Sunday, September 8, 2013

The Shift and the Conflict at Hand (Zane Mandell)

In this week’s reading we were able to finish the first part of this lengthy novel. The end of this part shows a clear distinction to all that has happened up until this point. There is this surging force, the one that Dagny will fight, even though she is unaware of the Origin. One question that this brought up for me is “Who is John Galt?”
This question may still be unanswerable, beyond the obvious of what we have previously learned from earlier readings, but this force is obviously labeled as the antagonist by Rand. This force involves a complete surge towards socialism. Whether it is issues between the states or companies, many laws are enacted that make it harder for those Rand labels as the protagonists to not only flourish but survive. The stance that the author takes is so blatantly obvious and one sided it is disgusting.
While I have been strong in standing for what I believe Rand does make somewhat of a convincing argument. The way that she shows these different acts of socialistic origin looks very horrible. But this is her world, her rules, and pure socialism. She is trying to make me take her side but I am able to identify specifically her error at this point. There is this obviously conflict between socialism and capitalism that is made time and again by the author. The problem here is that she is comparing American Capitalism to Pure Socialism; these are not opposites, in fact American Capitalism involves socialism in some ways, with built in regulatory agencies that are effective even with the context of the novel. Her argument would be invalid if she compared the purities of both of these economic philosophies. Pure Capitalism would be much worse than Pure Socialism. Pure Capitalism would allow underage children to drink and do whatever drugs they like. Pure Capitalism leads to an economy where people are only set on the now and the near future and never look down the road for the betterment of humanity, only the betterment of themselves. Pure Capitalism is chaos.

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