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Debunking the Atlas Moment
Interesting results from tracking Google searches for Karl Marx vs. Ayn Rand. In the chart below, Marx is blue, Rand is red. The orange line is a baseline search for recession:
Results suggest that the Atlas moment might not be so momentous.Â
The cycles on the Marx hits match up neatly with university schedules—people are googling Marx for class, not so much on Ayn Rand.
Here are the exact search terms:
For Marx, we'll use all of the following terms: "Das Kapital", "Das Capital", "Communist Manifesto", Marxism, Communism, "Karl Marx", "Carl Marx". For Rand, we'll use: "Atlas Shrugged", Objectivism, "Ayn Rand", "Ann Rand", "The Fountainhead", "Virtue of Selfishness", "John Galt". I think that's a reasonably comprehensive list of terms folks would be looking for, but feel free to try your own variations. If you include only Marx, be sure to run the "-Groucho, -Richard, - "Marx Brothers"" and so on.
A previous quickie version of this comparison from the same blog has made the rounds on the Internet and generated some interesting discussion, but today's version offers cleaner results.
phalkor has lost his focus|4.10.09 @ 11:35AM|#
Eat cake frosting out of the can until you want to vomit Eat
cake frosting out of the can until you want to vomit Eat cake
frosting out of the can until you want to vomit Eat cake frosting
out of the can until you want to vomit Eat cake frosting out of the
can until you want to vomit Eat cake frosting out of the can until
you want to vomit Eat cake frosting out of the can until you want
to vomit Eat cake frosting out of the can until you want to
vomit
I feel even worse.
Billy|4.10.09 @ 11:45AM|#
To be fair, several massive societal failures of the 20th century were based (at least in part) on the theories of Marx, so it is worthwhile to study them in this context. Of course, this is most often not what is happening at our Universities...
economist|4.10.09 @ 11:46AM|#
Billy,
What are you talking about? Everyone knows Marxism only failed
because the RightPeople (tm) weren't in charge.
High Every Body|4.10.09 @ 11:48AM|#
Everyone knows Marxism only failed because the RightPeople
(tm) weren't in charge.
Yea, "it was never really tried" is one of the funnier ones I have
heard.
Elemenope|4.10.09 @ 11:50AM|#
To be fair, several massive societal failures of the 20th
century were based (at least in part) on the theories of Marx, so
it is worthwhile to study them in this context. Of course, this is
most often not what is happening at our Universities...
I don't know what fucked up colleges y'all went to, but that's
exactly what I studied when I was studying Marx (in political
science).
When we studied him in philosophy, it was as a critic of Hegel.
Also legitimate.
Leftitty|4.10.09 @ 11:52AM|#
You libertardians don't know anything! I hat you so much! Everyone knows that Marxism has never been tried. The Last Eight Years are an indictment of free-market capitalism. FU! ARGH!
|4.10.09 @ 11:56AM|#
Go ahead and spend your time reading Rand and Mises and Friedman and jerking yourselves off and being irrelevant and the rest of us will deal with the reall problems.
Robert Enders|4.10.09 @ 11:58AM|#
The website that you linked to notes that the Marx searches peaked when schools and colleges were in session. I would guess that most of the interest in Marx is purely academic, that students researched Marx in order to better understand 20th century history. Google searches are not an accurate barometer of ideological belief.
High Every Body|4.10.09 @ 12:01PM|#
Robert Enders | April 10, 2009, 11:58am
Thanks for the long-winded version of this.
The cycles on the Marx hits match up neatly with university schedules-people are googling Marx for class, not so much on Ayn Rand.
Tony@cum.com|4.10.09 @ 12:03PM|#
The libertarians are despairingly watching their electoral hopes sink forever as most young don't go in for their peculiar idea that freedom means the right to work for chump change, pollute, eat contaminated meat, and read Atlas Shrugged.
jk|4.10.09 @ 12:07PM|#
Google searches are not an accurate barometer of ideological
belief.
Expect for a spike last election season the search
Che Guevara T-Shirt shows a downward trend.
|4.10.09 @ 12:09PM|#
Libertarians are a joke. Seriously. Even Republicans are less pathetic than you.
english teacher|4.10.09 @ 12:11PM|#
This is a reconstructed conversation of a high school English
facutly during lunch:
English teachers were ranting on capitalism and glorifying
socialism. The "enlightened" countries of Europe, they said. Free
education and free health care for all, they proclaimed.
But it's not really free. Sombody's gotta pay for it.
Oh, but they make so much more money over there.
Really? How much more?
But what we really need is a collective in this country.
Like the Borg Collective?
Everyone should be able to get a free college education.
I don't know if college is for everyone. Besides, who's going to
give me my food at the drive through [or when I go out to a fancier
restaurant, for that matter]? Somebody's gotta do those jobs.
You want to keep those people from going to college? Anyway,
socialism is so much more enlightened than capitalism.
If socialism is viable as an economic system, how do you explain
the Soviet Union's collapse?
The Soviet Union wasn't really socialist.
[Wait. The Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics was not socialist?
The state ownership of the means of production is not socialist?
Right.]
It was capitalism for a small group of people.
Oh. You mean an oligarchy?
(Silence.)
I guess when socialism exists in a system where only a select few
people have political power, like an oligarchical government, it
seems not to work. It also hasn't solved scarcity.
(Silence. A feeling of resentment permeates the air like a fart in
an elevator.)
Boy I love playing Devil's Advocate! I do that with all my
students!
(Silence.)
Oh look at that! I left my pop in the staff lounge. I better go get
it! [I better get out of here or the Bolsheviks are going to skin
me alive!]
|4.10.09 @ 12:57PM|#
If you include only Marx, be sure to run the "-Groucho,
-Richard, - "Marx Brothers"" and so on.
That's a good point to be sure to include -Richard. Otherwise the
dozens of people annually that search for the lyrics to "Right Here
Waiting" would completely skew the results.
|4.10.09 @ 1:21PM|#
I know that Marx=the devil and all that, and I certainly
wouldn't want to live under any of the eastern European versions of
socialism having actually experienced the DDR at first hand. But
what do you libertarians think of some Marxist analysis of the real
economic world? Don't capitalist economies evolve into a
monopolistic system where small elites control industry and
government to enrich themselves? Don't these elites create power
structures using the law to ensure their ongoing control? Don't
these concentrations become tighter and tighter? As a concrete
example, isn't Goldman-Sachs with its CEO's cycling in and out of
high government positions, its competitors bankrupted (Lehman
Bros), its friends (AIG) getting huge bailouts? Is this not what a
Marxist would have predicted?
Does it not make sense to study Marx rather than a science fiction
novel which is less well written than most of Heinlein?
Old Bull Lee|4.10.09 @ 1:55PM|#
All good points, but under a libertarian-style government, the
"high government positions" wouldn't have enough power for it to
matter. There would be no advantage to having "pull" with
government.
For example, if Treasury didn't have the power to bail anyone out,
what difference would it make if you had one of your old CEOs or
friends in there?
High Every Body|4.10.09 @ 2:19PM|#
Such a lonely day at Reason. Everybody at Church or Temple or
something?
Where is MNG to tell us that Galt's Gulch is the only place in the
universe worse than Galt's Gulch?
High Every Body|4.10.09 @ 2:20PM|#
Where is MNG to tell us that Galt's Gulch is the only place in
the universe worse than Galt's Gulch Gaza?
CRAP!
How many rulez did that one touch?
|4.10.09 @ 2:21PM|#
Mr. Lee:
It would be safe to put a squad of 17 year old cheerleaders into my
hands for a month, but everybody is not as righteous as I am.
Libertarianism will get nowhere unless it stops being utopian. Marx
claimed to be "scientific" rather than utopian, and that was the
big attraction over over left-oriented philosophies.
You can't postulate success for this movement by discounting how
real people behave. People in power shape the laws, rules, and
regulations in one direction only.
BTW, based on my personal experiences, life in the northern
European socialist countries is pretty good.
ed|4.10.09 @ 2:26PM|#
Could it be that Marx appeals to lowlife, parasitic retards
(always in great abundance) whereas Rand appeals to self-confident,
honest, risk-taking producers (the minority in any culture)?
Discuss.
Old Bull Lee|4.10.09 @ 2:40PM|#
Sure, there would be evil people in corporations but without
government influence they would not have nearly as much
power.
I don't envision a utopia, and I don't think that many libertarians
do (unless you mean utopian relative to what we have now).
Maybe one "utopian" thing about libertarianism is the less power
people have over each other, the less evil they can do to each
other.
ed|4.10.09 @ 2:53PM|#
No rational person believes in utopia. It isn't possible, so
long as we're dealing with humans. Objectivists (and honest
libertarians) wish to experience a world of human achievement,
unfettered. Marxists wish to see everyone cut down, so all may
experience misery equally.
Which is the moral philosophy? It all depends on your
sense of life.
tgb1000|4.10.09 @ 3:00PM|#
Every class I took in college required a term paper on Richard Marx. We had some latitude, of course. What is his greatest album? Which version of the mullet was his most successful? Was he more influenced by Hall or by Oates? Still, it was a liberal indoctrination. Where was David Horowitz when I needed him?
|4.10.09 @ 3:01PM|#
Marx tried to be scientific, but that doesn't make his
philosophy or economic theory correct. His assumptions were largely
wrong, and he cherry-picked historical events to fit into his
theory. Note how little has transpired the way he said it
would.
Some of his criticisms of capitalism are valid enough, but that was
of capitalism as it was in the 19th century, not as it is today.
Besides, what difference does it make if capitalism is flawed, if
no adequate substitute is available?
Free markets aren't perfect, nor is any system of government that
we're going to have in the near term. But nothing that's been
implemented or proposed to date looks anywhere near as good.
Socialism and communism both fail to account for reality. Read
Smith sometime and realize how much better he understood human
beings than any of the major communist or socialist thinkers.
The overall wealth, technological achievement, and general
improvement in the overall human condition is directly attributable
to greater human freedom in the West and to our relatively free
markets. While we can bear a great deal of friction with government
trying to take away the "excess" wealth and to over-regulate any
private actor, we can't take an unlimited amount of friction.
Without a predominantly capitalist United States, both we and
Europe will fail (their socialist lifestyle is heavily dependent on
American production and consumption).
Old Bull Lee|4.10.09 @ 3:15PM|#
I like that take, ed.
I've never thought a libertarian world would be perfect. I would
just rather have its advantages AND disadvantages as opposed to
those of communism or even what we have now.
ed|4.10.09 @ 3:18PM|#
Every parasite requires a host. When the host dies, the parasite dies. It isn't a symbiotic relationship, wherein both entities prosper equally. Marxism is parasitism. Eventually the host must die, dooming all the blood-sucking leaches attached to it. This isn't pointy-headed theory. We have the historical record of the 20th Century, and all the failed Marxist regimes, to prove it.
ed|4.10.09 @ 3:25PM|#
there would be evil people in corporations, but without
government influence they would not have nearly as much
power
Correct, Old Bull Lee. But aren't you happy that Obama, per his
campaign promises, has taken steps to correct this odious,
pull-peddling culture?*
*Sarcasm. Sorry.
Richard Marx|4.10.09 @ 3:34PM|#
No, don't use the -Richard function. You want to google me! Really, you do! I'll be right here waiting for you.
|4.10.09 @ 3:38PM|#
Could it be that Marx appeals to lowlife, parasitic retards
(always in great abundance) whereas Rand appeals to self-confident,
honest, risk-taking producers (the minority in any
culture)?
Yeah all those welfare queens are big into Marx.
|4.10.09 @ 3:39PM|#
Still hanging onto the childish fantasy that wealth is earned through hard work and ingenuity, and that's the whole story?
Geotpf|4.10.09 @ 3:40PM|#
High Every Body | April 10, 2009, 11:48am | #
Everyone knows Marxism only failed because the RightPeople (tm)
weren't in charge.
Yea, "it was never really tried" is one of the funnier ones I have
heard.
I hear these arguments from libertarians these days regarding our
current economic circumstances.
ed|4.10.09 @ 4:02PM|#
Yeah all those welfare queens are big into Marx.
They are indeed. But they haven't the education to make their case
on internet chat rooms.
Sorry--on Hit & Run.
|4.10.09 @ 4:35PM|#
From the World Socialist Movement Website:
"It is widely assumed that capitalism means a free market economy.
But it is possible to have capitalism without a free market. But it
is possible to have capitalism without a free market. The systems
that existed in the USSR and exist in China and Cuba demonstrate
this. The systems that existed in the USSR and exist in China and
Cuba demonstrate this. These class-divided societies are widely
called 'socialist'."
Premise 1: All social problems are caused by a concentration of
power due to capitalism.
Premise 2: The USSR, China, and Cuba are some of the most socially
problematic countries in history.
Conclusion: The USSR, China, and Cuba are some of the most
capitalist countries in history.
Ward S. Denker|4.10.09 @ 5:42PM|#
"people are googling Marx for class, not so much on Ayn
Rand."
This, of course, leads one to wonder why it is that universities
are pushing Marx so hard.
|4.10.09 @ 6:04PM|#
"people are Googling Marx for class, not so much on Ayn
Rand.
"This, of course, leads one to wonder why it is that universities
are pushing Marx so hard."
Well, HECK, AYN disagrees with KARL, and does it with some pretty
convincing shit. So the universities have to smear Rand and pretend
she isn't worth examining.
Academics? My ass, they are dunces.
ed|4.10.09 @ 6:43PM|#
Karl loses even without any academic opposition. One need only observe the historical record. Of course, this requires a certain objectivity, thus: back to Rand.
Metal Messiah|4.10.09 @ 6:49PM|#
I wonder how many of those searches for Ayn Rand are made by people who just found about her from some maladjusted nutcase on the internet?
RMT|4.10.09 @ 7:19PM|#
If communism was included in Marx than capitalism should be included in Ayn Rand...
Suki|4.10.09 @ 7:25PM|#
Herb,
If you were making fun of them might you want to point out their
writing style too?
Jeff Montgomery|4.11.09 @ 9:36AM|#
Since almost a million copies of Atlas Shrugged were sold in
2008, maybe Rand fans are better at web searches, or simply buy the
books instead ;) Who can say? Pretty soon she'll be on more college
reading lists, and the graph will even out.
If people are seeking out Rand today it would be with good reason:
while Marx may still hold sway among some, Rand's ideas actually
*explain* current events, rather than provide thinly veiled
justification for dictatorship. Those who dismiss her ideas simply
do not understand them; she should not be underestimated.
And if you do happen to read Rand, pay special attention to her
definitions. She goes to great pains to define words carefully,
because any terms in common currency, such as "selfish", have mixed
meanings. Some readers make the mistake of imposing their own
preconceptions on her terms.
economist|4.11.09 @ 9:30PM|#
Jeff Montogmery,
What makes you think Ayn Rand will be on more college reading
lists? From what I can tell, most academics in literature or social
sciences are thoroughgoing lefties who consider Ayn Rand Teh
Evul.
|4.12.09 @ 9:35AM|#
The reason that people google Marx more than Rand is that they
are NOT comparable, not in the same league, and are NOT
comparable.
Jesus. You'd like a magazine called Reason would know a logical
fallacy when they see one.
|4.12.09 @ 9:36AM|#
The reason that Ayn Rand rarely appears on college reading lists
is obvious. No, it's not a lefty conspiracy, silly. It's good
sense.
Rand's fiction is unreadable (perhaps the worst writer to ever sell
so many books) and her non-fiction makes absolutely no sense.
Academics know this. Why don't you?
|4.12.09 @ 9:41AM|#
Hey Jeff, Rand's ideas ARE well understood, which is why they
are rejected.
It's not a prejudice, but a logical conclusion drawn from the facts
at hand. Rand's philosophy is inapplicable to real life where there
ARE actual poor people, there ARE actual needs, and where you can't
let people die in the ditch because you don't feel like paying
taxes like everyone else in the civilized world does. In reality,
Jeff, we DON"T all go to college and move from the dorm room to the
executive suite. Simple reality that Marx understood perfectly and
that Rand (and her cult followers) chose to ignore.
THAT is why Marx remains relevant.
BTW: you people DO realize that reading Marx doesn't make you a
Marxist, right? It's not poison. It's a book.
..|4.12.09 @ 12:51PM|#
Hey Jeff, Rand's ideas ARE well understood, which is why
they are rejected.
By you, JeffHater? Millions of new readers every year would
contradict your thesis. And they actually read the books.
Googling Marx is hardly the same thing as reading his works from
beginning to end. By the way, hatred and violence have their roots
in ignorance and frustration. Maybe that's a glimpse into your
choice of handles?
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