Memo to the Would-Be John Galts
ADRIAN BLEIFUSS PRADOS
Dear moguls, magnates, captains of industry and masters of the universe,
Lately, we’ve noticed some media chatter over the notion that you might “go Galt” in response to the recent leftward political drift and the increasingly populist demands of the disgruntled public. Going Galt entails following the example of John Galt, the romantic, individualist hero/businessman of Ayn Rand’s best-seller, Atlas Shrugged. In the novel, Galt decides to withdraw from the world in order to deny an ungrateful society the fruits of his creative genius. We think it’s a great idea.
The truth is, we never deserved you. Please go. We never deserved your visionary leadership in the manufacturing, transportation and energy sectors, your inventive ability to devise new, arcane financial instruments, your wonderful political lobbies and their committed advocacy for sound policies in the realms of health care, education and foreign policy. We never deserved any of it.
We tried, half-heartedly, to show our appreciation by rewarding you with massive tax cuts, subsidies for your industries, grants for your research departments, and multi-billion dollar no-bid government contracts. But apart from those meager contributions, it was really your entrepreneurial spirit that earned you your first, second and third yachts, your helicopter and your diamond toilet bowl.
So teach us our lesson and leave. Let our economy devolve into a primitive bartering system where ten chickens will be worth one goat and two goats will be worth one iPod . Meanwhile, you can eat, drink and make merry in your secret Xanadu.
Please, follow the John Galt model as faithfully as possible and vanish without a trace. Leave your properties, art collections and, especially, your liquor cabinets intact. We, the hoi polloi, will now be burdened with the responsibility of managing your holdings and disposing of your estates as best we can.
We only ask that you pack your bags and spirit yourselves to your top-secret pleasure dome before we take the trouble of raising the scaffold, unpacking the guillotine and sharpening the blade. It’s such a pain.
Sincerely,
The Rabble
P.S.: Please take any and all copies of Ayn Rand’s fabulous novels with you. We don’t deserve them either.
this is hilarious!
Noam Chomsky recently called Ayn Rand “one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history.” I couldn’t agree more. She is shunned by most academics and for good reason. Even Mein Kampf gets more academic analysis if only to examine the rantings and ravings of a future dictator. I’ve only flipped through Atlas Shrugged but the sections I did read were enough to make me see red. I did, however, read The Fountainhead and I rank it as one of the top 5 worst books I have ever read in my life. When I see people on the subway reading any of her vile books I want to slap it out of their hands. Her “me first-screw everyone else-I’m a genius” ethos helped lay out the groundwork for the Goldwater/Reagan and Hayek/Friedman conservative onslaught of the past 20 years in this country. Her vision was truly a dangerous one that deserves further scrutiny. Marxism gets lambasted as an evil philosophy that is responsible for most mass murders of the past century. Why doesn’t she get the same scorn? Various right-wing governments over the years have expressed some form of praise to Rand’s “writings.” She was a shitty writer, a shitty philosopher, and an all around shitty person. Fuck you, Ayn Rand!!! Well, I’m glad I got that off my chest.
NOTE: I hope it’s clear that I’m not actually saying that Marxism is an evil philosophy. I’m merely repeating what it is claimed by many people in our post-Cold War world that socialism = mass murder. Fascism and communism (Stalin/Maoist style) are regarded as evils by Americans (rightfully so) but too often they fail to also include corporatism as a remaining totalitarian philosophy. I personally would classify Rand as a corporatist.
Corporatism is basically fascism in my understanding.
This article is classic, I can’t believe Ayn Rand is a best seller in this economic crisis, but none of Michael Harrington or Irving Howe’s works are being reissued.
I think now would be a perfect time to reissue Harrington’s The Twilight of Capitalism.
If any of you’ve ever talked to an “Objectivist,” perhaps on your college campus, you’ll notice that they’re like characters from The Manchurian Candidate, they tell you Ayn Rand is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being to have ever lived (note: kindess does NOT imply altruism!) and that her novels are the greatest accomplishment in the history of letters, ever.Â
They remind me of the guy who once told me that Bob Avakian’s unparalleled mind was the culmination of a glorious process that began at the Big Bang and unfolded through the creation of the Solar System, the emergence of life on Earth and, finally, the birth of the leader of the RCP.Â
A little note: Rorshach, the brutal masked vigilante from Watchmen, represents Alan Moore’s take on Objectivism.
“A little note: Rorshach, the brutal masked vigilante from Watchmen, represents Alan Moore’s take on Objectivism.” Which is, unfortunately, not as clear in the recent movie.
I wish they would follow John Galt’s lead and evacuate right away.