John Sutherland on the novel that became the US conservatives’ bible

Few novels have a significant social impact half a century after publication. But one 50-year-old book informs every utterance of that grand panjandrum of the American economy and lifelong “objectivist” (ie, disciple of Ayn Rand), Alan Greenspan.

Rand’s great testament, Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957. With its book-length appendix on the finer points of Randocracy and its massive bulk (1,168 pages) it was, initially, too chewy a mouthful for many Americans. Early reviews did not help. Robert Kirsch declared in the Los Angeles Times: “It would be hard to find such a display of grotesque eccentricity outside an asylum.”

A similar verdict in the New York Times elicited a furious letter of protest from a young economist, Alan Greenspan. It was his first appearance in the paper.

The charismatic Rand (who had cut her teeth scriptwriting in Hollywood) turned to the new medium of the TV talk show. Atlas Shrugged gradually racked up sales. Five million were claimed by 1984. The novel’s more-than-Orwellian dystopian message seeped into American thinking. “Ayn” became, over the years, a popular name for daughters of freedom lovers in the land of the free.

Rand’s “objectivism” is summarised in her hero, John Galt’s, oath: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Atlas Shrugged propagandises for a ferocious free-enterprise doctrine that would become a main supporting girder in Thatcherism and Reagonomics. Greenspan’s appointment as head of the Federal Reserve in the 1990s cemented the connection. No novelist has been as influential on American government policy as Rand.

For those unwilling to devote tedious hours to it, Atlas Shrugged has a simple plot. Tired of the “looters” (the proletariat and their corrupt political leaders), the leaders of American industry, commerce, art, medicine and learning, go on strike. Their shoulders, like Atlas’s, have been holding up the world; now they choose to “shrug”. They retreat, en masse, to “Galt’s Gulch”, a valley in Colorado protected by a ray-shield. Meanwhile, the outside world falls to pieces.

Finally, on the eve of total global meltdown, Galt broadcasts a long statement extolling the virtues of the dollar and laissez-faire “rationalism”. He is arrested and tortured with electric shocks. When the generator breaks down (like all the other machinery in the country), Galt calmly instructs his torturers how to mend it “speaking in the brusque competent tone of an engineer”.

The looters admit defeat. The novel ends with the messianic hero making the holy sign of the dollar. Rand did not live to see the downfall of the evil empire – from whose collectivist horror she escaped as a child refugee.

But her ghostly hammer was there on 9 November 1989. And, should George W Bush ever succeed in his scheme to privatise social security, a spectral Rand will be making the holy sign of the dollar behind him. No free lunches, America. Just lots and lots of dosh for Mr Atlas.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website