Atlas Shrugged: The Fortieth Anniversary Event Report

"It" was "Atlas and the World." Co-sponsored by the Institute for Objectivist Studies (IOS) and the Cato Institute, "Atlas and the World" was held on October 4 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C., to honor Ayn Rand's greatest novel on its fortieth anniversary.

IOS's chairman of the board, Frank Bond, opened the proceedings by quoting a Washington Post article that said the vast influence of Ayn Rand had remained curiously subterranean and largely unacknowledged. This gala event, said Bond, "not only provides further evidence of the impact of Rand's masterpiece, it is also meant to rectify an injustice. For today assembled on this stage and in this audience are just a few of the many remarkable people whose lives have been touched and changed by Atlas Shrugged. We gather to pay a long overdue tribute to a great book and to the great visionary who crafted it."

In his introductory praise for Atlas Shrugged, Ed Crane, president of Cato, said the work "has a passion, a clarity of insight and perception, that's simply unrivalled in American fiction. This is a book that is at once incredibly prescient in terms of the world we're living in today and remarkably uplifting in terms of describing the kind of world we could and should be living in."

Atlas and the Culture

The first panel of the day featured Ed Hudgins, director of regulatory studies at the Cato Institute; John Fund of the Wall Street Journal; and David Mayer, a professor of law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

Hudgins introduced the audience to his notion of "an ethical infrastructure" by reminding them of the familiar concept of an economic infrastructure: those industries and sectors—such as transportation, power generation, and communication—that facilitate other industries and other enterprises. "A prosperous and peaceful society," he argued, "also needs an ethical infrastructure," and Rand not only understood this but understood the virtues and values that constitute that infrastructure. Because she did, Hudgins concluded, she had a more profound understanding than other anti-statists of what was lacking in the society of 1950s and a more accurate vision of how collectivism would degenerate.

John Fund announced that he came bearing good news and bad news. The good news was that substantial numbers of people, influenced by Atlas Shrugged, were moving into jobs where they could work effectively and without fundamental compromise, even in the midst of a philosophically antithetical culture. Fund's bad news was that paternalistic government, in conjunction with a dumbed-down public educational system, now offers large numbers of people the following bargain: "Don't think too much about what you can accomplish in life, because ultimately we are there to take care of you, so long as you don't push the envelope of our system."

David Mayer said, "My point is actually quite simple. Atlas Shrugged is significant, because, through the novel, Rand shows us what we must do to complete the American Revolution, to complete the unfinished work of 1776, and the hope that it represents to the world. . . . By presenting a new code of ethics-the morality of self-interest-Rand's novel provides what the Founders failed to grasp, the missing element of the American Revolution: the moral justification of capitalism."

The Influence of Atlas

During the second panel, moderated by Andrea Rich of Laissez Faire Books, Ed Crane returned to describe his experiences with "businessmen-statists" and "businessmen-pragmatists." "Within the business community," he declared, "when you find people who defend capitalism on a moral basis and on a principled basis, what you've found are businessmen who've read Atlas Shrugged."

Robert Poole, founder and president of the Reason Foundation, recalled how Atlas had influenced him and his work. He had run across the book "while working with a bunch of other conservative, libertarian, and Objectivist students on the Goldwater campaign in 1964. And it really did change the whole direction of my life." After describing the growth of pro-capitalist think tanks over the last twenty years, and the roles of different types of think tanks, Poole concluded that "for all the strengths of the free-market think-tank movement, what is also important and has not really had enough attention in the last twenty years is working on developing the underlying moral basis for a free society. And that's why Ed [Crane] and I are so proud and consider it so important to be serving on the Advisory Board of IOS."

A different note was struck by Howard Dickman, an IOS advisor who is an assistant managing editor at Reader's Digest. (Dickman, like Andrea Rich, stepped in on short notice to replace Barbara Branden, who was unable to attend owing to illness.) Important as it is to espouse good ideas, Dickman said, advocates of freedom should not forget the extent to which reality is working to demonstrate the truth of their policies. He pointed to the escalating collapse of the public school system and social security system, and suggested that these phenomena have greatly aided libertarian attempts to convince people of the need for self-responsibility.

Atlas and the Businessman

John Stossel of ABC News moderated the day's second panel, "The Businessman as Hero." Before getting underway, Stossel announced that he had interviewed David Kelley on the topic of self-interest and the profit motive in conjunction with a forthcoming television special, currently scheduled for February 3. The businessmen's panel included speculator Victor Niederhoffer; Ed Snider, chairman of Comcast Spectacor; and John Aglialoro, chairman of UM Holdings.

Niederhoffer, an IOS advisor, focused on Ayn Rand's doctrine of "the sanction of the victim," recalling some passages from Atlas Shrugged in which Hank Rearden's love for his work is treated by his family as a source of shame.

Snider, an IOS trustee, read a passage he had written some years ago to serve as an introduction for Francisco d'Anconia's speech on the meaning of money. "Not only had I never realized the importance of ideas and philosophy for my daily business decisions, but I had accepted ideas that were making me unhappy. . . . Although I enjoyed working and producing, I didn't know why. And in fact I felt guilty. But the section on money identified for me why I worked and why work is noble."

Aglialoro spoke principally of his project to bring Atlas Shrugged to the screen. Five years ago, he purchased a fifteen-year option to make the film. To date, his total investment has been $2 million, and, "so far, it's been a bad bet." Besides the imposing costs of such a project, Aglialoro said, "I think the politics should not be underrated as one reason for not getting this project off the ground." Nevertheless, he said in closing, "it is a movie that should and must be made."

A Philosophy for the Future

The afternoon ended with an inspiring talk by David Kelley: "A Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century." "If we want to reduce [the philosophy presented in Atlas Shrugged] to its absolute essence," Kelley declared, "I would say it consists of two fundamental points: reason and individualism." And those were the topics on which he focused.

"Atlas Shrugged is a book about the role of reason in man's life," said Kelley. "Reason as an absolute. Reason as a source of knowledge and truth, as against faith, authority, or any form of wishful thinking. Reason as a guide to action, as the standard of value, as the basis for a rational objective moral code. And above all, reason as a creative power, the source of all human achievements, from philosophy . . . to the sciences . . . to art . . . to invention and material production. On this score, one of Rand's great achievements was to dramatize the role of the mind in production, cutting through the false dichotomy between spiritual and material affairs."

On some practical level, Kelley noted, "most people understand that knowledge and thinking skills are important assets in life. But who is telling them that the exercise of these skills is a moral virtue? Not the conservatives, who may defend intellectual achievement in the academy but are nervous when people think for themselves about morality. Not the cultural left, which views rationality as a tool of oppression. Not the educators, who view the acquisition of skill as less important than social adjustment. It is Ayn Rand who offers a moral blessing on the act of thought. 'A rational process is a moral process,' she wrote in Atlas Shrugged, 'If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the action of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.'"

Thus when young people look for guidance in life, Kelley said, "Ayn Rand is still the only moralist who tells them: You have a life. It's a precious thing, and it's yours. Don't give it up. Don't waste it on things you don't value, regardless of what others demand from you. . . . Pursuing happiness, taking full responsibility for it, is a worthy and challenging task. It will take thought and effort, it will take ambition and courage, it will take everything you have, and if you succeed you will have the right to be proud, morally proud, of what you have accomplished.

"No one else today is saying these things. And that is why Atlas Shrugged is no less important today than it was forty years ago. That is why this wonderful book will continue to earn the kind of readership, and have the kind of impact, that we celebrate today."

Conclusion

At the end of the day, conference participants traveled over to the Cato Institute for a reception, then returned to the hotel for a magnificent dinner and an evening of dancing. Before the meal, however, they were treated to a dramatization of Atlas's shrugging off the burden of the world and exulting in his freedom. After dinner, Nathaniel Branden and David Kelley gave brief talks, described in the previous issue of Navigator. The evening's formal proceedings ended as a display of fireworks traced in the darkened hall the sign of the dollar.

The Institute wishes to thank all the conference participants for making "Atlas and the World" an unforgettable event. The Institute also wishes to express gratitude to its members, whose support is allowing IOS to take the ideas Ayn Rand presented in Atlas Shrugged and teach, extend, apply, and promote them as the philosophy for the twenty-first century.

Some more pictures from "Atlas and The World"