On this day in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was published.
On this day in 1973, Ludwig von Mises died.
What can we learn from this knowledge? Almost certainly nothing. But in week of a North Korean nuclear test, the fallout of yet another dreary Congressional scandal (in the midst of yet another dreary election cycle, no less), and "warnings" that the people of Afghanistan are poised to become even more pro-Talibanish than they already are, it is a welcome tonic to think on what Mises and Rand did with the written word. What did they do? Mises wrote some on economics, and Rand penned a novel about the world going to hell in a handbasket.
There's a bit more to it than that.
Mises, of course, built on the Mengerian side of the marginal revolution of the 1870s and dealt with the question of what money actually is (The Theory of Money and Credit, why economic calculation under socialism is impossible (Socialism), and why almost all professors and intellectuals hate capitalism and property (The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality). His attempt at writing a general treatise on economics resulted in what Nathaniel Branden, writing in The Objectivist Newsletter, praised as a defense of western civilization itself.
Mises also put a well-aimed boot in the ass of those conservatives who preach that government should be run like a business (Bureaucracy). Given that the nature of government is intervention and coercion, he cautions, we most emphatically do not want government agencies functioning more like business. And he shows us why. But such conservatives would have to read Bureaucracy to find that argument, they would have to read, digest, and think -- which they are unlikely to do. Like liberals, they prefer to use the term "bureaucrats" as a pejorative, all the while creating legions more of them.
Ayn Rand invited her readers to think about the nature of individualism -- and she had so many readers that the book became a bestseller and a Hollywood motion picture. It's also interesting to think that, of the five major characters in The Fountainhead, only Dominique Francon doesn't have a section of the book named for her. And that book, Rand tells us on October 10, 1957, was only an overture to Atlas Shrugged.
From the destruction of the Rio Norte Line (and the progress of the John Galt Line) to the famous speech on the moral nature of money (compare those observations to what Mises wrote in The Theory of Money and Credit) to the differing economic results achieved in Colorado as opposed to Connecticut, to government interventions creating further problems resulting in yet more government intervention, again and again, seemingly without end... it becomes clear that Rand learned much from Mises.
But Rand's book is a novel, not a monograph: the economics has to support -- not be -- the story, and therefore needs to be shown, in imagery and in actions. Think, then, of the Manhattan described early in the book, in which we are introduced to a prosperous street, which street we know is prosperous because no more than one window in four is broken. Think of that great oak tree from the Taggart estate, the destruction of which haunts Eddie Willers. Remember that map, with rail lines perceived as arteries. Think of encountering Starnesville, Wisconsin and its inhabitants. Or of the first run on the John Galt Line. Of that dark club favored by James Taggart and Orren Boyle, and their shock when, upon leaving it, they encounter the brightness of daylight. Think of the evasions and finger-pointing leading up to the Taggart Tunnel disaster. Think of Ragnar Danneskjöld risking everything to reveal himself briefly to Henry Rearden -- and of handing Rearden a gold bar as a symbol of the wealth which had been, over the years, confiscated from him in the form of income taxes. Think of Rearden dropping that bar when he realizes that his only defender is a thief. Think of Rearden describing Danneskjöld, when confronted by police, as his "bodyguard." Think of your own search, over the years, for the Concerto of Deliverance. Consider how powerful those images are in your own mind, which of these was the first to bring a tear to your eye -- and then consider those who claim that Rand possessed no literary talent.
Think, too, of Francisco d'Anconia, a man so ruthless he makes Sam Spade or Liam Devlin or Javert look almost indecisive.
If The Fountainhead was an overture, then Atlas Shrugged was a dramatized theme and multiple variations with a triumphant resolution. I hold that if Ayn Rand had come up with nothing more than her definition of logic as the art of non-contradictory identification, that alone would have been enough to guarantee her immortality. And that definition appears, not in an academic journal, but in a best-selling novel.
But she did come up with more. She came up with with Dagny Taggart and the John Galt Line, with James Taggart and the Starnes siblings, with Ragnar Danneskjöld and Wesley Mouch and Richard Halley and Ellis Wyatt.
And with Francisco.
Mises doesn't promise that reading him will make us rich. Hell, he promised his wife-to-be that if she married him she'd never have money. He does show what money is, though, and what it means to civilization and to each man within a civilization. Ayn Rand demonstrates the nature of knowledge and morality, and the relationship between the two. She doesn't guarantee immunity against error. She does indicate how best to proceed against error.
And her hell-in-a-handbasket story had what we all seek, what I hope and have reason to believe Mises and Rand both found: a happy ending.
Posted by Craig Ceely at October 10, 2006 11:27 AM