Alternatives to "Atlas Shrugged"

[Sam_Stone]

@Slithy_Tove

Funny how Rand, a White Russian Marx hater, has heroes who put in the real effort of envisioning and creating things, disdaining the fat cats who think their power to write regulations or provide funding entitles them to meddle with that creation. Its almost as if she was saying all value derives from labor .

Huh? Rand never said anything of the sort. She was pointing out the difference between people who actually create things, and people who use the power of government to control the people who create things. This has nothing to do with the labor theory of value, which is the idiotic notion that value is created through physical labor, regardless of what that labor is doing,

The labor theory of value was always one of the core idiocies of Marxist thinking. There is nothing intrinsic to labor that makes it valuable or which creates value. You can expend a lot of labor and create nothing of value.

[Northern_Piper]

@Sam_Stone

The labor theory of value was always one of the core idiocies of Marxist thinking. There is nothing intrinsic to labor that makes it valuable or which creates value. You can expend a lot of labor and create nothing of value.

A point Lt Col Dubois makes in the civics class, when he says that you can give all the ingredients for an apple pie to two different people. A skilled baker will make a delicious pie; an unskilled baker, expending the same labour, will make something that no-one will eat.

[Sam_Stone]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

The collectivist nature of line marriages and other arrangements is frequently referenced or alluded to, as are various agricultural collectives and interests.

These are voluntary organizations. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is partly a thought experiment on what kinds of structures might voluntarily emerge in a world without government laws and safety nets. Line and Clan marriages are private welfare systems. Large families can afford to look after the elderly and sick. They have the resources to educate children and to survive economic downturns and job losses.

They are in no way ‘collectivist’. Everyone in a line or clan marriage is there because they recognize the benefits of being in one. They can leave any time. No one is sacrificed to a collective, any more than remaining in any marriage is ‘sacrificing’ to a family collective.

Libertarians believe in voluntary organization and voluntary commitment - even binding commitment such as in contract law. Libertarianism is not some kind of amorphous gaggle of individuals all acting independently without consequence or consideration of others. Libertarians assume that structures will emerge from cooperation and the need to organize activities. For example, the market is a strong regulating force which forces people to adhere to its dictates if they want to be successful.

[Slithy_Tove]

assuming those ingredients are “given” to either baker. Or that apples drop off trees and roll into bakeries on their own, attracted by baking genius.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Sam_Stone

The labor theory of value was always one of the core idiocies of Marxist thinking. There is nothing intrinsic to labor that makes it valuable or which creates value. You can expend a lot of labor and create nothing of value.

This is really getting off topic, but it should be understood that while Marxism is often touted as a socioeconomic theory, it is really a sociopolitical theory with dialectical macroeconomic trappings that are highly idealized and haven’t really been borne out in any case in which they have been applied in the real world. Part of the problem is that Marxist thought requires an adherence to the philosophical dogma rather than pragmatic evidence, hence why Marxist (and Maoist, et cetera) regimes have often rejected objective scientific evidence in favor of pseudoscientific tenets that are in alignment with dogma but not reality, leading to famines, suppression of scientific research (and often the scientists themselves), and why the leadership of these nations almost inevitable turns toward authoritarianism. The economic failure of the Soviet Union despite the obvious material wealth and agricultural potential was largely because the leadership refused to acknowledge that rigid “Five Year Plans” and nonsensical Lamarckist agricultural theories were actually a poor way to govern. The Soviets spent a lot of ‘labor capital’ to produce almost no value, and hemorrhaged its ‘client states’ of the Warsaw Pact to maintain any degree of fiscal solvency.

Laissez-faire capitalism actually has a similar problem despite the fact that its sociopolitical philosophy is in direct opposition to Marxism; it uses the trappings of the macroeconomic theories supporting the philosophy to justify profit at any social or ecological cost under the essential assumption that growth is limitless and issues that fall under the category of “The Tragedy of the Commons” are somebody else’s problem to deal with, as evidenced by essentially every large chemical or nuclear processing corporation disposing of waste in ways that have leeched into the environment and then using massive legal resources to deny any and all responsibility. And despite the supposed philosophical merit of successful companies making a profit based upon the merits of their work and innovations, they always seem to be first in line for government handouts, subsidies, and concessions on a scale that supposed “welfare queens” could only dream of.

In short, macroeconomics is where fabulists turn when their literary ambitions are thwarted by their lack of craft (Ayn Rand notwithstanding), and socioeconomic dogma rarely if ever stands up to practical test even when it is specific even to be implemented. The limitations to implementing any wide scale economic system, aside from the realities of resource limitations and inability to predict what a ‘market’ will do over more than a short period of time, are fundamental to human nature, and in particular the impulse to look out for one’s ‘tribe’ over all other considerations. In the case of Rand, that is a tribe of one, i.e. the sole individual, as if any single individual ever did anything of significance without relying on others and standing on the shoulders of those who came before them. Rand’s protagonists are more cartoonish than anything out of DC or Marvel because they are fundamentally there to exposit on a superficial, narcissistic philosophy.

Stranger

[Sam_Stone]

@Northern_Piper

A point Lt Col Dubois makes in the civics class, when he says that you can give all the ingredients for an apple pie to two different people. A skilled baker will make a delicious pie; an unskilled baker, expending the same labour, will make something that no-one will eat.

Sure. You can also make a product which has a lot of value today, but none tomorrow. For example, you might make a very labor-intensive, very good buggy whip that everyone wsnts and will pay a lot for - until buggies go away. Then your buggy whip suddenly has no value, even though the labor content of the whip never changed.

Value is simply defined as what people are willing to exchange in other goods to have something. It is entirely context dependent. How much labor goes into a thing is simply a cost, like the material goods that go into it or the capital that has to be invested to make it. It has nothing to do with value, other than that the estimated value at the time of creation must be higher than the cost of labor or the thing won’t be made in the first place. But if the thing could be made with no labor at all, its value would not change.

[Northern_Piper]

@Sam_Stone

But if the thing could be made with no labor at all, its value would not change.

Except that if something can be made with no labour at all, its value would change, because it would be cheaper to produce and could flood the market. But that’s simply a quibble about the assessment of input costs, as you say.

[Lumpy]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Regarding the question of the o.p., “A story that decries collectivism and extolls the freedom of individuals to excel, only far less ham-fistedly than Rand did?” I would recommend Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I don’t know that it exactly fits in with what the o.p. is looking for insofar as Eric Blair was certainly not an “Objectivist” in any sense (he was an avowed democratic socialist and definitely on the leftist edge of the English Socialism movement) but the novel is very much about what happens when the rights and needs of the individual are subsumed by an autocratic government for its own bureaucratic ends regardless of what political ideology it purportedly represents.

I’d have to disagree that 1984 is a good example. Yes the world depicted therein is nightmarishly oppressive and totalitarian; but the story is largely presented from the viewpoint of a member of the Outer Party, which is organized virtually as a concentration camp for the middle class. The point is repeatedly made that the vast majority of people, the Proles, are largely beneath political consciousness and so mostly free to do what little they can in their restricted circumstances. It also doesn’t help that upon careful examination the protagonist Smith is little more than a sniveling narcissist, who was cultivated as a victim by the Thought Police precisely because having such a selfish coward as a would-be rebel made the Party look good by comparison.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Sam_Stone

But if the thing could be made with no labor at all, its value would not change.

In a vacuum, this is true. However, if a product could be made with “no labor at all” with some marginal overhead cost, and in a way that wasn’t protected by some kind of intellectual property law or via a ‘trade secret’ process, many business concerns would come along to produce it. The resulting ‘value’ (in terms of the price people are willing to pay for it) would plummet to the minimum cost of materials and distribution and, at least in a transitory period, even less than production and distribution costs as the seller provides it below cost just to clear space in inventory. This sounds great for the consumer but is fiscally unstable in ways that, if said product is some kind of economic index, can destabilize an entire economy without regulation. A perfect example of this is cryptocurrencies which are not regulated in any significant way, have no intrinsic value (despite the energy that it takes to ‘mine’ them), and for which the market valuation is entirely based upon speculation of future valuation, often driven by deliberate manipulation of speculator opinion.

Stranger

[Sam_Stone]

@Northern_Piper

Except that if something can be made with no labour at all, its value would change, because it would be cheaper to produce and could flood the market. But that’s simply a quibble about the assessment of input costs, as you say.

You could exchange labor for capital without a change in manufacturing cost. In fact, it’s often the case that capital investment is made in things like automation to improve the quality and value of a product while reducing the labor required. This would be a case where lowing the amount of labor actually increases the value of the product.

The history of mechanization and automation is full of examples like this. For example, America lagged Japan in auto factory automation, so Japan for a time made higher quality, higher valued cars that also required less labor to manufacture. The cars weren’t cheaper, because the cost of capital investment offset the savings in labor, but they were higher quality due to more repeatable processes.

[Sam_Stone]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

In a vacuum, this is true. However, if a product could be made with “no labor at all” with some marginal overhead cost, and in a way that wasn’t protected by some kind of intellectual property law or via a ‘trade secret’ process, many business concerns would come along to produce it.

Again, cost of labor is only one input to the cost of something. Imagine that you could completely automate a factory to produce products with no labor, but the amortized cost of the automation is exactly the same as the labor input. You might do this for quality purposes. The product then costs the same to make, has higher value, yet requires less or no labor. It’s easy to come up with examples where a reduction in labor actually increases product value. It happens all the time.

Labor is simply one cost of production, among many others. In Marx’s time it was easier to confuse labor with value, because most items were heavily labor dependent. In the age of automation and capital-intensive manufacturing it’s much easier to see the flaws in that thinking.

[Andy_L]

There’s a lot of irony in MIAHM - the libertarian society that the Lunies appear to have is enforced by armed thugs who resist any attempt to create any other kind of government. Once the Authority (significant name) is overthrown, and the Lunies are free to create whatever kind of government they chose, they chose one that is virtually identical to the America of the 1960s - in spite of the speeches by a universally respected hero of the Revolution (the Professor).

Note in Heinlein’s “Coventry,” the hero expects the government-free society of the Coventry to be a libertarian paradise - but it’s an areas divided up between two different kinds of dictatorship and a more free-wheeling area where our hero is stripped of all his property almost immediately by guys with more guns than him. Meanwhile, the oppressive society outside Coventry has more real freedom than any of Coventry lands - our hero chose exile because he insisted on his right to punch someone who insulted him.

[Lumpy]

@Sam_Stone

In Marx’s time it was easier to confuse labor with value, because most items were heavily labor dependent. In the age of automation and capital-intensive manufacturing it’s much easier to see the flaws in that thinking.

More precisely, “labor” meant the dedicated time and attention of a workman, not necessarily someone performing muscular work. Mechanization at first vastly increased the output per worker but was still as “labor” intensive as ever in terms of human beings having to guide the whole process. What Marx and others failed to foresee was the mechanization not just of brawn but of brains too; the increasing autonomy of industrial production machinery.

[bobsmom101]

Thank you for the detailed analysis! When I read Heinlein in my youth, it was frustrating to not be able to figure out exactly where his political allegience lay. Now I’m starting to see why.

[Sam_Stone]

@Lumpy

More precisely, “labor” meant the dedicated time and attention of a workman, not necessarily someone performing muscular work.

Well yeah, that’s always been clear. But you can be the most skilled worker in the world, and still labor over something that absolutely no one wants, and therefore has no value.

Mechanization at first vastly increased the output per worker but was still as “labor” intensive as ever in terms of human beings having to guide the whole process.

No it wasn’t. Or rather, it rarely was like that. Early mechanization was aimed at textiles and agriculture, and it absolutely reduced the total number of people required. There’s a reason the Luddites were unhappy with automated looms. Since the dawn of mechanization of agriculture the number of people required to grow and deliver food has plummeted, and this began happening very early.

Today, an assembly line that might once have had fifty people on it might now have only two or three managing the process.

What Marx and others failed to foresee was the mechanization not just of brawn but of brains too; the increasing autonomy of industrial production machinery.

What Marx really failed to understand was the importance of capital investment and organization, which is what Capitalists bring to the table. In the simplistic labor theory of value, laborers are ‘exploited’ if a good sells for more than the cost of labor and they don’t share in the profit. This ‘excess’ profit, in Marx’s wordview, represents the theft of value from the labor force, since the value of the product solely derives from its labor input.

We know how division of labor can improve productivity - Adam Smith wrote about pin factories in the 1700’s. We also kmow that value is determined by what people want and need, and how products slot into people’s hierarchy of values. What Marx dismissed was the value of discovering what people need through a market system, and the value of concentrated capital in improving the productivity of workers. He also didn’t understand or didn’t address the cost of risk and why people need to be rewarded for taking risks with their capital.

As an individual auto worker, imagine what your labor would be worth if you attempted to design, build, and sell a car yourself. If it were even possible, it’s almost a certainty that you would mke far less than minimum wage doing it. You’d probably starve in the attempt, and if you managed to build a car it would almost certainly suck.

But if you get a job in an auto company, your labor will be magnified by millions of dollars of equipment you didn’t have to pay for, and by the large chain of people and processes that specialize in design, sales, supply-chain procurement, people management, etc. Somebody figured out what cars the public wants, raised the capital to create a company to build them, hired the roght people to carry out specialized tasks and paid them regardless of whether the product would succeed or not, and accepted the risks to their own wealth of getting any of it wrong.

You can make probably a hundred times as much per hour working in that capitalist-created enterprise than you could on your own, and in return the people who provided all the things that magnified your labor take their own cut. No one is being exploited. No labor is being stolen. And if it turns out that the labor output of the company produces something no one wants, no value is created and the capitalist goes broke. You get to keep the money you were paid for your services.

Marx didn’t really get that. Or rather, he chose not to consider it because it conflicted with his core belief that capitalists are exploiters of labor.

[nelliebly]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Note, this isn’t just a problem with bad writers (and Ayn Rand, for all she is revered by her followers, is a terrible writer); no less than John Steinbeck fell into this same trap, notably in The Grapes of Wrath , where he spends whole chapters railing against the banks, the landowners, et cetera, sounding every bit like a budding Millennial Marxist. Regardless of whether you agree with the screeds or not, it breaks the flow of what is otherwise a very engaging book of epic scope.

Did you read The Grapes of Wrath in high school? If so, I wish you’d had a better English teacher, one who would have helped you see that the intercalary chapters are not rants that interrupt the Joad’s story. Far from it. Steinbeck, who’d lived with migrants and traveled with them from Oklahoma to California, was committed to getting the whole story out. Each intercalary chapter is connected to the Joad’s situation in the preceding and succeeding chapter and puts it into the larger context of the lives of migrant workers.

The chapter on bankers is far from a rant. It’s a vivid vignette. It doesn’t vilify bankers, which is what a rant would do. In fact, it’s a pretty sympathetic portrayal. And all the intercalary chapters are like that. Steinbeck meant them to “hit the reader below the belt.” He didn’t win the Pulitzer despite those chapters; they were part of the reason he won.

Sorry if this is off-topic. I loved the book, and I guess the teacher in me is saddened when its careful structure is misconstrued.

[mikecurtis]

@nelliebly

Sorry if this is off-topic. I loved the book, and I guess the teacher in me is saddened when its careful structure is misconstrued.

Well, we all get different things from literature (all art really).
I had a pretty good literature teacher in high school, and she made reading very interesting while still teaching us the often tedious methods and structures of novels. And I’ve had socialist leanings from the beginning, so you would think I would be an ideal candidate to really enjoy The Grapes of Wrath but I, too found it, at times interminable. Not every great work is great for everyone all the time.

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@nelliebly

The chapter on bankers is far from a rant. It’s a vivid vignette. It doesn’t vilify bankers, which is what a rant would do. In fact, it’s a pretty sympathetic portrayal. And all the intercalary chapters are like that. Steinbeck meant them to “hit the reader below the belt.” He didn’t win the Pulitzer despite those chapters; they were part of the reason he won.

Sorry if this is off-topic. I loved the book, and I guess the teacher in me is saddened when its careful structure is misconstrued.

No, I understand the structure, and Steinbeck’s purpose behind it, which is exactly the point; by interrupting the story with these intercalary chapters, the narrative flow of what is an epic tale told in humanistic proportions–the Joads are fleeing starvation and servitude in the same way the Jews of Egypt fled the pharaohs of Egypt (at least, according Exodus, and notwithstanding the ahistorical nature of the story, Steinbeck loved his Biblical allegories)–is broken repeatedly. As a treatise on the ills of rampant capitalism without social conscience (and in which, as you point out, Steinbeck recognizes that the bankers holding mortgages of failing farms are just as much pawns of the system as the farmers), it is a fine piece of work.

But as literature, it suffers in these interludes despite the quality of the writing because they are the writer stopping to give the reader a lecture on socioeconomics instead of telling the story. Once or twice would have been okay, but Steinbeck does it repeatedly because his purpose is to illustrate the problems, and it pulls the reader away from the plight of the Joads. The ending scene of the book has far more emotional resonance for the reader than any of the lectures that Steinbeck exposits, and that is because Steinbeck is a masterful writer, but his insistence on spelling everything out for the reader, while perfectly understandable in the sense of political activism, is not good storytelling. It won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction because the prize is about more than just storytelling; the Pulitzer Board has a clear trend of selecting for ideological content as much as for literary merit, although I think an argument could be made that the novel has a surfeit of both.

As it happens, Steinbeck is one of my favorite writers, and while this is not my pick as his best work, I actually read it before it was assigned in school (9th grade as I recall), which was fortunate because the school board directed teachers to place a sticker obscuring the concluding paragraph of the books provided by the school because Rose of Sharon feeding a starving man from her breast was judged to be “obscene”. I actually think I didn’t really understand the paragraph the first time I read it but this caused me to go back and reread my personal copy and ponder it, which may have been the first time I really thought deeply about themes. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that Steinbeck was a bad writer for the structure of The Grapes of Wrath, and he clearly did it with intention, but rather it is an example of how trying to explicitly express a political message in a work of literature will compromise the storytelling even when the writer is talented. Ayn Rand, of course, was a talentless hack and couldn’t graceful intertwine ideological themes into a story if someone were holding a gun to her head.

Stranger

[Northern_Piper]

@bobsmom101

Thank you for the detailed analysis! When I read Heinlein in my youth, it was frustrating to not be able to figure out exactly where his political allegience lay. Now I’m starting to see why.

You’re welcome; glad you liked it.

But bear in mind, the society that an imaginative author draws is not necessarily the expression of the author’s personal beliefs. I think Heinlein was sympathetic to both views, even though they were in fundamental conflict, and in both cases was playing a massive “what if…?” exploration.

Just like Shakespeare : I really don’t think that the prosperous playwright who retired with all his money to Stratford and bought up houses and real estate really believed that we should kill all the lawyers. Those are the chaps who did all the conveyancing of real estate, after all.

But it was important for that particular play to put those words in a character’s mouth, and to play “what if…?”

[nelliebly]

I was well aware of the Biblical parallels but didn’t want to belabor the detour from the thread.

@Stranger_On_A_Train

but rather it is an example of how trying to explicitly express a political message in a work of literature will compromise the storytelling even when the writer is talented.

Most critics disagree with you. But to each their own.