Reviewing Atlas Shrugged

It is almost with a shaky set of hands that I commence to write these words. The very idea of reviewing Ayn Rand’s magnum opus ‘Atlas Shrugged’ (AS) is a bit daunting. Not just because of its scale (1084 pages in paperback and as Wikipedia informs me, at 6.45 lac words, one of the longest pieces of literature ever penned) but also because of the various spheres of human life it encompasses. From love to ethics to morality to religion to politics, Rand touches all and presents a unique (if somewhat utopian on occasions) point of view across. At twenty fours years of age and as someone who does not claim to have seen everything there is to see, think and judge upon in this world, I feel somewhat inadequate in forming a scholarly assessment on AS. But if there one thing that Rand would have hated her readers to have done, it was to blindly follow what she had written. And as John Galt says, the question is ‘to think or not to think’. To do justice to Rand would be to think and express an opinion. And so here it follows.

So what is the theme of the book? In two words – volitional consciousness. Two words that John Galt, the hero of the novel and Rand’s idea of the perfect man never fails to emphasize. Man’s existence on this planet says Rand is driven by the exercise of his choices, choices which are not forced upon him but which are followed and acted upon by a process of rational selection. If man’s ego was the ‘Fountainhead’ of humanity’s progress then it is the exercise of his mind that drives this progressive ego. Rational self-interest, according to Rand, must not be confused with selfishness. Yes, our choices must be driven primarily on the basis of what is good for us, but where Rand differs is in the dynamic of the choice that she defines. An objective choice is one which involves an equal trade off between the two parties involved in the decision. A sub-optimal choice which benefits or enriches one at the cost of another falls beyond the circumference of rationality and must be out rightly rejected. Trade, believes Rand, forms the basis or must form the basis of human actions. One must not gain at the expense of another (for that amounts to looting – the possession of someone’s asset by force - or amounts to mooching – beseeching someone to benefit another under a moral obligation while at the same time deriding the person who carries the weight of this obligation); a relationship must be formed as per Rand on the basis of an exchange. What one seeks the other must have in him or her to give.

Rand’s moral philosophy rests on three foundational pillars – pillars which form the backbone of this novel. These are the three primary principles of the Aristotle school of philosophy – existence, identity and consciousness. An object or a state exists; to deny existence is to deny identity and consequently reality. A is A, something that Galt never forgets to remind us. No matter how so ever you may wish A will not be B. And the moment it moves from being an A to being a B, it assumes a completely different identity altogether. It must not possess any remnants of A. It is now distinctly B. And thus to drive home the point of there being only two sides – things are either Black or White (Either/Or – another foundation of Aristotle’s philosophy). There are no greys, says Rand. And this fact of existence and identity drives towards the third pillar of consciousness. A man must be conscious to gain and understand the state of existence around him. And it is this consciousness, this awareness of reality that forces him to make his own choices. Consciousness being the faculty of perceiving what exists and thus making rational choices on the basis of living tangible factors of existence. It often reminds me of the famous quality I once read being attributed to a great statesman – the ability to see things as they are and not as you wish them to be.

It is a single quality that distinguishes Rand’s characters in the book. Rand divides them into two halves (Black and White….) – one set are the creators – people who create value, who bring innovation, who drive the commercial economy and sustenance of the society by the strength of their mind. Their innovations, efforts and drive generating greater benefits for those to whom they sell their products. These industrialists and scientists, as Rand shows them, are the torch bearers of rational self interest. Men and women who act because they want to act in that manner, because their mind makes them believe that it is only by acting in that manner that they are sustaining themselves. Thus, you have a Dagny Taggart (Rand’s heroine in the novel) and other industrialists like Hank Rearden and Ellis Wyatt who act in a certain manner only because it sustains their own self interest and those of their businesses. Rand’s point eventually boils down to this – innovations and inventions eventually move out of the hands of the thinkers to that of the industrialist who then applies them to mass production which through a domino effect creates value for the society as a whole. This forms the crux of Rand’s economic philosophy. AS could well serve as a manifesto for laizzez faire capitalism, standing in the blue corner up against the Communist manifesto in the red (pun intended). Thus the greatest private property is one’s mind and in the economic system envisaged by Rand, the state must carry out the responsibility to guard the sanctity of this one supreme asset.

Which is something the ‘People’s State’ in AS does not do. This is the second half of her characters – comprising the looters and moochers. People who deprive others of their innovations because they seek to reward the non-performing at the expense of those who perform, while very conveniently passing off this heist under the garb of ‘greater social need’. Moochers of course are the parasites – those who force others to believe that they are under a moral obligation to sustain them since those who are talented and successful must carry the burden of those who have not been able to acquire these attributes.

Both positions are those of extortion and throughout the novel are adopted by the ‘villains’ under the garb of moral obligation, towards society and towards the weak. Rand soundly rejects this point of view. She candidly outlines the decay that sets in when man’s actions are governed by the over arching umbrella of moral responsibility which is nothing but an attempt by the unproductive to live a life by robbing the productive of their means. The looters routinely use Communist postulates and arguments to undermine the men and women of ability. Principle among these arguments is the one against the making of profits and generation of money. (Franciso d’Anconia’s six page rebuttal of the argument that ‘Money is the root of all evil’ is one of the highlights of the book) Another argument is that of a rich and successful person’s moral obligation to support those who are not as well off. Hank Rearden’s family never fails to criticize him for running after money, for being materialistic but also feeds from his treasury for their sustenance. Rand does well to bring out to the hypocrisy of this situation as well as punching holes in theory of ‘Sanction of the Victim’. Rand displays how evil can exist only because good allows it to. It is only because the productive minds accept the moral guilt of being productive and accept the obligation of carrying the world on their shoulders that the looters and moochers thrive and become more powerful.

Rand also criticizes religion and mysticism (Galt’s speech has a few nasty things to say about India in this respect) believing that both these are forms of blind faith. The ‘mystics of the mind’ as Galt calls them force you to abandon your mind and consequently your ability to reason. The ‘mystics of the muscle’ are the looters, those who rob you of your productive efforts. Galt seeks out to destroy both by taking away the one weapon that these two forces possess – voluntary sanction of the victim. It is an approach that finds a small resonance with the Gandhian practice of Satyagraha. Rearden’s response of refusing to recognize the court that tries him but at the same time refusing to accept his guilt, not co-operating with the judicial process and holding steadfast to his views are reminiscent of Gandhi’s non-violence tactics. Tactics which rested on the single premise of the victim being morally stronger than the oppressor.

It is difficult not to agree with Rand’s thought process. Having espoused the concept of free choice and free minds, liberalism, rationality and broad mindedness, there is a lot that one finds common with what exists in the book. But AS suffers from two weaknesses. One is literary and the other a moral one. Rand’s characters, as pointed earlier, are purely black and white. They are neatly divided into two camps. Even if one passes that off as a necessity for her to show the divergence in the core beliefs of these two groups and distinctly draw out the features of objectivism, you cannot ignore the monologue that characterizes the book at certain places. Characters rarely converse without venturing into long speeches of philosophy. It almost seems that essays have been masqueraded as dialogues. At times you wonder whether it is humanly possible for someone to speak as long and use as heavy words, phrases and sentences as Rand’s characters do in the novel. AS is Rand’s magnum opus. But one can’t help thinking that the one thousand page novel could easily have been passed off a philosophy book condensed into three hundred odd pages. Rand would of course later in her writing career go on to do exactly that with her book ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’ as well as other titles. Her followers like Leonard Peikoff and Nathaniel Branden would also follow the same route and churn out pure philosophical essays rather than philosophy dressed works of fiction. But to be fair to Rand, all writing has a message and you can certainly doubt whether objectivism would have reached as many people had she not transformed them into novels like ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’.

More than the literary it is a moral question that requires a critical appraisal of Rand’s work. While A is indisputably A, what are the attributes that make an A an A? And can these attributes also display a partial presence in B? Rand says contradictions do not exist – things are either black or white. It is this argument that I now propose to dispute. And I want to do so by taking a few examples.

The two great Indian epics – Ramayana and Mahabharata – deal with moral issues at a great depth. They outline the moral codes that must govern the societies. The Ramayana is the simpler epic – a straight fight between the good and the evil. But try and judge maryada purshottam Lord Ram by objectivist criteria and you might find some surprises. What makes Ram leave Ayodhya, refuse the throne that is his by right and follow an obligated father’s wishes to march on to the jungle. Is Ram being a mystic? Is he acting in his self-interest? Or is this another form of altruism, a state of living that Rand absolutely despises. And if Ram’s interest is assumed to be to up hold the promise of his father then is it not a sacrifice (another word derided by Rand) on his part? The giving up of a kingdom for a life in forest – a sacrifice driven by an immoral promise forced out of plain treachery by a scheming wife. And what makes maryada purshottam to abdicate his wife just because of a seed of her disloyalty planted in his mind by the actions of a washer man who also throws out his wife who has lived in another man’s residence? Why does Ram, the upholder of all the sacred Hindu moral values on one hand turn so parochial as to throw his wife out on the mere fact she spent days and nights in the house of another man? What makes a demi-god character who displays prudence and rationality throughout the epic to act in such a ‘contradictory’ manner?

The Mahabharata is all the more dense when it comes to the concept of morality. It is perhaps the most morally ambiguous epic in literature. Each character has that one fatal flaw that stops him short of perfection. Bhisma is the maryada purshottam of the Mahabharata, who upholds all the values of raj dharma but allows his choice of right and wrong to be compromised by his loyalty to the kingdom he serves. Karna similarly allows his sense of morality to be compromised by his friendship to Duryodhan. And what of the Pandavas? Are they all white? What makes the upholder of moral values, the dharamraj Yudhistra to succumb to the tentacles of gambling and lose everything he puts at stake? And what of Lord Krishna himself? He, who is the orchestrator of the Pandava victories, is the most morally ambiguous of all. Where is the morality in placing Shikhandi before Bhisma, forcing the old man to lay down weapons and then firing arrows at him at will? Is it any less immoral than the Kauravas ganging up on an armed but alone in battle Abhimanyu? Was it moral to speak a white lie to Drona and make him abdicate his weapons and then chop off his head while he was sitting in meditation? Was it moral on the part of Krishna to goad Bhim to strike on Duryodhan’s thighs even though the rules of mace fight forbid such a move?

Each of these ambiguities Krishna addresses through sermons at different places on the epic, the most important one being the Geeta itself. All is fair, he stresses, on the path of righteousness. Krishna’s actions are legitimate because the Pandavas have righteousness with them. And that is not because they are all white or do not possess any human flaws. They most certainly do; but unlike the Kauravas they are able to acquire a streak of humility to conquer their flaws. The Mahabharata is not a simple fight between the right and the wrong – but a fight between those who have been able to conquer their contradictions and those who continue to live by their faults.

And this is precisely what is missing from the characters in Rand’s book. They are too perfect and not real. In a certain sense, even artificial. They exist in a realm of perfect competition and empirical economics will tell you that those conditions do not exist in a real world. Let me put forward another example – India and the United States are democracies. Both run on a political system that recognizes an individual’s fundamental right to choose who governs him. Adult franchise is the ultimate political representation of volitional consciousness. And if both these nations consider democracy as the moral code of their political systems then why are they spreading non-democratic regimes all across the world? The US has installed tin pot dictators all across the globe just because a democratically elected government would not serve their interests. Closer home while we profess democracy and advocate its spread in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East, we are perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to the democratic demands in Burma where a popularly elected leader has been under house arrest for almost two decades now. Why? Because it serves our self interest to keep the Generals ruling that country happy so that in return they control the militant groups operating in the North East. How different are we then from the Americans (often called ‘Cynical Bastards’ for this hypocritical policy), who support autocrat and non-democratic regimes in many nations simply because it suits their economic self interest?

My question is two fold – is this rational self interest? Both nations act in their own benefit and offer a morally questionable trade off. And if yes, then does this mean that our self interest may conflict with our living code of morality? Why is it okay for our people to exercise their minds but not okay for those from other nations to do so? So what do we choose – our morality or our self-interest? But hang on; doesn’t following your self interest as per Rand lead you to a path of a moral life? Or I am missing the definition of morality? Isn’t adherence to a principle you stand by the ultimate test of your morality? And if yes, then does our pursuit of rational self interest as individuals and as nations mean that our morality crosses path with our interests rather than running parallel to it? Isn’t the Mahabharata an example that contradictions in human character do exist, just that many are able to conquer them? Is India’s engagement with Pakistan in a peace process a step towards compromise (another concept that objectivists love to hate) or a step towards co-existence? And if both represent a climb down, a give and take, a sub-optimal solution, agreeing to live with each other through certain adjustments, then what is the objectivist alternative to it? Bombing each other out of existence? Isn’t our stand of co-existence with our neighbor driven by our rational self-interest to exist and not be bombed to pieces? If yes, then isn’t our rational self interest driving us towards a possible compromise and life of co-existence?

Difficult questions? Welcome to a difficult world.

I suspect Rand’s robust philosophy like all schools of thought has had some difficulty standing up to the queries of a real world. In spite of that it needs to be studied, more deeply analyzed and respected. Simply because it stands as a solid defense for the fundamental human right of making a choice (something no can dispute and take away from Objectivism) and because it stands as a solid wall behind the liberal, rational and open minded process of living a life.


P.S. Rand, through Galt’s speech is quite critical of the ‘mystic’ India consisting of sadhus who sleep on a bed of nails, while she profusely praises the US as the first country that gave importance to the concept of the power of a man’s mind. Too bad, ‘The Argumentative Indian’ wasn’t out then. Indian philosophy dates back to eras when the US as a continent was not even discovered. And the United States itself took almost two centuries to make a decision as to what extent it wanted to recognize the power of the mind of its people. Slavery was abolished only after the civil war in 1860s (Britain has abolished it decades earlier), women allowed to vote only in the late nineteenth century (Good luck Hillary! a women president if she comes will come after 232 years of male presidents) and blacks were allowed to vote only in the 1960s (a full century after abolition of slavery). If I could fault Rand on one count, it would be this irrational and blind devotion to the United States. Not expected from an objectivist.

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