Atlas Shrugged: a Cautionary Tale (Go See It!)
So, I went to see Atlas Shrugged II this afternoon. All of my cinematic friends with whom I’d discussed the film assured me that it was terrible, “just like the first one.” A look at the “Rotten Tomatoes” movie site dramatizes what the critics’ opinion is: a 5 percent “fresh” rating, which I think is the lowest I’ve ever seen. I suspect that’s as much a political as an artistic assessment; and judging by the really horrible, and seemingly unending, series of previews for coming “attractions” I had to sit through to get to the feature presentation, I have to say that Atlas will certainly ought to have plenty of competition for that 5 percent fresh rating.
But I am not really interested in the cinematic qualities of the movie (or, for that matter, the literary qualities of the book upon which it based). I’ll just say that I found both installments of the movie engrossing.
I have plenty of criticisms of Ayn Rand (some of which I lay out in “Can Art Be Defined?” in my book Art’s Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity). But I found I could easily bracket most of my criticisms while watching the two movies. For one thing, the movies are fun. Part two opens and closes with a nifty, pulse-rattling jet chase, always a plus in my book. There is plenty of entertainment value.
Is Ayn Rand’s philosophy simplistic? I think so. But she is also figure for our time. (I forget how many gazillions of copies her books have sold.) And that is because, whatever reservations one may have about her philosophy (or her prose), she highlighted one of the most critical issues we face today: encroaching statism and the assault on individual liberty and initiative that encroachment entails.
The movie Atlas Shrugged, like the book it is based on, is a heavily didactic work. People don’t like being lectured to, I understand that. But the message, the teaching, is an essential gospel for our age. Although cast in different terms, it is part of the teaching that made Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom such an important work. In essence, the tocsin sounded by both Hayek and Rand revolves around the dangers of central planning (though the phenomenon has many names). The dangers are both pragmatic, leading directly to economic stagnation, and also psychological. One of “main points” of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote in a new preface in 1956, is to underscore the “psychological change, the alteration in the character of the people” which “extensive government control brings about.” The name of that alteration is “dependency” and the movie Atlas Shrugged effectively dramatizes that process and is choc-a-bloc with truly repellent specimens (the heroine Dagny Taggart’s spineless brother James, for example) and all-too-believable instances of statist intrusiveness. You may think it is a long way from from ObamaCare to the movie’s “Directive 10-289,” which, among other things, freezes incomes and transfers patents and copyrights to the government. But stop and think about Obama’s obscene 2700-page behemoth a moment. Even Ayn Rand didn’t contemplate a situation where the government would fine you (or, as Chief Justice Roberts would have it, “tax” you) for not doing something.
I don’t want to go on about Atlas Shrugged. I know from experience how touchy Rand partisans can be. I did want to put it on record, however, that I enjoyed both installments of the movie. I recommend you forget what the critics have said and go see them. I might disagree with Rand about several important things. But she was conjuring with one of the most pressing issues of our day, an issue I tried to capture in the title of a recent Encounter book that I edited: The New Leviathan: The State versus the Individual in the Twenty-first Century.
I’m surprised a sequel was even made, considering how thoroughly the last Rand movie was panned.
I think Ayn Rand a tiresome bore.
Sorry.
Introducing obvious and simplistic ideas to the over-educated, under-informed elites that the middle class has understood perfectly well forever to be true is no great exercise on truth-telling.
I think Tom Wolfe says it all much better (and with far less, if any, didact, and a whole boatload more wit) in “Bonfire…”.
For those who think he exaggerates, let me tell you as one with as great deal of experience: he’s doesn’t. Not one tiny bit.
Read that book as the true exercise in journalism that it really is, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
That’s “journalism”, not “Journolism”, in case you’re becoming confused.
I sure as Hell am.
Rand’s philosophy is contemptible not for its simplistic nature, but for its pernicious establishment of the moral order upon what the Randian hero perceives as good.
Rand’s prose is hard slogging, and at times so melodramatic as to be camp, but what astounds me is how her critics fault her for not being perfect. The book is riddled with faults, but the main premise is simple – and solid. What I don’t see most critics attempt is to refute that part of her work. Instead they dismiss her on peripheral issues.
Unfortunately the lesson’s of Atlas Shrugged are being ignored today. Government (State, Federal, and local) now consumes 43% of our annual GDP. Our national debt has soared part 16 trillion. Rand warned us of the decline of big government societies long before Europe’s decline became evident. EU-17 Real GDP has declined over the last 5 years, while the rest of the world ex-US and Europe has seen GDP growth in excess of 31%.
Rand defends the producers of society. Yet many nations attempt to have more fair distributions of income and wealth. Once again, Rand has been proven right. Countries with the largest Gini coefficients have the highest GDP growth rate, and nations with the most equal distributions of income and wealth have the slowest rates of growth. Just look at the developed nation with the lowest Gini coefficient: Japan. Japan also has the slowest GDP growth rate of all major nations over the last 10 and 20 years.
Under Mao, China used to have a very equal distribution of income and wealth. People were not allowed to own businesses or homes, and they starved to death! Now China has an even greater Gini coefficient than the US. They have rapid economic growth, stock exchanges, property ownership, and billionaires. China learned the lessons of big government the very hard way.
Just look at the US. From 1792-1913, the Federal government consumed less than 5% of GDP on average. Real GDP growth was 4.6%. From 1913 to the present, the Federal government has grown to consume over 20% of GDP, real annual economic growth has dropped in half to 2.3% That doesn’t sound like much, until you compound that missing 2.3% per year for a century. Our massive government has made us all much less prosperous.
We’ve now had 4 years where Real GDP per capita has fallen for the 1st time since the 1930′s. Median family incomes have fallen for 4 straight years. Median net worth had fallen for 4 years. We’re printing dollars out of thin air to fund a trillion dollar annual deficit. (The Fed purchased 61% of new Treasury bonds issued in the last year.)
We have decades of Academic research on the Optimal Size of Government. Google ANY white paper and you’ll see that our government is multiple times larger than what is should be to maximize economic growth and prosperity for all. Even Congress during the Clinton administration studied the issue (Vedder,et,al) and found that the optimal size of government was only 11% of GDP).
With all the academic research, and over 2 centuries of data pointing to a much smaller role of government, it’s important that these complex issues are discussed. (Yes, I say complex. How many people recognize that higher income disparities lead to a greater production of goods and services, and thus greater economic growth? The data on Gini coefficients is true whether you look at the developed world or the developing world. It’s true whether you look at income or wealth Gini’s over 10 ,20, or 200 years.)
It’s very clear that most of our society have not learned the lessons from Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand.
Perhaps, those reviewing the movie still haven’t learned the lesson.
Excellent analysis using GINI Index. The Index itself offends me but it has its uses.
While I appreciate any praise for Ayn Rand, you are wrong on one important fact. Her central argument was not about central planning. Rand’s key point of departure from all prior philosophies is in her unabashed support of the right of the individual to their own life – the morality of a man acting in his own rational self interest.
You know, that thing Jefferson touched on when he wrote of man’s right to the “pursuit of happiness”.
I’ve read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead so many times that I lost count long ago. She would say that the reason her books are so engrossing is the “sense of life” they embody — the sense of what life is and can be. The best I can do to put into words what this vision is like is: it’s what you thought life was going to be like when you were young. The simple, black and white contrasts are an essential part of it: that is the youthful view of the world. Reading her, like reading Shelly, is traveling back to your youth.
One thing I can’t forgive the first movie for: Ayn Rand wrote very fun-to-read dialog, which they completely re-wrote for the movie, not for the better. Whatever her shortcomings, she could write good dialog. The lesson here: don’t rewrite someone when you are a worse writer.