this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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The 1000+ pages of Atlas Shrugged are all an excuse for a 48 page Manifesto portrayed as John Galt's speech that occurs in the middle of the book.
If you want to understand what Rand was saying, just skip the book part and go directly to that manifesto. Its still a long slog to get through just that part. The rest of the book is slightly worse than bad teen fanfiction.
Eh, I thought the opposite. I thought John Galt's speech was absolutely skippable since the point had already been thoroughly made by that point.
That said, here's my cliff notes of what I remember from the book:
The whole story could and should have been told in less than half the pages, and probably closer to 250 pages. Fountainhead has the same essential story, but in half the pages and much better storytelling IMO, and Anthem has a very similar message in a 1984-esque world in far fewer pages.
I've read all three, and I recommend them from shortest to longest (i.e. if you like Anthem, you'll probably like Fountainhead, and only read Atlas Shrugged to say you did.
I agree with Ayn Rand on some things (i.e. protectionism is bad), but disagree on a lot of things (almost the entirety of Objectivism). I consider myself a left-leaning libertarian, and I largely reject Ayn Rand's message, especially the one about how charitable giving is bad (I believe in wealth redistribution via UBI or NIT). That said, I think her ideas are instructive, especially when it comes to understanding some of the fringe ultra-conservative groups in the libertarian and libertarian-adjacent movements.
I'm not sure what you're proposing. I'm saying skip the rest of the 1000+ pages and JUST read the 48 page speech if you want to know the point of the book. You seem to be saying, "read the first 500 pages, and then stop reading the book once you get to the speech". I agree with you that the speech is mostly redundant at that point however my method skips right to the point while yours would require the reader to suffer through 500+ pages of cardboard characters with vapid storytelling.
What am I missing from what you are suggesting?
I'm saying, skip the whole book and read Anthem. It makes basically the same point, but it's a short novella and much more enjoyable than Galt's monologue.
I admit I haven't read Fountain Head or Anthem. That still sounds like reading 400+ pages of Rand to get the same point she's trying to get across. If others want some better storytelling surrounding her message, it sounds like yours is the better path. For those that just want to rip the bandaid off, the Galt speech by itself is the shortest path.
For those reading the Galt speech, Elon Musk might be a close contemporary example of Galt. He's a rich industrialist that benefited from other's labor and the society structures that gave him protective laws, safe food/water, an educated workforce, a welcoming to immigrants, and all of the things that let him succeed. As soon as he succeeds he puts all his energy into destroying those structures because he sees himself as the main character and everyone else unworthy of his 'genius'.
Anthem is closer to 100 pages, and it's much more enjoyable than the ~50 pages of John Galt's monologue.
If you really want a shorter version of Atlas Shrugged, read a summary. Galt's speech is really long, pretty repetitive, and not that interesting, and it's basically just Ayn Rand getting off on her own ideas. There are much shorter summaries of Rand's ideology.
You obviously didn't read the book, because Galt actually innovated (book describes essentially a perpetual motion electrical generator). Musk is a salesperson who is particularly good at getting funding, as well as hiring people who know what they're doing. If Galt were real, I think he'd criticize Musk for the same reason you are, that he's only wealthy because of handouts from other people. Galt is also a philosopher (hence his massive monologue), whereas Musk doesn't seem to have anything resembling a philosophy other than "get rich by stroking rich peoples' egos."
Then you've completely missed the point, or at least didn't finish the book.
The only things the MCs in the book destroy are their own creations, they never destroy anything of anyone else's (and that's critically important to Rand's Objectivism ideology). They're labeled as destroying public goods because the government sees all private creations as some form of "public good," but they merely practiced the ultimate form of "take their ball and go home," and merely exiting the market led to systemic collapse. The government collapses after becoming a dictatorship and due to its own failings, not because of any action from Galt et al. If you'll notice, they have exited society long before the government actually collapses, and the government gets more and more desparate (i.e. more authoritarian) the more people exit society.
The closest thing Galt does to "destruction" is hacking into a national radio broadcast to deliver his speech. That's it, he uses no force, and he is actually arrested by the authorities and they try to force him to lead the economic recovery, which he refuses to do. If he had "main character syndrome," surely he would've accepted that offer, no?
There's a reason he disappeared into obscurity, and it's precisely because he doesn't think anyone should be the main character. That's the entire point of the "Who is John Galt?" theme, he doesn't want people to look up to him, he wants to live on his own terms and be judged by his own merits, and only people who are truly interested will follow his example (again, not to follow him, but to follow their own self-interests).
And that's a large part of why I think the monologue is the wrong place to look for a summary of Rand's ideas, because it's pretty much the only time John Galt goes into public, and he only does it to spread a message, not to elevate himself. If that's all you read, it's pretty easy to assume than John Galt is some kind of important figurehead, when he's actually just the first in a larger group to exit a corrupted society.
Anthem is a much better distillation of her ideas IMO, and it's much simpler. Basically, it's a 1984 society where the government is stifling innovation merely to maintain consistent jobs. The MC writes by candlelight throughout the book, and in the end rediscovers electricity, which the ruling party has apparently hidden because it killed the candlemaking jobs. It gets a little campy with the couple rediscovering the word "I" and their own individuality, but the message is pretty clear IMO.
Two things wrong with this:
Galt tells us he created the machine. If you were to ask Elon Musk, he would tell you he created Tesla, which isn't true. Musk neither founded, nor did he complete Tesla from start to finished all by himself. Galt is portrayed as creating his machine all by himself, which again, calls into question its truthfulness.
Even if Galt created it all by himself, he did so build by a society that allowed it to happen and empowered him to do so. As soon as he perfected his machine on the back of a society that gave him the opportunity, transportation, safety, education, materials, and the populous needed to carry it out, he privatized his gains and disappears from society.
This is a great example of Rand's bad teen fanfiction. The classic hero protagonist with plot armor is invincible. Galt's Gulch never experiences a hurricane, drought, invasion of foreign military, pandemic disease, or any of the other grand scale crises that humanity encounters. It's residents are unrealistic epitome of self-sufficiency. Yet Rand presents this as the ultimate utopia.
A group that left a corrupt society, and is successful without itself being corrupted? Can you point to one place in human history that this has ever worked long term? The pragmatic realty of this would more likely play out like the small real world examples we've seen where a New Hampshire town tried to turn itself into a Libertarian paradise a la Galt's Gulch.
I get why Rand's message is attractive. It paints a world that individual merit is the soul metric of achievement and demonizes everything and everyone that doesn't follow this model. Its just not even close to being realistic across any culture or long lived society throughout our entire history.
I largely agree.
My reading is that the book isn't meant to depict a realistic scenario (all major characters are caricatures), but instead show a stark contrast between Ayn Rand's ideology and socialism to inform what the ideology is and is not. That's why Galt is so opposed to charity, not because that's a reasonable take, but because he's a caricature of the ideology (surely giving for your own pleasure is consistent with Objectivism). The point isn't to say we should all be like Galt or that society is currently as it's presented, the point is to create a context to highlight the practical differences.
That depends on where you place the goal posts. If we're talking about literally replicating Atlas Shrugged (i.e. an anarcho-capitalist "state"), then not even your example qualifies, as that's just an example of a bunch of egotistical idiots halfway implementing a poorly thought-out plan.
But if we're talking more generally, then the US is a good example. People fled to the New World to escape oppression from Great Britain and built a life for themselves, and we call that "The American Experiment." If we placed the founders into a political ideology today, it would probably be some brand of libertarianism (many of whom call themselves "Classical Liberals" to this day, which the founders absolutely are). But they absolutely saw the need for some sort of governing body with a monopoly on force, they just wanted that governing body to be small and largely get out of the way.
That said, objectivists aren't libertarian, nor are libertarians objectivist, and Ayn Rand famously hated libertarians (you can read through this if you like). I claim to be a libertarian, and I find Ayn Rand specifically and objectivists generally to be insufferable, and here's one quote from that article to hint as to why:
That said, I find some value in Rand's work, at least in terms of pointing out a direction that might be valuable to explore. We definitely don't want our systems getting in the way of innovation, and I argue our systems should support innovation, which is why I'm a fan of safety net systems like UBI/NIT (which Rand would hate, but she also lived on Social Security, so what does she know...).