Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is finally coming to the screen, and opening day will (ironically) be on tax day, April 15. This is appropriate, because Ayn Rand believed the world consisted of two groups of people, the givers and the takers. There are geniuses and parasites, and parasites should get out of the way of geniuses.
Martin Fridson reviews the movie in Barrons (Big Novel Meets Big Screen).. He has read the 1,200 page book only once, but his 29 year-old wife has read it 13 times. A 1991 survey for the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress ranked Atlas Shrugged second only to the Bible among books that have made a difference in people’s lives, Fridson writes (I doubt the Koran was included in the study).
Ayn Rand was an objectivist philosopher, and one of her best known disciples is Alan Greenspan. That makes sense because Greenspan believed that rational self-interest would prevent the big banks from going broke. However, Rand’s heroes were entrepreneurs motivated by a sense of ownership, and many of the big banks were run by hired guns who wanted to earn large annual bonuses and then move on.
Objectivism, as a philosophy, is based on the notion that reality is independent of the existence of people, and we discover that reality by relying on reason. Rand believed reason was the only tool available to us to discover that reality, She acknowledged that emotion exists, but she claimed we only become emotional about matters we have discovered through the application of reason. (Shakespeare would probably not be a Rand supporter, since that he wrote “nothing is either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.”)
It seems to me that Ayn Rand has much in common with Frederick Nietsche. Rand said the only morality is what makes us happy. Nietsche believed that Christian morality was only for the masses, and it should not restrict the actions of truly exceptional people. Rand was an advocate of individual freedom, but she presumably disagreed with John Stuart Mill’s caveat that we should avoid actions that might harm others.
Rand’s story is so long that the current movie only covers one-third of the book. The first part begins with the collapse of the American economy in 2016 (Rand wrote the book in 1957, so some adjustments are necessary with regard to time). The chief characters are Dagny Taggart, who is trying to save her family’s railroad from going broke, and Hank Reardon, an inventor she has hired to help her in this effort. Reardan is largely unaware of what is going on around him, and he is trying to placate people, including members of his family, who keep interfering with what he is trying to do. He gives money to his brother who wants to fund a charity, but his brother does not want anyone to know the money comes from a greedy capitalist.
This is a low-budget movie (only $20 million) because all the major producers did not think it would be well received by the public. The most important person in the book is John Galt, but he does not appear until the last third (which presumably will be movie number three). He is the one who has organized a strike by the most able managers and entrepreneurs. That is why America’s economy and infrastructure is falling apart. Because of excessive government regulations the geniuses have refused to work, so the parasites are now in charge. Atlas (the entrepreneurs) is no longer willing to hold up the world. (Fridson notes that in the original Greek story Atlas held up the universe.)
Fridson begins his review with the comment that Atlas Shrugged, Part !, is a rare commodity, a movie that actually celebrates capitalism.(Because of its low cost it may even earn a profit).
One Response to “Atlas Shrugged”
Leave a Reply
Where on earth did you ever get the idea that Ayn Rand philosophy advocates or accepts actions that harm others? That is blatantly opposite of her philosophy.
Minor correction. While the whole 18 year saga of getting this film produced may have involved costs approach $20 million dollars, the film itself only cost about $10 million dollars to make.