syrakusos

Money and Capitalism

I attend Eastern Michigan University, a fairly nondescript midwestern taxpit where Marxists vie with postmodernists. So, I am waiting for the start of my class in Police Organization (CRIM 432) and I look in a classroom and see AYN RAND written on the blackboard next to ARISTOTLE. The professor is Greg Browne, author of Necessary Factual Truths. How lucky can I get?

These high school guys do an uneven job. The first two, Hank and Philip in Hank's office near the end, are pretty good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGZowIOgZes The second scene, from earlier in the book, with Taggart, Boyle, Larkin and Mouch is not so well acted. Generally, no one is going to stumble on one of these YouTube trailers and be struck by the lightening. Only Objectivists are going to make them and view them, as we did. That said, I expect to see more of this over time, as video production becomes a new form of writing, just as writing superceded public recitation in ancient Athens.

So, was that avatar taken down in the Valley? I grew up in Cleveland, a little closer to the steel mills, but ended my teenage years in Lakewood, then moved away for a few decades. About ten years ago, I took on a project downtown and got an apartment at Cove and Clifton. "Ah, returning to the scene of the crime," my ex-wife said. (We met in Lakewood Park.) The nice thing about that neighborhood is all the route 55 buses that come down Clifton. You don't even need a schedule. On the ride downtown, the bus would pick up a few of my colleagues. (In fact, toward the end of the project, I actually had somoene on my team a a few doors away on the other side and we would meet at the bus stop.) Well, in the middle of all that, I was at a numismatic convention in Denver and I saw a vendor with "Cleveland" above his booth, but I did not recognize the name. I asked him where his shop was and he said that he was stictly mail order and he asked me where I lived. I said, ""Lakewood." He replied, "No one lives in Lakewood but gays and FBI guys." I almost said, "I am a gay FBI guy." Though neither is true, it would have been the perfect comeback.

Fifty years ago – on October 4 and October 6, 1957 – two launches hallmarked the conflict between socialism and capitalism. One was Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth, sent aloft by the U.S.S.R. The second was the publication by Random House of Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, a multilayered meta-discussion, at once a romantic mystery, a philosophic detection and a book of parables. On the surface, this is a story about business leaders who resist government intervention. At one point in the story, a director from the State Science Institute confronts the owner of a steel mill, who is guilty of an anti-trust violation: “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. …We’re after power and we mean it. … There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. … Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.” Twenty years ago, when financial genius Michael Milken was prosecuted by Rudolph Giuliani, fans sent copies of the book to Milken while he was in prison. In the nineties, they spoke up to defend Microsoft against federal anti-trust investigations. More recently, admirers of Atlas Shrugged wrote letters of support to Martha Stewart when she was imprisoned. Like many durable allegories, this story is framed by a quest. The questing heroine is Dagny Taggart, heiress and vice president of operations of a railroad. She begins by seeking the inventor of a motor that can covert static electricity to kinetic energy. She also takes on the search for a destructive enemy whom she knows only by small clues of physical evidence. Of course, they must be the same man for the myth to convey nuance. Linguistic anthropologists explain that campfire stories touch us below the conscious level. However, Atlas Shrugged is explicitly rational, structured by Aristotlean logic, and presented in declarative sentences. Moreover, in traditional myth – Herakles versus the Hydra or Gilgamesh and Enkidu versus Humbaba – the existence of evil is accepted as natural. Atlas Shrugged questions the existence of evil as an independent agency and denies the efficacy of the unreal. Yet, the very image of Atlas, the titan who holds up the sky (or the world), shrugging tugs at the mind as does the tension of a “nightmare” on your neighborhood “Elm Street.” Just as the informal inventions of preliterate people evolved into epic poems which themselves were resculpted by minstrels and novelists, the process continues in our day with cinema. Atlas Shrugged is being made into a movie. Although several previous attempts were abandoned in the 1970s and eighties, the current effort by Lion’s Gate seems on track. The starring role has been awarded to Angelina Jolie. In addition to Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead and Anthem. She also edited several anthologies of non-fiction about philosophy, economics, and art. All of these have sold more 30 million copies with sales pacing at 400,000 a year. A literature search will return interpretive works about Ayn Rand or her philosophy of Objectivism. The Ayn Rand Society is an affiliate of the American Philosophical Association (as are the Bertrand Russell Society and William James Society). In 1991, on behalf of the Library of Congress, the Book-of-the-Month Club polled its members on “Books that Made a Difference in Readers’ Lives.” Atlas Shrugged ranked second, behind the Bible. In online voting hosted by Random House Atlas Shrugged placed first as “the best novel in the English language.” A similar poll by the Modern Library asked for the “100 Greatest” novels. The editors cited none of Ayn Rand’s works. However, the readers placed all four of them in the top ten. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it proved that it could match the USA in its ability to drop an atomic bomb on any city on Earth. Today, our civilization is threatened by different gangs of thugs, each determined to destroy all the others. Atlas Shrugged exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of all such “mystics of muscle” and glorified the individuals of achievement who make cities possible.