Ever since I read The Fountainhead I've been a huge fan of Ayn Rand's, big enough even to read Atlas Shrugged, basically a longer, more tedious and preachier version of The Fountainhead, as well as some of her less well-known short stories. That being the case, I was more than a little surprised by the sudden onslaught of anti-Obama Randisms like, "We are truly living an Ayn Rand novel-come-to-life nightmare." When Obama announced his intention to appoint an automobile czar this quote was ubiquitous. Dr. Helen Smith wrote, "Do you ever wonder, after dealing with all that is going on with the economy and the upcoming election, if it’s getting to be time to ‘go John Galt?" She then went on to say, “I had to refresh my memory with the Cliffs Notes,” but the themes of Rand’s novel had stuck with her. Well pardon me, but I'll have to use the limited knowledge I attained by recently reading the actual book to respond to these patently absurd claims. On top of all of this, last year Atlas Shrugged sold more copies than ever before, undoubtedly due to all the free press it's been getting in conservative radio shows and news columns. In her books Rand basically deifies the "giants of industry." Her books are logical frameworks in support of the conclusion that the ultimate goal of humans should be to be Creators, to create something out of nothing much like a God, and that consequently the best way to do this is to leave The Creators alone. I should point out here, that I absolutely agree with her on this point.
The first point I want to make is that Ayn Rand was a Philosopher, that's why I loved her books, and I think that's what's so dissappointing about the recent infatuation with her work. People are basically reading her as an economist, which she most certainly was not, and ignoring her philosophical message. I couldn't put it better than a recent USNews article did, "Battling Obama by 'Going Galt': Conservatives Look to 'Atlas Shrugged' for Answers to Keynesian Policies." Pitting a philosopher against an economist is a bit like, I don't know, pitting religion against science... silly.
In the interest of fairness, I'll point out that conservatives aren't the only one's trying to co-opt Rand's philosophy to their raison d'etre. Andrew Leonard of Salon.com wrote, "We let the John Galts of Wall Street -- the Jimmy Caynes and Sanford Weills and John Thains and Angelo Mozilos -- do as they pleased, and they broke the economy." While it is certainly true that Rand's philosophy influenced Alan Greenspan, who may have contributed to the recession by lowering interest rates and encouraging deregulation, at the very least the deregulation that occurred can not fall squarely on Greenspan's shoulders, if it should fall on them at all. After all, he was not a legislator, and so didn't sign in a single a law that led to deregulation. But as I said before, Rand idealized the giants of industries. She worshiped people who created quality goods. Howard Roark was an architect and John Galt was an engineer... don't really get many of those on Wall Street. Ayn Rand was very anti-government (as well she should be, she grew up in communist Russia), but she wasn't so blinded by that distrust that she wouldn't recognize a moocher who wasn't a government official. She would undoubtedly see those on Wall Street as moochers who make their livings by leeching off the labors of The Creators. The bankers on Wall Street have the power to bankrupt a great company or push a worthless company's stock price sky-high. That is the opposite of what Rand would want and so she certainly wouldn't idealize those people who had the power to do it. In fact, I suspect that Rand would be an outspoken critic of today's entire corporate structure which places second-handers at the top of the pyramid - after all how many CEO's ever really created anything? Now there are exceptions like Steve Jobs (Apple) and Elon Musk (PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors), but the actual consensus in the business-world is that the age of corporations built around one man are over. Btw, they're both democrats, a fact I discovered after I wrote that sentence (see here and here, for their campaign contributions, Musk gave some money to Republicans, but he supported both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the primary). The argument goes that today's businesses are far too complex to revolve around one person. But the truth is that no one does more to stifle the imagination, creativity, and ingenuity of the creators like modern corporations. Have a great invention? Better bankrupt yourself trying to patent it because a corporation would be happy to steal it. Have a great invention that you patented? Today's your lucky day, a corporation might pay you pennies on the dollar for it. Have a brilliant idea? Well let's see how brilliant it is once it's been filtered through a dozen VPs. Just look at what Michael Jackson (not the recently deceased pop-star), former VP of advertising and marketing for GM recently said about GM. He said that "U.S. operations have too many layers for approval...," that GM was a "bureaucracy of meetings culture," that led suppliers to "present work they know will get approved, not cool, risky creative." In other words, modern corporations have become more like governments and less like Rand's idealized vision. They've become more fixated on growth and the elimination of competition, than on creating good products, which is why so many companies are struggling now. So many corporations took on the philosophy, "profits first, good products only if absolutely necessary" as opposed to "good profits follow good products." Rand's characters, on the other hand, thrived on competition and viewed it as necessary proof of the superiority of their creations. They wouldn't sell a product that wasn't the very best they could make. So to return to a previous point, if any CEOs wish to "go Galt," feel free. Take your undeserved and unearned golden parachute and go away, let the real John Galt's take your place.
Now I'll move back to the conservative arguments. They generally go something like this: "You’ve of course heard of both the 'climate czar' and the 'energy czar,' who supposedly know how to 'reform' America’s energy industry. States are busy appointing 'stimulus czars,' alleged experts in how to spend other people’s money. Many people are eagerly awaiting the appointment of a 'car czar.' Obama has already appointed a 'regulatory czar' (Cass Sustein). This authoritarianism is ominous. Ayn Rand repeatedly warned, after Atlas was published in 1957, that America was slowly drifting toward dictatorship (of a fascist kind)." My first counter-argument will be both my simplest, as well as, in my opinion, the most important. In Atlas Shrugged, successful industries were socialized by the government and czars were appointed to run them. Our federal government has only, and will only, bail-out failing businesses. Now I'm not saying that Rand would be enthused by this, however, it is simply a completely different issue than the one Rand was addressing in her books. Rand would have no sympathy for pathetic CEOs who had to go begging to the federal government for a bailout. In fact, she would undoubtedly have been more disgusted by their behavior than the federal government's. She would see it as only natural that the government would jump at the opportunity to get involved in the private sector, but she would see the CEO's behavior as the ultimate betrayal. In addition, she would see it as moronic to deny an investor in a company, certainly a majority investor, the right to govern the direction of a company, even if it is the federal government. If a "bad" investor is allowed into a company, the fault lies not with the investor for exercising their rights, but in the company, for granting them the rights in the first place. This is a key ingredient of laissez-faire economics. I agree that it might have been poor judgment to refer to the people who would be in charge of making sure the taxpayer's money would be put to good use as "czars" due to the authoritarian connotation, but it would be even less wise to allow our word choices to be governed by every dead fiction writer. Finally, you have to appreciate the irony of republicans (who want to listen in on your phone coversations, who want to be able to lock you up without trial, who want to tell you who you can and can't marry, what drugs you can or can't ingest, what prayers you must or must not say in your schools, and which sciences can or can't be taught in schools) calling democrats "tyrants" because of their choice of words! After all, Obama's czars have zero power over ordinary citizens, a tyrant is someone who has absolute control over his/her citizenry. "But," they scream, "democrats want to control you, that's their end-game." Well republicans are the ones with the track record. Rand would never support the condemnation of an entity for actions it will allegedly take in the future, and certainly not by an entity that has already committed them in the recent past.
Another thing I find interesting about the conservative's new found love for Ayn Rand is the fact that she would never be caught dead in today's "conservative" republican party (though she certainly wouldn't be a card-carrying democrat either) as it is dominated by the religious-right. She was an open and outspoken atheist. She also had an open marriage, which leads to the comical conclusion that only a dead Ayn Rand is a conservative's friend; were she alive today she would be derided as an Atheist, adulterer and probably all-around loon. But if Michael Jackson's (the recently deceased pop-star) death has shown us anything, it's that nothing puts a nice polish on a person like them not being around to rub it off.
In reality, saying Ayn Rand would be against our government's behavior is rather like saying that Castro would be against it, they are merely on opposite sides of the spectrum. Rand would be no more of a fan of Reagan or Bush than she would be of Obama. Under Reagan the federal government grew (61,000 federal employees added to the payroll, $165 million bailout of social security which increased payroll taxes on employees and employers, brought new federal workers into the system, and, for the first time, taxed Social Security benefits in the most "liberal" way possible: by taxing the upper-income recipients. For more on this go here). Government spending grew more under Reagan (in either term) than it did in either of Clinton's terms, or in Carter's term (for more on this go here). In addition, individual freedoms shrank under Reagan. He escalated the war on drugs which resulted in hundreds of thousands of casual marijuana users being imprisoned. Rand would no doubt assert that people should be free to decide what they do and do not ingest. Reagan also passed an anti-crime bill that gave the police more freedom to search a person's body.
To show that I'm not the only one who feels this way, check out this article by conservative columnist Scott Galupo. Here are some of the highlights:
- "That this turgid, tedious novel, published in 1957, has continually found fellow travelers on the right is a great oddity of American intellectual life."
- "Yet, like the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, she refused to identify herself as a conservative; the movement's Eisenhower-era toleration of the welfare state rendered it a dead letter, she asserted."
- "Libertarianism for Miss Rand smacked of free-loving hippies and other assorted moral relativists."
- "Miss Rand was open about the fact that her self-styled philosophy — objectivism — and her belief in unfettered free markets were profoundly radical."
- "Then, too, there's Miss Rand's strident atheism. If she were alive today, she'd be right alongside Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, railing against the moral perversity that results from belief in a deity."
- "Conservatives' embrace of "Atlas Shrugged" today is nothing more than blinkered escapist fantasy — rather like a besieged army turning to Norse mythology or J.R.R. Tolkien to boost morale."
I guess my point is, just stop invoking Rand as some kind of argument against the Obama administration. There are many valid and good arguments against what the government is doing, but bringing up Atlas Shrugged is about as relevant as bringing up The Motorcycle Diaries. Rand was an extremist who had been traumatized by an upbringing under communist rule. She made many good points, but as long as you believe in any regulation, you have a fundamental disagreement with her, and frankly if this economic meltdown has told us anything, it's that only an idiot wouldn't disagree with her on that point. Nothing brings this point home more than the rating agencies which valued subprime mortgages. There are simply somethings for which you need a massive and unbiased machine to regulate. Would you leave the testing of your food, drug, or water supply to a company that is being paid by the people providing the food, water, or drugs? Would you leave it to the companies who have to pay for the safety measures required to make their products safe, to determine what safety measures they should or shouldn't incorporate? I promise you the most expensive ones will be the first cuts, regardless of their importance.
It's important to remember that Rand was a philosopher and a writer, not an economist. She was brilliant, but she had an extreme and narrow mindset that is so often the result of personal trauma (as it certainly was in her case), but is even more often the result of a feeble mind. A rape victim might wind up hating all men or women (depending on the sex of their rapist), and someone who's child died of a drug-overdose might hate all drugs, but as with all things, the truth often lies somewhere in the middle. The truth is that we've had a mixed economy (neither truly laissez-faire nor socialist) since our nation's inception. A little bid of socialism and a little bit of free-trade is as American as apple-pie. If you want to argue about where to draw the line, that's fine with me, but unless you want a complete revolution of our economic system, it's simply not a sound argument to argue from Ayn.
