Going Galt
One of my favorite chapters in Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, has to do with the immediate aftermath of the “Great Panic” and the effort to rebuild American society. In the novel, an outbreak of the zombie virus in China transforms into a global pandemic virtually overnight, claiming hundreds of millions of lives (eventually billions) and sending the world into a frantic panic. In the United States, with almost half the country lost to the infection, this translates into the full-on collapse of most economic, social, and public institutions.
As the U.S. government reorganizes itself and the country to combat the zombie menance, it institutes a retraining program. With major industry in tatters, the nation needs people who can use their hands: carpenters, blacksmiths, mechanics, etc. And in a country where a fairly large percentage of people are in the service industry, this means that the everyday laborers of the world became teachers. There’s a nice scene in the novel where the narrating character (voiced by Alan Alda in the audiobook) describes the efforts of surviving financial executives, Hollywood moguls and high-powered lawyers to adjust to a world where their skills are basically useless, and those of their maids and janitors are essential.
All of this is to say that this new conservative notion of “going Galt” is absolutely ridiculous. The Washington Independent’s David Weigel gives a good description of the idea, which is drawn from Ayn Rand’s famous novel Atlas Shrugged:
The plot of Rand’s novel is simple, despite its length — 1,088 pages in the current paperback edition. The United States is governed by bureaucrats, “looters” and “moochers,” who penalize and demonize creative people. The country is in decline because creative people are disappearing — they have followed the innovative John Galt to a mountain enclave, “Galt’s Gulch,” where they watch society crumble. Creativity has gone on strike (the working title of the novel was “The Strike”), and the engine of capitalism cannot run without it.
The problem with this picture of a society doomed by the disappearance of its creative class of capitalists, is that it bears laughably little resemblance to reality. Society simply isn’t driven by a class of self-directed Promethean ubermensches (and frankly, if it were, I doubt it would include folks like Rep. John Campbell, who has turned to Rand to help him understand the current situation). You can’t have a factory without workers, and you can’t have a prosperous society without the input – however small – of the average person. The economic welfare of this country depends just as much on the actions of the average American as it does on the individual investor or entrepreneur. This is an obvious point most people recognize when it comes to social movements (a leader isn’t a leader without followers), but it seems to go over a lot of folks’ head when it comes to economics.
In fact, I’d go as far as to argue that on the whole, the importance of the “creative” class is probably a bit overstated. If the creative class were go to “go Galt,” we would notice, but I think we would quickly churn along, because (as most people recognize) innovation isn’t a product intrinsic to a particular class; it can – and often does – come from anywhere. By contrast, if every single agricultural or service worker were to “go Galt,” this country would come to a grinding halt, with little hope of ever recovering.
The simple fact is that Atlas Shrugged is turgid, grossly overrated piece of middle-brow fiction tailored to the egocentric fantasies of a teenaged boy, or someone with only a cursory understanding of how people and societies work (not mutually exclusive). As a piece of political philosophy, it is piss-poor barely coherent, and as a guide for proscriptive action, it is virtually worthless. The fact that Republican lawmakers are turning to the novel for ideas and rhetoric is only indicative of the sorry state of American conservatism*. “Going Galt” is a childish “solution” for an apparently childish political movement.
*It’s also a pretty terrible strategy for electoral success; “Let’s win working-class votes by insulting working-class people as worthless to the engine of capitalism!”
I love how the people threatening to “Go Galt” aren’t producers of anything–in many cases, they have the sort of jobs that Rand so detested.
Yeah, I don’t think “creative people” are a fixed class, either. That’s hooey. Creativity can’t go on strike — somebody will always have an idea.
On the other hand, you might say the Republican Party has gone Galt lately. Do you ever get the sense that they sort of — stopped working? Just quit? I mean, Limbaugh and Steele are having a spat, complete with put-on Ebonics, for crying out loud! They’re behaving more like a spasming beheaded chicken than an opposition party. Maybe all the smart conservatives are hiding out in a secluded valley in the Rockies, exchanging solid gold coins?
Ayn Rand did not believe that creativity was the attribute of a fixed class either. Certainly great ideas can come from anywhere in society. The question is whether people will be free to act on those ideas, whether they will be rewarded or punished if they try. In a free economy, people with creative ideas are able to rise to positions where their ideas can increase the productivity of people throughout society. Block those people from rising, punish them instead of rewarding them, and it will have a detrimental effect across the board. Joe Smith can have as many great ideas as he likes, but if there’s no reward for the work it will take him to implement them, then he will keep his ideas to himself.
The issue here isn’t just the tax increase though. A three trillion increase in the budget is not going to be paid for by a slight increase in the marginal tax rate for the top 2% of taxpayers. The money will be sucked out of the economy via government borrowing or it will be created out of thin air, devaluing the dollar. When it is pumped back into the economy it will go with all kinds of strings attached to it, expanding the government’s control over the economy, and turning private companies into government bureaucracies. If there is one thing a government bureaucracy hates, it is innovation. Creativity will be stifled.
Note that in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt is not the one who causes the collapse. The collapse is being brought on by the actions of the government. Galt’s goal is simply to remove from the economy those men with the ability to slow down and temporarily stave off the collapse. The ones who would, like the horse in animal farm, keep plugging along, trying to make the impossible possible, and delaying the final reckoning. I don’t know if there are even any such men left in the economy. If they are out there, and they don’t intend to follow Galt’s example, then they will have their work cut out for them, because this collapse has been a long time coming.
I know full well that the people at the Tea Parties are not those Galts. And no one appreciates more than I do the irony of religious conservatives trading in their Bibles for copies of Atlas Shrugged. I wonder where they were five months ago when Bush began the process of nationalizing the financial industry. The hypocrisy of their sudden conversion, though, doesn’t make it any less true that Ayn Rand was right. And there have been people warning all along that statism would eventually lead to this. It’s only now that they are out of power and needing a cause to rejuvenate them that the mass of the Republican Party is willing to listen. For now.
The game Bioshock has an underwater city called Rapture that was founded by a Galt-type. It goes horribly wrong of course, and the critique picks up some of the points you mention. One of the characters notes that everyone expected to be a boss and a lot of unrest resulted when they realized that someone still had to do labor.
I think business owners should “Go Galt” on tax day to protest the call to sacrifice, to show who is important to our everyday life, and that we will not tolerate tyranny. Shut down the economy for one day.
“You can’t have a factory without workers, and you can’t have a prosperous society without the input – however small – of the average person. The economic welfare of this country depends just as much on the actions of the average American as it does on the individual investor or entrepreneur.”
You are incredibly wrong. If there is no factory to begin with, started by an individual with enough courage and spunk and drive to make it happen and dream of a goal, there will be nowhere for your average worker to work. Which is exactly what is happening in our economy today. The doers are being punished and are shutting down their plants and leaving the country by droves, and the workers are without a place to work and unemployed. Why don’t they start their own factories if they are so wonderful? Anyone can do it. Anyone with drive, that is.
Yes, I think we need craftsmen. And, come to think of it, most of the businesses that are started in the US begin when a craftsman either thinks of a new idea and wants full credit for it, or he realizes that what he does is important, more important than what he charges for his actual time. It is his MIND that he uses to take a chance and succeed. And while there will always be folks who decide to rise above the masses and take this chance, why would they want to do it when they are punished by stupidly high taxes?