by Tom Pratt
Many Christians, of course, look askance at the accumulation of wealth that makes one “rich” in some sense of that term, whether relatively or enormously so. Some will suggest absolute limits on such accretions to single individuals or corporations. Others will simply support the policies of governments for efforts at redistribution of accumulated wealth in whatever form by taxation and regulation. Within the church many make efforts to use various means to make wealthy people feel guilt for their “luck” or “good fortune” in life. Others formulate theologies of varying degrees of required or expected divestiture of “surplus” goods for the benefit of the “poor.” In these ways businessmen and women are made to feel like second class Christians for having as their primary goal of business “making money.” By this they mean that they cannot run a business that stays in business without making a profit. The antagonists in Atlas Shrugged constantly inveigh against the “profit motive” as a kind of immoral, or at least amoral, value to be placed in subservience to the “common good.” Some Christian theologians and spokesmen through the centuries have taken this position, idealizing the value of poverty and simplicity of living, and elevating the value and good of “meaningful” work and the “fulfillment” it brings. In all of these cases Christians find themselves quite often at a loss for words to defend both the individual and corporate accumulation of profits that constitute real wealth and the American “way of life” that so enables this process. Rand is in part reacting to this tendency of Christians to leave the field of economic comment to the collectivists and altruists and/or join them in political actions and invective against the “rich.” They should not.
First, returning to the example of Jesus and Paul, any examination of the ministries of these men reveals clearly that they both benefited from the wealth accumulation of people in the first century. Jesus was supported especially by wealthy women, who would not ordinarily in the first century world have been personally and independently wealthy. They would have been inheritors of estates and/or married to wealthy men, both Jewish and possibly Hellenist. Paul experienced the same thing in his missionary travels and benefited greatly from people wealthy enough to have large houses for meeting and servants and family to make up “households.” The newest work on the history of the Christian church shows clearly that the earliest converts were not merely peasants and beggars and slaves and illiterate workers.[43] There is no indication that there was ever any general movement to seek divestiture of the wealth of early church members. However, they were a boon to the spread of Christianity by their generosity and hospitality. What Paul did avoid in his travels, and what Jesus criticizes at times, is the system of patronage which many Jews had tapped into and Roman citizens accepted as customary for those in the lower echelons of society—a receiving of benefaction for the “favor” of supporting the rich patron politically and culturally. Otherwise, the warnings of Scripture are for rich and poor alike to beware the seductions of money as a means of security in a world where, anciently, God said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Dt. 8:3; Mt. 4:4; Jn. 4:34 ESV).
The two quotations above from the d’Anconia speech are enlightening in both the common misquotations. James Taggart’s misquote and Rand’s acceptance of it and the supposed “correction” are instructive when taken against the actual Pauline quote. Neither common version gets it right. Neither money itself nor its love is the root of “all evil.” The translation we cite is the correct one and it makes no such universal claim for the denunciation of money. It says fundamentally what is illustrated in the novel and supported by the speech. The love of money is “a” root of “all kinds of evils” is a statement that requires unpacking and enfleshment even as the scene in the novel does. The manner in which some characters “love” money is diametrically opposed to what Francisco delineates. They demonstrate it when their own conversations are ended in the panic to get out of the room, leaving the only three people who do understand the proper “love” of money standing in silence. They know that the money being lost in the crash of d’Anconia stock was already worthless and cannot now be recovered, but of the entire crowd they are also the only ones proven capable of replacing it. Therefore, Francisco’s motive in destroying such “wealth” is justified by his values and his own ability to reproduce it when his values for its distribution are met in a world with no guns drawn on him. The struggle for Rearden and Dagny is to see that their wealth is in the service of the looters and needs to be abandoned or destroyed until it can be reproduced in a different evaluation system. There is no threat to Christian thinking here.
The statement of Jesus above is also enlightening. Most Christians in our era, along with non-Christians as well, do not understand the strong implications of Jesus’ teaching. The word for “serve” in the Greek is the word “bondslave.” It does not mean merely a house servant or a valet or a butler or some other lowly version of common labor. It means someone whose entire existence belongs to his or her Master and Owner. One cannot be owned by more than one Master. It is an impossible scenario. Yet many, maybe most, modern Christians have no sense of being owned by God so that every hour of every day and every work or action is controlled and accountable to Him. They are not really “Christian” to begin with. They have a nominal relationship to the church and other “Christians,” but in no sense do they consider themselves owned by God through Jesus Christ as Lord. From this standpoint Jesus is stating the obvious—one can only have one owner. Either God or something or someone else. “Mammon” here in the context is the sense of security that comes from earthly “treasures” rather than heavenly ones, those that come from being owned by the heavenly Master. A Christian must choose between finding security in earthly things or heavenly things. And if one is like the famous “rich young ruler,” Jesus will see whether you or I are owned by our money and require of us what it takes to detach us from it so we might belong to Him alone.
This is a sense of valuation of the hierarchy of “goods” in our reality that fits the Randian model. Galt himself would not allow his greatest achievement to be put to a use he did not approve no matter what the cost in “money” was to him. Hank Rearden felt the same about his famous Metal and eventually followed his rational conclusions. Francisco took action on the same principle in the destruction of his family fortune. Others of the “men of the mind” did the same as they one by one dropped out of the world they saw around them to find another one regardless of the cost in “money.” Jesus told an enigmatic parable about this very subject one day to those who were “lovers of money.” You will find it in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 16. It is the story of the actions of a quite pragmatic and unscrupulous “steward” (manager) in the world of the first century. It tells how a man caught cheating by his master went around to the master’s creditors and created the impression that the master was a great benefactor. The result got the “steward” off the hook and gets a backhanded compliment from Jesus, who recommends the story to us with this punchline: “the sons of this world [Greek age] are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk. 16:8 ESV).
Hand Rearden makes a mini-speech to Dagny at one point trying to say what he believes about wealth and luxury:
“I’ve never despised luxury,” he said, “yet I’ve always despised those who enjoyed it. I looked at what they called their pleasures and it seemed so miserably senseless to me—after what I felt at the mills. I used to watch steel being poured, tons of liquid steel running as I wanted it to, where I wanted it. And then I’d go to a banquet and I’d see people who sat trembling in awe before their own gold dishes and lace tablecloths, as if their dining room were the master and they were just objects serving it, objects created by their diamond shirt studs and necklaces, not the other way around. Then I’d run to the site of the first slag heap I could find—and they’d say that I didn’t know how to enjoy life, because I cared for nothing but business.” He looked at the dim, scu
lptured beauty of the room and at the people who sat at the tables. They sat in a manner of self-conscious display, as if the enormous cost of their clothes and the enormous care of their grooming should have fused into splendor, but didn’t. Their faces had a look of rancorous anxiety.
“Dagny, look at those people. They’re supposed to be the playboys of life; the amusement-seekers and luxury-lovers. They sit there, waiting for this place to give them meaning, not the other way around. But they’re always shown to us as the enjoyers of material pleasures—and then we’re taught that enjoyment of material pleasures is evil. Enjoyment? Are they enjoying it? Is there some sort of perversion in what we’re taught, some error that’s vicious and very important?”
“Yes, Hank—very vicious and very, very important.” (p. 372)
At many points the characters of Atlas Shrugged are like the “dishonest manager”—wiser than many Christians know.
Chapter 13 - I Am; Therefore I Think
In order to grasp what premise drives Rand’s hostility to Christian presuppositions as a basis for her philosophical ethics, it is necessary to take a brief gallop through the key traditions she was opposing, and a couple that she affirmed. This survey will hit only the high points, and especially a few that she would have considered “low points.”
A Greek Tragedy
The Western tradition certainly goes back to the philosophical tradition of the Greeks, beginning with the Milesian pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. These were men who sought answers to the deep questions of life not in religious speculation, but in an effort to understand the world on its own terms. Their attempts to identify the basic elements of the universe (earth, air, fire, water) and to organize them hierarchically seems remarkably simplistic to us in our day, but they represent a real attempt to get beyond the fickle and immoral deities of the Greek religious tradition. They represent the first Western thinkers to attempt an application of “rationality” to our understanding of the natural world and the world of human beings.
The Greek philosophical tradition reached a high mark with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Plato was the disciple of Socrates and ostensibly reflects the older man’s views in his thirty-five publications, cast mainly in the form of Socratic dialogues. Several points are relevant to our discussion of Rand. First, Plato believed in the existence of “The Forms,” as “eternal, changeless, and incorporeal” entities that “exist independently of thought.”[44] These Forms exist in a higher realm than that of nature and they can only be encountered by us through thought. But for all those qualifications, they are no less real and were perceived by humans in their pre-born (eternal) existence as souls, and are more real than the world in which we live today, a world that is a shadowy reflection of the true Forms. Here are the true forms of all physically existing things in the world of nature, as well as the true forms of such ideals as justice, truth, and beauty. Hence for Plato, the most truly real world is not the world in which we eke out our lives, but another realm, above nature.
The only way to know and understand that world is to be challenged to perceive it by one who has already done so. In the Myth of the Cave (related in his political work, Republic) Plato writes of people who are chained to a wall in the bottom chamber of a cave deep in the earth. A fire is burning farther up inside the cave. Only capable of seeing the back wall of the cave, these chained persons do not see the world as it really is, a shadowy reflection of the real world of the Forms, but only see what they see. One of the prisoners is able to free himself and journeys up the cave to the outside world where he perceives the real world as it actually is. Deciding to tell his fellow prisoners, he descends back into the depths and relates what he has seen, in all its beauty contrasted to the drabness and unreality of their own world. But they do not believe him, and seek instead to kill him. This is the philosopher, the one who truly knows, and is a parable of Socrates, whom the men of Athens had condemned to death in AD 399.
In Republic, Plato calls for a regimented society, divided among the Bronze (farmers, craftsmen, builders), the Silver (soldiers and other lower-level administrators), and the Gold (the philosopher rulers). These three classes also correspond to the three elements of the human condition: appetites for food and sex, assertiveness that enables one to do brave and competitive tasks, and those who are guided above all by reason. (“The city is the man.”) It needs to be understood that what Plato means by reason here is the ability to discern the Forms and to be guided then by impassionate application of the forms of justice, truth, and beauty to the task of ruling. Since the task of ruling is onerous, these Philosopher-Kings (or Queens, Plato was not distracted by gender) must be forced to rule, for the good of the collective.[45] Furthermore, they will not do any manual labor, as that is reserved for the Bronze class; in Plato’s Greek culture manual labor for “gentlemen” was universally loathed. Private property is eliminated in this most just society, and class distinctions are strictly regulated. Children are removed from their parents upon being weaned and are raised by state employees who are naturally suited to such tasks, and sex has as its only function the procreation that is needed for society to continue, though certainly the Bronze class will violate this principle since they are often governed by irrational passions.[46] Plato’s theory imagines a planned and enforced structure of government for “the good of the people” that brooks no alteration and that allows for no freedom outside the structure.[47]
In his later years Plato took on a student from Stagira named Aristotle, who mentored under the older man for twenty years. Aristotle’s mature philosophy shows some signs of agreement with Plato, but also many areas of disagreement. Following Plato’s death in 347 BC, Aristotle traveled to Assos and Lesbos where he studied biology and gathered a good deal of biological information.[48] Aristotle came to disagree with Plato on the independent existence of the Forms, preferring to believe that these “Forms” existed only in the mind of the thinker. A famous painting of the two men by Raphael shows Plato pointing up to the heavens, while Aristotle’s hand is stretched out horizontally, probably a reference to his moderate notion of the Golden Mean, but also an indication of his rejection of the metaphysical existence of the Forms. Philosophy has to do with this world, for Aristotle, not some imaginary spiritual realm.
For our purposes we will briefly examine Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction, his understanding of the Excluded Middle, and his Law of Identity, since these make up the section titles of Atlas Shrugged. These constitute Aristotle’s exposition of the laws of thought, but they are “not merely how we must think in order to obtain knowledge; they also describe the fundamental character of reality.”[49] Aristotle stated the Law of Non-Contradiction in this way: “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.” Something either is or it is not. And if it is, it is knowable by human thinking and experience. As Rand often said, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” This was one of Aristotle’s most basic insights, and shows his dissatisfaction with Plato, who believed that what we perceive in this world is but a shadow of the Forms in the other realm, the true world. For Aristotle, this is the world of knowledge, and it is what it is.
The Principle of the Excluded Middle can easily be stated: “Either there is a tree over 500 feet tall or it is not the case that there is such a tree.”[50] Aristotle famously gave the example of a sea battle. Either there will be a sea battle tomorrow or there will not be. There is no other option. Something either exists or does not exist at a given point in time and in some respect. The fact of what is there determines our response to it. The Law of Identity (“A is A”) tells us that something is what it is at a given place and time. It cannot be something it is not. All of this is to say that what we experience in this world cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect, that either it does or does not exist at some given place and time, and that it cannot be what it is not. For Aristotle, this e
ntailed the notion that “the universe makes sense.”[51] The fact that we are conscious and cognitively aware of this universe also makes it clear that our experience of the rational universe is understandable, since as John Galt says, “If nothing exists, then there can be no consciousness.” (p. 1015)
It is this characteristic that constitutes “benevolence” for Rand. For Rand, the modern Aristotelian, these beliefs drive us to the conclusion that the world we have is what we have, and it is what it is. We might wish things were different, but they are not. We cannot live in a world of make-believe. In addition, since we are creatures dwelling in this material world, the world must be seen as good. This especially includes its material structures, structures that can be understood by the rational mind, as long as it maintains its focus on the Law of Non-Contradiction and the Principles of Either-Or and A is A. So, her heroes are copper miners, steel makers, railroad builders, and engineers. No Platonic pointing to the sky, this is a world of reality.
