Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is out in theaters, or I guess Part 1 with presumably a Part 2 and 3 on the way because the 1957 novel on which it's based is a three parter. The book got bad reviews when it came out. I won't be reviewing the movie because I won't give it's producers the price of admission.
My mom had me read Atlas Shrugged when I was in high school because her father was Ayn Rand's first cousin. His dad, my great grandfather, Ike, along with other family members, helped bring Rand (then Alice Rosenbaum**) over to the US from the USSR, probably in the early to mid '20s, but I'm not exactly sure of the date and everyone who knew is now dead.
Rosenbaum/Rand was happy to take the family's help, their food and shelter, while she built her career. As told by my grandmother, she drove them nuts with her late hours and difficult personality. Then, she left, and while they cared about her as a young niece/cousin who lost her own country in war and political upheaval, they were pretty glad to see her go. She never paid them back or communicated with them after her success. They never asked her to pay them back and never sought a dime of her success (although my grandmother did tell us that Grandpa Ike felt bad she never kept in touch as she promised), but one would think that a woman so committed to the idea that charity is evil would have refused it for herself.
In any event, Atlas Shrugged is about how businesses, and ultimately the entire world, fall apart when the government enacts some regulations and the captains of industry disappear. The idea that fall apart because the top executives fail to show up makes me laugh because I never worked at a company where the CEO's presence mattered much to operations. Each place I've ever worked could happily hum along without its leader while it was sure to fall apart if a few secretaries or the mail room guys took off the same day.
There's a current television program that further illustrates my point. It's called Undercover Boss. The program challenges corporate CEOs to do the jobs of the lower tier of employees. Usually, the boss has no idea what he or she is doing and has to be trained by the person who knows the job, and the industry, far better than the boss, but makes a fraction of a fraction of the salary and none of the bonuses and other perks. Each program ends with a heartwarming gift or gesture from the boss to the needy employee(s) who helped him or her through the day, but that only begs the question of what happens to the other employees the boss never meets and continues to squeeze. It further makes me wonder how a company can run when the people running it have no idea what it does.
Rand's beloved captains of industry are failing their companies, and this country, because they typically have no specific knowledge of their company operations or industry standards. They got their positions through inheritance or business school connections and are not experienced or even interested in the core operations of the businesses they run. They're money guys who move around decimal points on spreadsheets and play their companies like a hotel on the Monopoly gameboard. For example, in the banking and mortgage industries, the CEOs and othe top executives saw dollars flowing in during the early 2000s real estate boom, but they gave no thought to where those dollars came from, and either encouraged or disregarded the taint of fraud and overreaching that spoiled them. They didn't or didn't want to see the storm coming. I have no doubt the loan underwriters and closers on the floor knew exactly what was coming because they knew exactly what was being done to make each loan. They may have even reported their concerns to a boss who either didn't understand the problems to come or didn't care or both and told them to shut up and go back to work or get fired.
You might argue that the employees could never do what the CEO does, but I'm not sure I agree with that. While cash flow, planning and financing are important, a good CPAcould figure that out. The trick is to do the financial planning in conjunction with planning and executing for the specific business, rather than treating every business as a purely financial operation absent the specifics of it's particular industry or product. If the leaders of the big corporations understood their products and services, they would probably improve both the specific business and it's financial situation.
One exception to to the point that the boss is probably the least valuable person in a company is the small business owner. Small business owners usually work on the line or in the office with their employees and became owners and bosses by learning their industries. If those pushing Rand's philosophy on business owners limited their notions to small business owners, they might have something to say.
But Rand's followers don't adore the small business owner like they do the powerful executives of large corporations. It's not the work they care about, but the power and gain that comes with it. Atlas Shrugged may be about inventors and self-made men who knew their industries, but that's a smoke screen to make the philosophy more palatable. It's not the real basis for her philosophy. Rand once said that the model for her "ideal man" was 1920s murder/dismemberer, William Hickman. She admired Hickman's ability to completely tune out the existence of others. It seems that Rand's legacy also has a lot to do with her adoration of Hickman because tuning out the needs of this country is the top priority for those wanting to implement Rand's theories in our government.
The "love story" of Atlas Shrugged is another cause for concern on a political level. Rand describes the relationship between the female and male lead as "a purer kind of love" because Rand believes that love between the powerful is more important than love on the lower end of the economic spectrum. It seems to me that there is nothing extra special about wealthy and powerful people in love. They just get better weddings and more luxurious honeymoons. I think Rand's exaltation of the young and wealthy in love was more personal. It would have been comforting for Rand to think that love between the select can be purer than that between everyone else because she broke her own marriage vows with a married man. The adulterous couple not only flaunted their relationship to their spouses, they made them sit through it (quite literally as I've heard). If her love was purer and more important than anyone elses' love, it takes the tarnish off her affair and lets her off the hook for huring the people she hurt. As a political philosophy, allowing those in the power class to do anything they want socially and sexually is a recipe for corruption and disaster as the story of the recently resigned John Ensign illustrates.
I do wish Grandpa Ike had left Alice Rosenbaum in the USSR. There, she would have become a farmer or factory worker and would have been ignored and forgotten rather than the mother of the worst political theory this country has seen since the Civil War slave-owning South. Grandpa Ike was a hard working man, a nice guy who did care about other people. He was always very nice to my mom, and to my sister and I when we were small children. I imagine he'd hate to know that his kindness to a young Alice Rosenbaum so many years ago led to tea party, libertarian on steriods politics that is bringing this country, the country to which he immigrated and the counry he loved, to ruin.
I'm not particularly proud to be a distant cousin, several times removed, from Ayn Rand. The more removed the better in my book. But, since I know the personal side of the Ayn Rand story from my great grandfather, grandfather and grandmother, I think I need to relate her hypocracy to others and point out the holes in her theories, political and otherwise, to those who might be tempted by them. Atlas Shrugged should not be a model for government or society. It's a mediocre novel with a steamy love story modeled on a real life love story between two very flawed people and should be left at that. It's success comes more from it's convenience to those with power in money than it's theory or truth.
**Some sources refer to her original name as Alyssa, but I've never heard her referred to as such. The family I knew usually referred to her respecting adult name choice of Ayn, mentioning that she was Alice when they knew her.
5 comments:
You should post this on Huff Post. They'd love it.
Any truth to the rumor that she was a soviet agent sent to the US to destroy us from within by promoting selfishness?
Sorry, it's just a rumor I was thinking of starting. Her minions have really been irritating me lately.
I highly doubt she was any sort of agent. As my grandmother told the story, her family was part of the group called "White Russians". They were the people who set up some sort of interim government after the Czar stepped down before the government was taken over by the Soviets and the Czar and his family executed. That, however, is a huge over-simplification as the history there is rather complex and there were multiple groups within the group, some Czarists, some socialists and in between. I have settled on the notion that Rand was a sociopath and acted for her own purposes. The family said she was odd when she lived with them, completely unable to relate to others and living in her own little world.
As my grandmother told the story, there was some tearful departure when she went to California. She cried and told them that she'd never forget them. Then, as grandma said, "she promptly forgot them." The story was considered simply an amusing oddity of the family and no one imagined that Rand's nonsense would be appropriated by corporate leaders to promote a new facism. Frankly, I'm not even sure Rand would have approved of the current use of her works. She seemed to enjoy her own Social Security and Medicare.
Darn! Too bad I live in the reality based community so I won't start a false rumor. No matter how badly Alice damaged our country.
I saw the famous Phil Donohue show and was amazed. I think you got the logic in the family - she didn't make much sense although she was obviously intelligent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzGFytGBDN8
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