Maybe Ayn Rand knew something when writing “Atlas Shrugged”: the case of James Taggart
Review: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
I read “Atlas Shrugged” almost four decades ago, long before I understood alcoholism. Although I was never enthralled with author Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, her cult-like behaviors or her personal life, I delighted in her understanding of the wealth-enhancing benefits of free markets and grasp of the idea that capitalism’s fiercest opponents were often those who only pretended to be capitalists. I knew from Gabriel Kolko’s “The Triumph of Conservatism” that businessmen, under the guise of “consumer protection”or similar pretext, frequently seek favors by getting government to impose regulations that are good for them and bad for their competitors. Rand described such crony capitalists in her books, but I couldn’t possibly have understood then how accurate her depictions were, particularly of her key antagonist, James Taggart.
Many books are written by authors who don’t understand that alcoholism explains much of their subjects’ behaviors. As a result, if alcoholic drinking is mentioned at all, it’s only on the periphery. The fictional “Atlas Shrugged” similarly only occasionally describes what is clearly alcoholic drinking in Taggart, even if we might doubt that the amphetamine-using Rand fully understood that alcoholism was at the root of awful behaviors.
The first implication of alcoholic drinking can be found on page 70 as Taggart wonders, “Why do I do those things?”while remembering the drunken sex with wealthy socialite Betty Pope, who dreads waking up each day””another day and nothing to do,”suggestive of the idea that the two are co-alcoholics, neither of whom cares about the other. Sixty-four pages later, editorial writer Bertram (“money is the root of all evilâ€) Scudder is downing drinks while bashing honest non-favor-seeking businessmen and deriding property rights as “superstition.”But we need to read 261 pages before we run into Taggart drinking with the 19-year-old dime shop girl he later marries, Cherryl Brooks, who he knew “did not taste what she was drinking.”Taggart takes a “gulp”from his drink while describing his friend, fellow traveler Orren Boyle, who last night “hired himself a suite…[and] still there today, drinking himself under the table and the beds…”while otherwise talking about himself in glowing terms to the naïve young girl (whose “old man”was “never any goodâ€).
I am far from finished in my re-reading of “Atlas Shrugged,” but with crony capitalism at the root of today’s financial mess”which I intend to explain before the election in my client newsletter “Wealth Creation Strategies”–it’s an unusually timely story.
On a personal note, I decided on the name Galt Publishing for my publishing company when I realized that my admonition to codependents to stop enabling was equivalent to Rand’s exhortation, through her main protagonist John Galt, that producers stop playing host to parasites. Like the alcoholics they often are, the “Looters,”as described in Wikipedia’s List of characters in “Atlas Shrugged,” consist of men and women who use force or fraud to obtain value from those who produce it. They seek to destroy the producers despite the fact they are dependent upon them. James Taggart’s desire to destroy those on whom his life depends brings the analogy full-circle.