Whittaker Chambers' Review of Atlas Shrugged, with commentary

Next year will be 50th anniversary of the publication of Rand's magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged." In anticipation of this anniversary, I thought I would revisit the most notorious of all the reviews of AS: that of Whittaker Chambers. This review is most notorious for allegedly equating Rand's views with Nazism ("From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!'"). The "infamous" quote, as I hope to demonstrate, is not quite as unfair as it has been made out to be. Indeed, in the context of the entire review, it doesn't seem in the least unreasonable.

The review starts by noting a few uncontroversial facts — namely, that AS was not much liked by critical opinion when it came out:

Big Sister Is Watching You
By Whittaker Chambers
December 28, 1957

Several years ago, Miss Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead. Despite a generally poor press, it is said to have sold some four hundred thousand copies. Thus, it became a wonder of the book trade of a kind that publishers dream about after taxes. So Atlas Shrugged had a first printing of one hundred thousand copies. It appears to be slowly climbing the best-seller lists.

The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. Somebody has called it: 'Excruciatingly awful.' I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the 'looters.' These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, labor, etc., etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. 'This,' she is saying in effect, 'is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.'

Although admirers of AS are not going to be happy with Chambers' opinion of the book, I see nothing wrong with it. If one believes that a novel should provide depth and insight into the human condition, then AS inevitably will appear remarkably silly.

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive story known as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.

The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. Insofar as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in boardrooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Antonio. This electrifying youth is the world's biggest copper tycoon. Another, no less electrifying, is named: Ragnar Danesjold. He becomes a twentieth-century pirate. All Miss Rand's chief heroes are also breathtakingly beautiful. So is her heroine (she is rather fetchingly vice president in charge of management of a transcontinental railroad).

So much radiant energy might seem to serve a eugenic purpose. For, in this story as in Mark Twain's, 'all the knights marry the princess' — though without benefit of clergy. Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no children — it suddenly strikes you — ever result. The possibility is never entertained. And, indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you can't fool little boys and girls with such stuff — not for long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir uneasily. The Children of Darkness are caricatures, too; and they are really oozy. But at least they are caricatures of something identifiable. Their archetypes are Left-Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people, but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies. (And neither Right nor Left, be it noted in passing, has a monopoly of such dreamers, though the horrors in their nightmares wear radically different masks and labels.)

Again, I find nothing to object to here. The line "those who think little about people as people" perfectly captures what I consider the number one failing of AS as literature. The novel, in my view, is supposed to illuminate human nature, not demean or dehumanize it.

In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as 'looters.' This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the playguy business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.

'Looters' loot because they believe in Robin Hood, and have got a lot of other people believing in him, too. Robin Hood is the author's image of absolute evil — robbing the strong (and hence good) to give to the weak (and hence no good). All 'looters' are base, envious, twisted, malignant minds, motivated wholly by greed for power, combined with the lust of the weak to tear down the strong, out of a deepseated hatred of life and secret longing for destruction and death. There happens to be a tiny (repeat: tiny) seed of truth in this. The full clinical diagnosis can be read in the pages of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Here I must break in with an aside. Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsche's 'last men,' both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes, consciously or not, from the same source.) Happily, in Atlas Shrugged (though not in life), all the Children of Darkness are utterly incompetent.

Here I have a slight disagreement with Chambers. I don't believe that Rand is heavily in debt to Nietzsche. She may have been influenced by a vulgarized misrepresentation of Nietzsche, twisted to serve her own purposes; and she also may have been influenced by some of Nietzsche's vices; but of Nietzsche's virtues, of his irony and his contempt for convictions, certainty, ideology, and rationalization, she has not the vaguest clue. Chambers comment, however, that the children of darkness are not utterly incompetent in real life is shrewd and devastating.

So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go, literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. It is then, in the book's last line, that a character traces in the air, over the desolate earth, the Sign of the Dollar, in lieu of the Sign of the Cross, and in token that a suitably prostrate mankind is at last ready, for its sins, to be redeemed from the related evils of religion and social reform (the 'mysticism of mind' and the 'mysticism of muscle').

That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rand's ideas that the good life is one which 'has resolved personal worth into exchange value,' 'has left no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous cash-payment.' The author is explicit, in fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any doubt after 1,168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot in a postscript:

'And I mean it.' But the words quoted above are those of Karl Marx. He, too, admired 'naked self-interest' (in its time and place), and for much the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies of industrial and cognate accomplishment. The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers inside the tent, and as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The Message is the thing. It is, in sum, a forthright philosophic materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system, one, intellectually, at about the stage of the oxcart, though without mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism, this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc., etc. (This book's aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned 'higher morality,' which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus, Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.

Here Chambers overreaches, thereby making his first serious mistake. It is an understandable one. We all of us try to understand the unknown by relating it to the known. Chambers, as a former communist, had a profound understanding of Marx. Although Rand can sometimes seem like a sort of anti-Marx, there are some definite parallels in thought between these two intensely ideological thinkers, particularly the way in which they each mix the pretense of realism, science, and naturalism with a utopian vision of a transformed human nature. Chambers, drawing the parallel a little too far, accuses Rand of "forthright" materialism.

The accusation of materialism has been made (with less excuse) by later critics of Rand — e.g., by Robbins and Ryan. But this is a mistake. Objectivism is actually quite hostile to some of the central positions materialism. A consistent materialist must embrace some form rigorous Darwinism, along the lines preached by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins' vision of man is not compatible with Rand's. Rand herself appears to have understand this and in her journals she expressed skepticism toward the whole idea of Darwinian evolution. After all, how could Howard Roark and John Galt ever be descended from apes? Such naturalism and realism that exists in Objectivism is purely adventitious. It's a polemical device used to beat down traditional religion. And not merely to beat down religion from an irreligious perspective, in the manner of a Voltaire or a Mencken, but from that of a competing religion. Randian man is not, as Chambers suggests, made the center of a godless world. No, Randian man is god. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem with Objectivism. Chambers continues:

At that point, in any materialism, the main possibilities open up to Man. 1) His tragic fate becomes, without God, more tragic and much lonelier. In general, the tragedy deepens according to the degree of pessimism or stoicism with which he conducts his 'hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silent universe.' Or, 2) Man's fate ceases to be tragic at all. Tragedy is bypassed by the pursuit of happiness. Tragedy is henceforth pointless. Henceforth man's fate, without God, is up to him, and to him alone. His happiness, in strict materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rand's words, 'the moral purpose of his life.'

Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as observable in a free-enterprise system, which is in practice materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as they would be under an atheist socialism, if one were ever to deliver that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure, with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit. No doubt, Miss Rand has brooded upon that little rub. Hence in part, I presume, her insistence on man as a 'heroic being With productive achievement as his noblest activity.' For, if Man's heroism (some will prefer to say: 'human dignity') no longer derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which was a root of Nietzsche's anguish, then Man becomes merely the most consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness and its replenishment his foremost activity. So Randian Man, at least in his ruling caste, has to be held 'heroic' in order not to be beastly. And this, of course, suits the author's economics and the politics that must arise from them. For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged stares stonily past them, as if this book were not what, in fact, it is, essentially — a political book. And here begins mischief. Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this world's atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.

Here Chambers is guilty of giving Rand too much credit. He assumes that Rand's cult of the ideal man arose to deal with the demoralization that accompanies any excessively hedonistic consumerism. But I doubt Rand was ever very much troubled by such concerns. Her ideal man arises from her hyperbolic romanticism and her female sexuality.

Chambers also overrates Rand's potential influence. By drawing the parallel between Marx and Rand, Chambers assumes the possibility that Rand could one day be as influential as Marx. But Objectivism simply does not have enough appeal ever to represent this sort of threat. Most human beings would not want to live in the future utopia imagined by Rand. (And Rand, with her usual disdain for the "folks next door," probably wouldn't want them to live there either.)

One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind). When she calls 'productive achievement man's noblest activity,' she means, almost exclusively, technological achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. She might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely entertain her objections. But, in sum, that is just what she means. For that is what, in reality, it works out to. And in reality, too, by contrast with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship, however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious (as Miss Rand clearly feels it to be). Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship.

Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing. The embarrassing similarities between Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?

This is Chambers most controversial assertion: that if put into practice, Rand's philosophy would inevitably bring forth some form of authoritarian or totalitarian dicatorship. But note Chambers' caveat: "Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship." He is not, as some Randites have maliciously suggested, accusing Rand of advocating dictatorship. I can imagine some apologist for Rand insisting that, far from getting Chambers off the hook, this only damns him the more. After all, he admits that Rand does not want dictatorship, but then goes on to insist that Rand's philosophy will lead to dictatorship. But to take this line or reasoning is to entirely miss Chambers' point. Chambers is contending that Rand's philosophy would inevitably lead to dictatorship, not because that's what Rand wants or advocates, but because that's what happens when fanatical individuals attempt to implement ideological systems that don't take full account of all the relevant realities. Objectivism, if given access to political power, would lapse into dictatorship because the Objectivist leaders would become frustrated with the wickedness of the subject class that were constantly sabotaging and undermining the beautiful Objectivist society they were trying to bring about and would start taking a harder and harder line. Now I don't actually agree with Chambers argument; but it is not a stupid or intellectual dishonest argument, as Rand's apologists would contend.

Something of this implication is fixed in the book's dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!' The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

Here is the most controversial section of the review. Once read in its overall context, it doesn't seem in the least unfair. Chambers is not, as is often maliciously implied, accusing Rand of advocating genocide. The phrase "To a gas chamber — go" is a metaphor used to described the extremity of Rand's contempt for those who disagree with her. And that really, in final analysis, is, as Chambers correctly states, the most striking feature of AS. I can think of no great or important work of literature that comes anywhere close to AS in the shrillness of its disdain. Those who admire the book are blind to this eviscerating contempt, because the contempt is not directed at them. Its directed at everybody else — that is, at everyone who refuses to agree with Rand. AS is a book that is difficult to admire or appreciate if you happen to disagree with the author. In this it is unique. You don't have to agree with Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Dickens or Hugo or Henry James or Proust to enjoy reading their works. These authors don't abuse, don't spout vitriolic disdain and contempt, for readers who refuse to agree with them. This is Rand's one utterly unpardonable sin.

Chambers concludes on the following note:

We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feeling at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline, and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse.

Chambers here expresses precisely the emotion faced by the intrepid critic of Rand: "sympathetic pain." It is an enormous pity that someone of Rand's genius and determination should have created something as intellectually dubious and morally contemptible as Atlas Shrugged. Rand's life, along with her philosophy, present us with the pathetic spectacle of an unedifying tragedy.

—Greg Nyquist