Current Events > Ayn Rand fell down and hit her head between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

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At least, that's my theory. Both novels are pretty entertaining, but the ideas in The Fountainhead are generally very good; the "ideas" and "philosophy" in Atlas Shrugged are mostly evil or ridiculous.

What do people think about this?


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Atlas Shrugged is horribly self indulgent. I remember reading it the summer before I started grad school. Ironically, I was on a train trip across the US throughout most of the book. I nearly took the bait and was really smitten by it for a good chunk of the read. At some point, I think around the time Galt goes on his rant towards the end, I was NOPE.

I started thinking about the logical conclusions of the philosophy and concluded their implications were highly callous. Not to mention the bizarre takes on love and romance presented in the thing. People have the capacity for self sacrifice, empathy, and care for the whole. I would rather be a smaller mountain within a chain than one alone towering over the plain. That is my fundamental revulsion against the philosophy.

I agree the Fountainhead is a fun premise and an interesting thought experiment. I do believe their are nuggets in it that are valuable to consider, but the extremes Shrugged takes the conclusions are not necessary.

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I was speaking to my theory professor in grad school about Rand during a break in seminar. He told me and few students hanging out something along the lines of this. "Everybody (tries to) reads Rand at some point in their life. 99 percent end up revolted and the rest true believes." He asked me where I landed.

Guess that makes me part of the mass-man and Rand-like Champion.


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Atlas Shrugged is just a manifesto disguised as a thin narrative about railroads.

Atlas Shrugged is just a natural evolution of Fountainhead, expanding on the philosophy from a personal scale to a national, mass populace scale. And turning a ten page monologue about the virtues of her philosophy into a 50 page one. Also the movies stank (did they even make a third one?)

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Atlas shrugged was garbage and I couldn't be bothered to read the second half.

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Clearly, people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jeff Besoz read and really agreed with Atlas Shrugged. I mean...there's rich and driven, then there's THOSE people. Wtf. I feel bad about being the same species as them.

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After seeing an old program that both she and Aldous Huxley were on in the '50s (not at the same time), I couldn't help but think that Huxley was a far more complex person and that he was actually scientifically literate, unlike Rand.

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Neither of those books has any redeeming concept. I mean ffs Roark is a rapist in the Fountainhead and literally every character in Atlas Shrugged is a caricature.

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MeIon Bread posted...

Clearly, people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jeff Besoz read and really agreed with Atlas Shrugged. I mean...there's rich and driven, then there's THOSE people. Wtf. I feel bad about being the same species as them.

I don't know if Bezos and Gates have publixally said they believe it but why group them in with Musk lol, completely different attitudes. Gates has been engaged in huge philanthropy operations forever

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Shadowplay posted...

After seeing an old program that both she and Aldous Huxley were on in the '50s (not at the same time), I couldn't help but think that Huxley was a far more complex person and that he was actually scientifically literate, unlike Rand.

Huxley's dystopias came from the other direction.
Huxley's Brave New World warns us against the raw utilitarianism Rand's Atlas Shrugged adores.

The subtheme of suppression of the individual is just a coincidence, by being core trait of dystopian fiction itself.

I think there is a moral discussion to he had about social systems that exploit or thwart those most capable. That is a form of immorality in my head. As is a system that exploits and thwarts the average. This is my revulsion to Rand. Plus, her system would never start on a blank canvas. The power of wealth with the average will always put the capable of limited wealth behind the 8 ball.

I just see Rand's system ending up in a form of social darwinism where wealth equals morality. Poorness will not just be an economic condition but a moral one, priming the elites to justify exploitation of the underclass as ethical.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsspXHADa4c
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The tl;dr of the 1100 or so pages of Atlas Shrugged's dry and boring meanders and manifesto dump is pretty straightforward and intuitive:
"Wealth is always more mobile than poverty"

Or, as explained by Eric Cartman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTc3zcnIZOw

It could be read as a strong arguement for workers controlling the means of production. If a few can up and leave and collapse the economy and needs of many, why should the many accept the arrangement? The arguement would boil down to class conflict and such an arguement is one Marxists want to have. It helps prove their historical dialectic.

For clarity, I am not a marxist or extolling the virtues of such a system. Just reflecting aloud.

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furb posted...

The arguement would boil down to class conflict and such an arguement is one Marxists want to have. It helps prove their historical dialectic.

The counter-argument is that economy wouldn't happen, without a different sort of class conflict (state apparatus vs. everyone else) taking its place.

furb posted...

It could be read as a strong arguement for workers controlling the means of production. If a few can up and leave and collapse the economy and needs of many, why should the many accept the arrangement? The arguement would boil down to class conflict and such an arguement is one Marxists want to have. It helps prove their historical dialectic.

For clarity, I am not a marxist or extolling the virtues of such a system. Just reflecting aloud.

As an emigrant from Soviet Russia, Rand was a staunch opponent of any form of communism or collectivized unions or anything like that.

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the most overrated author of all time

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year olds life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

~ John Rogers

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