Because of my Steemit name @capitalism I have to start my new series about inspirational books with this one:

About the book

Some call „Atlas Shrugged“ by Ayn Rand the „Bible of Capitalism“ - and they are right. There’s no other book, that advocates the laissez faire capitalism like this one. With over 1,000 pages it comes even close to the christian bible in terms of length. 

The content of „Atlas Shrugged“ based on a simple idea: What would happen, if all the creative inventors and entrepreneurs would go on strike? What would happen, if they, tired of the obstruction by bureaucrats, the media and others, would resign from their business, disappear and go to a unknown place, where nobody bothers them? 

Many don’t like the style of writing of „Atlas Shrugged“, because it’s written very long-winded. That’s because it is actually an introduction into Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, that comes only in the form of a novel. One of the lengthy passages of the book where Rand is laying down her philosophy is a monologue of Francisco d’Anconia about money:

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “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?“

In the novel it goes on like this for several pages. It surely was not written for a time like ours, where the attention span is defined by 3 minute music video clips or even shorter info bites.

How had „Atlas Shrugged“ inspired me? 

The book describes a fictional United States, where all the economically creative people (inventors and entrepreneurs) being constrained by bureaucratic functionaries, corrupt politicians and the biased media. Like in „Star Wars“ or other fictional works that resembles the classical mythologies, „Atlas Shrugged“ pictures a world of white and black, of good and evil. The inventors and entrepreneurs are the heroes and the bureaucrats are the villains. So, it’s not unlikely to call it a „mythology of capitalism“.

For the Americans of 1957 - the year of the first publication of the book - this US, that Ayn Rand had described, was a kind of spine-chiller in the cold war. The US was still the country of capitalism with a free market and only little interventions by the government. Of course that wasn’t hinder the success of the book, as many people are liked to be scared by fictional stories.

I read the book the first time in 1990, one year after the Berlin Wall came down and I - raised in East Germany - got the chance to buy it. The story of „Atlas Shrugged“ seemed to me not far fetched. As you maybe know, the Berlin Wall was build in 1961, because the communist East Germany had a really big brain drain to capitalist West Germany. Hundreds of thousands specialists (medical doctors, engineers and skilled workers) didn’t want to live in an environment of oppression and obstruction. So, they emigrated to the West. The only way to stop this brain drain was the building of the Berlin Wall. (Unlike other walls that some are planning today, it was not build to keep people out, but to keep people in.)

After the fall of the Berlin Wall there is now of course freedom for the former East Germans. They can go where ever they want to go. But even in the unified Germany of today there is a slight form of the bureaucratic obstruction, that Ayn Rand described in „Atlas Shrugged“.

The World Bank did in 2015 a study about how easy it is in 189 countries to start a business. On rank #1 was New Zealand, where it’s really easy to start. Singapore was on #10, Australia on #11, UK on #17 and the US on #49. Germany was on rank #107. So, it’s not a suprise, that many entrepreneurs are leaving Germany now and starting their business in the US or somewhere else.

From this European perspective, Ayn Rands „Atlas Shrugged“ is not a fictional spine-chiller, but a familiar description of past and (in lesser way) present reality. And it presents an intriguing solution to escape the bureaucratic obstruction: emigration.

Not a reader? Watch the movies

Some years ago „Atlas Shrugged“ was adapted in a movie trilogy. The movies were not really successful at the box office, but they are nevertheless telling the tale:

Join the Steemit Book Club

Is there any book that inspired you? Present it to your fellow Steemians. Please use the tag #bookclub for you post.