Since the onset of neo-liberalism with the Thatcher government, successive governments of both main parties have followed fundamentally the same ideological and economic script.
Back in the 1970s, the British economy was struggling to adapt to the various crises that struck the world economy. The skyrocketing cost of living, loss of British companies' competitiveness, and inflation, all had the effect of bringing increasing demands from the unions, who sought to buffer their members from the worst of it. As we know now, the rise of Thatcherism created an "agreed consensus" that it was the unions that caused the crisis in the UK in the 1970s. Likewise, the same "agreed consensus" is at play with the Conservative government today, who successfully blamed the previous Labour government for "breaking the banks".
The "plan" that Thatcher and her successors have followed for the last thirty-five is simple: to "re-figure" the British economy from a manufacturing (production) based economy to a service (consumption) based economy. At the same time, this service-based economy has been supported by a massive expansion of the banking and financial sector, making the service-based economy - which has been designed to take up the slack of the loss of manufacturing - heavily reliant on the fate of the banking sector. Whereas a production-based economy is reliant on a competitive (i.e. relatively weak) pound to make British products attractive to buyers abroad, the kind of economy Thatcher introduced was reliant on a strong pound: this was what the financial sector was craving, and would also help consumerism (as it made imports cheap).
The result of this was the slow death of manufacturing in the UK, and a balance of payments that has been in a serious state of disrepair for years. Though no-one has seemed to care.
Following on from this, the Blair government took up the idea that young people in the UK were under-qualified for the modern world. For this reason, successive governments since then have promoted the idea that a much larger proportion of younger people should have degrees; the logic being that better-educated young people could get better-paid jobs.
The problem - as we now see plain today - is that these two plans are in many ways nonsensical, and also logically contradictory. But this is how those in government have been running the country.
Intellectually bankrupt
To the casual observer, the UK has done really quite well since the "neo-liberal" revolution has been introduced. GDP is up, and the country is self-evidently more prosperous. Except that it depends on who you are talking about.
Back in 1978, this was when "egalitarianism" was at its height: the gap between rich and poor was at its smallest. Things were only "bad" if you happened to be very rich and Conservative; for everyone else, things were - basically - fine. This all ended with Thatcher. Within a short time, unemployment had trebled. Since the "neo-liberal" revolution in Whitehall, the gap between rich and poor has successively widened, so that now while those at the top ten per cent are many times richer than they were, those at the bottom ten per cent are actually worse off. Yes, they may have some consumer goods that they can afford due to advancements in technology and cost-effectiveness. But they are still - financially - worse off than they were before. This is how this economic system works.
British governments since Thatcher have had plenty of time to make manufacturing more productive and competitive. The fundamental problem about British inefficiency stems back to the end of Empire. It may seem like a difficult point to deal with, but Britain's manufacturing and productive base was reliant on demand from the Empire to keep things afloat. This was surely shown during the Second World War, and going even further back. Once the Empire starting breaking apart, British governments never grasped the nettle about how to make British industry competitive in a real world economy, rather than in a "fake" Imperial economy. The "oil shock" of the 1970s brought that into stark relief, and the Thatcher government decided that it couldn't be bothered to try and make it work. The government would rather let the whole thing die.
As mentioned earlier, the UK has turned into a consumption-based economy, which ironically seems not far off how an Imperial Homeland would be run. Except that Britain no longer has an "empire" that can do its production for it. Instead of factories, the UK now runs on banks. Like in Switzerland. Instead of an "empire", it now runs the country like a PLC, where its citizens are treated like mere "employees", who can be hired and fired at will. Instead of colonies, the UK has "assets", which it sells off to the highest (foreign) bidder.
Which brings us to Germany.
Germany is the country that many others aspire to be, for the simple reason that it is perhaps one of the best-run countries in the world, in terms of productivity, efficiency of government, and the well-being of its people. In this sense, Germany is the "anti-Britain": a country which learned some very hard lessons before 1945 but also learned how to get the best out of its people. Germany is what Britain could have been, if the country were run intelligently.
Britain's economic system can be called intellectually bankrupt because it is a system that a con. By allowing Britain's productive assets to wither and die, though a combination of incompetence and recklessness, successive governments have put all the country's eggs in one basket. That was found out in 2008, when we suddenly realised how absurd the UK's "miracle" of banking really was.
Since then, the British government has decided to react to the greatest financial crisis since the Depression by doing...the exact same thing. Nothing has changed about how the UK economy is ran. The huge bubble that burst in 2008 is being re-inflated once more, except that this time the "recovery" is even more of an illusion than the growth that was created under New Labour. The economy now is growing only due to debt-fueled consumer spending, ever-worsening working conditions, a much greater number of low-skilled and low-paid jobs, and an out-of-control property bubble. The state of the economy is based on even more fragile foundations that before the crash, but George Osborne, the architect of this "long-term economic plan", is only motivated by short-term political gain and the harvesting of votes.
The governments of the past thirty years have all been complicit in the "asset-stripping" of the nation, leaving the taxpayer doubly worse off - in selling off national infrastructure at below-market value, and then allowing these privatised assets to fleece their customers. as mentioned earlier. For the private sector this is a win-win situation.
What has been created since the "neo-liberal" revolution has been a system of Corporate Socialism, where assets are privatised and those privatised companies are then subsidised and if need be bailed-out by the government - the worst outcome of all from the government's financial point of view. In the meantime, this amoral system creates a morally-bankrupt government as well as an intellectually-bankrupt ideology.
Morally bankrupt
The logical conclusion of this economic system is a moral system that has destroyed the essence of society.
On top of increasing inequality to levels now not seen since the Depression, those who have become the victims of this system are then demonised as the causes of its problems. This is where the idea of blaming those on welfare for the need for "austerity" comes from. Back in the 1980s, when the government started selling-off council housing, this meant that only those with the severe social and familial problems became entitled to state housing. The effect of this was creating "sink estates", and thus another "scapegoat" for the government's problems was formed.
This vicious circle is repeated time and time again: the government creates a problem, then blames the victims for the problem.
George Osborne is the architect of the current government's version of this system, where he has implemented a policy of "divide and rule" to a ruthlessly-effective degree. In reality, all his decisions are not based on what's best for the country, but what's best for his prospects. From "help-to-buy" to racking up tuition fees, Osborne implements policies that simply store up nightmares for the future. While David Cameron is the charmingly-affable front man to this game, it is Osborne who is the real "master in the shadows".
Dividing young against old, rich against poor, working poor against jobless poor, this is the morally bankrupt system that the Conservatives use to rule the UK.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
The Jeremy Corbyn effect and the Labour leadership election: the death of New Labour?
A month from now, we'll know who the new leader of the Labour Party will be. The odds favour Jeremy Corbyn, given the massive groundswell of support from the party grassroots, which has left the three other "establishment" candidates struggling to come up with a plan. The latest one - involving all the "big beasts" - seems to be an all-out attack on Corbyn's values and what it would mean for the party electorally.
The surreal irony here is that the party hierarchy talk about Corbyn being someone who will have no resonance with the public mood, while he remains the only candidate of the five who has energised the party base and caused a massive rise in party numbers (more on that later). In other words, the hierarchy want someone who may have little in common with many of the actual party members, but will somehow resonate with the wider public. The surrealism of this point of view tells us what stage of absurdity the Labour party has now reached.
From party of government to political laughing-stock
In five years, the Labour party have gone through a seismic change in fortunes, at least as traumatic as that which they faced between 1979 and 1983 - arguably more so. The story of what happened in Scotland north of the border is highly educational. The party became complacent and relied on second and third-rate party hacks to run things on Scotland, while being dictated to from Westminster. The SNP took advantage of this ruthlessly, and took power in Holyrood with a majority. In 2015, Scottish Labour's MPs in Westminster found out when the same result is applied to a FPTP system: wipeout.
What we are seeing now is the accumulation of various factors, which have aligned together at one moment in time, bringing the spectacle of the current Labour party into full focus. Apart from the meltdown in Scotland highlighting an effective schism between the ideologies of the Scottish and English electorate, there are the changes that have happened within the Labour party itself over the last five years (and since the May election) that have contributed to this very public mess.
Ed Miliband's election as leader was due to the support of the unions. We can only guess now what might have happened if David had won instead; of all the possible candidates to lead the party after the 2010 election defeat, he was probably the best-qualified, having been Foreign Secretary, and being a figure who could easily articulate the "centrist" approach. As we now know, the grassroots of the party are currently much more leftist than many of its MPs, most of which have served through the years of New Labour. Ed Miliband has been seen as one reason for this realignment amongst the grassroots.
Then, after the Falkirk election scandal, the voting system within party was changed, with the intention of making it much more open to party members, making the process more obviously representative of members' views, and allowing for low barriers to entry to encourage increased party membership. Given that party membership is now more than 200,000, we can say that approach is a success. Unfortunately for the party hierarchy, the members are not looking to vote the way the party elite expected. The horrible complacency of Labour's leadership has come home to roost. Having allowed a "token" leftist candidate on the leadership election, once more the Labour leadership took things for granted: their members would vote for one of the uninspiring, centrist candidates because there was "no other alternative". They had learned nothing from the debacle of Scottish Labour. In the same way that the SNP became the beneficiaries of Labour complacency, Jeremy Corbyn has become the beneficiary of this grassroots insurgency.
Having given the party base a weapon to democratise the election process, the party heads are appalled at how this has backfired on them. While those at the top of the party are New Labour veterans and stalwarts, the "Ed Effect", and the shattering loss of the 2015 election, seems to have galvanised the party base to "stick two fingers up" to the out-of-touch complacency shown by Labour in Westminster.
This is also partly a result of the lack of any inspiring new figures coming through the party. While the likes of Chuka Umunna and Liz Kendall are new MPs and can articulate the "New Labour" idea, the problem is that it is not what many of the grassroots want to hear. Worse, their generalisations and lack of a "common touch" make them out as being only a few shades to the left of the Tories. This is also partly the legacy of New Labour and Blair: selecting yes-men and party hacks as MPs, that have little real life experience outside of politics. Only Dan Jarvis of the "newbies" bucks this trend as being a former soldier with a genuine life story to tell; but for (understandable) family reasons doesn't wish to step up to the mantle.
Cavaliers and Roundheads
This is where the "Corbyn-,mania" comes from. Being cut from a different cloth to the many indistinguishable "New Labour" figures, he is the polar opposite, something that hasn't been seen in British politics for thirty years. A natural populist, he appears as a bearded prophet, who dresses in the style of puritan socialist. This is in marked contrast the "professional" look of the rest of the Westminster set, from the "New Labour" types to the ranks of the public school Tories.
In some ways, British politics these days seems to resemble the ideological contortions of the mid-17th century. Certainly, with the situation north of the border, relations between England and Scotland may be said to be almost as bad and distrustful as they were in the days of the Civil War. While no-one of course is suggesting violence, the political situation, and the complex political realignments across Britain, could be said to be as convoluted and as difficult to comprehend as they were at that time. There are factions and sub-factions now as there were then.
The Tories are certainly living up to their role as the party of the aristocracy (The "Cavaliers"), doing just enough to rule the country, but doing so in a highly-divisive and dangerously-reckless way. Like back then, the modern Tories - the party of the aristocracy - are unpopular in London. Like back then, the Tories had "lost Scotland" to a group of Scottish political insurgents.
But also like then, bizarre political groupings and alliances were formed. The modern Labour party (aka The "Roundheads") has factions of its own, as Cromwell's supporters did back in the 17th century. During the Civil War and up to the Restoration, Scotland changed allegiances a number of times. This was also the time of "The Levellers", whose values these days Jeremy Corbyn would be sympathetic towards. The "Corbyn insurgency" bears all the hallmarks of being a grassroots rebellion like that which was formed by The Levellers in days of the Civil War.
The current political situation within the Labour Party in Britain may soon become even more convoluted, if Jeremy Corbyn becomes the new leader. Corbyn's campaigning in Scotland has shown that he has drawn the support of many who had only just recently swapped their votes from Labour to the SNP in the general election. However, the new leader of Scottish Labour, Kezia Dugdale, is ardently against his values. So we may well have a situation where the leader of Labour in England is more popular in Scotland than England, and more popular than Scottish Labour's own leader, who disagrees with him. This would be beyond farcical, but also a reflection of how complicated British politics has become.
A Corbyn leadership may well be a "moment of madness" by the Labour grassroots, given the fact that they lost the general election on a platform more to the middle than anything proposed by Corbyn. A mass movement of Corbyn support would almost certainly face a bloodbath in the face of the "Cavalier" Tories in 2020; but it would be an "honourable death", as seen by his supporters.
The problem is what state the Labour Party would be in afterwards - or after five years of Corbyn leadership.
The surreal irony here is that the party hierarchy talk about Corbyn being someone who will have no resonance with the public mood, while he remains the only candidate of the five who has energised the party base and caused a massive rise in party numbers (more on that later). In other words, the hierarchy want someone who may have little in common with many of the actual party members, but will somehow resonate with the wider public. The surrealism of this point of view tells us what stage of absurdity the Labour party has now reached.
From party of government to political laughing-stock
In five years, the Labour party have gone through a seismic change in fortunes, at least as traumatic as that which they faced between 1979 and 1983 - arguably more so. The story of what happened in Scotland north of the border is highly educational. The party became complacent and relied on second and third-rate party hacks to run things on Scotland, while being dictated to from Westminster. The SNP took advantage of this ruthlessly, and took power in Holyrood with a majority. In 2015, Scottish Labour's MPs in Westminster found out when the same result is applied to a FPTP system: wipeout.
What we are seeing now is the accumulation of various factors, which have aligned together at one moment in time, bringing the spectacle of the current Labour party into full focus. Apart from the meltdown in Scotland highlighting an effective schism between the ideologies of the Scottish and English electorate, there are the changes that have happened within the Labour party itself over the last five years (and since the May election) that have contributed to this very public mess.
Ed Miliband's election as leader was due to the support of the unions. We can only guess now what might have happened if David had won instead; of all the possible candidates to lead the party after the 2010 election defeat, he was probably the best-qualified, having been Foreign Secretary, and being a figure who could easily articulate the "centrist" approach. As we now know, the grassroots of the party are currently much more leftist than many of its MPs, most of which have served through the years of New Labour. Ed Miliband has been seen as one reason for this realignment amongst the grassroots.
Then, after the Falkirk election scandal, the voting system within party was changed, with the intention of making it much more open to party members, making the process more obviously representative of members' views, and allowing for low barriers to entry to encourage increased party membership. Given that party membership is now more than 200,000, we can say that approach is a success. Unfortunately for the party hierarchy, the members are not looking to vote the way the party elite expected. The horrible complacency of Labour's leadership has come home to roost. Having allowed a "token" leftist candidate on the leadership election, once more the Labour leadership took things for granted: their members would vote for one of the uninspiring, centrist candidates because there was "no other alternative". They had learned nothing from the debacle of Scottish Labour. In the same way that the SNP became the beneficiaries of Labour complacency, Jeremy Corbyn has become the beneficiary of this grassroots insurgency.
Having given the party base a weapon to democratise the election process, the party heads are appalled at how this has backfired on them. While those at the top of the party are New Labour veterans and stalwarts, the "Ed Effect", and the shattering loss of the 2015 election, seems to have galvanised the party base to "stick two fingers up" to the out-of-touch complacency shown by Labour in Westminster.
This is also partly a result of the lack of any inspiring new figures coming through the party. While the likes of Chuka Umunna and Liz Kendall are new MPs and can articulate the "New Labour" idea, the problem is that it is not what many of the grassroots want to hear. Worse, their generalisations and lack of a "common touch" make them out as being only a few shades to the left of the Tories. This is also partly the legacy of New Labour and Blair: selecting yes-men and party hacks as MPs, that have little real life experience outside of politics. Only Dan Jarvis of the "newbies" bucks this trend as being a former soldier with a genuine life story to tell; but for (understandable) family reasons doesn't wish to step up to the mantle.
Cavaliers and Roundheads
This is where the "Corbyn-,mania" comes from. Being cut from a different cloth to the many indistinguishable "New Labour" figures, he is the polar opposite, something that hasn't been seen in British politics for thirty years. A natural populist, he appears as a bearded prophet, who dresses in the style of puritan socialist. This is in marked contrast the "professional" look of the rest of the Westminster set, from the "New Labour" types to the ranks of the public school Tories.
In some ways, British politics these days seems to resemble the ideological contortions of the mid-17th century. Certainly, with the situation north of the border, relations between England and Scotland may be said to be almost as bad and distrustful as they were in the days of the Civil War. While no-one of course is suggesting violence, the political situation, and the complex political realignments across Britain, could be said to be as convoluted and as difficult to comprehend as they were at that time. There are factions and sub-factions now as there were then.
The Tories are certainly living up to their role as the party of the aristocracy (The "Cavaliers"), doing just enough to rule the country, but doing so in a highly-divisive and dangerously-reckless way. Like back then, the modern Tories - the party of the aristocracy - are unpopular in London. Like back then, the Tories had "lost Scotland" to a group of Scottish political insurgents.
But also like then, bizarre political groupings and alliances were formed. The modern Labour party (aka The "Roundheads") has factions of its own, as Cromwell's supporters did back in the 17th century. During the Civil War and up to the Restoration, Scotland changed allegiances a number of times. This was also the time of "The Levellers", whose values these days Jeremy Corbyn would be sympathetic towards. The "Corbyn insurgency" bears all the hallmarks of being a grassroots rebellion like that which was formed by The Levellers in days of the Civil War.
The current political situation within the Labour Party in Britain may soon become even more convoluted, if Jeremy Corbyn becomes the new leader. Corbyn's campaigning in Scotland has shown that he has drawn the support of many who had only just recently swapped their votes from Labour to the SNP in the general election. However, the new leader of Scottish Labour, Kezia Dugdale, is ardently against his values. So we may well have a situation where the leader of Labour in England is more popular in Scotland than England, and more popular than Scottish Labour's own leader, who disagrees with him. This would be beyond farcical, but also a reflection of how complicated British politics has become.
A Corbyn leadership may well be a "moment of madness" by the Labour grassroots, given the fact that they lost the general election on a platform more to the middle than anything proposed by Corbyn. A mass movement of Corbyn support would almost certainly face a bloodbath in the face of the "Cavalier" Tories in 2020; but it would be an "honourable death", as seen by his supporters.
The problem is what state the Labour Party would be in afterwards - or after five years of Corbyn leadership.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
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.
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.
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