I had sent some friends of mine an e-mail titlted:
"Wafa Sultan : the Middle Eastern Equivalent of Ayn Rand?"

One of them was a Liberal, who replied:

"Mark, every time you ever mention Objectivism, this is all I can think of:"



I have to admit, the comic strip had me rolling in laughter. Best laugh I've had all night. All in good fun, of course.

Mark; Maybe it's me. I don't find it that funny.

Normally, I would find such a strip offensive, but it must be that I have 'mellowed out' over the years. For some reason, I was able to set aside the Objectivist mindset and look at it as an outsider. Scary, huh?

I don't find it offenseive. I don't find it funny.

I got a laugh out of it.

How to eat in Galt's Gulch was not covered in Atlas Shrugged and I never even thought about that myself during all these years. (Also, I have "shrugged" in my life and then had to figure out how to eat. It's a problem.)

Michael

I understand the supposed humor of the comic strip, I don’t find it funny at all—and not because I’m “offended”. In the Galt's Gulch, the ‘men of the mind’ have no problem growing food, tiling the soil, sweeping up and other manual labor along with the more brainy work. When Galt said in his radio speech “We don’t need you”—he meant it. So that’s why the supposed humor is missing from this strip. Even a joke must have some layer of truth to it, and this one has neither wit nor irony.

Believe me, I love humor. And so I’m a little disappointed with this.

Victor,

Come on. Rand didn't present all those things. She worked from the top end.

If some people find the thing funny, let them enjoy it. They have reasons to. (Try walking away from caricature art and living a few years. It will change your perspective.)

Michael

I have to agree with Victor on this. He is correct. The men of the mind were producers and as such, knew how to do menial tasks as well as major accomplishments of science. The comic strip conveniently overlooks that. Good point, Victor.

I thought it was very funny. Much classier than Randian Christmas. *wink*

And I still found it funny for the reasons I gave.

So there.

Nyah!



Michael

Okay, perfectly fine to react with laughter to something like that comic. One would not expect a response like the Mohammud cartoons evoked among Muslims. We're a civil philosophic school of thought here.

But I do find it curious how my Jewish acquaintance is unwilling to stand in defense of Israel and Jews in general. He's ultra-Liberal left-wing. Oh well, he's lived in Boston much of his life. I guess that explains it.

I like humor about Ayn Rand. The strikers started doing what was neccessary for their lives. I repeat the cartoon wasn't funny because any good reader of the book would know the strikers had no problem tilling the soil.

Chris.

When I have tilled the soil, it has kicked my ass hard.

So I still think the cartoon is funny. What a horrible way to have to eat!

Nyah to you too.



Michael

The comic kinda fell flat with me. C'mon... They were a self-contained community and there had to be a Mickey-D's or at least a Starbucks out there.

Kat

All they would have to do is get some former looters from the old world and say “Look, you wanna live? Then get to work, bitches.”

They could just bring in Dr. Archibald Bitchslap. Did anyone see Saturday Night Live last night?

Now that's a scenario I would give my right arm to witness!

Philip Rearden washing dishes. His mother mopping floors. Lillian could panhandle.

Mark,

It is so obvious to me that the “joke” was written by a liberal who seems to hold the Marxist “surplus value” theory—in that the real cause behind human production, behind human survival, is the sweat and muscle of “the workers” over brains. This not only jumps in the face against what AS is all about and demonstrates to be true—but against historical facts. In this cartoon strip, the “men of the mind” are really dependent upon the workers—the very thing that Rand’s theme seeks to discredit. She succeeded. This strip just ignores all these facts and takes its own theme as 'a given'.

This is why this joke is not objectively funny—except to those who would hold a leftist view of production. In MSK’s case, he laughed at what the intended humor was meant to be, but upon examination the “humor” collapses under the weight of its own untruth. Nevertheless, thanks for posting it. I get a laugh from it of a different sort.

-Victor

Victor; That's a thoughtful post. You are a very good thinker and I'm honored to be associated with you. Your art work is good too.

Victor,

I didn't even think about class struggles, and I am not sure I agree with your analysis, although it is clever. I just thought about how tilling the earth to eat is hard work for anybody to do.

Michael

Michael; You are correct. I did some farming when I was much younger. It was hard work. People who talk about going back to the land don't know what hard work is.

Michael,

You might not have thought about “class struggles” but what else is the cartoon about? Read between the lines where the supposed humor is presented. That joke doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it seems pretty clear to me that it was created from an “axe to grind” impetus. You don’t get that impression at all?

Humor, it is true, can be totally non-cerebral, illogical and totally silly —such as you would find in a Marx Brother movie—but this cartoon is trying to convey a “message”—the one I just explained. By the way, nobody said that “tilling the soil” is easy work-- but that is all beside the point I’m making.

Anyway, I don’t want you to think I’m getting all anal over a silly cartoon strip.

Victor


[P.S. Chris, where do you stand now? good god, man--you are making me dizzy!]

I didn't think it was funny either. I was just kind of bewildered, and wondered, "Didn't they read the book?" for the reasons Victor mentioned.

And I know that manual labor is hard. I once had to muck out a stall (that's ONE stall). The woman told me it would take me 10 or 15 minutes. 45 minutes later, I was only a quarter done and I was weeping with frustration. She took pity on me and finished the job so I could get on the road, because I had an eight hour drive ahead of me towing a horse trailer. It's a matter of knowing how and of having developed the correct muscles.

Judith

I found it funny, because such a strip could just as well have been written by a dedicated Objectivist.

The reason is that for the sake of a joke, a humorist often takes a stance he knows to be wrong, and that the audience knows he knows is wrong. It's just a temporary pose struck, as it were. Since I, the reader, do not know the views of the cartoonist, I just regard it in that way. Among friends, I am given to such playfulness myself.

Am I the only one who noticed that Ayn Rand is pictured--the "GENIUS"?

The best evidence that whoever drew this didn't read the book is that, in the valley sequence, the characters showed that they knew all that.

I came across the site of Bob the Angry Flower, which is where this comic comes from. Go to Archive if you want to see more comics. Many of them are not very funny, but some of them gave me a quite a chuckle. Here are three I liked for personal reasons.



Have you ever used Norton Anti-Virus? If you have, then you will most likely understand the following sentiment:






We have had several discussions about reductionism on OL. The following comic reminded me of how I felt at times during them.






The finally there was the issue of cartoon boobs.






That's enough for now. Back to writing.

Michael

Er, hello. I'm Stephen Notley, cartoonist of the "Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later" cartoon. I discovered this thread on the Internets and I registered and logged in to say a couple of things.

1) I had not read the book. I'd read a proposed screenplay based on the book. I'm *now* reading the book, which caused me to go on the wee Googling trip that brought me here.

2) I am a socialist.

3) No, really. But my definition of socialism is: Human efforts are put to best use in societies. More specifically, I do not subscribe to the battle between labor and capital over who made the wealth as though we were contending over the results of a zero-sum game. I believe that social behavior has a *multiplicative effect* on production rather than an additive effect. That is, when labor and capital work together, they create more than the sum of their individual separate efforts. Capitalists and laborers both, if forced to work without society, will spend their lives on subsistence. If they work together they will create wealth in abundance, more than what both of them together put in.

Everyone gets more out of society than they put in. Take the wealthiest, a Bill Gates. He spends 8, 9, 10 or more hours a day of meetings, decisions, at this point in his career likely few technological contributions, but perhaps some. He gets back food, clothing, shelter, transportation, entertainment, the whole panopoly of human creation. Now take the poorest, some bum on the street. He spends 8, 9, 10 or more hours a day putting in virtually nothing except the service of extorting money through guilt from people on the street. And even he gets food, clothing, shelter, transportation, entertainment, a much smaller slice but still far more than he contributes towards the whole panopoly of human creation. We *all* get more out of it than we put in. It's multiplicative.

So, given that hooking ourselves into a social system allows us to generate vastly greater wealth than what we'd make alone, how shall we divide the spoils? There is an adversarial relationship between labor and capital, just as there is an adversarial relationship between the defense and the prosecution in a court of law. But both sets of adversaries, while competitors, are also partners in a system with a greater purpose. For defense and prosecution, the purpose is justice. For labor and capital, the purpose is wealth. The system relies on balance between the adversaries. That sounds wishy-washy librul, but it simply means that any powers, rights and privileges accorded to one side of the equation must also be accorded to the other. Seeking the ascendancy of one over the other is asking for a big ol' disaster in the face, it seems to me.

For the time being...

Anyway, welcome to OL. You sound pretty Objectivist actually.

Stephen,

What a delight!

Welcome!

I really enjoyed your cartoon.

Since you are now getting familiar with Objectivist thought, take your time. I am pleased to see that these ideas are important to you.

There is one thing I want to highlight right now, more as a guidepost than as preaching. (I intensely dislike preaching, despite the obvious preaching tone in the speeches in Atlas Shrugged. I actually dislike preaching dogma, but I even have distaste for preaching truth. I just don't like the profession. )

You will find Objectivism to be more about denying a moral sanction to using force against creators of wealth (goods and services) than about distribution of wealth per se. This real issue is wealth and force, not just wealth. And at even more depth, the fundamental social issue is force versus reason as a standard of setting the rules.

Actually, the synergy of accumulated wealth on a social level you mentioned is covered almost in the same manner by Ayn Rand. In my own view, we are now right smack in the middle of an information revolutuion that is multiplying wealth and toppling dictators in a manner unprecedented in human history. I attribute this effect to that synergy.

btw - I don't mind the label "socialist." You will probably find a few people who give a kneejerk reaction without looking at the ideas you mean, but in general, I think you will find friendly people around here. (On OL, independent thought is a high value, so everyone speaks for himself, not for any organization. That leads to some interesting disagreements.) You might want to look into what the definition of socialist is later, or at least check the precision of the definition you use.

Anyway, I do hope you will look around. I am sure you will find some great premises to check and, who knows, help us check some of our own.

EDIT: I corrected a broken link in the opening post, so now your cartoon shows up.)

Michael

Mr. Notley,

Your definition of Socialism is technically false. The actual meaning of Socialism is "A political-economic system within which the means of production are controlled by the State." Note that this is not a special Objectivist definition but rather a definition widely agreed upon by economists, political scientists and philosophers of many different viewpoints.

Speaking as a qualified economist, both Socialists and Classical Liberals believe that the system they advocate (Socialism and Capitalism respectively) actually does put human efforts to the best use within society. In other words, by your definition of "Socialism," both Classical Liberals and Socialists claim to be "Socialist" (again, by your definition).

The difference between Socialism (academic definition) and Capitalism is, with respect to your definition, one of means. i.e, what 'mechanism' puts human efforts to their best uses. Socialists advocate using the State to do this, Classical Liberals advocate allowing individuals to sort out the matter by themselves through voluntary dealings with eachother.



Good.



Again, you are correct.



That doesn't sound like Socialism to me, indeed it makes some important points. However there are a few things I would advise you to look out for.
First, the distinction between labor and capital is getting very blurred. The Marxist concepts of labor (proletariat) and capital (bourgeois) are only applicable in the context of an early-to-mid-stage industrial economy where capital is so rare and expensive that to accumulate it requires vast wealth. In the west today, a very common item of capital (for example, the PC) can be found in the vast majority of homes. People can run businesses with nearly no barriers to entry now thanks to the online economy. Indeed, the dichotomy between labor and capital is basically obsolete.
Second, Rand did not preach the ascendancy of capital over labor. She saw all production, including labor, to be a product of that producers mind (even menial labor requires some mind to be carried out), and thus the producer had complete sovereignty over it. Thus, if a single producer wants to trade his product for money by working for someone else, thats fine.
Third, Rearden made his own alloys!

Several of the Titans in addition to running industries were farmers (I am sure they had farm machinery) and some even raised hogs (Dwight Sanders IIRC). The man who designed and manufactured airplanes and heavy industrial motive power also knew how to butcher hogs. So food was raised the old fashioned way.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Wasn't there somebody down at the lake fishing?

--Brant

Dagny cooked and sewed.

Hugh Akston cooked an outstanding hamburger.


Would that not require that she actually own the lake, lest she be poaching or perhaps tragically using the commons?

Q: How many Objectivists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: We have agreed among ourselves not to change the lightbulb until the income tax is repealed.