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BIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU 173
Beyond the idea of conspiracy, Rand’s ethical revolution led her to
see natural human sympathy for the downtrodden as an unacceptable
stricture on those she designated “at the top of the pyramid.” Through
Galt Rand reversed the typical understanding of exploitation, arguing:
The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all
those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving
no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man
at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude,
contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of
all of their brains. Such is the nature of the “competition” between the
strong and weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of “exploitation” for
which you have damned the strong. (989)
In these passages Rand entirely drops the populism and egalitarianism
that characterized her earlier work, reverting to the language used by
earlier defenders of capitalism. Although she did not use explicit biological
metaphors, her arguments were like a parody of social Darwinism.
Atlas Shrugged was an angry departure from the previous emphasis on
the competence, natural intelligence, and ability of the common man
that marked The Fountainhead.
Why such a dramatic shift in thirteen years? Partly Rand was simply
tending back to the natural dynamics of pro-capitalist thought, which
emphasized (even celebrated) innate differences in talent. These tendencies
were exaggerated in Rand’s work by her absolutist, blackand-white
thinking. Her views on the “incompetent” were particularly
harsh because she was so quick to divide humanity into world-shaking
creators and helpless idiots unable to fend for themselves. This binarism,
coupled with her penchant for judgment, gave the book much of
its negative tone. Because she meant to demonstrate on both a personal
and a social level the result of faulty ideals, Rand was often merciless
with her characters, depicting their sufferings and failings with relish. In
one scene she describes in careful detail the characteristics of passengers
doomed to perish in a violent railroad crash, making it clear that their
deaths are warranted by their ideological errors (566–68). Such spleen
partially explains the many negative reviews Rand received. After all, by
renouncing charity as a moral obligation she had voluntarily opted out
of any traditional expectations of politeness or courtesy. Atlas Shrugged
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