Atlas Shrugged turns 50

[legion]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucmg/20071106/cm_ucmg/threecheersforaynrand

Good book. I don't agree with all of Rand's premises (like her justifications for adultery), but I do largely agree with her conclusions.

[frogger]

Ayn Rand was a lame writer.

[equality72521]

Anthem is an excellent book.

[Superman]

Superman shrugged.

[M.D. Holloway]

Try as I might, I just could never get through it. Fountainhead and Virtue of Selfishness was easy to read but Shrugged...not so much.

[Nostril Cheese]

Originally Posted by frogger

Ayn Rand was a lame writer.

+1 she was just someone who knew how to market herself.

[daepp]

One of my all time favorite books. I don't agree with her entirely, but that book was so far ahead of its time - when you read it, you have to keep reminding yourself that it was written decades ago.

For a good taste for someone who's never read it, google "Money Speech Atlas Shrugged".

[motion]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

Try as I might, I just could never get through it. Fountainhead and Virtue of Selfishness was easy to read but Shrugged...not so much.

No kidding. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up my copy over the years only to make it to page 75 or so.

[Superman]

I googled the Money Speech. It has been a long time since I read and studied Rand. And sure enough, there is virtually not a single accurate or lucid sentence in that speech. At least, not in the first three paragraphs. She's making connections between money and integrity that just don't exist. She's attempting to elevate the concept of "value" so that it appears to have taken on some dignity in its separate essence. Gifted writers can do this. They can make you conclude that something which simply exists.....for no reason.....just exists.....is somehow the extension of a moral good because it is sometimes associated with good things and good people.

If you really really really want to believe that greed is good, and the fight toward self-interest is a moral victory........then Rand is your girl. But.....you have to already believe that in order to fool yourself into concluding that Rand has an original idea.

[Tobra]

I had more trouble putting it down than getting through it.

Has some pretty extreme positions, but that was more literary license than anything else, I think.

I had a hard time believing it was that old when I first read it, almost prophetic, I read it in the mid-nineties.

For those of you who wonder what Supes is talking about, read this, and you will not be wondering what he is talking about, you will wonder if he knows what he is talking about.

[lendaddy]

Originally Posted by Superman

If you really really really want to believe that greed is good, and the fight toward self-interest is a moral victory........then Rand is your girl. But.....you have to already believe that in order to fool yourself into concluding that Rand has an original idea.

I would say that the most glaring example or experiment in this theory is America itself. The standard of living and the charmed life of our "poor" is the proof in the pudding.

Can we agree there is no more "greedy" or self-interested country in the world? If so, how do you explain the above if not from the fruit of unbridled human nature or as you call it "greed".

[IROC]

Originally Posted by motion

No kidding. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up my copy over the years only to make it to page 75 or so.

That was me exactly. Twice I tried to get into it, but just couldn't...

[Rearden]

Originally Posted by Superman

I googled the Money Speech. It has been a long time since I read and studied Rand. And sure enough, there is virtually not a single accurate or lucid sentence in that speech. At least, not in the first three paragraphs.

You can't find any accuracy or lucidity here?

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

[Tobra]

maybe he was thinking of the last three paragraphs

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

[Superman]

Originally Posted by lendaddy

I would say that the most glaring example or experiment in this theory is America itself. The standard of living and the charmed life of our "poor" is the proof in the pudding.

Can we agree there is no more "greedy" or self-interested country in the world? If so, how do you explain the above if not from the fruit of unbridled human nature or as you call it "greed".

There is no questioning the power of self-interest. And the brute fact that America owes much of its prosperity to its understanding and harnessing of this force. Greed is not good, and not bad. It is what it is. Same with money. Even more so. Rand can make some folks imagine there is some special power in money or greed, or that those things earn special respect or admiration, but as was stated above, that is a purely literary construct. If rocks made you guys handsome and comfortable and enlarged your Johnsons, then I could make you imagine that rocks are a moral "good." But you'd be just as incorrect.

It is what it is. The individual does have power. We can call it a "special" power, but that would be like saying that Lendaddy has intelligent intelligence. Rand did the intellectual equivalent of selling the Ten Commandments to the Jews. They didn't need to be sold on the concept since they had already been, and it wouldn't actually be adding anything of value that was not already there. Like selling the importance and value of beauty to a group of high school cheerleaders. Brilliant! You know their reaction before you begin, and if you're skilled at dialectic, then they'll think you're a prophet.

[Superman]

"Money is made possible only by the men who produce."

Who believes this?

[dd74]

I've never read Rand. I somehow thought Ursula LeGuinn was Rand's counterpart, and so stuck with her.

LeGuinn used a fair amount of social commentary in her books, but she also had a plot.

Is that the case with Rand? I mean, is there a plot with characters, or it just one long manifesto/commentary on the world at large?

[legion]

Originally Posted by Superman

"Money is made possible only by the men who produce."

Who believes this?

I do.

Take away the productive, and see how the government, those on the dole, and the other looters and moochers survive.

[legion]

Originally Posted by dd74

I've never read Rand. I somehow thought Ursula LeGuinn was Rand's counterpart, and so stuck with her.

LeGuinn used a fair amount of social commentary in her books, but she also had a plot.

Is that the case with Rand? I mean, is there a plot with characters, or it just one long manifesto/commentary on the world at large?

It has a plot. Some parts are strong, others are rather weak. There are several main characters: Dagny Taggert, Francisco D'Anconia, Hank Rearden, and John Galt to name a few.

For those who cannot get through the written version (and I must confess I failed on my first try), Edward Herman (he is frequently on the History Chanel) has a version on CD (four CDs to be precise). I listened to it driving to Florida and halfway back.

[BeyGon]

I first read Fountainhead, then Atlas Shrugged, I thought Atlas Shrugged was great, I have read it twice now. Anthem, like someone else mentioned was a great book. I read these when I was in the USMC waiting for a class opening. I think they really shaped the way I think today. If you want a first try read Anthem, it isn't so long, you might have a better chance getting through it.


"Money is made possible only by the men who produce."

Who is John Galt?

The last time I read Atlas Shrugged I tried to fit the Clintons in all the right-bad guy- places, it worked for me.