Atlas Shrugged, Part 2 Chapter 2: The Aristocracy of Pull

Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago to Books
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Summary: September 2. “The destroyer” is taking more minds, but Dagny continues to work with Daniels on the motor. Dagny learns that the cigarette is extra-terrestrial. Rearden move forward with Metal for Danagger, then Lillian collected him to attend James Taggart’s wedding to Cherryl, a Cinderella story. James calls money the root of all evil. Cherryl confronts Dagny, the man of the family. Rearden pondered the meaning of life, as Lillian made an alliance with James. d'Anconia usurped the conversation, and spoke on the meaning and value of money, and then revealed part of his plan to Rearden.

Start by reading the first-tier comments, which are all quotes of Ayn Rand (some of my favorites, some just important for other reasons). Comment on your favorite ones, or others' comments. Don't see your favorite quote? Post it in a new comment. Please reserve new comments for Ayn Rand, and your non-Rand quotes for "replies" to the quotes or discussion. (Otherwise Rand's quotes will get crowded out and pushed down into oblivion. You can help avoid this by "voting up" the Rand quotes, or at least the ones you especially like, and voting down first-tier comments that are not quotes of the featured book.)

NB: I labeled d'Anconia's speech on money by paragraph, because I know these are going to get out of order as they are voted up or down. Some I thought worth splitting up, others I skipped. If you add one that I skipped, I recommend labeling it as I have.

Atlas Shrugged was written by Ayn Rand in 1957.

My idea for this post is discussed here:

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...

All Comments

  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    He was thinking of his marriage contract with Lillian. But the implication probably applies to moochers/looters in general: "agreements" to serve others without reciprocity, even if we passively "accepted" them, are not binding.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    “He [Rearden] cried to himself: You made a contract once, now stick to it. And then he thought suddenly that in business transactions the courts of law did not recognize a contract wherein no valuable consideration had been given by one party to the other. He wondered what made him think of it. The thought seemed irrelevant. He did not pursue it.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    “He [Rearden] lost, for that moment, all the days and dogmas of his past; his concepts, his problems, his pain were wiped out; he knew only – as from a great, clear distance – that man exists for the achievement of his desires, and he wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    “The calendar in the sky beyond the window of her office said: September 2.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    This is great. Several times in this book, Ayn Rand uses contrasts and reversals like this to highlight what she sometimes calls an Inverted Morality. It's like opposite day!
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Rearden doesn't get it yet. He likes the words coming out of d'Anconia's mouth. But he hasn't connected the dots yet to be able to see what the core issue is, and why he himself is the guiltiest man in that room.
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  • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I don't think I've ever heard it taken that far; that "everything" is good if it's not for yourself. But it is an extrapolation I'm not surprised to see from JT. If selfishness is bad, then anything that's opposite of selfishness must be good. Unfortunately JT starts with the wrong basic premise.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Makes me think of current Government regulation. Uber; minimum wage, endless list of growing regulations that restrict our free and voluntary trade.
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  • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Very appropriate, given the recent release of new carbon regulations on Producers of electricity.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I wonder about this. This seems to be part of Ayn Rand’s definition of altruism. But does any altruist actually say this? Or is this just her caricature of them?
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    4 and 4B is my favorite quote from this lot.

    In the speech when he says "money" I'm not always clear if he's talking about the medium of exchange or the wealth itself. I think of it as being wealth but since money quantifies wealth, they're used interchangeably. It's kind of like "potential difference" being called "voltage" b/c we measure it in volts.

    We need to serve one another to live an affluent life with specialized products and services. As the speech says, we either serve one another for free exchanges (usually involving money) or under threats, lies, manipulation, etc.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    A conversation observed by d’Anconia and Rearden: “Well, I don’t know. All of you are crying about rising costs, it seems to be the stock complaint nowadays, it’s the usual whine of people whose profits are squeezed a little. I don’t know, we’ll have to see, we’ll have to decide whether we’ll permit you to make any profits or not.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d'Anconia to Rearden: “Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d'Anconia to Rearden: “Let me give you a hint: If the things I said are true, who is the guiltiest man in this room tonight?”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d’Anconia on Money 23: “Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d’Anconia on Money 22: “Yet these were the words [to make money] for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d’Anconia on Money 21: “If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d’Anconia on Money 20: “To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d’Anconia on Money 18: “When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men….to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    d’Anconia on Money 17: “Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values.”
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