Fortune takes note of the “crumbling infrastructure” and suggests that Randian capitalists might come to the rescue (the article is confused and meandering so no reason to ponder the thesis completely). But it does remind me of the book I just read last week, one I thought was just over-the-top wonderful: The Driver, by Garet Garrett.
It is set at the tail end of the Gilded Age, when railroads were being taxed and regulated to the point that they were losing money, even as their loses were being picked up by the taxpayer and the railroads being made public property. Along comes a shadowy speculator named Henry Galt, about whom everyone has previously asked: “Who is Henry Galt.” He emerges into public view by buying out a railroad and gaining total control of it. He spends like crazy for upgrades and reroutes and generally does an amazing job in turning losses to profits. He then moves on to acquire more enterprises until he becomes a member of the super-rich, while working that mad. It is a thrilling story, complete with a detailed description of why bi-metallism didn’t work.
But he makes a few too many people angry in the process. The FTC, his competitors, and Congress put him on trial. He is even arrested! But in some thrilling testimony that explains the role of the speculator and capitalist, during which time the railroad stock begins rising again, he is ultimately vindicated.
This is just a wonderful book. In fact, I read it in two 4-hour sessions, and I didn’t want it to end. Another 200 or 300 pages would have been much welcome. Garrett is a wonderful stylist and he understands markets like few 20th century novelists.
You might be wondering about the unusual parallels with Atlas Shrugged. Wonder all you want. There is no real way to answer the question. But it is a fact that The Driver came out in 1922.
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Very interesting. I wonder if Rand may have read this as a child and forgot she read it, then it spins around in her subconscious for a few years until she spins it back into Atlas.
Wouldn’t be the first time for a writer to be consciously or unconsciously affected by other works.
Garet Garrett was a powerful writer, who had the ability to shed light on the subject of political philosophy as few others of his generation did.
I read “The People’s Pottage”, which criticized FDR’s power grab and welfare state manipulations, when I was about 15. Wowed by this rare and telling criticism of a left-wing People’s Hero, I immediately turned to “The Rise of Empire”.
“Empire” was even more awesome than “Pottage”, because Garrett effectively drove home a point about which almost everyone else on the right was silent (in 1962). Garrett explained that the American rise of empire, beginning with US intervention in the Spanish American War and extending through both World Wars, gathered power to the state at the expense of individual liberty.
I was slightly astonished but persuaded by Garrett’s radical and sweeping theme of the virtue of small, republican government, dedicated to defending individual freedom at home, and minding its own business–and none other–abroad.
For the first time, it began to dawn on me that the William Buckley crusaders were pulled along by the same cultural currents as nearly everyone else.
All thanks to the remarkable Garet Garrett.
One must also face the possibility that Rand was dishonest and a plaigerist. I’ve long noted that, in Atlas Shrugged, she treats the dishonesty of her characters as heroic, as long as it’s being used for the goal of bringing down the State. The fraudulent copper mine, for example, is a prime example of coercion through deception, although of course an apologist might be tempted to offer a Clintonian sophism as to whether actual falsehoods were uttered in some exact way.
The end, it seems justified the means in Rand’s mind…perhaps it would extend to stealing another’s words.
Note that I don’t even believe in intellectual monopoly laws like copyrights and patents…but I do believe that deception is wrong, including the conscious use of another’s words, then claimed as one’s own without their permission.
Doubt that she read such a book as a child and then forgot where she’d read it. If memory serves, she emigrated (from Russia) to the US as a young adult.
“over-the-top wonderful” lol
I’d like to take issue with the comment “KAZ” made. Although I have not read “The Driver”, it doesn’t change the much greater magnitude and seemingly more sophisticated indictment of collectivism that “Atlas Shrugged” addresses. If the existence of this novel is it’s inspiration, it doesn’t change the fact that that was Rand’s original work.
I do agree that it is certainly possible that Rand plagarized the basic plot and the main character’s last name from “The Driver.” From what I know of her character, and she dealt with
her schism from Nathaniel Branden, it wouldn’t suprise me.
However, except for perhaps during her interest in Nietzsche in her younger years, I don’t believe that Rand ever explicitly believed in the doctrine of “the ends justifies the means.” Nor is this reflected in “Atlas Shrugged.” Given the much greater role of the state in her novel as opposed to “The Driver” as well as the much more precarious state of the nation at large, the actions of the novel’s protagonists did not constitute fraud. None of them owed their would-be opporessors the truth any more than a homeowner owes a would-be burglar a tip about how to break into his house.
I’d like to take issue with the comment “KAZ” made. Although I have not read “The Driver”, it doesn’t change the much greater magnitude and seemingly more sophisticated indictment of collectivism that “Atlas Shrugged” addresses. If the existence of this novel is it’s inspiration, it doesn’t change the fact that that was Rand’s original work.
I do agree that it is certainly possible that Rand plagarized the basic plot and the main character’s last name from “The Driver.” From what I know of her character, and she dealt with
her schism from Nathaniel Branden, it wouldn’t suprise me.
However, except for perhaps during her interest in Nietzsche in her younger years, I don’t believe that Rand ever explicitly believed in the doctrine of “the ends justifies the means.” Nor is this reflected in “Atlas Shrugged.” Given the much greater role of the state in her novel as opposed to “The Driver” as well as the much more precarious state of the nation at large, the actions of the novel’s protagonists did not constitute fraud. None of them owed their would-be opporessors the truth any more than a homeowner owes a would-be burglar a tip about how to break into his house.
You’ve all been taken in by this bogus joke, apparently concocted to promote the Mises Institute’s republication of the book in 2007. There is no “reoccurring literary motif through the book [that] has people asking: ‘Who is Henry Galt?’” as the Mises review claims on Amazon. The question appears once, on page 52 as: “Who is Henry M. Galt?”, and is asked by the narrator who is not familiar with the character.
This is quite different from the Mises blog assertion that it’s a question “everyone has previously asked…” …? Not quite.
She could have read it. The connections are: railroads, politics, socialism, and the last name “Galt”. But the claim that she took the motif, which would clearly indicate the theft of an idea, is unfounded.
Hmm… I would have to say that anyone who believes Ayn Rand supported the “ends justify the means” moral theory knows very little about Rand.
Daniel:
I know that Rand officially hated the End Justifies the Means moral theory…but she nonetheless espouses it at the end of Atlas Shrugged.
As I noted, and you need to refute this if you’re going to rationally remain in denial, the characters apparently defrauded potentially innocent investors in that copper mine, en masse, with the rationale that they were going to bring down the evil establishment that was looting them.
This is a violation of the principle of not initiating coercion…fraud is definitely coercion, in effect exactly as evil as any more literal form or threat of violence.
Oh, and Brian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt#Origin
It doesn’t seem to just be Mises’ assertion.
Kaz – Francisco did not defraud anyone. In fact, he correctly identified Jim and cronies – as the thieves they were, preventing them from stealing his property. They were as “innocent” as the Big Bad Wolf, dressed up as Grandma.
Francisco recognized them for what they were – the destroyers of his Government, his country and his company – essentially his life. The actions he took involved self-defense, protecting himself from the force/fraud of others. It is the initiation of force that Rand decried, not force itself.
This whole “Ayn Rand is a Plagiarizer” is the newest in a long line of silly attempts to defame her reputation. Rand was more than willing to tell you many of the conversations, films, comics and stories that inspired her characters, her plots, her ideas.
The Driver seems to be a likely candidate for one potential influence among many but not confirmed. And really, does it matter? It was a book easily forgotten. Atlas Shrugged most certainly was not.
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