Hello Friends,
And merry Christmas!
First, I would like to apologies for letting all of you hanging for 2 years. Those last two years have been quite intense to say the least, and I needed some time to regroup. I’ll share a bit more at some point, but let’s dive straight in - I missed writing to you guys.
I recently read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. It is an exceptional book.
London-based, and most of my friends being European, my struggle has been to find someone to discuss it with: it is a monument of American literature, but virtually unknown in Europe. It tells the story of a dystopian socialist→communist society in which a small group of industry captains (think Elon Musk) literally go on strike to build their own utopian ultra-capitalist community.
Before I share more of my thoughts on the story and its lessons for modern geopolitics, I want to share the following caveats: the purpose of this piece is not to start a political debate. Atlas Shrugged is obviously pro-capitalism/pro-libertarianism. I am personally pro-libertarianism, but the story is not realistic anyway in the sense that the heroes are too “perfect” and their ideal of society unviable. If you are interested in accurate material about libertarianism, I strongly suggest you read Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia and/or Hayek’s Road to Serfdom: they are unavoidable readings on the topic. If you are in a more musical/esoteric mood, I suggest you go for Keynes vs. Hayek - The Original Economics Rap Battle! and Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two: refreshinglygly accurate!
The reason why I found Atlas Shrugged terrifyingly relevant is that it depicts an accurate evolution of how mass movements are born and grown. It immediately made me parallel it to Hoffer’s True Believer - Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, one of the books I find most intellectually towering and that I have recommend/gifted the most along the years.
Ayn Rand was born “Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum” in 1905 imperial Saint Petersburg, and fled Soviet Russia in her early 20s, a few years after communism took over as a mass movement.
Eric Hoffer was born working class in the US in 1902 and spend a good part of his life loading and unloading ships on the San Francisco docks.
Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged in 1957.
Eric Hoffer publiches The True Believer in 1951.
In my opinion, Atlas Shrugged is (partly) a fictional take on the non-fiction theories exposed in The True Believer. What Hoffer explains through flawless critical analysis, Rand brings to life through poignantly unsettling dialogues between the leaders of her finctional mass movement and the industrial elites struggling to stand up to them.
Rand’s deeply uninspiring character James Taggart could be summarised in this single quote by Hoffer: "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."
We could even make a fun game out of it: can you guess who wrote each of these quotes?
"The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others."
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
"The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on the imperviousness to the realities of life. [...] Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is."
"Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs."
“There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.”
Answer: 1. Hoffer 2. Rand 3. Hoffer 4. Hoffer 5. Rand
Now, (I hope) by this stage you’d be asking me: “What’s your point? How is this pertinent to a newsletter focused on geopolitics?”
I think that as we get more and more into deglobalisation, nations will have to rely more and more on mass movements to mobilise their populations towards self-costly strategies. This is exactly what happened pre WWII. Both Russia and Ukraine are capitalising on their respective mass movements. Middle-Eastern non-state organisations have been doing so for decades now. And the Western world is
If one is to understand what is happening in the world right now and how things might evolve and in the next months, years, and decades, I strongly believe those two books are absolute must-reads.
Hope you enjoyed reading this nearly as much as I did writing it… now go and read Atlas Shrugged: infinitely better writing than mine!
Thanks for reading, and have a festive week ahead,
V