Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

Who is John Galt? Saatat olla kuullut kysymyksen, mutta tiedätkö vastauksen? Tämä kysymys toistuu ensimmäiset 600 sivua Ayn Randin 1168-sivuisessa mestariteoksessa Atlas Shrugged. Maailma näyttää menevän erikoiseen suuntaan ja vastuunkantajat ovat vähissä. Tapahtuu asioita, jotka ovat ihan kuin tästä maailmasta. Konkreettisia esimerkkejä pienistä asioista, joissa ihmiset toimivat ajattelemattomuuttaan väärin ja välinpitämättömästi. Dagny Taggart tarinan päähenkilönä yrittää kaikkensa, mutta ei saa otetta siitä, mitä taustalla oikein tapahtuu. John Galt antaa vinkkejä itsestään ennen varsinaista ilmaantumistaan.

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

John Galt on lakkokenraali. Hän haluaa pysäyttää maailman moottorit agitoimalla ahkerat ja ajattelevat ihmiset lakkoon, mielen lakkoon. Mitä jos vastuunkantajat kaikkoavat maailmasta? Mitä jos he kohauttavat olkapäitään ja päättävät yksinkertaisesti poistua? Päättävät lopettaa tekemisensä, jättäävät kaiken taaksensa ja vain katoavat? Mitä jää jäljelle? Miten yhteiskunta toimii, jos kukaan ei kanna vastuuta? Mitä jos ahkerien mitta vain tulee täyteen?

 

Kapitalismin klassikko

 

Ayn Randin Atlas Shrugged on todellinen jättipaketti. Ei voi kuin ihmetellä, kuinka Rand on pystynyt pitämään kokonaisuuden tarinan koossa. Alussa asiat vaikuttavat viattomilta, mutta tarinan kehittyessä niille tulee merkitys ja ne kumuloituvat kaaokseksi. Kirja on luonteeltaan syvällistä yhteiskuntafilosofiaa. Se avaa tarinan muodossa yleisen yhteiskunnallisen ajattelumme ongelmia. Erityisesti se hyökkää altruismia ja valtiokeskeisyyttä kohtaan. Sankariksi Rand nostaa itsenäisen yksilön, joka omilla toimillaan tavoittelee omaa onnellisuuttaan.

 

Atlas Shrugged on klassikko. Erityisesti USA:ssa teoksella on oma merkittävä roolinsa ja siihen viitataan usein, sekä hyvässä että pahassa. Minä asemoin Atlas Shruggedin kolmen parhaan lukemani kirjan joukkoon. Lukukokemuksena se on suoritus, josta voi olla ylpeä. Moni sen tahtoisi lukea, mutta 1168 sivua karsii jyvät akanoista. Ilman todellista tahtoa sitä ei kannata edes aloittaa. Vähän kuin Raamattukin, vain hyvin harvat ovat sen alusta loppuun lukeneet. Atlas Shruggedia voi perustellusti tituleerata yhdeksi kapitalismin raamatuista. Hauskana anekdoottina kirjassa esiintyy kultaisella dollarimerkillä varustettuja savukkeita, jotka symboloivat kapitalismin henkeä. Jos tuollaisia olisi oikeasti tarjolla, todennäköisesti alkaisin polttamaan.

 

Atlas Shruggedin parasta antia ovat monipuoliset ja mielikuvitukselliset henkilöhahmot. John Galt itsessään on elävä legenda, mutta tarinaan mahtuu paljon muitakin. Hank Rearden, yrittäjä, innovaattori ja oman tiensä kulkija. Todellinen taistelija, yrittäjyyden perikuva. Francisco d'Anconia, mies joka yllättää kaikki toimimalla toisin kuin hänen oletettaisiin toimivan. Ragnar Danneskjöld, mies joka haluaa poistaa Robin Hood-sankaruuden maailmasta toimimalla juuri päinvastoin kuin Hood. Päähenkilönä tarinassa kuitenkin on Dagny Taggart, nainen joka ei pääse perheyrityksenä johtoon, vaikka kaiken vastuun kantaakin. Pahiksia tarinaan mahtuu myös useita. Moni näistä veljeilee valtion kanssa pyrkien politikoimalla pönkittämään omaa valta-asemaansa. Havahduttavinta näissä kaikissa henkilöissä on se, että jokaiselle löytyy helposti vastinpari elävästä elämästä.

 

Atlas Shruggedin opetus

 

Atlas Shruggedissa John Galt kumppaneineen kutsuu valitsemiaan henkilöitä "mielen lakkoon" eli jättämään kaiken taakseen ja kohauttamaan olkapäitään nyky-yhteiskunnalle. Kuten yleisesti lakoissa, tässä lakossa kukaan ei esitä kenellekään vaatimuksia, sen sijaan yksilöt vain jättävät roolinsa yhteiskunnassa, kun mitta tulee täyteen.

Ajatus olkapäiden kohottamisesta ja taustalle poistumisesta on kiehtova. Ei käy kiistäminen, etteikö se välillä kävisi mielessä. Nykymaailmassa tämä voisi tarkoittaa vaikka sitä, että tietyn pisteen, tietyn riippumattomuuden tilan, saavutettua sitä voisi todeta, että nyt riitti ja muuttaisi ulkomaille. Mielettömäksi menevä verotus voisi olla yksi tällainen laukaiseva tekijä. Itse voisin lähteä vaikka Sveitsiin.

 

Onko downshiftaaminen mielen lakkoilua?

 

Toisaalta aloin miettimään, onko nykyilmiöistä downshiftaaminen yksi muoto "to shrugg" eli liittyä mielen lakkoon? Osittain on, sanoisin, mutta kuitenkin vain niissä tapauksissa, joissa downshiftaaja jää elämään omilla saavutuksillaan, eikä valinnallaan rasita muuta yhteiskuntaa. Tiedän monia tapauksia, jotka työnteollaan ja sijoitustoiminnallaan tähtäävät tiettyyn varallisuustasoon, tiettyyn taloudelliseen riippumattomuuteen, jonka jälkeen he tahtovat alkaa elää rennommin ja alkaa toteuttamaan aktiivisemmin arvojensa mukaisia asioita. Tällaiseen valintaan yksilöllä tulee olla vapaa oikeus. Toinen downshiftaamisen muoto eli vähemmän tekeminen ja muiden siivellä eläminen siitä syystä, että ei viitsitä tehdä enempää, ei sen sijaan sovellu randilaiseen ajatteluun.

Kirjan parhaat palat

Kirjan parhaat palat voi kiteyttää kolmeen osioon. Francisco d'Anconian puhe juhlissa esitettyyn väitteeseen, että raha on kaiken pahan alku, on mestarillinen tykitys, joka ei selittelyitä kaipaa. Puhe löytyy kokonaisuudessaan alta. Toinen huippukohta on Ragnar Danneskjöldin perustelut sille, miksi hän haluaa hävittää Robin Hoodin levittämän ajattelun maailmasta. Ensiajatuksella tuskin kukaan sanoo vastustavansa Robin Hoodia, mutta kun kuulee Danneskjöldin argumentit, alkaa asiaa ajattelemaan uudella tavalla. Ehkä rikkaiden ryöstäminen ei sittenkään ole oikeudenmukaista. Kolmas kohokohta on John Galtin puheet, erityisesti kirjan viimeisessä kappaleessa esitetty loppupuhe, jossa kiteytyy Randin filosofian ydinkohdat ja Atlas Shruggedin sanoma. Tämä puhe on 66 sivua pitkä, joten liitän siihen vain linkin. Nämä lukemalla saa jo jonkinlaisen käsityksen siitä, millainen mestariteos Ayn Randin Atlas Shrugged on. Jos elämässäsi on joskus riittävästi aikaa tälle teokselle, suosittelen lukemaan, koska se takuulla jättää jäljen omaan ajatteluusi koko loppuelämäksi.

Francisco d'Anconia's Money Speech

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

Ragnar Danneskjöld on Robin Hood

"I've chosen a special mission of my own. I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in".
What man?
Robin Hood. He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I'm the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich - or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.
What in blazes do you mean?
... Ragnar:  ... I have never robbed a private ship and never taken any private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel - because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from the violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government. But I have seized every lootcarrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others. I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices - that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others - that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us - and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads doen on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as the moral idea." ". . . Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."

This in John Galt Speaking

John Galt's final speech can be read here. It's circa 66 pages long, but still highly worth of reading.

"We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt. There is a difference between our strike and all those practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endager you, not to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, accoring to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality - the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind." (1011)

Some extra quotations 

"What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster. And that's what I'm doing: I'm manufacturing time... I'm producing everything I need, I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life." (722)

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (731)

"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in the whole of human history. Every other kind and class has stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable - except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind on strike." John Galt (738)

Some links to Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.dailypaul.com/133313/francisco-d-anconias-ayn-rands-money-speech-in-atlas-shrugged

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged