The obnoxious philosophy that is an inspiration to Trump and the far-right

Martin Shipton

An American novel published 68 years ago that requires stamina to get through its 1,168 pages is the unlikely inspiration for those controlling the new wave of far-right populism.

Liz Truss, who was briefly our Prime Minister, gave a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand as a present to Mark Field, the Tory MP she had an 18-month affair with. It was an unappreciated gift, the reading of which Field described as “wading through treacle”.

Nevertheless, after learning that Rand is Donald Trump’s favourite writer – although I doubt that he has waded through more than 10 pages of Atlas Shrugged – I considered it something of a duty to find out what all the fuss was about.

St Petersburg

The author herself has an interesting early history. She was born in St Petersburg as Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in 1905, the year of the first Russian Revolution that led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Her father was a bourgeois Jewish pharmacist and after the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 the pharmacy was nationalised and the family fled to Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian civil war when the capitalist powers tried unsuccessfully to oust the Bolsheviks.

Rand and her family returned to Petrograd – as St Petersburg had been renamed – where they eked out a living, sometimes nearly starving to death.

Later she was able to take advantage of the opportunities opened up to women by the Russian Revolution and attend what became Leningrad State University, initially studying history and later screen arts.

In 1926 she was granted a visa to visit a cousin in Chicago, from where she did not return, later moving to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter.

Her family’s impoverishment as a result of the Russian Revolution determined her world view and made her not just an opponent of socialism, but of any movement that promoted the wellbeing of communities.

For her, the only people worthy of admiration, respect or even acknowledgement were rugged individualists and entrepreneurs whose activities were dedicated solely to self-aggrandisement and the accumulation of wealth and power. The villains are those who seek to rein such people in through regulatory measures geared to the common good.

There’s no disputing that Atlas Shrugged is a novel of ideas, or rather of one idea that underpins and comes to dominate the narrative.

Industrial America

It would be wrong to suggest that the book has no literary merit. Its strengths lie in the intricate descriptions of industrial America – heavy industry, iron and steel production and above all the railway network.

Its central character is Dagny Taggert, a businesswoman who runs with great success one of the United States’ greatest (fictional) railway companies. Like the male entrepreneurs whose commitment is to the success of the companies they have developed from small beginnings, Taggert has dynamism, creativity and a shrewd ability to forge ahead.. That comes across especially in the early parts of the novel, before intrusive polemic takes over.

As the book proceeds, the successful businesses are hampered by regulations introduced by the government. An inventor who has developed a stronger steel alloy for use in the construction of railways is forced to share the production of it with rivals because that is perceived as “fair”.

For Rand, this is the antithesis of fairness and doubtless reminiscent of the anti-capitalist Bolshevik activity she witnessed as a child.

The regulations become increasingly tough for businesses to cope with and what had been successful enterprises are brought down following what becomes an epidemic of directors disappearing.

Eventually, Taggert pilots an aircraft and follows a disillusioned academic researcher who had been seeking to develop a new source of energy. She descends in a remote and mountainous part of the Mid West to land in an enclave where unrestrained and unregulated entrepreneurship is able to flourish at a local level.

Objectivism

The enclave, which hints at being a new version of Atlantis, the mythical island that sank into the Atlantic, is presided over by a mysterious figure called John Galt, a guru of Taggert’s philosophy known as Objectivism, which in essence states that individuals only have a responsibility to make themselves happy, and that the idea of helping others for their sake is evil encapsulated.

When he’s not in the new Atlantis, Galt has a lowly job working for Taggert’s railway company at its terminus in New York.

As it moves towards its conclusion, the book enters the realm of science fiction, with Galt captured and tortured by forces of the federal government which by now is in a state of almost total collapse.

Before that, however, Galt has managed to hijack the radio waves and deliver a lengthy polemic in which he expounds the virtue of selfishness and the vice of doing good for the sake of others.

Just one extract from this section of the book illustrates the unhinged and obnoxious nature of Galt’s – and Rand’s – philosophy: it’s not those at the top of society who exploit those at the bottom, but those at the bottom who exploit those at the top: “In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns.

“But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability.

“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time.

“The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.”

Worshipped

In the book, Galt becomes a cult figure who is worshipped by the masses and reviled by an elite who want society to be more equal. In the United States, it’s the ultimate validation of the concept of the American Dream, where those who work hard will necessarily accrue great success, while those who fail to make it will be seen as victims of their own ineptitude.

Rand’s philosophy of pure selfishness – shared by the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk – would at one time have been dismissed as the offensive ramblings of an eccentric. Now they are shamelessly in the mainstream, with the poor and the disabled demonised and people flocking to support those who egregiously pose as their saviours.

We need desperately to find a way out of this mess.