Is the Relevance of Atlas Shrugged, both as Metephor or History, Worth Making a Film About?
These require a substantive response, which I make below. My initial comment is numbered and italicized, followed by his comment, and then my “Response.”
1) Rand's science fiction is another piece of fantasy for"outraged" Americans who don't want to face the real world, or deal with it.
Are you saying that a work has to be realistic in order to be relevant to the real world? Why? What about metaphor?
Resposnse: No, a work does not have to be realistic in order to be relevant to the real world. In a world increasingly characterized by Empires, I have long thought that Satire is perhaps the best approach to this Centralization of power as Oswald Spengler characterized it.
Metaphor also has its place, but one might hope that it is carried off with some accuracy. Is this case, with the novel in question?
In mythology, Atlas has been punished by having to hold up the Heavens. Wikopedia comments that many people make the error that he is holding the Earth on his shoulders. Miss Rand appears to have been one of these, since her novel is clearly about events here on Earth, and not about events in Heaven, a place about which she appears to have been in denial.
Is it too much to ask, Rod, that a Metaphor, if applied, be used with some degree of accuracy?
2) In the book, Galt never produces the promised machine to stop the world. He simply convinces a few people to drop out.
Well, crucial people on whom the dying economy has come to depend. And anyway, it's a metaphor for the fact that state power rests on the acquiescence of the ruled and exploited.
Response: I suppose its natural for a Philosopher to see a Philsopher as someone upon whom the Economy depends. But, do you really believe the few people Galt convinces were all that essential to the Economy? Perhaps the most important, Hank Reardon, does not do so until near the end of the book.
I notice, in again introducing Metaphor, that you simply skip over my observation that Rand/Galt never produces his so-called machine to stop the engine of the World. The key, in my view, to coming close to stopping the engine of the world, is Decentralized, and virtually free, Electricity. as was envisaged by real creators over a century ago, such as Nikola Tesla, before J.P. Morgan and others Centralized it. We are still in that reactionary paradigm today, but there are forces now seeking to break that monopoly of power which made something like Enron possible only a few years ago. The Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation, of which I am Executive Director, is dedicated to a Decentralized, Sustainable, Affordable lifestyle, and is actively working with some of the inventors of a forthcoming Energy Exchange Machine which might put even the new, advanced solar panels in the shade!
Further, State Power rests on much more than a Metaphor that “rests on the acquiescence of the ruled and exploited.”
More than in other Empires such as Rome, the Media, Corporations and the Political Parties make a mockery of the notion of Democracy and the acquiescence of the mass of the society.
Empires have always attempted to disarm those over whom they rule as I described in"The Second Amendment in Global Perspective."
http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1405
That process, with respect to the Militia, has been going on since the 1790s, was greatly increased by Elihu Root in strucuring the Empire over a century ago, and has proved in Iraq that the National Guard is not an efficient guardian of Empire, hence all of the private Mercenaries there, outnumbering the regular army, etc.
This, also harks back to Rome, and is a whole dimension ignored by Rand in describing the collapse of the nation, at a time in the 1950s whe this was all being developed, with the great fear being the Soviet Union.
Today, as Homeland Security builds its internment camps for dissidents, the great fear is the GWOT, although Obama and the Pentagon are now offering us an alternative terminology.
3) Who does all of the scut work in Galt's little Utopian community?
Well, we see writers working as fishwives and scientists working as janitors, so I think she's answered that question.
Response: I don’t think she answered it at all. That may even be the most far-fetched piece of sheer fiction in the whole book. Few so-called intellectuals that I have ever known would do that!
Many years ago, F.A. Hayek chuckled at a discussion of mine in Egalitarianism and Empire about the sociological significance of the long finger nails of the Chinese Mandarins, still the ultimate definition of the intellectual as career bureaucrat, whether in Business, Government or Academia. And, I might have added, their soft hands, certainly unlike those of the architect/builder, Howard Roark.
Within several months we will be building a model home for Veterans here in Asheville, based on the technology the M-HEF used in building a Community Center in Guatemala last year, using a number of women, of what you might call the heroic, Dagny Taggert type. I believe we can dry-in a 3/2, 1,200 square foot building for $15,000, and complete it for the total price of a mid-sized car.
Tell you what, Rod. I hereby invite you to come on over, perhaps a six-hour drive from Auburn, and let us film you actually participating in this project. That might convince me that I am wrong, at least about some intellectuals and their soft hands.
As we complete this project and document the process on paper and film, a friend of mine will be presenting these to Michelle Obama, who has pledged to help our homecoming Veterans and their families. We also have gardens, a greenhouse for winter, and a number of cisterns, loaded with rain and other waters, for use in the months ahead.
4) How would a movie handle Galt's 125 pp. blather about the virtues of Objectivism?
They would shorten it, just as Rand herself shortened Roark's speech for the film version of The Fountainhead -- and just as lots of books with long philosophical speeches in them (e.g. Dostoyevsky, Swift) get the speeches shortened in the movie versions. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about this book but I'm not sure why.
Response: Obviously, it would have to be shortened, and no doubt, that would probably improve it.
The nature of the “chip” on my “shoulder,” as you put it, thank goodness it is not the Earth Miss Rand imagined on Atlas’, ought to be evident from these comments. She just misses the mark about the way in which History and the World works.
5) As to railroads, these have since the 1820s been a prime source of Gov't largesse.
As is likewise noted in Atlas Shrugged, where Taggart Transcontinental is said to have been unusual in disdaining government help (until Jim Taggart took it over and made it one more lobby yelping for special favours). And the railroad cartelisation legislation described in Atlas is based on Woodrow Wilson’s actual railroad cartelisation policies.
Response: Lastly, your final sentence, if correct, suggests to me both Rand and you need to have read a bit more in American History. Wilson did not “Cartelize” the railroads during WWI, he “Nationalized” them!
Surely, you undertand the difference!
Critics have argued the Anti-trust laws actually cartelized the railroads in the late 19th century. In 1920, radicals on the Left praised Wilson’s Nationaization and wanted it to continue.
Try Googling “Woodrow Wilson” + “Nationalization” and you’ll find more than you wish to know on the subject.
If the movie is made, perhaps there are enough Objectivists around (most I have known have been simply, rigidly, Objectionable) that it will turn a profit. We’ll see!
In conclusion, using Rand’s novel to analyze the present situation, is what the historian W.A. Williams once referred to as The Great Evasion. Our intellectual time and effort could much better be employed elsewhere!