Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
No, there's a good number of "ordinary good folks" sprinkled throughout the book.
I believe they all die.
Interesting lesson she's got going with that morality... "if you're a type-A personality genius, this is the philosophy for you. If you're a type-B personality, or not a genius, you're probably doomed and none of the Superleaders should bother with what happens to you."
Oh, and the issue with "lower class" labor at Galt's Gulch... the problem isn't "who's going to work in the sewage plant" or "who'll haul wood?" Those will be paying jobs, hired out to the lowest bidder. The real issue is "who will change diapers and feed babies?" (Are women expected to stop working a paying job, or are both parents equally expected to tend their children?)
And who will teach them... will parents pay for private education for their children, and poorer parents will have uneducated children (which damages everyone in the long run), or will there be an education tax? Should children basically be "property" of their parents until the age of majority, or should a (proper Objectivist) culture have protections for them, minimum standards for their education and treatment? If it has protections for them, who pays for those? What happens to orphans? Do they get thrown into work farms?
There are some gaping holes in Rand's plutarchist utopia.
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I'm willing to give her a break on these issues as
Atlas Shrugged was already over 1,000 pages long (in a small font). I don't expect an author that is advocating a philosophy in the medium of fiction to cover every possible objection to that philosophy. I doubt Sartre's
Nausea covers every objection to Existentialism.
For the most part I enjoyed
Atlas Shrugged. From a literary standpoint I enjoyed the story. I didn't mind that her characters didn't change because I think that was one of the points of the book. The world was falling apart around her characters but they never abandoned their core beliefs.
From a philosophical (or political) standpoint the book was written over 50 years ago, but we are still struggling with many of the themes that Ayn addresses in
Atlas Shrugged and the book still feels fresh and relevant. I don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's beliefs, but I do agree with many of them, and the one's with which I disagree I don't have good answers for myself. I am also constantly "re-examining my premises."
One last thing, I have to say that I very much enjoyed the Dagny Taggart character. The book was published in the 1950s and Dagny had sexual relations with three different men all outside the bounds of marriage (at least on Dagny's part). I can just imagine how people from the 50s viewed Dagny. Personally, I find stong, intelligent, independent, and self-sufficient women very attractive.