Midcentury: Atlas Shrugged

October 2007 -- This summer, as Ayn Rand ’s Atlas Shrugged approaches its fiftieth anniversary, I have just passed my forty-fifth year of living with that astonishing book. Thinking back across the decades, I find I am most surprised by how little progress has been made in advancing her philosophy of Objectivism .

When I first encountered Atlas Shrugged , it struck me as a work so emotionally inspiring and theoretically lucid that I imagined a thousand pens must leap to defend it. But of course they didn’t.

The attempt to explain that anomaly began as soon as the first reviews were printed. Members of Ayn Rand ’s circle argued that the reviewers were collectivists or Christians or conservatives or just irrational. Necessarily, those early explanations for the culture’s inadequate response to Atlas were speculative. But so are today’s. After all, we now have but fifty years of cultural history to go on, and, doubtless, matters will be clearer when we have a hundred. Unfortunately, I shall not be able to join that better-informed debate, and so I must do my speculating here, at midcentury.

Specifically, I would like to look at a belief that most advocates of Objectivism seem to have accepted regarding the past and future success of the Objectivist movement: that it depends above all on getting people to read Atlas Shrugged when they are young. No other proselytizer is so potent, Objectivists hold, but it functions most effectively before college has indoctrinated people with irrational anti-individualism. The idea has merit, but I think it is not the whole truth of the matter.

Looking Backward

By and large, the people who have found Atlas Shrugged powerfully convincing have been young people. In my own case, I was fourteen years old when I read Atlas, having just completed my freshman year in high school. After I finished the book (in two sleepless days), my brother, three years older, argued bitterly against my newly adopted philosophical and political positions. But he too soon read the book, and all his arguments were instantly swept aside, thus restoring as much harmony to our relationship as brothers ever achieve.

That is the way Atlas Shrugged usually works: like a tidal wave. But the emotional power by which Atlas Shrugged convinces people also works against it. In Romantic fictional narratives, like Atlas, the good, the true, and the beautiful are whatever the novelist declares them to be. So long as the story lasts, the Romantic author’s philosophy has the force of an axiom. And the book asks the reader bluntly: Which side are you on?

I think that is the principal reason young people have been better able to enter into the world of Atlas. Being young, they have no particular theories about the world that must be rejected before this new philosophy can be embraced. Older readers generally do have such theories. That doesn’t mean older readers’ outlooks are irrational or corrupt or cynical—just that they are different enough to resist a Romantic novel’s impertinent demands for allegiance and to require sympathetic persuasion, something at which Atlas Shrugged does not excel.

Of course, Atlas certainly does include explicit argument as well as implicit philosophy. Embedded within it are half a dozen brilliant essays in the form of speeches. The speech on the nature of money, delivered by Francisco d’Anconia, has always been a favorite, and the same character’s speech on love and sex is, for me, no less valuable. Then there is the speech, delivered by John Galt at the novel’s climax. Its presence makes the novel a mine of insight into the Objectivist philosophy. Recently, when writing a column on heroism, I turned to a single paragraph in Galt’s speech, on integrity, and found there a wealth of ideas about the interrelations of virtue and value, thought and action, confidence and courage. Surely, one might think, older people not bowled over the novel’s implicit philosophy have full opportunity to weigh its explicit philosophy.

But that is not so, for the novel’s presentations of explicit philosophy have drawbacks as well as virtues. To begin with, the speeches are not structured according to classical principles of oration, and the speakers give little or no consideration to possible objections. Worse still, long as the speeches are, they are highly condensed arguments. The reasoning that grounds the Objectivist ethics is presented on one page of Galt’s speech—two pages, if one includes supporting material on the nature of life. That one page includes a definition of morality, its basis in volition, a demonstration that Man’s Life is the proper moral standard, and the distinction between a moral standard and an ultimate moral value. I cannot blame older readers who resist Rand’s fictional portrayals of Objectivist morality for not grasping her explicit validation of it.

Looking Forward

In light of the foregoing, I believe that substantially greater success for the Objectivist movement during its second fifty years will depend upon a relatively lessened role for Atlas Shrugged . Undoubtedly, the novel will remain the primary entry point into the philosophy, at least for young people. It will continue to be discussed as Ayn Rand ’s principal work, and therefore it will continue to be bought by all who want to learn about her. In the first half of 2007, the New York Times used Ayn Rand ’s name eleven times, and mentioned Atlas Shrugged three times. The Wall Street Journal mentioned Ayn Rand seven times up to the midpoint of 2007, and Atlas Shrugged twice, including a column of readers’ book recommendations for twentysomethings. When young people first encounter mentions of “ Atlas Shrugged ” or “ Ayn Rand ,” a certain percentage will seek out Atlas, read it, and be convinced. Two years ago, Penguin/Putnam revealed that annual sales for Atlas Shrugged in 2002 were 140,000 and up 10 percent over the previous year. Objectivism without Atlas Shrugged does not lie in the foreseeable future.

But the continued success of Objectivism , I believe, must see a rising percentage of new Objectivist work, both fictional and nonfictional, and the former will be by far the more difficult to produce. To date, a few of Rand’s devotees have tried to follow in her authorial footsteps, and some have had commercial success. But none, so far as I am aware, has broken with Rand’s literary approach, and that is what needs to be done. Robert Bidinotto recently expressed his conviction that “ Objectivism cannot be fully and accurately grasped apart from Rand’s fiction, [and] the unique nature of Randian heroism cannot be perceived except through the filter of her fiction.” I would say nearly the opposite: Readers cannot truly grasp Objectivism ’s morality through the single example of Rand’s fiction, just as one cannot grasp the nature of Romantic music through the single example of Beethoven; one must also hear Chopin. As Ayn Rand herself argued: In order to form any adequate concept, a person must abstract from at least two differing examples.

Thus, differing fictional examples of Objectivist morality will be sorely needed in the years ahead. Rand’s heroes are typically of the type that appeals to adolescents: rebels, outcasts, dissidents, and outlaws. (Part of her genius was contriving to cast American industrialists in that role.) What we need are Objectivist heroes for all ages, in roles and situations that Rand herself would not have employed. Imagine, to take but one instance, a fully Objectivist hero who works as a middle manager for a small but admirable corporation. Imagine how he would exhibit the Objectivist virtues in dealing with bosses, colleagues, and underlings—or in dealing with customers and competitors—or in dealing with his family and community. Such depictions would present completely different applications of the Objectivist philosophy and help readers to grasp the underlying ethical approach by offering highly differentiated manifestations of it.

And what about the arguments embedded in Atlas Shrugged ? There the picture is much brighter, for those highly truncated essays were supplemented by Rand herself and have been expounded upon by other thinkers ever since. Today, professional intellectuals influenced by Objectivism are moving into teaching positions at the college level and are spelling out, at book-length, the epistemology, morality, aesthetics, and psychology that began with mere hints in the speeches of Atlas Shrugged . Still other intellectuals are applying those principles to historical interpretation, economics, business ethics, childhood education, law, and foreign policy. Journals and magazines, including this one, are then applying the intellectuals’ work to current political and cultural affairs. All in all, the nonfiction side of the ledger shows very considerable progress, though there is always more to do.

One place where the propagation of Objectivist theory lags, however, is in the relatively few practitioners who are applying it to their fields. If, for example, Objectivism is “a philosophy for living on earth,” why does it not play a more significant role in the self-help movement? Too many young readers of Atlas Shrugged think that, by agreeing with Rand’s theories, they will succeed in life and love. Where are the Objectivist self-help writers who can show them how to apply the philosophy’s virtues to their careers, studies, finances, and relationships? What better answer could the philosophy give to its disparagers than to help produce happy and productive young people? Or again, if Objectivism has solved the central epistemological problem of conceptual knowledge, why does it not play a more significant role in the Information Age? Why are information scientists not employing it successfully? What more powerful demonstration than that could there be of Rand’s epistemological insights?

Our Turn

As a founding document, Atlas Shrugged was the ideal method for presenting the radically original philosophy of Objectivism . No other vehicle could have done as much to launch Ayn Rand ’s revolutionary ideas. Yet the particular identity of the instrument meant that it had limitations as well as capabilities. We cannot lament that fact; we can only recognize it. And we can acknowledge that to spread Objectivism more widely during the next fifty years will require that the novel’s proselytizing power be supplemented.

Specifically, as Objectivism leaves behind the founding generation and their works, its future success will rest on the ability of Objectivist philosophers to shape the thinking of biologists, neuroscientists, information scientists, psychologists, psychotherapists, economists, lawyers, sociologists, teachers, and businessmen. And it will rest too on the ability of Objectivist novelists and artists to inspire productive and happy individuals, families, and communities to put Objectivism into practice.

Immediately after Atlas Shrugged was published, and the scathing reviews started to roll in, Nathaniel Branden said to his then–wife, Barbara: “It’s our turn now. Ayn has done enough. She’s entitled to rest. It’s we who have to carry the work forward.” His statement is even truer today, as Atlas Shrugged reaches midcentury.

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