Atlas Shrugged Revisited

By Jill Chapin

April 13, 2011

I had always promised myself to someday read my mother’s copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that has been on her bookshelf for nearly half a century. I finally read it last year and was surprised to learn that sales of this book have spiked during the current recession. Reasons for this renewed interest could be a need to better understand how the American Dream has fallen so precipitously, and to attempt to place blame on what is responsible for our woes. The target seems to vacillate between the idea of either socialism or capitalism having gone wildly amok.

There is a bitter – or delicious – irony, depending on one’s point of view, as to whether Atlas Shrugged supports or topples the idea that unfettered capitalism and individualism is what makes this country great, and that encroaching socialism is eroding the entrepreneurial spirit we once had that led us to build skyscrapers, our network of highways, a transcontinental railroad, the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, even Mount Rushmore.

In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart is trying to build a transcontinental railroad with a superior grade of a new metal alloy that will be safe and enduring. Steel magnate Hank Rearden is the man who invented it. Both are driven by a demanding work ethic that calls for nothing short of perfection. They are willing to pay a lot in terms of money, time and energy to ensure that quality does not suffer.

However, due to government requirements that wealth be evenly distributed, no matter who works hard or not, workers are reduced to automatons who have abdicated their right to critical thinking, preferring instead to simply do as they are told. They have been brainwashed to think that the smart and the rich owe them, simply for existing.

Today’s workers by contrast are working harder for less pay and many work overtime or have multiple jobs. No other industrialized nation offers only two weeks’ annual vacation. For the most part, our workers do not fit the unenterprising stereotype depicted in this novel.

It is easy to sympathize with Taggart’s and Rearden’s constant battles with government edicts and social giveaways that erode their insistence on excellence. Their unwavering work ethic far surpassed such companies as present day airlines whose maintenance inspections were signed off on but never done, or pharmaceuticals whose unsafe drugs were knowingly brought to market, or manufacturers whose products were designed with deliberately planned obsolescence built into them.

They also were not trying to avoid contributing their fare share of taxes; in fact, it was they who were fleeced by the government and were essentially squeezed out of their roles as leaders who were best positioned to pull the country out of a deep depression. These protagonists are depicted as nothing like our current CEOs who too often will bow to shoddy work in the interest of the bottom line, and who complain about high corporate tax rates even as they pay no taxes.

Today’s 21st century capitalism is not so much about producing anything as it is about out-sourcing jobs and exploiting every tax loophole (that most of us do not have) to reduce company taxes to nothing. This was not the capitalism that Rand was glorifying.

What would she say about today’s growing gap in pay between workers and top executives? The median CEO pay in 1950 was 24 times that of the average worker; in 1990 it was 122 times that of their employees. In 2009, in the midst of a crushing recession with millions out of work and desperately trying to support their families with no jobs available, CEOs’ median pay was 550 times that of the average worker.

Would Rand look at this and perhaps think that too much of a good thing – unregulated capitalism -. can become a bad thing? These numbers prove that the trickle down theory is hermetically sealed, thanks to more protections afforded large companies and banks than to the ordinary worker, who despite legitimate claims of union excesses, still do not come close to amassing wealth like those in the top one percent of our population. Americans love the idea of a free market until they realize that it has morphed into something that benefits fewer and fewer of us every year.

Whether or not you agree with the premise of Atlas Shrugged, we probably can see Winston Churchill’s point of view when he said that the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

What we seem to have today is both an unequal sharing of riches and a growing abundance of miseries.

Jill Chapin

Jill Chapin has been a guest writer and columnist in several Los Angeles area papers for over fifteen years. She has written a bilingual parenting book titled, "If You Have Kids, Then Be a Parent!" and a children's book entitled, "My Magic Bubble."

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