On Sep 14, 10:43 pm, Michael Gordge
xtra.co.nz> wrote:> On Sep 15, 2:08 pm, extro...@
hotmail.com wrote:
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>> By HARRIET RUBIN
>> Published: September 15, 2007
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>> One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-
>> page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still
>> drawing readers; it ranks 388th on
Amazon.com's best-seller list.
>> ("Winning," by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No.
>> 1,431.)
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>> For years, Rand's message was attacked by intellectuals whom her
>> circle labeled "do-gooders," who argued that individuals should also
>> work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to
>> greed. Gore Vidal described its philosophy as "nearly perfect in its
>> immorality."
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>> But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate
>> executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When
>> they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave
>> form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no
>> conflict between private ambition and public benefit.
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>> "I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that 'Atlas
>> Shrugged' has had a significant effect on their business decisions,
>> even if they don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's ideas," said John A.
>> Allison, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the
>> United States.
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>> "It offers something other books don't: the principles that apply to
>> business and to life in general. I would call it complete," he said.
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>> One of Rand's most famous devotees is Alan Greenspan, the former
>> chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose memoir, "The Age of
>> Turbulence," will be officially released Monday.
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>> Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic
>> forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of "The
>> Fountainhead," a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr.
>> Greenspan had married a member of Rand's inner circle, known as the
>> Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment.
>> Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began
>> praising drafts of "Atlas," which she read aloud to her disciples,
>> according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand's papers. He was
>> attracted, Mr. Britting said, to "her moral defense of capitalism."
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>> Rand's free-market philosophy was hard won. She was born in 1905 in
>> Russia. Her life changed overnight when the Bolsheviks broke into her
>> father's pharmacy and declared his livelihood the property of the
>> state. She fled the Soviet Union in 1926 and arrived later that year
>> in Hollywood, where she peered through a gate at the set where the
>> director Cecil B. DeMille was filming a silent movie, "King of Kings."
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>> He offered her a ride to the set, then a job as an extra on the film
>> and later a position as a junior screenwriter. She sold several
>> screenplays and intermittently wrote novels that were commercial
>> failures, until 1943, when fans of "The Fountainhead" began a word-of-
>> mouth campaign that helped sales immensely.
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>> Shortly after "Atlas Shrugged" was published in 1957, Mr. Greenspan
>> wrote a letter to The New York Times to counter a critic's comment
>> that "the book was written out of hate." Mr. Greenspan wrote: " '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."
>
>> Rand's magazine, The Objectivist, later published several essays by
>> Mr. Greenspan, including one on the gold standard in 1966.
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>> Rand called "Atlas" a mystery, "not about the murder of man's body,
>> but about the murder - and rebirth - of man's spirit." It begins in a
>> time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt, calls for
>> a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops
>> shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.
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>> Rand said she "set out to show how desperately the world needs prime
>> movers and how viciously it treats them" and to portray "what happens
>> to a world without them."
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>> The book was released to terrible reviews. Critics faulted its length,
>> its philosophy and its literary ambitions. Both conservatives and
>> liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw
>> promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of "greed is
>> good." Rand is said to have cried every day as the reviews came out.
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>> Rand had a reputation for living for her own interest. She is said to
>> have seduced her most serious reader, Nathaniel Branden, when he was
>> 24 or 25 and she was at least 50. Each was married to someone else. In
>> fact, Mr. Britting confirmed, they called their spouses to a meeting
>> at which the pair announced their intention to make the mentor-protégé
>> relationship a sexual one.
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>> "She wasn't a nice person, " said Darla Moore, vice president of the
>> private investment firm Rainwater Inc. "But what a gift she's given
>> us."
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>> Ms. Moore, a benefactor of the University of South Carolina, spoke of
>> her debt to Rand in 1998, when the business school at the university
>> was named in Ms. Moore's honor. "As a woman and a Southerner," she
>> said, "I thrived on Rand's message that only quality work counted, not
>> who you are."
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>> Some business leaders might be unsettled by the idea that the only
>> thing members of the leadership class have in common is their success.
>> James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft,
>> said he encountered "Atlas" at "a time in college life when everybody
>> was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and a collectivist." He found her
>> writing reassuring because it made success seem rational.
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>> "Rand believed that there is right and wrong," he said, "that
>> excellence should be your goal."
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>> John P. Stack is one business executive who has taken Rand's ideas to
>> heart. He was chief executive of Springfield Remanufacturing Company,
>> a retooler of tractor engines in Springfield, Mo., when its parent
>> company, International Harvester, divested itself of the firm in the
>> recession of 1982, the year Rand died.
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>> Having lost his sole customer in a struggling Rust Belt city, Mr.
>> Stack says, he took action like a hero out of "Atlas." He created an
>> "open book" company in which employees were transparently working in
>> their own interest.
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>> Mr. Stack says that he assigned every job a bottom line value and that
>> every salary, including his own, was posted on a company ticker daily.
>> Workplaces, he said, are notoriously undemocratic, emotionally charged
>> and political.
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>> Mr. Stack says his free market replaced all that with rational
>> behavior. A machinist knew exactly what his working hour contributed
>> to the bottom line, and therefore the cost of slacking off. This, Mr.
>> Stack said, was a manifestation of the philosophy of objectivism in
>> "Atlas": people guided by reason and self-interest.
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>> "There is something in your inner self that Rand draws out," Mr. Stack
>> said. "You want to be a hero, you want to be right, but by the same
>> token you have to question yourself, though you must not listen to
>> interference thrown at you by the distracters. The lawyers told me not
>> to open the books and share equity." He said he defied them. " 'Atlas'
>> helped me pursue this idiot dream that became SRC."
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>> Mr. Stack said he was 19 and working in a factory when a manager gave
>> him a copy of the book. "It's the best business book I ever read," he
>> said. "I didn't do well in school because I was a big dreamer. To get
>> something that tells you to take your dreams seriously, that's an eye
>> opener."
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>> Mr. Stack said he gave a copy to his son, Tim Stack, 25, who was so
>> inspired that he went to work for a railroad, just like the novel's
>> heroine, Dagny Taggart.
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>> Every year, 400,000 copies of Rand's novels are offered free to
>> Advanced Placement high school programs. They are paid for by the Ayn
>> Rand Institute, whose director, Yaron Brook, said the mission was "to
>> keep Rand alive."
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>> Last year, bookstores sold 150,000 copies of the book. It continues to
>> hold appeal, even to a younger generation. Mark Cuban, the owner of
>> the Dallas Mavericks, who was born in 1958, and John P. Mackey, the
>> chief executive of Whole Foods, who was 3 when the book was published,
>> have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.
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>> The book's hero, John Galt, also continues to live on. The
>> subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bank building,
>> which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell, was the
>> John Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last month after a
>> fire at the building killed two firefighters.
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>> In Chicago, there is John Galt Solutions, a producer of software for
>> supply chain companies like Tastykake. The founder and chief executive
>> of the company, Annemarie Omrod, said she considered the character an
>> inspiration.
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>> "We were reading the book," she said, when she and Kai Trepte were
>> thinking of starting the company. "For us, the book symbolized the
>> importance of growing yourself and bettering yourself without
>> hindering other people. John Galt took all the great minds and started
>> a new society.
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>> "Some of our customers don't know the name, though after they meet us,
>> they want to read the book," she went on. "Our sales reps have a
>> problem, however. New clients usually ask: 'Hey, where is John Galt?
>> How come I'm not important enough to rate a visit from John Galt?' "
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> Gesh thanks mate, its been a lonely battle with these fucking leftist
> retards and your post makes it all worth while.
>
> cheers, can I buy you are beer mate?
>
> MG-
