This is a continuation of our last post
"The Galt
Gestalt". We admit, one post is probably enough, Ayn Rand has been memorialized
quite enough, thank-you very much. Companies like the demolition contractor at the World Trade Towers site proudly name themselves
"John Galt this" and
"Fountainhead"
that. They also name themselves after Howard Roark, and at least one
company, an architectural design firm in Minneapolis, named an imaginary
"Howard Roark" as a senior partner of the firm.
Thousands of books and hundreds of institutes all over the world
celebrate Rand's ideas -- the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights,
the Ayn Rand Institute, Ayn Rand Society, RebirthofReason.com, Liberty
Institute, AtlasShrugged.com, The Atlas Society, The Objectivist Center,
Objectivsm 101, Objectivism Reference Center,
ObjectivistAcademiccenter.org, AynRandInstitute.ca, and so on.
With all that, who needs
more Ayn Rand stuff? Well, the recent
outpouring of Randism might benefit from more "balance". The gushing
accolades over "Atlas Shrugged" at FOX News and cable news channels --
by announcers who Americanize Rand's first name to "Ann", instead of
"Ayn" rhymes with
"all mine", or as Rand would say,
"swine", might benefit from a more adult reading of her book.
In our post
"The Galt Gestalt" we talked about modern day Ayn Rand acolytes -- those who maybe didn't have the opportunity to
write books with her like Alan Greenspan,
but who still forward her ideas and writing. We admit, we at Acronym
Required did read her books -- in junior high school -- as the fiction
they are. So we're always surprised that full grown adults actually say
that Rand's half a century old books foresaw America's current economic
state.
In the
"Galt Gestalt", we reviewed the
movie
"The Fountainhead", with its fallible characters Howard Roark and
Dominique, set among quarries and "modern" 1940's buildings -- all
Roark's "creations". We challenged Rand's portrayal of Roark as a
"creator" rather than a destroyer or terrorist, and questioned how
such
daft writing by could be misinterpreted for 2009 economic wisdom. We
observed that today's coterie of Rand admirers pick and choose the parts
of her philosophy they like and disregard the bits that don't fit their
political agenda -- like her complete intolerance of mixing religion
with politics. Indeed, she warned Reagan on mixing politics with
religion:
"What we are seeing is the medievalism of the Puritans all over again,
but without their excuse of ignorance....The New Right is not the voice
of Americanism. It is the voice of thought control attempting to take
over in this country and pervert and undo the actual American
revolution....."
You don't hear too much talk of
that these days, do you?
Was Roark a "Creator"? Or a Terrorist?
Some executives say that "The Fountainhead" is their very favorite
work, but maybe they never read it, or maybe they never got to the end.
Because incongruously, in "The Fountainhead", Howard Roark blows up
buildings with explosives, then defends his crimes by telling a jury
some fantastic gobbledygook about great "creators" who stood up to all
the men. Each individual scientist or inventor, he intones
"lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to
achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of
achievement..."
How can a novel where the main character dynamites buildings be seen as a blueprint for America, a nation that reviles
people who even associate with those who associated with those who threatened to blow up buildings?
There's some irony to the fact that former Weather Underground member
Bill Ayers, who is actually a respected professor and Chicago community
service leader, is labeled a
"terrorist" by the same people who hold fictional dynamite wielder Howard Roark as a
"hero".
Rand-ites Who Transcend Rand's Scorn
Perhaps these people who adulate Rand, the creator of the hero terrorist
are just fantastic hypocrites. It's true, everyone, including us,
capably cherry-picks their evidence. So just as Rand's most fervent
admirers cherry-pick her ideas, she cherry-picked her evidence, her
ideals, and her followers. Today's Randites are consistent then in their
love, because Rand consistently scorned those who most fervently
embraced her ideas. Do they know that
Rand dismissed libertarians as
"a random collection of emotional hippies-of-the-right who seek to play at politics without philosophy"?
It's a dysfunctional relationship, for sure, but they loved and love
her just as Howard Roark pined for Dominique in the quarry in the "The
Fountainhead" and made statutes in her image while she married other
men.
Why the enduring adoration? Why are sales of "Atlas Shrugged" still
booming, aside from the fact that it's impressively thick but vapidly
light read -- a delirious combination of Harlequin romance and "For
Dummies" -- perfect airplane reading? "Thick book you have there..."
Americans and The Myth of the Rugged Enterprising Individual
What is this persevering and hypocritical adulation of Rand? Is it the
refusal to let go of the myth of the rugged individual? Historically,
the US had some very hardy Americans, Teddy Roosevelt, for instance.
Read accounts of his
Amazon exploration
and shudder at his rugged manliness. But the US and its corporate
economy certainly hasn't been a wunderkind of noble individualists
recently.
Way back in 1984, Roger Rosenblatt wrote about this strange phenomenon, asking in
Time magazine's (
"The Rugged Individual Rides Again"):
"Why the pretense--why the evident pleasure--in seeing the country as a collection of loners?"
Now, twenty-five years later, the myth may be less intact, but politicians still pimp it.
It has served the GOP well since Ronald Reagan rode in with his
"Morning in America"
theme. Perhaps it made sense for Reagan then, 30 or so years ago,
because Reagan came up in Hollywood at the same time as Ayn Rand. He
seemed to be acting out his fantasy part as the rugged individualist,
with his ranch, the far-away (albeit perhaps diseased) look in his eye,
and his incessant portrayal of individuals with mythical powers --
"Tear down this wall!" (- another myth).
Two decades later GW Bush didn't ride horses around a ranch like Reagan,
but he did purchase that dried out piece of land in Texas, where he
would gamely pull on gloves --
Ironclad Icon Series Extreme DutyTM
gloves no doubt -- over soft citified hands so he could hack at brush
for rolling cameras. The American rugged male image is very particular,
you see, and can't be properly projected from the decks of a
Kennebunkport yacht.
Rugged Individual Jumps the Shark
If the whole American rugged individualism was seen as "hypocritical" by the mainstream magazine
Time,
over two decades ago in 1984, it's even more far-fetched played out by
GW Bush. And when Bobby Jindal took a stab at the iconic myth the other
day the whole idea jumped the shark.
Talking about how he went down to the docks after Hurricane Katrina
and saved
some people threatened by bureaucracy Jindal deadpanned:
"Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people.
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our
government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our
citizens."
It took mere hours, if not minutes, for people to
uncloak Jindal's lies.
You see, for Americans, "enterprising spirit" has been exploited so
much that Americans can be skeptical and cynical, especially when it
involves someone that doesn't quite look the part.
Interestingly though, while everyone attacked the part of Jindal's story
about the Katrina survivors when they found out that Jindal wasn't on
the scene at all, the larger myths that his tale served stayed
preposterously intact. First, despite his claim, there is no bureaucracy
in the US that impedes "enterprising spirit". There is bureaucracy
without a doubt. But the federal government largely enables and serves
interests of business and corporations, foremost, property rights and
laws. Occasionally, like with the Clean Air regulations, the federal
government attempts to
protect individuals. Obviously, as
Jindal's talk unraveled into lies, we recognized just how fantastic the
notion that he's the rugged leader leading all the rugged individuals.
Rugged Individual or a Cog in the Machine
What's interesting about Rand's perseverance as an American male fantasy
is that we're so far from the Cold War era in which Rand became a
political fixture. Nevertheless the rugged individual myth is one that
the American people still cling to. This myth still matters because it
not only nourishes the GOP, it feeds GDP.
Every day docile citizens drive off to jobs in their all-terrain SUVs,
which perhaps keeps all these workers thinking about how "rugged" they
are. Politicians and businesses and economists push the conceit since
its certainly an easier populist sell than all the proceeding
political-economic models -- monarchy, colonialism, feudalism, slavery,
etc. But the myth is outdated.
A global economy needs global leaders, and individuals who work together
as "teams", as annoying as that concept is. Today, the enemy is
certainly not "the collective", although that might have been a
believable enemy for someone who immigrated from the Soviet Union half a
century ago. Nor is the enemy "the government", which has secured
property laws, patent law, corporate law, free trade, privatization, and
an entire infrastructure that serves capitalism and private enterprise.
There is no salient enemy. Except perhaps terrorists who explode and
burn buildings -- like Roark.
Of course that is not what we hear from media because there would be no
television news if not for enemies and wars, and if the market did not
first go up, then come down, and if there were not Democrats who opposed
Republicans and Republicans who opposed Democrats. How could we go to
all our boring jobs day after day if we did not have the network news
anchors to break things up, with their histrionics, their drama, and
their enemies? This eases the boredom and it helps us feel whole and
human, even as so much of what humans do is totally dehumanizing. But
lets separate entertainment from information and policy.
We are not rugged individuals.
Rand & Marx
I previously
described how Stephen Moore of the
Wall Street Journal, like many Rand fans, thought the fiction of "Atlas Shrugged" was
"eerily similar" to today's events.
But if anyone believes Rand predicted economic events of today more than
half a century ago, you should read more carefully to see how many
predictions she made that were just plain wrong. Adjust your attitude
slightly and Ayn Rand is no more than a cheap novelist who
coincidentally, seemed to get a lot of her ideas from Karl Marx.
On economic ideas, her books advocate capitalism, but her ideas were
bounded by her experience, that is, Bolshevik history and the Cold War.
Some people see Lenin in her work but it's Marx, whose philosophy Rand
opposed mightily, who she seems most often quote. Both Karl Marx and
Rand ruminated on the higher purpose that humans sought through fighting
nature with labor. For instance, compare Marx's words about the purpose
of man, and compare those of Rands's Howard Roark in "The
Fountainhead".
-
Karl Marx said: "He [man] opposes himself to Nature as one of her own
forces. in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own
wants."
-
Howard Roark said: "The creator's concern is the conquest of nature".
Sixty years ago when Rand wrote her epic stories, humans were still
ensconced in what we would dub today as "a war on nature". Indeed many
still farmed and fished, though far less than their ancestors. But now
in the 21st century humans have decimated so many ecosystems, how can we
perpetuate the belief that we humans
don't have the upper
hand? In fact, our domination is so complete that the North and South
poles are collapsing back in on us. Paradoxically, nature still presents
challenges, but it's global warming, which is really a fight against
ourselves. Our 21st century reality is vastly different than what Rand
and Marx knew. Do we benefit as a society from compelling individuals to
prove their worth in big highway cruisers?
In addition to their "man against nature" framework, Marx and Rand
shared other constructs. Marx had his class struggle as do Rand's
followers. Today the internet swirls with talk about
"Going Galt",
the folly that professional workers should walk off the job if the tax
rate increases. Marx and Rand also both used architects to illustrate
their vision of the ideal laborer, loner builders who worked for
themselves, strictly for their own purposes, for the sake of work.
-
Karl Marx,
writing on how bees build intricate hives noted, "...what distinguishes
the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect
raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At
the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in
the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only
effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also
realises a purpose of his own..."
-
Howard Roark said:
"Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down
new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision...His truth was his
only motive. His work was his only goal. His creation...gave form to his
truth. I am an architect.
Marx bemoaned the fetishization of labor, the degradation of man's work
to capital. Similarly, Rand's architect worked motivated by his vision,
his creation, his truth. Neither were motivated by pay, never mind
taxes. If there is a class struggle, its not against the government,
which is printing money to save large corporations as we speak. Most
Americans work for these corporations, and even if they're a
self-employed electrician, their income is completely entwined with the
banks. There are few "creations" to speak of unless the banks making
financial instruments counts, and as we've learned, putting rugged
individualist cowboys into the world of finance can do real harm.
Ayn Rand and CEOs -- She Completes Them & How Swiftly they Swoon
Rand endures partly because she's not part of the curriculum. It's a not
so secret society for those who might well have shunned economics.
Economics departments don't include Rand in their curricula, yet
hundreds of people outside of academia acknowledge how much Ayn Rand
influences them. Apparently it doesn't matter to her fans that "Atlas
Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" are cheap potboilers full of
hypocritical ideas antithetical to the modern economy.
In a 2007 article, the
New York Times
interviewed John A. Allison, CEO of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the US, who
said of "Atlas
Shrugged".
"I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that 'Atlas Shrugged' has had a
significant effect on their business decisions...It offers something other books
don't: the principles that apply to business and to life in general. I would call it
complete."
And there I was thinking all that math I learned in economics and business classes was
so important, when all I needed to read was Rand's overly thick Harlequin romance?
Then in January, 2009, the Times reported that Allison's company
BB&T profit fell 26% in the 4th quarter of 2008, and so the bank
accepted $3.1 billion
in government money". Poof? Just like that? Enterprising spirit of
America gone? Rand out the window? To hell with "principles"? Mr.
Allison can you comment? Should we shelve Rand next to Marx, now that
it's 2009 not 1945?
Worshipping the individual and the market may be what business leaders
say they like to hear, but when push comes to shove, it more often than
not thrown out as soon as something more self-serving appears.
The American Image Dilemma
Rand's ideas don't make for successful individuals any more than they
make successful businesses. A few years ago Americans strongly believed
in their rugged individualism, as they flipped houses and extracted
equity and took out big mortgages from aggrandizing lenders. Now they're
feeling a little chastised, mad even. Americans are now in 2009 caught
up in the throes of a financial behemoth of their collective making,
generated by private banking and enterprises they don't understand. But
ironically, what better time to encourage them to feel like rugged
individuals again?
But, although "rugged individualism" is evidently music to emasculated
workers' ears, it's hard to buy. The USA is, after all, a country
where 30% of the people are obese. Rugged doesn't usually come in size
3X stretchy pants. As well, Rand preached "reason" not religion, but 50%
of the people believe in the Creator, not the "creator", and will tell
you that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs 6000 years ago. In 2009,
the fact that the GOP tries to lead by encouraging this pathetic a
level Randian thinking from its citizens doesn't bode well for the
nation of
"knowledge workers".
But the GOP may be unable to come up with anything else. The party seems
superglued to the rugged individual image and in it's service, they've
forwarded the most unlikely series of messengers -- Joe the Plumber,
Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele, Sarah Palin. Nice try, attempting to be
both the party for
"one-armed midgets",
and
the party of rugged individualists a la Reagan? Seriously Republicans
and America in general, the individualists, the midgets, and everyone
else deserves a more up to date and congruous image.
Of course in the frightening series of public relations debacles by the
GOP and their media, Rand actually plays a tiny role. The rugged
pioneering individualist myth is a strained fictional construct. But
unfortunately, Rand fans and some in the GOP do have one winning
strategy, which is to promote the facile idea that far, far less
government is better (except military and police). It's a winning
strategy because the US (and every other state) will never have
no regulation.
Government regulation is what ensures "free markets". Therefore Ayn
Rand fans have a permanent platform in their cries for less government.
Like the unlikely longevity of the myth of the rugged individualist, now
it's painfully obvious that deregulation is not the answer. But it's
child's play for Randians to argue that George W. Bush was no Ayn Rand,
and we need
still less regulation. When we examine the notion
however, it's clear that this too is part and parcel of old plot lines
from outdated fiction. Although mid-century may be faddish and fine for
furniture, if orange plastic chairs and aqua blue polyester are your
thing, by any measure, it doesn't work for economic policy.
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