Atlas Shrugged The novel Atlas Shrugged was written by Russian-born writer and philosopher Ayn Rand and published in 1957 in the United States. It is a controversial and widely popular work. According to a 1991 Library of Congress report, the novel was recognized as the second most influential book after the Bible in the lives of its readers. A complicated combination of mystery, love story, social criticism, and philosophical concepts, the more than a thousand-page long novel embodies the authors passionate celebration of individualism, free will, capitalism, logic, and reason. The main theme of the novel is the role of the mind in mans existence and, as a consequence, the proof of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest. The morality of capitalism is a major theme in Atlas Shrugged, which for the first time in history offered a total defense of capitalism, not just as a practical economic system, but as the only moral social system. According to Ayn Rand, capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the prohibition of physical force from human relationships: in other words, rights can be violated only by means of force.
The Essay on Capitalism Vs Socialism Economic System
Christina HaselApril 22, 1999 Economics Has Capitalism Defeated Socialism Socialism and capitalism are not on different ends of the Economic Spectrum, but they could be, judging from the way each author defended his opinion and point of view on the subject. One article is all for capitalism, and explains why it s the best economic system. The other is totally opposite, and it justifies why ...
In a capitalist society, no man is allowed to begin the use of physical force against other people. The only function of the government, in such a society, is to protect mans rights, basically, to prevent the threat of physical force. The government acts as the performer of mans right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. Thus, the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. Set in an imaginary America in a communist world, Atlas Shrugged is a sharp critique of a corrupt communist system and its destroying effects on areas such as science, love and industrial productivity. The novels main protagonists, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, are capitalist industrialists, Atlases who carry the collapsing national economy on their backs.
Things change, however, when the mysterious John Galt begins a movement against the existing order, convinced that the parasitic society is in danger of destroying itself if its competent and hard-working members would simply stop working. But first, the protagonists must learn how to let go of the ties of obligation, responsibility, and guilt connecting them to the abusive community in all aspects of their lives. As for the character of Ragnar Danneskjold, he is a notorious pirate and one of the first strikers. He is a world famous pirate. Ragnar was from Norway, the son of a bishop and the scion of one of Norwegian most ancient, noble families. He attended Patrick Henry University where he became friends with John Galt and Francisco dAnconia. When he became a pirate, he was forsworn and excommunicated.
There is a price on his head in Norway, Portugal and Turkey. Ragnar seizes relief ships sent from the United States to Europe. As the novel goes on, Ragnar begins, for the first time, to become active in American waters, and even in Delaware Bay. According to rumor of report, his ship is better than any available in the fleets of the worlds navies. People believe that as a pirate he simply keeps the seized goods for himself. However, while many other protagonists take pride in making a personal profit from the proceeds of their creativity, Danneskjolds motivation is to return to other creative people the money which was unjustly taken away from them, especially, their income tax payments. For that purpose, Danneskjold maintains a network of informants in the US Internal Revenue Service (and possibly also those of other countries) who provide him with detailed copies of the tax receipts. In addition to other talents, Danneskjold is mentioned as being a skilful accountant.
The Essay on Force And Perfectly Elastic Question
Question no 9) A package is dropped from a helicopter moving upward at 15m/s If it takes16 sec before the package strikes the ground, how high above the ground was the package when it was released if air resistance is negligible? Ans) 1000m Question no. 11) If A -B = 0, then the vectors A and B have equal magnitudes and are directed in the opposite directions from each other. Ans) False Question ...
The profit from the goods he seizes are then deposited in accounts opened in Midas Mulligans bank in the names of various industrialists, to the amounts of the income tax taken from them, which are handed to them (in gold) upon their joining the Strikers. Kept in the background for much of the book, Danneskjold makes a personal appearance when he risks his life to meet Hank Rearden in the night and hand him a bar of gold as an advance payment, to encourage Rearden to persevere in his increasingly difficult situation. As a robber with ideological principles, Danneskjold resembles the reverse or negative of Robin Hood: he steals from the parasites and returns wealth to the productive. Danneskjold considers Robin Hood as an archenemy which he had sworn to pursue and destroy. Not Robin Hood the person, of course, as he is long dead, but his principle that it is permissible to rob the rich and give to the poor, a principle which in Danneskjolds (and Rands) view is very damaging. To AynRand, Ragnar was the avenger. Here is what she said about Danneskjold in one of the interviews: He would be the symbol of the helpless indignation that all of us feel and that any victim feels or anyone feels morally against evil. And I thought now what would justify a superior type of man into choosing a career of violence, what would be the real justifiable, psychological base for it? Enormous indignation.
Ragnars dominant quality as avenging angel was justice, in the same way as Francisco [dAnconias] dominant quality had to be enjoyment of this earth. I could understand what would motivate a man to become a pirate or to indulge in war or physical violence. So that was to be the key. A man who could not stand the rule of evil. Atlas Shrugged praises capitalist work ethics as inherently moral, since the capitalist workers gain profit proportional to their labor, skill, and merit. On the other hand, Rand criticizes communism as a corrupt system, which, basing on human equality, gives equal chances to devoted and unworthy workers. In the communist system according to Rand the damage to the economy is caused by the lack of skill and responsibility.
The Essay on Communication Between Men And Women
As everyone knows by now, there is a difference between a man and a womans outer appearance. What some people do not realize is that a man and a woman are also different in communication techniques. Generally speaking, men and women fall into two categories when dealing with communication techniques. When men talk, it is for giving information. Deborah Tannen says this informative speaking is ...
The situation can be improved through another source: the productive, successful businesses that function according to capitalist standards. The society uses the capitalists own guilt as a tool of control. At the same time, the legislature implements a number of laws and directives forcing them to participate in the system. Rand also argues that the legislative apparatus contains many loopholes, used by incompetent businessmen to eliminate competition and to profit from the work of economic “Atlases” who keep supporting the parasitic society. This is the center of hypocrisy in Atlas Shrugged: while pretending that the existing social order is interested in the benefit of the entire population, the administrative ruling class lets the community sink into decay while the looters are getting rich. At the time Rand was working on Atlas Shrugged, her greatest fear was that the United States would succumb to dangerous collectivism and end up letting in socialist ideas with its weak, if not non-existent, cultural ideology.
According to Rand, America of the 1950s did not have a social background. In the book Capitalism: An Unknown Ideal she said the countrys conservatism and liberalism were loosely defined concepts that could be stretched to mean all things to all men. Rands theoretical writings of the time describe capitalism in the United States as lacking a philosophical base, because the country did not have an original culture. In response to this lack, Rand declared that she would invent these missing cultural foundations in her fiction. Thus, Atlas Shrugged became her last expression of the Objectivist logic which she concidered to be the only way to save America. As Rand said to her biographer, Nathaniel Branden, the novel explains her philosophical principles in a dramatic action story combining metaphysics, morality, economics, politics and sex.
Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged with a sense of mission. She said, After Atlas I was no longer pressured, my lifelong assignment was over. The novel was sold over 5 million copies by 1984, but despite the enormous popular success the writer believed she had explained her philosophical views clearly enough and did not write another word of fiction for the rest of her life..
The Essay on A Favorite Place I Like To Spend Time
A Favorite Place I Like to Spend Time Sometimes, when I feel tired and exhausted, I need a place for relaxation. Although there are many places, where one can feel relaxed, such as reading in a library with a cup of coffee, or sitting in a comfortable chair, covered with a cozy warm rug, holding a cup of fresh hot tea with scents of flowers, herbs, and jasmine and looking through the window, where ...
