Sisyphus Shrugged

By Robert Peate

"I look forward to reading it [Sisyphus Shrugged] and sharing it with my staff and colleagues in Congress."
—Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

Ayn Rand was wrong.

Atlas Shrugged is wrong.

Here is not only why but what to do about it.

Includes the 2017 essay "Altruism: Coercion for the Common Good".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Peate
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393172437

Book preview

by Robert Peate

First Four Major Works

The Recovery

Sisyphus Shrugged

Money’s Men

The Sun Children

Collections

Mister Negative and Other Stories

Mister Positive and Other Stories

The War and Other Pieces

The Time Before: Stories IV

Increasingly Incoherent Departures from the Norm

The Black Book

Opposite Days

8

Notes from Quarantine

PRAISE FOR THE RECOVERY

A great read.  He presents a very plausible alternative to the ‘miracle’ story of Jesus’s resurrection and his distaste for what became of his legacy. . . . I wish every middle or high school would put on this play for their Easter pageant.

—Dana Ross

It certainly will throw some of the straight-laced into an uproar.  (Being the kind of person I am, I sometimes enjoy throwing the straight-laced into an uproar.)

—Bill Sifferle

This is the kind of fiction that shakes people up.  It challenges them right down to the core, which in my opinion is how things should be. My son’s response was, ‘This will piss some people off.’  But he sees the possibility of truth in the fiction.

—Cyndi Bowdish Noyes

PRAISE FOR SISYPHUS SHRUGGED

"R obert, reading  Sisyphus Shrugged  and enjoying it greatly, though it scares the hell out of me.  Every day, politics gets closer to the reality you project, as concerns about the next election emerge."

—Bob Cone,

inventor of photographic emulsion Liquid Light

"MY FAVORITE DISCOVERY with Sisyphus Shrugged is the very philosophy it advocates, a refutation of the rule of free-market capitalism that doesn’t retreat automatically into communism.  In my mind, both are just opposite sides of the same evil coin.  Peate doesn’t take the easy route of painting the world exclusively in black and white with an either-or choice as to which extremist side is which color.  He takes the much more difficult road of sifting through the shades of grey and rainbow colors that make up the real world, and challenges us to assemble our own coin in a way that works best.  Not perfectly, but better than the simplistic formulas that characterize so much of the political Right and Left.

"Also refreshing is Peate’s nuanced and realistic exploration of the role of force and violence in revolutions and social change.  Rather than automatically retreating to the white robe of pacifism, he incorporates the violence that is inevitably committed by the adherents of both sides, and explores the difficult path of situational ethics in the midst of activism. It’s this very lack of self-righteousness and simplistic prescriptions in the story that distinguishes it from Rand’s opus.  People run the gamut from heroes to flawed and misguided humans to psychopathic monsters and don’t always stay neatly in a single category.  In the personal as well as the political, Peate’s characters’ task is to move from a dystopian status quo without falling into the opposite extreme, to create traction on the slippery slopes and find compromise and middle ground.  And while the result is a location definitely left-of-center, it avoids simplistic solutions and paper-doll worlds that too often characterize political fiction.

"It is for these reasons that I believe the Left, just as much as the Right, needs to read Sisyphus Shrugged."

—Beverly Garside, author of Objectivist dystopia I and You

YES, THE PROTAGONIST, Evelyn Riley, is one of the strongest female leads in the game—more Peggy Carter than Isabella Swan, no doubt about it.  But her XX status isn't used to bolster the plot—if anything, her character transcends gender by making decisions based on possible outcome, rather than loyalty to an image generated for either other characters or readers.  She’s not TRYING to be a role model or a heroine . . . she just is one.  What truly sets Evelyn apart from her current literary peers, in my opinion, is she doesn't lead with her ego, which isn't to say she was written without one; it just takes a back seat to what truly motivates her in this corporate dystopia.

—Danielle Ophelia Southcott

"THIS IS NOT THE SORT of story where you’re meant to lose yourself in its world and take a mental vacation from your everyday existence—this is meant to be relevant to you, it is meant to make you think about ideas and their impact on your real life. . . .

"Even if you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged this novel stands on its own, and everything necessary to understand the plot and its characters is there.  To be honest, I read the whole thing in a day.  I found it to be entertaining and an interesting take on a bit of intellectual territory that includes philosophy, economics, politics, and ethics."

—Martin Brzezinski

"WEDNESDAY TALK RADIO on KBOO this morning had about 30 percent more callers than usual, all wanting to talk about Ayn Rand and Robert Peate’s new novel taking off from her book  Atlas Shrugged.  Wild!"

—Lisa Loving, KBOO-FM

"OVERHEARD IN THE BOOKSTORE, from a person holding Sisyphus Shrugged: ‘Wow, this is intriguing.  Daunting, but intriguing.’

We chatted about Ayn Rand and Fiction of Ideas. Book gone.

—Néna Rawdah, Saint Johns Booksellers

"IF YOU HAVE EVER READ Atlas Shrugged, whether you liked it or not, you really should read this book.

"I was fortunate to completely avoid the writings of Ayn Rand during my formative years.  I slogged through Atlas Shrugged painful page by painful page so that I would have the background from which to read this book.  Rand’s bible for the greedy and narcissistic self-styled Libertarians of present-day politics has too much influence to be ignored. After nearly drowning in the utter ‘wrongness’ of Objectivist philosophy for 1,000 pages, I expected Peate to take the easy path of ridicule and humor to demolish her childish and naïve ideas.  Instead, he treats her and her protagonists with respect, at times elucidating her own points more effectively than she did.  Then he turns around and eviscerates her logic at every turn using the reason and the hearts of his own characters (it is important to note that Rand’s characters appear to completely lack the latter.  Even sex is about power for Dagny).  Peate has some anachronistic grammatical rules that he follows, and he leads the reader a bit much by the hand, but he is a far better writer than Rand, and tells a good story, while effectively rebutting her entire philosophy.  This book is a must-read for not only those who already reject Rand but also for those who embrace her."

—David Scott Moyer

I REALLY LIKE YOUR quote ‘I live for Humanity, and I ask Humanity to live for me (and for everyone else).’  That's the way it should be.

—Paul Buchheit, DePaul University

SEEMS LIKE IT’S DESTINY that it should be read by future generations who just shake their heads in disbelief that we just let it all happen.

—Eric S. Witt

"THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION and is on the same believability level as Atlas.  Your willing suspension of disbelief will get a workout, but no more than reading Ian Fleming, Dan Brown, or Ayn Rand. The story is well written, the plot is well thought out, the characters are believable, and the reading was very enjoyable.  And well, it was a great book to read this Labor Day weekend.

Happy Dagny came out of it smarter too.

—Joseph Spuckler

I SHOWED IT TO WIFE Linda, and she screamed so loudly she hurt my ears (my left ear is particularly sensitive, and she keeps forgetting this).

—David E. Block

YOUR ‘AGREE WITH US or starve (or walk or whatever)’ extortion is so fucked up as to be truly sick, jack ass.

—James Stevens Valliant,

author of The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics:

the Case Against the Brandens

(he commented on Sisyphus Shrugged without having read it)

COMMUNIST UTOPIA . . . hard-left propaganda.

—Ken V. Krawchuk, author of Atlas Snubbed

(at least he read Sisyphus Shrugged before commenting on it)

"HEY ROBERT PEATE, I just wanted to share that my family and I are really enjoying Sisyphus Shrugged.  We are waiting out a storm, in a nomad's ger, in a remote part of Mongolia.  I am reading your book aloud to everyone, and we are all finding your storytelling captivating, thank you!"

—Frank Mosher,

writing from Elsen Tasarhai Bayangovi Camp

in central Mongolia

It’s extraordinarily cathartic to read.

—Sandra Fulbright-Myers

PRAISE FOR Money’s Men

I sat there reading Peate’s words, nodding my head in both agreement and revulsion, with tears in my eyes. ‘They’ would probably never express their thoughts this way, mostly because they either wouldn't or couldn’t—but what Mr. Peate articulated in that short passage is EXACTLY what they are doing.

—Denise Johnson,

beta reader

"IT'S A LEVEL OF SOPHISTICATION that rises above your source of inspiration. A lot of speculative fiction is very naïve in that way, too wrapped up in the vision to see that in real life there will be opposition.  That is the struggle: how do we get from here to there?

"Rand seemed to think that if a few millionaires withdrew their support from the economy we dumb brutes wouldn't be able to cope.  I think she underestimates human potential.

"I think the scenes of extremism go quite a bit beyond the violence in Sisyphus Shrugged and really work to illustrate where the logic behind the various points of view would lead: some willing to die, some willing to kill.  The poetic justice of the death by boulder is a great image."

—Martin Brzezinski

DEDICATION

For you

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Ifirst heard of Ayn Rand during my freshman year of university, from my suitemate David E. Block. He just mentioned her in passing. At times over the years since I heard more and more, until I got the gist that she was the Antichrist to the Left, the Second Coming of Dollar-Sign Jesus to the Right. Being a liberal Democrat, I avoided her. I expected, based on the comments I had seen, that Ayn Rand would be all sorts of impressive. I was intimidated by her reputation.

In 2012, I got the bright idea to take her head on. I then felt it was my duty to go on offense, to beat her at her own game. As she would say, I would do it all myself: I would succeed based on the merit or worth of my own ideas and work. That’s fair, right?

I had met two different teachers who had her books on their classroom shelves. I was curious. I read the backs of her book covers. I rented the 2011 movie Atlas Shrugged Part One (and, later, Part Two). I began reading Atlas Shrugged and writing Sisyphus Shrugged simultaneously. When I began reading Rand, I felt much less intimidated. It was immediately apparent, when I turned my full attention to her, that whatever positive reputation she enjoyed (Goddess of the Marketplace, for example) was a result of endless promotion of her work by those with an agenda to promote it, not necessarily a reflection of her actual merit. An honest appraisal of Rand’s work, which I endeavoured and am still endeavouring to make, did and does not seem to justify her image. Her reputation seems to boil down to her depictions of single-minded resourcefulness that never asks for or gives help, as if not needing or being needed by anyone is somehow a good thing.

Over the years, I had also read many criticisms of Rand’s ideas and writing, such as this representative comment from Democratic Underground user Telly Savalas, posted on that site on October 4, 2005:

Furthermore, don’t you think she could go to more effort to be a bit more terse? I mean, Jesus Christ, I’ve seen bumper stickers that are more nuanced than one of her novels, so I don’t see why she can’t be more succinct in the exposition of her cheap little ‘ideas’. Does it really take an 800-page novel to say, ‘Guvmint bad, capitalism good’?

During the seven months from 2012 to 2013 that I passed writing this work, I read excerpts of Atlas Shrugged to my wife.  In response to the disturbingly repressed Dagny has sex for the first time scene, she said, What a fat load of disgusting drivel that book is. You couldn’t pay me to read it. This reaction seemed to be representative. My friend Dave Moyer called Rand’s last novel the Narcissistic Sociopaths’ Bible, which I found both concise and apt. He added, I love how, at the very beginning, when she brings in Rearden, she starts him off working in a steel mill, and then, magically, he owns it in fifteen years. How he got there doesn’t matter. What a crock of shit. She has these allegedly self-made people but doesn’t mention how they are made. Railroads. Hmm. Government land grants, anyone?[1]

On the other end of the admiration spectrum, we have this rather disturbing assessment, in a 1957 letter to the editor of the New York Times, from one of the men who would preside over the largest upward redistribution of wealth in American history, eventual Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Those familiar with Rand are probably familiar with this letter, but I think it bears repeating here:

TO THE EDITOR:

Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. Mister Hicks suspiciously wonders about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work. This reader wonders about a person who finds unrelenting justice personally disturbing.

ALAN GREENSPAN,

NEW YORK

THERE ARE TWO LAYERS here.

The Soviets took the family pharmacy and apartment away from Ayn Rand’s father, devastating the family and Rand forever. They kicked her and others out of university for having been bourgeois, reinstating them only due to protests from visiting scientists. Rand knew the pain of abusive government. Her entire oeuvre is a protest against the Soviet Union and a celebration of the free businessperson, the honest businessperson. Atlas Shrugged is a revenge fantasy upon the Soviet Union, depicting its injustices and pains, the abuses it perpetrated and the corruptions it fostered. As such, it is historically interesting. The book is even entertaining, as when Francisco d’Anconia destroys the fortunes of the corrupt businessmen and -women at the top of society (most Rand admirers ignore her objection to corrupt business).  This scene is especially delicious in that it exposes their hypocrisy in benefiting from foreign business while destroying domestic business. Mister Greenspan apparently refers to this type of injustice—his right-wing heroes defeating the forces of left-wing evil—because he can see no farther.

Rand loves America for its freedom, its capitalism, but she fears a slide into communism—well, who can blame her? The problem is that she equates Western socialism with communism, so traumatised by communism that she sees it wherever she looks, and that is the injustice, the larger layer, the bigger problem of the book. She sees black and white (her own particular brands of black and white), no grey. She does not understand that it is not either or. To effect her Soviet revenge fantasy, Rand paints absurd caricatures only to shoot them down, caricatures no one could admire, caricatures that might have had some basis in the Soviet Union of her youth but which no one would recognize as representing real Americans. I should take this moment to mention there is a great deal of material in Atlas Shrugged I did not rebut, considering it as I did beneath rebuttal, all depictions of liberals as lacking values, beliefs, or certitude about anything, for example. The absurd does not require rebuttal.  (That said, she does depict people deserving to die for caring more about their children than about the welfare of the rich.)

So: justice within the story against abusers and hypocrites, injustice within the story by suggesting that American society and human nature are the ways she depicts—and for wishing death upon liberals. If she had set her tale in a fictional country, no one would have any complaint with her fantasy excepting that it would be a rather dark fantasy. Because she set her Soviet revenge fantasy in America, many have taken it as something more than that. Hate the Soviet Union, go ahead! The problem is that Rand thought America was on the same road as the Soviet Union, wrote stories reflecting this view, and influenced generations to think American liberalism was akin to totalitarian dictatorship.[2]  To think this is to hold a skewed world view, to say the least.  To act on such a false view is to cause harm.

Perhaps the most important realization I made when reading the book is that not only is it about the Soviet Union but the prophecy of Atlas Shrugged came true: the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Incompetence and corruption fall under their own weight. Who knew? I only regret that Rand didn’t live to see that collapse; imagine the resolution the sight of it would have provided her. It’s a shame Reagan’s arms buildup gave the USSR the unifying principle it needed to stave off collapse for a decade. I base that assessment on my reading of Boris Yeltsin’s autobiography Against the Grain (1989), which I recommend.

The case of Atlas Shrugged is sad for several reasons, really: if she had just set it in the Soviet Union, it would have been a great story of liberation from the Soviet oppressors. I suppose she saw it as a cautionary tale. Instead it reads as an insult. How dare you compare America to the Soviet Union? I feel like demanding. How dare you insult my liberalism? How dare you suggest I condone the abuses of dictatorship because you do not understand the fair and legitimate demands of any civilized society? What is wrong with you? Well, I know what is wrong with Rand: Soviet trauma. That does not mean, however, that the harm her work has caused must not be addressed.

Rand, tragic heroine, spent her life fighting phantoms and equating my kind—liberals—with those phantoms, but those who oppressed her home country were not liberals.[3] The Soviets were liars who spouted Marxism for their own profit at the expense of the workers. That is certainly not Marx’ ideal. To think it is is to misunderstand Marx.

My mission was to respond to Rand’s vision with my own in the context of an entertaining story.  What I came up with was Sisyphus Shrugged.  I asked myself, Who are the truly indispensable ones here: the business leaders or the workers?  What would happen if labor went on strike?

When I began reading Atlas Shrugged, what struck me was that, despite all the criticism of Rand’s prose I had seen from those driven to vexation by her premises, the book was well written from a technical standpoint. Yes, there were some logical leaps, but that is not the same thing. Her plot is slow but well-thought out. (A part of me feels the plot of Atlas Shrugged seems to be, Woman walks about feeling superior to everyone except those she deems worthy of casual sex, but I realize there is more to it than that. Rand is saying that we must be true to ourselves and pursue our own goals, even if others disapprove. That is not the problem with the book. The problem with the book is that she thinks pursuing reason and standing up for oneself means never being taxed or regulated.) Her pacing is slow, but this is consciously designed to build tension and allow for a full disposition of her views. Her sentence structure is good. (She does write some unforgivable sentences, despite her near-native English fluency, for example in Part One Chapter VII: The sincerity of his voice was genuine. Really? No editor caught that?) Rand’s views aside, I found her Who made this motor? and Who is John Galt? mysteries—and the disappearances of key characters—original and entertaining. Dagny’s search for the missing designer of the static motor is gripping enough. Rand ties her intersecting plot lines together well, and some of her scenes are masterfully written. It is what she is saying that is the problem. I do not need to knock a writer’s skill when it is sufficient to knock what she is saying. She is saying that honest private economic leaders are heroes and everyone else is on a continuum of utility to those leaders; nothing and no one matters except in relation to private economic leadership. If you are a private economic leader, great; if you serve a private economic leader, you are less admirable but still useful; if you disdain honest private economic leaders, you are scum. She is saying these things in a skillfully presented way. (Rand also advocates the truthful presentation of science, which supposedly lends credence to her other positions. Of course, she equates public funding with dishonesty.) The popularity of her work to this day attests to her skill, deny it though we might wish to do. I found many of her ideas ridiculous, but I also found her eloquent enough to think to myself, She is a more articulate prophet of neoconservatism than the entire current Republican Party. That’s pathetic, if you ask me. (I am sure the Right would say, Only someone who lived under the Soviets can fully articulate how evil collectivism is. I am sure the Right would say that, but I haven’t heard it say that yet. No, the Right fancies itself somewhat well spoken. Note to the Right: start saying that. I have given you your excuse for being inarticulate.)

In short, Atlas Shrugged’s strengths are an astounding degree of detail, a plot structure that is as advanced as can be (even amazing in its complexity and planning), and dialogue that, though at times stiff and unnatural, is for the most part expertly written. That is the truth. The book’s weaknesses are its glacial pace, its logical and moral flaws, and above all its tone. It is the tone that accounts for its influence. Rand writes in the absolutes of a Sith lord, which explains both the devotion and the outrage.[4] Thou shalt not disagree with me, her pages command with near-Papal infallibility, prompting obedience and revolt in equal measure.

We must remember that her tone is a response to the fear and pain instilled in her at an early age.

Criticism of Rand’s writing is not limited to her political opponents. My wife’s cousin Billie Fox said to me, "Because I am a conservative, a lot of people suggested Ayn Rand to me. I couldn’t even finish Atlas Shrugged. She had the worst characters. They didn’t come across as human, rather incarnations of ideologies or ideas, like some modern incarnation of mystery plays." I have found this to be a common complaint, one with which I agree. Despite her technical prose and plotting skills, Rand’s characters are one-dimensional for the most part. Dagny and Hank have two dimensions: business and sex. They mention love but do not seem to feel it much. It says something when even your political allies condemn your writing.

Speaking of sex and love, it is clear to me from reading Atlas Shrugged that to Alisa Ayn Rand Rosenbaum everything is power. The love in her story is the love of power and of the values her characters share (which boil down to competence at business; no obligation to anyone else; and rejection of most generosity as weakness or corruption). This is remarkable. I have a question for you, dear reader: have you ever said to anyone, Others adore you; I’m so turned on? Henry Kissinger said that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac, but you’d think in writing a novel a writer could convey some attraction toward specific qualities of a person, rather than just what she or he represents or how others view her or him. Oh, that’s right: according to Rand, we want to have sex with our own values, not other human beings. Tell that to every person who ever regretted a romance. We do not always end up with those whose values we respect, those whose values represent our own. Perhaps we should, I can agree with her on that. I happen to value not only reason and high standards but compassion and generosity. I consider these all to be signs of admirable morality.

All this said, Atlas Shrugged is a wonderful book, a priceless record of a sociopathology that says the unrestrained yet moral capitalist is the paragon of our time. That is certainly a novel idea. It is as if she does not notice the morality of capitalism from the Industrial Revolution on. Most fascinating to me, in this work and others, Ayn depicts altruism (as she defines it) as the philosophy of corruption, folly, and laziness. To espouse altruism is to lie to cover looting or mooching, predation or parasitism. Those who advocate for the poor don’t really care about them but want simply to line their own pockets. Those who advocate for regulation don’t really want to prevent business abuses but want simply to abuse businesses, like Soviet tyrants. A great deal of Atlas Shrugged, it must be said, is nothing more than straw-man character assassination. Every time a character in Atlas Shrugged makes an altruistic statement on behalf of society, workers, or anyone else, it is to cover a failing. I take from this that we are to extrapolate from this that any time someone expresses good it is really evil. Freedom is slavery, et cetera.[5]  The poor, of course, are to blame for their own poverty, as a result of their lifestyle choice, in the immortal words of Dick Cheney. We cannot even say the poor are suffering. They must be content, because if they weren’t, they would simply choose not to be poor, since we live in a land of perfectly equal opportunity for all. It’s perfectly convenient, and reading this work explains much. Atlas Shrugged is the perverse right-wing vision laid out in unself-reflective black and white. Of course it has no bearing on reality, but this vision motivates many regardless of reality.

Rand has the whole World backward but is obliged to weave her tapestry very carefully to portray her situations and characters the one and only way that will serve her purposes. It’s an amazing wonder anyone takes her slanted work seriously.  Actually, what’s amazing is not that Rand’s work is slanted, it’s that she announces her slant.  She wants to have her hero and heroine say certain things, so she arranges her scenes so they can say these things, and then she announces that the characters with whom they will interact are biased or lacking in certain ways . . . just so her main characters can attack those ways.  My favorite example occurs in the setup of the scene depicting the press conference announcing the John Galt Line/Rearden partnership. Rand describes the reporters there thus:

The reporters who came to the press conference in the office of the John Galt Line were young men who had been trained to think that their job consisted in concealing from the world the nature of its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public figure who made utterances about the public good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning. It was their daily job to sling words together in any combination they pleased, so long as the words did not fall into a sequence saying anything specific. They could not understand the interview now being given to them.

Wham! The perfect setup. Now, when Hank Rearden admits that he charges far less than he could for Rearden Metal, he is a saint by comparison with these jackals. Rand specializes in moral relativism. To make my heroes heroic, I will put them up against the most ridiculous and least realistic pack of unthinking questioners ever imagined, she seems to say. Of course, in the real world, journalists vie to compete, to sell copy. They want to ask penetrating questions. They want to appeal to readers. Also, no group is uniform. Where are the older reporters? In any group, at least one person thinks differently. She paints with too broad a brush—because not only does it serve her interests to do so, that is the only way she can serve her interests. One wonders if, even in 1957, anyone read this scene and imagined that actual journalists thought so little, engaged in such immoral pandering to liars en masse, truly had no experience with honest businesspeople (for that is what Dagny and Hank are; it’s most of the other characters that are ridiculous). It’s straw man-setup, attack, over and over.  But the announcement of the reporters’ characters is what amazes me.  Now I think anyone who admires Rand simply likes being spoon fed. (Rand provides much detail of places, people, and things that are unnecessary to her story, too, also leading to this conclusion. Her true believers do not want to have to think, it seems to me.)

I do realize that Rand’s slant is also designed to make points that would not require slants if they were reasonable. For example, her depiction of these journalists as corrupt liars. Well, that’s simply not honest. Sometimes a clear contrast is required to illustrate a point, so I could forgive the slanting as a technique if her positions were reasonable. The problem is they are not. Are journalists as a group nothing more than corrupt liars? Instead of bending reality to suggest this in the mind of the reader, why not just say it, Ayn, if you really think it? Because you know it is not true. You say yourself at the end of Atlas Shrugged there are publishers in the World who agree with you. Surely this includes newspapers. So . . . you’re just engaging in a slanted fiction that you know to be a slanted fiction. Why, again? Oh, that’s right: to serve an agenda that apparently cannot be presented as reasonable in a reasonable world, because it is not reasonable. Only in a world gone mad would Ayn’s perceptions appear justified, because her perceptions are delusions. Those damned government officeholders, labor unions, and journalists!

To be fair, when my old suitemate and friend David E. Block began reading Sisyphus Shrugged, he said of my depicted Randian nightmare, I do not think Americans would permit such severe changes. I said in response, Neither do I, but if Rand can bend Reality to make her points, I can bend it in the opposite direction to make mine. The difference is that I admit my scenario is just a fantastic circumstance to make my real-world political points clearer. Did Rand admit the same of her own scenario? I believe she saw her work as the logical result if liberalism were allowed to run amok. If so, then my depiction of capitalism run amok is fair game. Our experience with Obama shows how far Americans are willing to bend rightward. I am exaggerating that willingness to make points and admitting it.

The book Atlas Shrugged is also possessed by the bizarre idea that simple competence at making money is the highest virtue, and that someone who combats waste, fraud, and abuse in a private business, saving money for that business, increasing its profits, is the ultimate hero. The needs of the business outweigh the needs of the few or the many, seems to be her motto. Wealth is equated with virtue, which I could buy a lot more easily if the majority of the richest members of today’s society worked as hard as Hank Rearden to create products that had actual value instead of creating the cheapest possible products to rip off the customer or, worse, creating nothing and hiring no one while living off capital gains. Who is the moocher, the looter, the leech? I’d like to see more Atlas from these Atlases. Right now I see useless parasites, living off the blood, sweat, and tears of actual laborers while paying them as little as possible to produce bad products for which customers will be overcharged.

Two more big flaws with Atlas Shrugged are its premises that the most talented and creative members of an organization are at its top (they aren’t) and that if those top members were to remove themselves from the equation to Galt’s Gulch they themselves would be able to function (they wouldn’t). Their organizations would continue, but they would not do very well personally in the wild, having little experience with roughing it. That is the reality. Also, the business leaders Rand depicts have not retired. They may be wealthy, but they are still working. If they have enough to retire to Galt’s Gulch on, why are they still working? Because the desire to work and create is paramount, therefore they would not retire. That is why they are working in the first place: money is not everything to a genuinely creative person, only to someone who is not creative (expendable) anyway. You can’t have it both ways, Rand: it’s either or. Sound familiar? If you can afford to retire to Galt’s Gulch, you have already demonstrated you care more about money than about creating, and Society doesn’t need you. If you are so creative that you cannot bear your creativity being oppressed, you won’t do well under capitalism, which most creatives learn early on. It is a rare thing to possess both creativity and business sense. It is even rarer to possess creativity, business sense, and the ability to create a new society from scratch in a box canyon. Rand’s heroes, however, are just that heroic.

Worth mentioning, too, is the bizarre situation Rand depicts of a populace made of submissive peasants . . . who need to be ordered to stay at their jobs. Is her opinion of ordinary people that low, or does she think they will magically rise up in response to John Galt’s speech? You can’t have it both ways, Rand.

My friend Joseph Karczewski points out yet two more big flaws in Atlas Shrugged: Rand doesn’t address the injustices that produced communism, and she doesn’t address the benefit to the individual citizen of Western socialism, in which crime and poverty are reduced. Does she think her best minds live in a vacuum? Does not she care if they get shot or mugged by impoverished drug addicts on the street, or contract rampant disease because no one has health care? Does she just not think?

It is also odd that Rand thinks that inventors and inventions are in any way linked to her political philosophy. I don’t recall any liberal ever opposing invention. To be completely fair, the joy of personal achievement knows no political philosophy. Everyone feels pride and joy at accomplishment, regardless of his or her political or social views. Why didn’t Rand see this?

Ultimately, listening to Rand and her admirers kvetch about taxes leads me to conclude that they do not even understand capitalism, which is all about the exchange of goods and services. Their position that they should not be forced to pay one dime for the society that has made their success possible indicates to me they do not understand it is not that they are being preyed upon by looters who wish to steal from them but helped by those who wish to provide them a society that makes their success possible. They do not understand the capitalist principle that you get what you pay for. They should be thanking their lucky stars they have the opportunity to buy such an environment, which most of the World does not! It would be laughable if it weren’t pathetic. Here we have, in Rand’s work, a giant failed attempt to rationalize not caring about one’s fellow human beings, yes, but also a short-sighted failure to appreciate the benefits to oneself from a society that functions (from a mind that claims to think about rational self-interest!)—or, worse, appreciation without a desire to pay for it. Where do you think it all comes from? You aren’t entitled to, nor is it possible to have, a functioning society for free. Who is the moocher here? It is extremely ironic that many of those who share her views like to say that freedom isn’t free while thinking, apparently, that everything else that makes a society successful is. I suppose they are content to let others pay for clean air, clean water, roads, post offices, and every other service from which they benefit. Now that’s mooching! They can’t think no one pays, because they also like to say money doesn’t grow on trees.

Still, the idea of bringing a society to a halt by removing its most creative people is an entertaining and imaginative fiction. It is simply odd that anyone should imagine that a society’s most creative people are its business leaders. Creative people are notoriously (and perilously) bad at business. Amassing wealth is a skill, and we can even say that business in some ways facilitates creativity, but I do not consider it creative in itself. This may just be a semantic difference of opinion, of course. (It is interesting to learn in what high regard Rand holds business leaders, in what low regard she holds everyone else, and how far removed from reality she is. I happen to consider The Lorax the greatest story ever written about business. Is the Once-Ler creative? I suppose once, while also being destructive. Is that admirable? Not really. The whole point is we must consider much more than our own whims.)

It was ever thus: when the World was ruled by kings, they had their apologists. Whoever is in power will enjoy praise. Her work is typical in that regard. Why should we take it seriously and rebut it? Because capitalism is the order of the day and must be addressed. Rand is its chief advocate, the anti-Marx. Jean-Paul Sartre said that Marxism is the philosophy of our time, and Rand provides Marx the perfect counterpoint by which to continue the discussion. I considered Atlas Shrugged a book desperately in need of a rebuttal, so I spent seven months writing this.

I have tried to make the story Ayn Rand began in Atlas Shrugged more entertaining than it was in that book. To be fair, I give Rand the benefit of the doubt, take her at her word, and accept that she really thinks as she writes. That just makes her . . . unreasonably wrong. Liberals feel their own greatness too. Liberals feel pride in accomplishment, the will to power, and the joy of sharing in pride and excellence with each other also. They just condemn those who only care about themselves, because they know it is possible to be great and care about others—nay, they consider it impossible to be great otherwise.

My method during this project was to read and to write concurrently. After 100 pages of Atlas Shrugged read, I had 200 pages of Sisyphus Shrugged written, after 166 pages read, I had 375 written, and so on. I wrote 200,000 words having read about 200,000 words of Atlas Shrugged, then I kept reading and adding. The more I read, the more inspiration I derived. At the same time, my own story structure emerged, such that I added some philosophical responses to existing moments in my story. I described my process of reading, writing, and revising to my friend Joseph Karczewski on August 25, 2012:

. . . Some of the things I have written I know do not line up with Atlas Shrugged.  It is my intention to reconcile them as I go.  In the mean time, I am writing the most entertaining story I can, even if that means changing some things [later for continuity].

As I read, I would reconcile the discrepancies. I told Dave Moyer on September 13, 2012:

I’m writing as I read, adjusting my material to account for what I’m reading. It’s all so rich—there’s so much to address—that I could not possibly wait. This way, when I finish Atlas Shrugged, I will already have my own material ready for final sculpting.

I benefited from many sources of inspiration and direct quotation when writing. Noteworthy are two online reviews I quoted in my professor’s lecture in the beginning. Whenever possible I obtained permission to quote. I contacted those two writers without receiving responses. I hope their authors do not mind I used their words. If they contact me to say they mind, I will remove their words.

My prose style is slightly different from Rand’s. My friend Dana Ross was kind enough to say, of another story I wrote, It is short and clean, meaning the author didn’t add 100 pages of sticky details that would be meaningless when the ideas in the story just need to come through. I thank my friend Dana for understanding my writing. My approach in all my works is intentionally minimalist for two reasons:

1. I think everyone enjoys using his or her imagination, and I think a story appeals to more people when each of those people can imagine things the way he or she wishes. To me, leaving out certain details increases both the enjoyment of the reader and the number of readers who will enjoy a story. That is a part of my style.

2. I think that to include details that are not absolutely necessary, or which do not enhance the story in some way, is to stop a story’s momentum. This renders a story frustrating. Stories revolve around action and emotion, with some descriptive details but not too many. Description of visuals must be kept to a minimum, in my view. Description of actions and subjective emotional states are far more important. Even these, however, must not be excessive. To be fair, it is a fine line. I err on the side of less being more.

My style may be different, but it is my goal, with this work, to provide not only a sequel but a rebuttal, to show Rand’s limits and flaws for the betterment of society. In contrast to John Galt, I live for Humanity, and I ask Humanity to live for me (and for everyone else). I say the World owes everyone a living. Anyone who thinks otherwise does not share my morality.

It must also be stated that I could never begrudge Rand or anyone else holding a philosophy writing fiction to depict his or her philosophy. My position is simply that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is morally reprehensible, disgusting. Her rights to hold and present it to others are absolute. As President Gore said, the proper response to speech we oppose is opposing speech.

It was my intent to write this work such that reading Atlas Shrugged was not necessary. However, one friend who started this work said she was lost fairly quickly. She said she might watch the Atlas Shrugged movies first, to understand my work better. It was not my intent to promote Ayn Rand, but I have no objection to anything that makes my work more accessible. Also, I think there may be no cure for Rand better than Rand, and my work will be the reward for enduring her (or completely superfluous).

Regarding the name Brooks: in 1987, around the same time that my suitemate first mentioned Rand to me, I wrote a story idea about a rogue general named Brooks. I had a schoolmate in high school with the first name Brooke, and I liked the name. When I wrote SS, I thought it would be fun to continue the idea of a rogue general named Brooks. That was before I came across Cherryl Brooks and feared that readers might become confused or annoyed by the same name. There was at first no relation between the characters, but I was loathe to change the name, as I wanted the connection with my early idea. Then I decided I could connect them without too much difficulty. Why not?

Regarding Rand the philosopher: a friend of mine was confused. She said, Mostly I was confused about why the professor was discussing Ayn Rand. If it’s a sequel to her book, was she a character in her own book? In the world of Sisyphus Shrugged, Rand was a philosopher not a fiction writer and her fiction is truth.  It is my job to incorporate her fiction into mine, but I also want to rebut her views head on.  I want to rebut her with fiction and truth.

For the record, I do not hate the rich. This book is designed to fight error and apathy.

I agree with Rand that human nature is selfish, that we should help ourselves first and foremost.  I also agree with her gist (if not her terminology) that appeals to pity are often contrary to our own interests, harmful, even often nefarious.  Where I differ with her is that I think we can and should help ourselves and others at the same time as a conscious goal.  To her, helping others is incidental, almost accidental, or, if conscious, nothing more than a calculated stepping stone to helping oneself. She seems to stop at the water’s edge of helping oneself, never really considering helping others a worthy goal even after helping oneself.

I consider that the reverse of morality.

ROBERT PEATE

Oregon City, Oregon

February 2013

P. S.  INITIAL WRITING on this book occurred from July 13, 2012, to February 16, 2013, and was followed by significant editing (revising and extending) until April 10.  After that small corrections and revisions occurred intermittently.

PART ONE:

NON-PREVARICATION

"If people want to organize for wages, hours, or practical demands,

it’s their proper right."

—Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

I: THE THEME

TWO-year-old Evelyn held up her arms to her mother, Maureen.

I need you, Evelyn urged.

Why do you need me? Maureen asked, amused.

Because I need you, Evelyn said.

I need you too, Maureen answered, picking up her daughter.

I NEVER SEE THEM, Andrew Riley pleaded to his wife, Maureen. Every morning I go to work, my heart breaking.  All I do is work from before the dawn to after the dusk.

I’m sorry.  Here’s a drawing Karen did for you.

He looked at the self-portrait, its lips looking like sausages, its nose like that of a pig.  He smiled.

I miss my babies, he mourned.

You keep them fed, clothed, and housed, and we thank you for it.

Daddy, what’s wrong?

Oh, Honey—we thought you were asleep.  I’m just sad because I never see you.

I’m sad too, Daddy.

It’s all right, Honey.  I love you.  Give me a hug . . . now go back to sleep.  Would you like me to read you a story?

Yes, Daddy!

All right.  I’ll be right in.  Get into your bed.  I’ll be right there.

Five-year-old Evelyn went to her room.

Tomorrow I’m going to take them to the lake, Maureen said.  It’ll do them good to get out of the house.

Someday I hope we’ll all be able to go.

Me too—but this won’t last forever.

I don’t know.  Things just keep getting worse.

EVELYN, TOM, AND BOO ran through the woods from the bullies as fast as they could.  Big Mike and his nameless friends had bee-bee guns!  The girl and her two friends found one of their favorite trees to climb and skeedaddled up it as fast as they could.  Sitting up top, they put on brave faces as Mike and his friends founds and regarded them from below.

Well, we caught you, runts, said Big Mike, grinning.  The other two laughed, as if Big Mike had said something profoundly clever.  They nauseated eight-year-old Evelyn.

Ha, ha! returned Tom.  You thought you got us, but we tricked you pretty good!

Mike raised his bee-bee gun and aimed at Evelyn.  She gulped.

No! yelled Tom and Boo, whose real name was Ronald.  Evelyn didn’t know why everyone called him Boo.

Big Mike shot and hit Evelyn in the arm.  Ow! she cried out, but she would not let them see her cry, so she held back her tears.  Mike’s accomplices then shot Tom and Boo, in the belly and the neck, respectively.  The children were hurting and suffering.  The older kids, Big Mike and his friends, were laughing.

Just then Boo’s really older brother, Jimmy, found them.  He ran to where they were.

What do you punks think you’re doing? he demanded, grabbing the guns out of their hands.

Hey! That’s my gun! Mike protested.

Jimmy slapped Mike across the face, and Mike blubbered like a baby, then ran home.  The other two followed him.

I already called the police, Jimmy called up. They’ll be waiting for them at Mike’s house. Come down. I’m sorry I was so slow. His face fell when he saw their wounds. Boo had a bee-bee lodged in the skin of his neck.

You didn’t have to come at all, Evelyn said.

Of course I did, Jimmy said.  The bigger is kind to the smaller, the stronger is kind to the weaker.  We take care of each other.  That’s what Dad always says.

I never see my dad, Evelyn said.  My mom and sister died in a car accident.  I was asleep in the back seat, but I lived.

The other children, some of whom had heard rumors, stayed silent, too uncomfortable to speak.

PULL YOURSELF UP BY your bootstraps, Horatio, Eddie Willers said to himself as he got up from the ground in front of the passenger train known as the Comet. Holding his forehead grimy with sweat, he re-entered the broken train, collected food and bottles of water from the kitchen car, and set out toward the next town. No matter how far away it was, he would make it, he told himself. A resourceful, independent man does not simply lie down and die. This train might be broken, but I am not.

And he kept walking.

"THIS IS JOHN GALT SPEAKING.  Mister Thompson’s administration has collapsed, as illogic will always collapse in the face of logic. We, the men and women of the mind, are rebuilding our nation. I am not your leader. I was merely the strike captain. The men and women of the mind are rebuilding our structures: governmental, private, legal, agricultural. Many of you have starved and died. Many more will suffer in the coming days until everything can be restored and made better than it was before, but do not lose heart. Please return to your homes. The Constitution is being restored as we speak. Delegates from each State are being chosen to coordinate new elections, to restore the Congress, which will then approve a new judiciary. We have lost much, but we will gain more than we have ever seen. Richard West has agreed to submit to a national referendum on his assuming the Presidency, and we have approved it. He will provide the kind of laissez-faire capitalist leadership that is needed now more urgently than ever. I ask you to approve him as I return to private life. Thank you."

Richard West won approval. The Senators and Representatives came back to the Congress. The infrastructure was rebuilt by private contractors. President West hailed the return of a free market, in which goods and services would be inexpensive due to competition and pure due to the integrity of those who provide them. Former government services were restored sparingly, erring on the side of the free market, but grain began to grow again, trains began to run again, and even the airline industry began to rebound. Galt became a private scientist, declining repeated invitations to join the State Science Institute as Robert Stadler’s successor. Doctor Floyd Ferris was nowhere to be found, either dead or on the run, afraid of prosecution for the horror of Project X.

MISTER PRESIDENT, THE Congress has passed more appropriations for private security firms at our farms; dams; nuclear, electric, and solar power plants; and other vital installations.

I’ll sign them, President West said. And please tell Attorney-General Anderson that the time has come; I’ve put off a certain faction of my supporters for too long. Just tell him he may proceed with the indictments. He’ll know what I mean.

Yes, Mister President.

Everything just became clear sailing ahead.

Yes, Mister President.

And please get me Representative Garmage on the phone.

Yes, Mister President.

WHAT IS VIOLENCE?

The professor teaching Randian Philosophy posed this question in the Columbia Petroleum University lecture hall and waited for an answer from his class of over a hundred students.

Someone raised a hand.

Yes?

Hurting someone else?

Good. And what constitutes hurting someone else?

Well, you could physically harm them.

Yes, the professor said. He thought for a moment. And how could you do that?

You could kill them.

Yes. Be more specific. How could you kill them?

You could shoot them.

Yes. You could engage in direct physical violence. Are there other ways to kill someone? He looked about for more hands. Some of the first hands up were faltering. He called on one of them.

You could withhold something needed, such as food, medicine, or water.

"Yes. Violence need not be forward action. It can also be the withholding of something needed. Good phrase, the professor said. If you take away something needed from someone, and he or she suffers, you are engaging in violence. That brings us to John Galt. Who is John Galt?"

The professor waited for hands, then called on one.

A leader?

Yes, I suppose one could call him that. The professor looked for another hand and found one.

An economist? I know he had something to do with money.

Close, but not quite. It’s been ten years now, so I understand that you were all kids at the time. But John Galt, a follower of the philosophies of Ayn Rand, is a sociopathic anarchist. He fancied himself a leader, and he certainly studied economics, though he drew the wrong conclusions by focusing too narrowly on some things and ignoring others. Ten years ago he tried to ‘stop the motor of the World’. His method was to encourage business leaders to abandon their businesses, on the assumption that they were indispensable. The government and the public would recognize how important they were and stop abusing them, the poor business leaders, as if America was suddenly going to lie down and starve to death refusing to work if a few business leaders disappeared. The class chuckled.

Was he successful? No. After some months of confusion and panic, the economy resumed—without those leaders. Of course, we did have an election during the panic. The professor paused. So: even though his strike failed overall, is attempted violence still violent?

Silence and stares.

Is it still a violent act to attempt violence, even if that violence fails?

Yes, said a student. Attempted murder is still a crime.

Exactly. John Galt attempted to stop the nation’s economy. He failed, but his attempt was an act of violence. I would add that it was also an act of terrorism, because he committed an act of violence to achieve a political purpose. Regardless of semantics, his strike failed. Why? Does anyone know?

No one raised a hand. The professor scanned the room to make sure no one wanted to try to answer before speaking again.

Because the business leaders he enlisted for his strike were expendable, and we did eventually recover, he continued. However, the temporary disappearance of those business leaders did cause a panic and adversely affected society for a short time. The professor observed heads nodding in understanding. This is why I’m a teacher, he reflected, not for the first time.

Now, why did Galt do this? the professor asked.

Some students looked about, afraid to answer, but one young man raised his hand.

Yes?

Because the Government had slid into communism?

The professor chuckled. That is a simplification, but it will do. It is true the government had interfered more in the marketplace, under President Thompson, who had the gall to suspend the Constitution and declare himself ‘Head of State’. Professor Chambers shook his head. The Equalization of Opportunity Law? The Fair Share Law? Directive Ten-Two-Eighty-Nine? An Economic Dictator? The professor laughed. This is America. We believe in freedom. That means regulation, not oppression. Those were un-American concepts and acts that no sane government would attempt or desire. Of course, Thompson was the third in line of succession when the North Koreans . . . August Fifth. The professor took a moment to compose himself. The worst national trauma since Kennedy was murdered sixty years prior. You may not be old enough to remember Biden, Emanuel, and Kerry personally, but you have heard what happened, I am sure.

The names were met with jogged memories and murmurs of Oh, yeah, from his students.

"They were great men. They never would have engaged in the kinds of things Thompson did.

"Thompson’s actions, and those of his henchman Mouch, were attacks on the free market. The fact is we had too little regulation before, but Thompson overreacted. What he did was essentially Soviet in policy and practice. A heavy government hand on business doesn’t really lead to a thriving marketplace, but one extreme—government tyranny—does not excuse the other, the neglect of deregulation and letting business run roughshod over all else. Thompson’s abuses don’t excuse Galt’s ‘strike’, but they do, however, make Galt’s strike understandable. It’s easy to see the two ends of the spectrum as yin and yang. Who is John Yang? The professor chuckled then walked to his desk, next to his small podium, and sat on it. The saddest part for me is that these attacks on private property distracted America from the real issues of poverty and corporate abuses while handing the abusive corporations—the ones who were the problems in the first place—ammunition in their quest to portray the very existence of government itself as the problem. These governmental abuses, as well-intentioned as they might have been, upset many who felt, as Rand did, and rightly so, that the Government was going too far—and created a new set of problems. John Galt was one of those who were upset and wanted to do something about it, and he did. Doing something was necessary, but was his strike the right thing to do? Was it effective? In both cases, I think we have to say, ‘No.’ Yes, he slowed down our economy even more, but it was already slow. He just made bad problems worse, causing thousands to die of starvation, lose their homes, and their hope. Worst of all, Galt failed even to acknowledge the causes of the policies he opposed. If I had him here, I’d love to ask him: ‘Why did the Government