Friday, January 27, 2012

Introduction

I'm a former Green Party activist who published the Montana Green Bulletin for more than 6 years, ending in 2009 when I ran out of money, and lost my internet connection. Mostly, I just reprinted the complete Bulletin there, and most people told me it was "too long" and "too much information."
This new blog will contain my current writing, including the "greateco" blog published on the Great Falls Tribune website, and some of my Facebook postings.

To start, here is a review of Atlas Shrugged Part 1, the movie, which I wrote today.

Atlas Shrugged, Part I

Now, 9 months after its release, I've finally managed to rent a copy of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. A suitable gestation period, I suppose. It's available from Red Box, which charges $1.20 per day from its automated machines. Call it "an Automat movie". I couldn't help but wonder how many sandwiches and cups of coffee from the Horne and Hardhardt Automats Rand might have consumed in her years on the streets of Manhattan.

I think of this because the makers of this film are all devotees. What, you can actually find that many people? And with this kind of money? They make a point, in the producer's and writer's commentary, that one scene - Hank Rearden's party, celebrating the first pour of Rearden Metal - is shot in the Gold Room of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, which they claim was the site of the first Academy Awards presentation attended by such Rand friends and mentors as Cecil B. DeMille and Henry Fonda (not to mention Howard Hughes). The more obvious connection is with Cornelius Vanderbilt, himself. Nathaniel Taggart, the founder of the railroad which the heirs are running into the ground, was modeled on Commodore Vanderbilt. (Some would claim he was modeled on James J. Hill, or perhaps Harriman, Stanford, and the Southern Pacific "Octopus" guys, but as usual, it's a misch-masch of all of them).

Atlas Shrugged, in this production and as well as in the minds of the most fanatical devotees, is a paen to the wealthy "Robber Barons", of whom our own William Andrews Clark was one of the best examples. At least he had taste in art, music, and the history of culture, and "invested" heavily in those things, rather than more copper mines, etc. Although his holdings constituted a major part of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (D'Anconia Copper, in AS), he sold them early, and retired to a Renaissance mansion in LA, whence he continued to collect books and art work, and endow the LA Philharmonic.

Actually, it was his son who did most of the charitable giving, while his daughter, who just passed on last year at age 103 simply consumed her $1 billion or so (in current dollars) from the largest apartment on Fifth Avenue. I wonder if she ever had lunch with Ayn Rand? Or was she (Clark), perhaps, anti-Semitic, and not fond of Russian refugees making fun of her family?

My friend, Pia, a young (late 20's) devotee of Rand, who also grew up in LA and went to Columbia University, wondered, in her commentaries, why some billionaire like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (or even better, the Russian Jews who started Google and became the Oligarchs after the end of the Soviet regime), didn't fund AS as a major motion picture. They could each kick in $20 million or whatever, and do it right. How about Richard Branson, Ted Turner, or others who were actually big fans?

The producers on the DVD pose the same question, and relate their own experiences in raising money from Wall Street speculators and Hollywood moguls. Getting major actors was no problem - all sorts of famous ones expressed an interest in participating, just as Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey clamored for their parts in The Fountainhead.

The answer, which I anticipated in my remarks to Pia, was that the Wall Street speculators and Hollywood moguls either detest Rand and her "philosophizing", they're totally ignorant of it, or most likely, they simply don't want to be involved in anything "controversial." There was an even better example of this in Red Tails, a George Lucas film about the Tuskeegee Airmen.

I saw Terrence Howard on Tavis Smiley the other night, talking about the 20-year crusade which George Lucas undertook to make Red Tails, and how difficult that proved to be. Poor Southern blacks, the elite of them attending the Tuskeegee Institute (a kind of vo-tech school for freed slaves in Alabama), became one of the most decorated fighter pilot units in World War II. One might have thought that Barack Obama had picked up the phone and said, "George - now is the time to make that film, just in time for my next election." Apparently, that never happened, but there were plenty of Hollywood power brokers who were telling Lucas, "No way. It's got an all-black cast. Films with all-black casts don't make money. Count me out." Seriously.

If Barack Obama had nothing to do with the Tuskeegee Airmen and Red Tails, it seems more likely he had something to do with Atlas Shrugged Part 1. Eddie Willers, the "feudal serf" of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, is played by an African - rather incongruously, but not unduly so in the Age of Obama. So far, he doesn't talk regularly with the underground track walker, John Galt. All we see of Galt so far is the beginning of his "pitch" to the various moguls he convinces to go on strike. We don't see him talking with Willers at all, and picking his brain about what's happening "upstairs." So, that is different.

It's not just Atlas Shrugged which doesn't fit in with today's Gangster Capitalism and Hollywood Blockbuster mentality. But the real reasons go even deeper. The people who are attracted to Ayn Rand's sociopathic "ethics" of greed and exploitation are simply not the same people who actually have a lot of money and creative abilities. Or, maybe they are, and simply don't want to share this knowledge in any usable form, fearing the competition, or that others will "do unto them" as they imagine Rand wanted them (the Elect) to do to others - namely let them starve in the dark - the real meaning, to them, of "laissez-faire."

Another aspect is the cultish nature of Rand Fandom. There are several factions, each of whom professes to possess the True Cross. The licensed "intellectual heirs" are those who are associated with Leonard Peikoff, who originally ownd and sold the rights to the film in 1992. Apparently, they expired after 20 years, so after many false starts and disappointments, something had to be made. By this time, Peikoff had apparently lost all interest, and had no desire to participate in the production, while several other "Objectivist" groups, led by David Kelly, all contributed their "expertise" and are mentioned in the credits and DVD commentary. Indeed, there's a long segment of hundreds of young people representing various libertarian and "pro-capitalism" groups chanting "Who is John Galt?" Something like 20 minutes of it in the extra features on the DVD.

Nathaniel Branden, Rand's "partner" as they put it in the commentary (protege - sexual and otherwise), was also consulted, although he was later disowned and is not on speaking terms with the Peikoff faction since about 1970. It's important, here, to point out that Rand was NOT a libertarian, and that she always denounced and refused to recognize the Libertarian Party, and otherwise distanced herself from most of her fans and advocates for what they thought were her views. She had a much broader understanding of her own place in intellectual and cultural history, as well as who were the "good guys" and who were the bad ones. Politically, she was more like a Stalinist - an intellectual authoritarian who brooked no opposition or arguments.

Some of this translates well in the film. The unknown actors who play Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden are right-on. We know they are the good guys, and they act like it. The villains (one of Ayn Rand's strong suits in The Fountainhead - portraying villains) are simply incomprehensible. They say all the right things with evil and distorted motives. Hank's brother, Philip Rearden, is a familiar type who represents an anti-poverty and development non-profit, something like Public Citizen or Food First, perhaps. But most of the villains from the novel are simply stupid and self-serving - along the lines of a Max Baucus, say, or Harry Reid. They say all the good things about the environment, ending poverty, providing jobs and "giving the little guy a chance" while totally subverting those purposes in cigar-smoke-filled rooms. Very much like the classic Montana power broker, actually.

Oh, I know all the arguments for "laissez-faire capitalism," and how it is actually better for everyone - even the poorest people, and least advantaged. Unfortunately, this "laissez-faire capitalism" as portrayed in this film, and in a rather more nuanced way in the original book, does not (and CANNOT) exist. It is, as Rand was fond of saying, a "contradiction in terms." If capitalism is a system where the owners of capital own and control the economy and government (as it surely is - what else could "capitalism" possibly mean?), then how can it be "laissez faire"? Everything is owned and protected for the benefit of what we now call "the one percent", or even the 1/100th of 1%. Even they don't have "laissez-faire." They, too, are bound by political and financial constraints - they can only do what they can get away with, or what the rest of us allow them to do (another of Rand's key concepts - "the sanction of the victim." All they have is the power we give them, or allow them to get away with).
But in this film, as in "real life" capitalism, the rest of us basically have no rights or freedoms at all. We can't even say or think what we believe - not if we want to hold a job and be free of predation from a million different con-artists, bosses, and self-appointed "officials" who want to "rule" over every aspect of our everyday lives.

Yes, "laissez faire" is a good thing. But we don't find it in "capitalism." Think, instead, of "do your own thing," "mind your own business," be self-reliant, be an independent thinker. Be neither a master nor a slave; an exploiter nor the exploited. Just BE. It is so obvious that this is what Rand meant, and that her wrath was directed not against "altruism," but against tyranny and oppression. (Of course, she defined "altruism" as being the opposite of what most people understand by the term - another "gotcha" for the naive followers of her "creed").

Something I kept thinking while watching this film was that the producers were Neo-Cons. That constant petty whinging about "moochers" and "second-handers", about Welfare Queens and the great and good being sacrificed to the mediocre and starving masses, does, unfortunately, come out of Rand's Nietzschean fantasies. Although she later renounced Nietzsche after he became associated with Nazism, she kept the core of his ideas - or at least the Nazi interpretation of them. Much is made in her non-fiction writing about the distinction between egoism and egotism, and that she was an "egoist" much more like Emerson (self-reliance) than Nietzche. I'm sure she also read Max Stirner - "The Ego and it's Own" - a contemporary and friend of Engels, but not Marx, as well as many other philosophers in the Anarchist tradition which, again, she felt she had to renounce (and denounce) in her metamorphosis into a purveyor of "philosophy" to an up-scale middle-class audience.

Egotism, she later realized (and changed it in subseqent editions of The Fountainhead), was a bad thing, but needless to say, not one in a thousand of her readers and present-day fans understands the distinctions she made between "egoism" and "egotism."

This is not the place to get into a detailed analysis of where Ayn Rand succeeded and where she failed (in constructing a workable theory for a better world). Suffice to say, Atlas Shrugged is Dystopian, not Utopian. She doesn't mean to provide any "answers", but merely to expose the structure of the failing and dysfunctional society, government, and economy which existed even in those halcyon years of the 1950's. Most people take books - even novels - much too seriously, and attempt to find the same kinds of truths and guidance which they might find in an ancient religion or philosophy. Rand provides a guide to some of that - a place to start, as it were. But beyond that, you've got to find your own answers, and verify the "truths" or "falsehoods" which her system embraced and promulgated.

I think I could have added a lot to this project in writing or re-writing some of the dialogue. Even if it is, in some sense, "true" to the original text, the interpretation and affect is often wrong - as is so often the case in films set in the 1960's and earlier. All sorts of slang expressions which we know was invented much later can be found in many of these productions. Actually, AS is relatively free of that. The heroes' dialogue rings true, but most of the bad guys seem like caricatures - even in an age where most politicians and official spokespeople seem like caricatures of themselves.

So, I have to judge this film a failure, as Rand and many other seemed to understand long ago. It's like making a film of The Bible, or maybe Dune. Both have been done many times, but they simply don't compare with the original text. The producers claim that their real goal is just that - to get viewers to read the whole book - all 1084 pages of it. I did that - 7 times, in fact, but I haven't read it, now, for more than 40 years. Still, I remember most of the original dialogue and action, and this film is faithful to it. And as a teacher, I didn't (and don't) recommend Rand for young readers - especially those interested in politics and the history of ideas. What remains of Rand's work and thinking in today's America is almost entirely wrong - witness the Congress people who profess to follow her teachings. They are invaribly villains in the context of the original book, and even Alan Greenspan said as much about himself. Moral midgets who have no more idea of what freedom and self-realization might be than hogs at a trough. Truly a philosophy for predators and looters.