Brexit: the result of accumulated incompetence? Parallels with "Atlas Shrugged"

Following the government's strategy and "progress" with the Brexit negotiations, I was reminded of  the plot to Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" (the author wrote a series of articles on this novel's symbolism).

Ayn Rand's original working title to this mammoth novel was "The Strike". The premise behind the story being: what would happen if all the smartest people refused to work? So the story follows as, one by one, various stalwarts of industry and other brains of American society begin to disappear, as the government of the day slowly takes greater and greater control of the economy. The process becomes self-reinforcing as the government takes up more of the slack left behind as more and more of the "best and brightest" disappear from public life. In the end, left with an over-bearing government led by a mass of collective incompetence, accidents become commonplace as the country literally begins to fall apart. The "best and brightest" finally reappear to save the nation from itself when the government loses control of the situation completely. The reader is left with the implication that these "best and brightest" will then restore the country under a new system where the government is entirely absent from any role in the economy and the public sphere.

The story reads as an indictment on "government" as a whole, as an autocratic system which feeds incompetence and inefficiency; the opposite to how the private sector is meant to be ran. While I'm no fan of Ayn Rand, following the government's handling of Brexit, it's hard not to draw (ironic) parallels with their rank incompetence and descent into chaos, and that of the government portrayed in "Atlas Shrugged". In the same way as the "best and brightest" fled from their posts in light of the fictitious government's actions, the same seems to be true of various parts of industry in the UK during the Brexit process.
Most of industry warned during the referendum campaign that to leave the EU would be bad for the British economy; now that the government seems to be lurching towards leaving the EU with no deal at all, some giants of the economy are reminding the government in stark terms of their own economic interests. If the government pursues this course to leave with no deal in March 2019, they will be forced to make their own "contingency plans": put simply, they will up sticks and leave the sinking ship as quickly as possible. While the UK will leave the EU in March 2019, big business - and the financial sector in particular -  need clarity far sooner: no later than the end of this year, to give them time to make adequate preparations. Similarly, Britain's airline industry needs to know what the "deal" will be no later than March 2018, to make suitable preparations. The government's incompetence and incoherence has been given very short shrift, and will result in real consequences much more quickly than they think. The initial effects of Brexit on the economy may be only a few months away; a harbinger of what is to come.

Since the referendum, it also feels as though all those who supported "Remain" (i.e. much of the intelligentsia) have been quelled into silence by the febrile and menacing feel in the public sphere; like how many "captains of industry" are making contingency plans to flee with their assets, large parts of the intelligentsia have seem to have gone AWOL. It's no coincidence that some of those have also applied for (Irish) EU passports, perhaps to better enable their own flight after Brexit. While the intelligentsia have absented themselves from the discourse (perhaps seeing how impossible it is to reason with incompetents), the country descends into madness. It seems as though industry and the intelligentsia are getting their excuses in early, as if to say "we warned you; you didn't listen. It's not our fault".
The irony here is how the government's agenda is being guided by those who are huge supporters of Ayn Rand's ideology; it is almost as if they want the government to be led by incompetents (as in the plot of  "Atlas Shrugged") - to bring about the economy's collapse, and allow them to take over.


A failure of government

The EU can see how badly the country is being ran, and its strategy now with Theresa May seems almost one of pity. Unfortunately this seems as doomed to fail as any other strategy, for as much as May and her government completely misunderstand how the EU works, the EU seems to equally misunderstand how the Conservative Party works. The EU tries to "make nice" with May over the possibility of a deal (by - wrongly - thinking that this positive mood music will encourage May into making the necessary concessions); meanwhile, May is encouraged to see any sign of "flexibility" on the EU's part as a sign that they are willing to make concessions, so sees no need to give ground. So both sides seem to be feeding each other with false hopes of a deal, to encourage the other to make the kind of concessions which may well be politically impossible. Both sides are in a bind - a kind of "Gordian Knot" of epic proportions.
May may well go down as one of the worst Prime Ministers the country has ever known, certainly in modern times. Her personal characteristics seem to work against the process gaining any momentum at home. To begin with, she has autocratic tendencies, to the extent that any serious debate over the issues is knocked down. This has led to the extraordinary situation where there has been - now sixteen months on from the referendum, and nearly seven months on from invoking article 50 - still no proper debate in government about what its actual Brexit aims are. All that has been said so far is woolly rhetoric to paper over the vast differences in government. The EU doesn't know what the UK government wants because the UK government itself doesn't know what it wants. It is truly astonishing that May could trigger article 50 for the start of negotiations without her government having a clue what its final position was.
This is partly due to the weakness of May's position as well; even when her government had a majority, she was loathe to start a proper debate on Brexit that would lead to open differences in government. The result is that the open differences have surfaced anyway, because she has done nothing to diminish them. Now her government doesn't even have a majority, this has made those differences even more apparent, with the loudest voices from the "Hard Brexiteers" carrying the most sway. In the same way that the intelligentsia have largely gone AWOL in the country at large, in the Conservative Party, the most rational voices have been silenced by the headbangers. And while this goes on, Theresa May sits in Downing Street and does nothing, as she is too weak to act: a hostage to fortune.
It is May's position as a mere "caretaker" presiding over this chaos that fatally diminishes the prestige of the role of Prime Minister of the UK.

This all feels like the inevitable result of the gradual degradation of the quality of political discourse in Britain.
There was a time when politics was inhabited by people of intellect, with ideas and (some) moral standing. John Major may not have been an intellectual giant, but he at least seemed to possess an aura of integrity. Tony Blair may have had an ambiguous moral compass (e.g. Iraq), but at least he was smart, and improved the state of the nation overall. (Doctor) Gordon Brown may have had his flaws, but when the financial crisis happened, he did the right thing at the right time, by saving the economy from imminent implosion.
David Cameron was a sign of the things to come. He treated politics as a game, even to the point of playing with his country's own future. He thought he was smart, but he was merely "lucky"; until his luck ran out. He filled his cabinet with similar chancers like George Osborne, and the rest with people whose loyalty or affiliations were more important than their rank incompetence. Theresa May was so long-standing in her position as Home Secretary for the same reason.
It is this gradual but self-evident decline in the quality of Britain's politics that led to Brexit in the first place: it's what happens when the establishment is left to rule though passive compliance. UKIP's incoherent ideology was allowed to take over the political discourse; the result now is that the government has copied its core agenda almost in its entirety and it's treating our democratic institutions as a complete joke. The government now thinks that democracy is a system where you can ignore the opinions of the people you don't agree with; they think the judgments of experts can be ignored if they disagree with their own prejudices.

If you're not worried, you're not paying attention.

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and John Galt: the allegory of The Fall Of Man

I wrote last month about Ayn Rand's magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged" and the role of its enigmatic hero, John Galt. As said before, the thread of biblical symbolism runs deep in the story, which is made explicit in Chapter Seven of Book Three, when John Galt makes his "address to the world": an extraordinary monologue consisting of many thousands of words.

Galt's monologue is his "manifesto". In earlier threads on this topic, the author compared the role of Galt to that of Satan/ Lucifer in biblical symbolism - Galt and his followers as "fallen angels" who have rebelled against the rule of God/"government" and been forced to flee, so that they can live according to their free-will. In the same way that Satan would rather be "a lord in hell that a slave in heaven", Galt and his followers would rather be free and in "exile" than be a slave to government.

Galt's monologue explains that he equates God and faith with slavery and irrationality. As Lucifer from the Old Testament was the angel that challenged God's unquestioned power, Galt is the doing the same here. As Lucifer is the "agent of free-will" and the seeker of knowledge, Galt is the same here. John Galt sees the morality of God and the "social" morality of government as the essence of the same "evil": the idea that people should submit their will to another and should live for the sake of another. To Galt, this is anathema, and is innately against the interests of man, ultimately bringing about the death of humanity.

"Original Sin" and The Tree Of Knowledge

Galt talks in some detail about the concept of "Original Sin", and how this permeates the morality of "government" as much as that of God. As God labels man as innately irrational and evil, so, by implication, does government: that men are irrational, evil beings that can only be controlled by government. But as Galt says:
"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice and outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can neither be good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched"
So creating the idea of "Original Sin" is an act that Galt/ Satan opposes for its immorality; it demonstrates the innate evil of God and "government".

Galt continues, by explicitly talking about the Tree Of Knowledge:
"What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declared that he ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity for sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden Of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man. Man's fall...was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives"

Galt, then, is "the serpent", who wishes for Adam and Eve to become "like God", a rational being. God's "evil" is that he punished Adam and Eve for becoming free-thinking, "moral" beings. God wanted them to remain in the Garden Of Eden as his unthinking, helpless slaves: God would look after them, giving them all they needed, provided they did not question his authority. Galt sees "government" in the same light: an entity that exists to prevent man from bettering himself, an entity that preaches - in Galt''s words - a "Morality Of Death".

"The Morality Of Death"

This "Morality Of Death", according to Galt, has two types of teacher:
"The mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists; those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind; one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. Their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter - the enslavement of man's body, in spirit -  the destruction of his mind.
"The good, say the mystics of the spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive - a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society - a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no-one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. Man's mind, say the mystics of the spirit, should be subordinated to the will of God. Man's mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society. The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie, who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. His reward, say the mystics of the spirit, will be given to him beyond the grave. His reward, say the mystics of muscle, will be given....to his great-grandchildren"

Man's life is therefore sacrificial, either to God or society. This is what Galt finds "evil": man is not destined to live, but to die; not to think, but to serve. As the old adage goes, the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. Galt finds these values as the opposite to man's nature; by following these values, man's only outcome will be his own death.

Man can therefore only prosper without God and government: this is the conclusion to be reached. Man can only be moral without these two entities clouding his values, forcing him to work against his own self-interest.
According to Galt, "Selfishness" is not the "evil" that brings down man to his basest vices, but conversely, the thing which helps him see what is clearly rational for his own benefit. Galt sees the idea of "sacrifice" having been subverted by the "Morality of Death". Sacrifice  - as Galts defines it, "the surrender of a value" - has become the justification for creating a more "moral" society, where people work for each other. But as Galt sees it, sacrifice is "a morality for the immoral", telling people to renounce the material world and to divorce your values from matter. This is ultimately contradictory and hypocritical, according to Galt.

Galt's morality is for selfishness and independence, loving only those things worthy of respect. In the Garden Of Eden, Lucifer, as the serpent, was showing Adam and Eve the way to become "like God". In "Atlas Shrugged", John Galt is showing the way to become "a man", instead of a slave.
Galt subverts the common telling of The Fall Of Man, into the opposite, man's evolution to a rational being, which God then "punishes".

It is telling that "God-fearing" people always fear the future and long for the simple certainties of the past: a time before modern technology and industrialisation, the "Satanic mills" and "dog-eat-dog capitalism". "God-fearing" people see modern life as immoral and unforgiving, whereas people like John Galt see modern developments as a sign of man's progress. Ayn Rand saw Capitalism as the only "moral" system of development. The "Satanic mills" and the metal foundries of the industrialised world look a great deal like the biblical descriptions of Hell; fitting then that someone like John Galt would belong there.

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and John Galt: a modern-day Lucifer, or Satan in disguise?

In "Atlas Shrugged", the character John Galt dominates the third part of the story (Book Three). It is Galt who has been responsible for persuading the "best and brightest" to join him in his "New Atlantis", in a remote valley, where these people can live their lives according to their own efforts, without involvement of government.

As said in my earliest articles on this subject, biblical symbolism runs a deep vein through the novel: in its scope and ambition, "Atlas Shrugged" could well be called the most influential piece of fiction of the 20th century. This is the "Fall From Heaven" of the beginning of the Old Testament, but seen from the perspective of Satan/ Lucifer.

Furthermore, in the same way that Satan and his allies are banished to live their own form of existence in Hell, Rand has Galt and his followers living their "pure" form of life from complete scratch, with nothing from their successful and rich lifestyle of the outside world. In the remote valley these "exiles" live in, all their efforts are made by their own hand alone. They build their own houses themselves; they live simply (at least, appear to). From a psychological point of view, they have sacrificed their materialistic ego (i.e. their riches in the outside world) for the sake of a moral ego (i.e. the pride they have in doing things by their own efforts and in their own way). In "Atlas Shrugged", these "best and brightest" have made the ultimate material sacrifice in order to live true to their ideas; it could be argued that Satan and his followers were made to make the pay the same price by God when they were banished from Heaven.

John Galt is the mouthpiece of Rand's philosophy, spelled out in various ways in the novel. Galt explains Rand's own thinking on morality and the nature of government: Galt has stopped "the motor of the world" by taking away the "best and brightest" in society. In other words, Galt simply equates wealth with talent and effort; you cannot have the former without the latter. This is the basic premise of the novel, stripped of its baubles and fancy rhetoric. All those in his "New Atlantis" are rich because they are clever and/or hardworking. People are poor, therefore, because they are stupid and/ or lazy. It is as simple as that.
His moral objection to life in the outside world, where government controls much of day-to-day life, is that he refuses to live in a society where he sees the clever having to work for the sake of the stupid, and the hardworking for the sake of the lazy.

Galt's own vow is that he swears to "never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine". In Galt's eyes, this is the only moral way for a man to live: by his efforts alone.

Light-bringer or destroyer?

This philosophy as hardly anything new, as George Monbiot explains. The question is: whose philosophy is it? Blaming poverty on the poor has a long history, most recently expounded by George Osborne with his "strivers versus skivers" rhetoric. It goes down well because, like all successful ideas, it is easy to explain - regardless of the reality.

According to Christian belief  "the meek shall inherit the earth". According to Galt, it is the strong who shall inherit the earth. If Galt and his followers represent the "best and brightest", then "government" must seemingly represent the opposite - the worst and the weakest. What Galt finds offensive (i.e. immoral) is the strong being obliged to support the weak. Underpinning the tenets of Rand's philosophy - Objectivism - is the idea of social Darwinism. Society can only progress if its weakest elements are allowed to die. Accordingly, in a society where everyone is responsible for his own efforts, it is natural that the weakest specimens of society will not succeed. When neo-liberals and Conservatives talk about how "inequality is good", this is what they mean; they see it as being "natural".

So who is John Galt then, really? What does he represent?
My previous article on this subject mentioned "Luciferianism", and the role that some see Lucifer (Satan's name before The Fall) having in promoting the pursuit of objective knowledge. Lucifer is the "light-giver", whose gift is to free man from the shackles of God's narrow doctrine. Seen in this way, Lucifer's role is to test and push mankind on to better things; a kind of "disciplinarian teacher" for humanity. This seems to be the role that Galt is playing in "Atlas Shrugged", punishing society - robbing it for its "best and brightest" -  for the sake of itself. This theme, and further biblical references, are continued in the second article about the role of John Galt here.

Perception is one thing; the reality is another. Rand may seem inequality as "just", but that does not make the world "just". Those nations with the highest levels of inequality are not the most successful ones in the world; on the contrary, all the evidence suggests that nations with low levels of inequality (e.g. in Scandinavia) are those with the highest levels of development.
John Galt may be an idol for the neo-liberal scene, and people like the "TEA Party", but Galt represents a philosophy that ridicules the concept of empathy. And we all know what a society without empathy can be capable of.

On the one hand, Galt seemingly symbolises the "best" in humanity - its pursuit of knowledge and excellence, and its individualist spirit. But on the other, Galt symbolizes the very destruction of the concept of "humanity" - by destroying the very concept of human empathy, teaching it as something immoral and obscene.

In this way, "John Galt" may well be termed as a new, modern form of the Trickster: the "serpent" that encouraged Adam and Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit, and then suffered God's wrath.

It is in Galt's "manifesto", discussing in detail the symbolism of the Fall Of Man, that reaches the crux of Ayn Rand's philosophy, and the real meaning of her work.

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged": morality, Christianity and Lucifer

In a recent article the author went into some detail about the biblical symbolism evident in the story of "Atlas Shrugged". It is ironic that Ayn Rand's seminal masterpiece - given that she was a profound atheist -  is so full of Christian imagery. But her work on this great novel displays the contempt she had for the "conventional morality" of the day, when "Atlas Shrugged" was published in the 1950s, with the novel acting as a philosophical marker for a different form of morality, which she called Objectivism.

As argued in my previous article on this subject, Rand's morality tale bears some strong similarities to a retelling of the story of Satan's fall from heaven in the Old Testament - but crucially, with the moral perspective reversed. As Atlas Shrugged is about industrial "heroes" fleeing the constraints of government,  a "revision" of the Fall From Heaven sees Satan and his followers lose their battle with God, and decide to flee to exist independently from God's power.

I said (in jest) that Rand could be said to be a kind of "Satanist"; but more accurately, she could be called a "Luciferian". Her philosophy of extolling independence, self-love, the pursuit of knowledge and rationalism comes very close to the ideas also shared by Luciferianism. Lucifer himself represents the symbolic "Fallen Angel".
Lucifer (Satan) is seen as the symbol of the pursuit of ultimate knowledge and personal growth. More exactly, this is the name given to Satan before "The Fall". Seemingly inspired by the pursuit of knowledge and self-advancement, he grows frustrated with God's arbitrary use of power, seeks more independence, and refuses to bow down to man, God's creation. And yet, after The Fall, in the guise of The Serpent, his temptation of Eve may better be seen as a method of trying to lift the veil from the first humans' eyes about God's intentions and deception (by eating from from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good and Evil the humans will be "like God"). What are Satan's motives here? By labeling Satan's motives as purely evil, this is something that Christian theology struggles to convincingly answer.

Rand's use of biblical symbolism in the novel is self-evident in some of phrasing she chooses: using words such as "hymns" to describe the ideas expressed by the heroic characters in Atlas Shrugged; the industrialists talking of themselves as "sacrificial victims"; and the pirate Ragnar Danneskjold describing himself as an "avenging angel". This is the morality of Christianity turned on its head.

The Anti-Pope

In the modern day, the current Pope, Francis, has been seen as a paragon of Christian virtue: going back to the "old values" of a "poor" church that focuses as much on social welfare as spiritual purity. Rand's philosophy stands for the exact opposite to this idea of altruism and self-sacrifice. Her morality is one based on people's value being based purely on the talents, not their "need". In her eyes, people are rich due to their own talents and efforts; likewise, people are poor for their lack of the same properties. This is not something for "society" or government to be concerned about; it is a matter of individual responsibility. In other words, "inequality" is the state of nature. Modern-day Conservatives talk of the same thing.

Pope Francis talks about ideas such as love for our fellow man; in "Atlas Shrugged", the government of the day uses the same language, while Rand twists this thinking into meaning the exact opposite: turning the rich into the victims, and the poor into looters. In Part Two, Chapter Seven of the novel, the pirate character, Ragnar Danneskjold, talks about how he is effectively a "Robin Hood" for the rich: taking back the money "stolen" from the rich by the government (on behalf of the poor) and returning it back to them. Rand also (through the character of Danneskjold) gives an astonishing attack on the "morality" of the legendary Robin Hood, damning his methods as the epitome of evil. As the pirate says:
"He is a man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights; that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors"

This gives a small example of the morality behind Rand, and her ability to make the counter-intuitive appear logical. To her mind, because Pope Francis wishes to "help the poor", he represents evil in human form.

Where does this leave ideas such as "love" or empathy? As said earlier, people like Pope Francis extol the idea of self-sacrifice and love for our fellow man. In Rand's morality, these ideas are anathema: "love" can only be earned. "Empathy" appears entirely absent from Rand's value system.

A "psychopathic" morality?

"Empathy" is generally understood to be the ability to recognise how someone else feels emotionally, and being able to respond to this appropriately. In the field of psychology, psychopaths (who represent around 1% of the overall population) are distinguishable for their absence of human empathy. Because of their lack of empathy, they cannot understand or react to, for example, human suffering. This results in their being capable of extremely callous and cold-hearted behaviour.

Going back to the example of Satan, it could be argued that descriptions of his actions in Christian literature mark him as being one of the prime examples of a psychopathic character in scripture. What many consider "evil" could likewise be called "psychopathic". While the terms can never be exactly interchangeable, it is true that psychopathy is responsible for a great deal of crime and social ills.

With this in mind, Ayn Rand's philosophy has been held to blame for the neo-liberal economic model that has ruled much of the world for the past thirty years. It is this system that has resulted in a widening gap between rich and poor, the re-shaping of the global economy, as well as being responsible for the conditions that caused the financial crisis of 2008, which many people even now are still feeling the after-effects of, seven years later.

The moral system that underpins the economic system of today's world was written by Ayn Rand. For this reason, it could well be said that "Atlas Shrugged" was the most influential - and dangerous - novel of the 20th century. It takes a special kind of genius to take an idea that almost everyone considers to be immoral, and transform it into the appearance of the highest virtue.
In many ways, "Atlas Shrugged" is a kind of Bible of our time. It certainly reads like one, and may well also have been responsible for causing human suffering in the same way as the Word Of God, thanks to the "Pied Piper"-like quality of the words contained in its many pages.

In "Atlas Shrugged", the "Pied Piper" role is played by the character John Galt, whose role is explored in more detail in the following article.

Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged" and biblical symbolism: God, Government and Satan

Ayn Rand's magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged" was published a little under sixty years ago. At the time, the novel - and the philosophy behind its key message - was considered unfashionable and even controversial, as it went against every moral fibre of the society that existed at the time. As one of the main advocates of pure Capitalism (i.e. a society and economy effectively without government interference), Rand took the economic ideas of the "Austrian School" and created a "moral code" from them:she called this new philosophy "Objectivism". As this novel was published in the middle of the so-called "post-war consensus", her ideas took conventional morality and turned it on its head.

Rand's sense of morality - of right and wrong - is displayed and explained in stunning clarity in"Atlas Shrugged". It tells a morality tale, but one relevant to modern times and written in an accessible, highly-readable form. As a piece of literature it is a true masterpiece; a contemporary work of art. It is breathtaking, terrifying, electrifying yet dangerous. It is breathtaking in the enormous scope of vision, a piece of literature over a thousand pages long that takes in everything from big industry to the lowest poverty. It is terrifying in its description of gradual social breakdown, with its predictions of how government can easily lose sight of how society functions. It is electrifying in the manner of how morality and ideas are explained with cut-glass sharpness and a refined clarity of thought. And yet, as a piece of writing, it is also dangerous: dangerous for the great convincing intelligence shown in its pages, but also the horrible truth of what these ideas mean in the real world.

As dangerous as "The Communist Manifesto" was to society when its ideas began to put put into practice, the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged" have been as dangerous to society when implemented by governments for the past thirty-five years. Communism brought about the poverty of any society that implemented its ideas; meanwhile, trying to implement "pure" Capitalism in the last thirty years simply resulted in a complete collapse in the system. Russia after Communism was as good an example of this as any: the result was complete anarchy and a depression-style collapse in living standards. And lest we forget, it was only "government" that saved the global system from complete collapse in 2008.

For both pure Communism as preached by Karl Marx, and pure Capitalism as described by Ayn Rand, are simply dangerous - but convincing - pipedreams; opposite versions of a nightmarish dystopia.

The Word Of Rand

As said earlier, Atlas Shrugged is a morality tale. It is a document, in fictional form, of Rand's view of the world. 

In essence, the story revolves around several "heroic" characters who are people of industry. These characters (such as Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart, who dominate the first half of the story) are moral purists, who wish to make (more) money and become (more) successful, it seems simply for the sake of becoming better. Their goal is not to do things for the benefit of others (e.g. society, or their family) but doing things that further their own goals. Any positive effect that others gain from their success is incidental. Moral purity and philosophical (and psychological) strength are key attributes, as are honesty and the principle of self-reliance. As a result, these characters have little time (and respect) for those around them that do not follow those same ideas.

Rand is a fervent believer in America as "the land of the free". In her eyes, America is the nearest thing - given she was an ardent atheist - to "heaven on earth". America for Rand was a place founded on the principles of freedom and the right to self-betterment through individual struggle and excellence without government interference. In "Atlas Shrugged", these "heroic" characters gradually fall victim to efforts by the government to prevent them from fulfilling their wishes to "become better" under their own terms. A succession of government rules obstruct them and create disincentives to working as they would wish, as the government sees these industrialists as "greedy" and "anti-social". These "heroes" are forced to either accept government's many rules, or quit.

In the end, the industrialists are shown another way of doing their work, without government interference in the "New Atlantis", which they flock to, and then thrive in.

God, Government, and The Bible

Rand sees this "New Atlantis" as a society where the only rule is that of nature and "rational self-interest". Conversely, the land of "government" is one of rules that stifle the free will and betterment of individuals who seek to make their own success and fortune - in effect, because they are rivals to the exclusive power of "government".

Anyone familiar with the Old Testament, and especially the fate of Satan, might see some interesting parallels with the morality tale of Atlas Shrugged - albeit with an important twist. 

In the Bible, Satan is God's most powerful (and beautiful) angel. Satan seeks to be as powerful as God, and (according to the theologian Origen) seeks greater free will from the will of God. When God makes man in his own image, he refuses to kneel before man when God requests it. These factors result in the "war in heaven", which culminate in the ejection of Satan and his followers from Heaven and their banishment to Hell, which Satan becomes the ruler of. It is therefore only in Hell where Satan and his followers are truly "free".

Of course, the Bible goes out of its way to portray Satan as the embodiment of evil, but this is a misleading simplification, even when directly reading the Bible itself. Satan's key role in Genesis is the temptation of Eve with the apple from the Tree Of Knowledge (Of Good And Evil), which would make her and Adam "like God". Satan's other name is Lucifer, which is Latin for "light-giver", and it was this role - as the giver of "light" or knowledge - that Satan is punished for by God after the temptation of Eve. In other words, Satan's role in Genesis is to encourage the first man and woman to better themselves, while also highlighting God's arbitrary and deceitful nature.

Rand's grand morality tale, "Atlas Shrugged", could then be called a re-imagining of the tale of Satan's fall from Heaven told from the perspective of Satan rather than God. Substitute the word "God" for "Government" and Satan and his followers for the "heroic" industrialists, and the narratives are in many ways parallel, except that the sense of perspective is reversed. In the Bible, Satan and his followers are forced to leave Heaven as they refuse to follow God's (arbitrary) commands and (to their minds) twisted philosophy, and feel held back from their full potential. In "Atlas Shrugged", the "heroes" flee the control of "government" for the same reasons.

It could also be argued that God represents to Satan the same idea that "government" represents to Rand. Satan rebelled against God partly because of what he saw as God's arbitrary power, but also because Satan refused to bow before man, God's creation. In this way, Satan refused to offer man his unconditional love or respect, as he felt it was undeserved or unearned. This idea (of "conditional love" or undeserved respect or charity) also features strongly in Atlas Shrugged. For example, Hank Rearden, one of the industrial "heroes", refuses to give a job to his brother because he is unqualified and undeserving. Later, he threatens to throw his brother out of his house, rather preferring to see his brother on the street than getting charity from him for simply being part of the family. Rand's philosophy reels against the idea of charity and "brotherly love" precisely because she sees it as unearned, detrimental and pointless. Satan, given his attitude towards man, would doubtless agree: part of what Satan stands for is the opposite to the concept of Judaeo-Christian selfless, "brotherly love". Satan represents the advancement of the "self" to its moral conclusion - severing connection to "God", and the rejection of the idea of selflessness and self-sacrifice for (undeserving) others e.g. by refusing to unconditionally "love" man, or to blindly obey God's commands.

To follow "God", then, is to abandon the idea of the "self" for the benefit of the whole; this is what Satan rejects, resulting in his Fall From Heaven. Likewise, Rand's philosophy rejects the idea of "government" having the right to arbitrary power over individuals, and in her novel, Atlas Shrugged rails against this (calling those who support government's arbitrary power "looters"), and also strongly rejects the idea of (wealthy and talented) individuals sacrificing for the benefit of others who are poorer (and less talented) - the "heroic" industrialist Hank Rearden, during his trial in the novel, calls himself a "sacrificial victim". However, he refuses to accept this quietly.

Seen in this light, "Atlas Shrugged" not only turns conventional morality on its head, but its symbolism - to those knowledgeable of The Bible - makes a morality tale like the "Fall From Heaven" seem instead a "Flight From Hegemony": Satan and his followers escaping the "tyranny" of God's power and  "sacrificial" morality to establish their own "freedom" outside of Heaven. In Atlas Shrugged, the "heroic" industrialists similarly wish to escape the "tyranny" of government. So Rand could - arguably - be called a "Satanist" of a kind, looking at the evidence above.

Dangerous stuff, indeed...

(Part Two of this thread continues here)