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Atlas Shrugged By Ayn Rand ISBN13: 9780451191144

Atlas Shrugged was written by self-styled philosopher Ayn Rand (born Alissia Rosenbaum, in St. Petersburg in 1905 for what that's worth). It was first published in 1957 and represents the ultimate expression of her Objectivist philosophy.

You might believe - whether from the blurb or from the book's fans - that Atlas Shrugged is some sort of inspired and inspirational political-philosophical epic about the human spirit, but it actually reeks of large-scale adolescent power fantasies combined with a depressingly negative view of the human condition. While Objectivists - not to mention many libertarians - treat it as virtual Holy Writ, others would be better regarding it as a quaint period piece of crank fringe literature by someone who spent too much time thinking and not enough time living in the real world. While it's not as ridiculous as, say, Dianetics, in parts it comes very close; although it tries to be a novel of political allegory which presents and works out Objectivist ideas, it fails both as a novel and as political allegory.

As a novel, it starts out as a moderately effective pageturner for the first hundred or so pages, but it isn't long before realisation dawns that the characters neither are particularly interesting nor undergo much actual development. As with many of the book's elements, they're drawn in strict black-and-white terms: either highly intelligent and supremely capable industrialist supermen (or woman in the case of the heroine, who has little actual femininity besides her gender); or snivelling cowardly incompetent strawmen, conveniently described as "looters" and representing any form of cooperation and collective action, and whose conversation consists almost entirely of crude caricatures of collectivist slogans. Family life is rarely seen - children are almost nonexistent, for example - and it is always subordinated to the demands of running one's business and making money for oneself.

As political allegory, it fails because its world bears little resemblance to reality. A country as large and advanced as the USA would - and could - never rely exclusively on rail for transporting goods, nor rely on a handful of companies to supply them, nor be run by such incompetent wretches, and consequently the catastrophes which occur in the book's final third come across more like symptoms of increasing authorial hysteria than anything else. Philosophy and religion are caricatured as arguments that human beings are worthless and fit only for self-sacrifice, science - in one of the book's most ludicrous passages - culminates in a "sound ray" which kills goats and brings down bridges at long distance, and anyone who doesn't make large amounts of money running their own business is treated as being beneath pity. And just where did someone who (so we're told) devoted her whole life to running a railroad find the time or inclination to learn to fly a light aircraft?

The only way in which Atlas Shrugged can be said to succeed is in its presentation of Objectivist principles, which are laid out in John Galt's long, long, long radio broadcast near the end of the book. These principles leave a nasty taste in the mouth, with their elevation of the individualistic pursuit of wealth, regardless of the consequences, above all other things; compassion, sympathy, cooperation and working for the common good are all regarded as products of human weakness and are to be disregarded. Such a contempt for basic human values far outweighs anything worthwhile Objectivism may have to say about the merits of individual aptitude and self-reliance. Ultimately, the effect of reading Atlas Shrugged is comparable to being on the receiving end of a long, hysterical, and largely baffling lecture about a subject you're not really very interested in.

A few words about Objectivism itself: in its sanction of personal greed and concomitant disdain for those less well off or differently inclined, not to mention its promotion of an explicitly favoured subspecies of the human race, Objectivism has a lot in common with - of all things - certain principles and practices of a certain pseudo-religious organisation which I know better than to refer to by name. (Try "never reward a downstat", for starters.) Indeed, it's probably not too much to say that Objectivism is the missing link between this organisation and libertarianism.

One last oddity. The cover of the copy I was lent proclaims the book to be a special "35th anniversary edition", published in 1992, but what's so special about 35? It's the product of two prime numbers of little significance, except that one of them happens to be the number of digits on one hand or foot and the other is the number of days in a week. Is the number 35 meaningful to Objectivists for some reason?

Atlas Shrugged links