The Capitalist Ideal

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The Capitalist Ideal The Moral Vision of Atlas
Shrugged
David Kelley
Center for the Study of Political Economy ?
Hampden-Sydney College ? October 18, 2007
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The Russian revolution
The storming of the Winter Palace, October 1917
(a re-enactment staged as a civic spectacle on
the third anniversary of the action).
Vladimir Lenin
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Alyssa Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand)

• Alyssa Rosenbaum (left), with sisters

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Atlas Shrugged
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The capitalist idealOutline

• The story
• The heroes, the villains, the world
• The John Galt Line
• Death by regulation
• Producers of the world, unite!
• The themes
• The glory of production
• The morality of self-interest
• The justice of trade

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Heroes and villains

• Dagny Taggart, Taggart Transcontinental,
  operating VP
• Hank Rearden, Rearden Steel
• James Taggart, Taggart Transcontinental,
  president
• Orren Boyle, Associated Steel
• Wesley Mouch, Washington man
• Floyd Ferris, State Science Institute

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The John Galt Line
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The capitalist idealOutline

• Story
• Themes
• The glory of production
• The morality of self-interest
• The justice of trade

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The best within us

• You ought to do something great...I mean, the
  two of us together. What? she asked. He said,
  I dont know. Thats what we ought to find out.
  Not just what you said. Not just business and
  earning a living. Things like winning battles, or
  saving people out of fires, or climbing
  mountains.... The minister said last Sunday that
  we must always reach for the best within us. What
  do you suppose is the best within us?

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Rearden Metal
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Reardens drive to create

• The one thought held immovably across a span of
  ten years, under everything he did and everything
  he saw, the thought held in his mind when he
  looked at the buildings of a city, at the track
  of a railroad, at the light in the windows of a
  distant farmhouse, at the knife in the hands of a
  beautiful woman cutting a piece of fruit at a
  banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would
  do more than steel had ever done, a metal that
  would be to steel what steel had been to iron.

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Motive power

• Motive powerthought Dagny, looking up at the
  Taggart Building in the twilight

was its first need motive power, to keep that
building standing movement, to keep it
immovable. It did not rest on piles driven into
granite it rested on engines that rolled across
a continent.
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Motive power

• They are alive, she thought, because they are the
  physical shape of the action of a living powerof
  the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of
  this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it
  form.
• They are alive, she thought, but their soul
  operates them by remote control. Their soul is in
  every man who has the capacity to equal this
  achievement. Should the soul vanish from the
  earth, the motors would stop, because that is the
  power which keeps them going the power of a
  living mindthe power of thought and choice and
  purpose.

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The capitalist idealOutline

• Story
• Themes
• The glory of production
• The morality of self-interest
• The justice of trade

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The altruist tradition

• Karl Marx None of the supposed rights of man,
  therefore, go beyond the egoistic man, man as he
  is, as a member of civil society that is, an
  individual separated from the community,
  withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with
  his private interest and acting in accordance
  with his private caprice.

• Beatrice Webb Socialism is the attempt "to
  transfer the 'impulse of self-subordinating
  service' from God to man."

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Reardens defense

• I work for nothing but my own profitwhich I make
  by selling a product they need to men who are
  willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it
  for their benefit at the expense of mine, and
  they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense
  of theirs. I do not sacrifice my interests to
  them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me we deal
  as equals by mutual consent to mutual
  advantageand I am proud of every penny that I
  have earned in this manner. . . .

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What is altruism?

• Rand The basic principle of altruism is that
  man has no right to exist for his own sake, that
  service to others is the only justification of
  his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his
  highest moral duty, virtue, and value.
• Comte The religion of Humanity sets forth
  social feeling as the first principle of
  morality....To live for others it holds to be our
  highest happiness. To become incorporate with
  humanity..., this is what it puts before us as
  the constant aim of life. ...In the positive
  state..., the idea of Right will disappear.
  Everyone has duties, duties toward all, but
  Rights in the ordinary sense can be claimed by
  none.

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From each To each

• Exaggerating needs, minimizing ability
• Penalizing responsibilityand vice-versa
• Suspicion, meddling
• Power congeals
• Brain drain

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The capitalist idealOutline

• Plot
• Themes
• The glory of production
• The morality of self-interest
• The justice of trade

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Trader principle

• A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does
  not give or take the undeserved. He does not
  treat men as masters or slaves, but as
  independent equals. He deals with men by means of
  a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced
  exchangean exchange which benefits both parties
  by their own independent judgment..
• In spiritual issues, a trader is a man who does
  not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws,
  only for his virtues, and who does not grant his
  love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others,
  only to their virtues.
• The Virtue of Selfishness

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The pyramid of 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.

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Summary

• The glory of production
• The morality of self-interest
• The justice of trade

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The Capitalist Ideal The Moral Vision of Atlas
Shrugged
David Kelley
The ATLAS SOCIETY 202 296-7263 www.atlassociety.or
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