by Cambridge on Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:34 am
Galt’s soliloquy is essentially a monologue on meritocracy. Meritocracy assumes equality of the “runners in the race.” We have two kinds of equality: distributive equality and proportional equality. Distributive equality is simply giving everybody the same candy bar; proportion equality is taking into account the relative disproportion of the racers at the start. If we’re talking about marketing handouts on the street corner, then distributative equality is the order of the day. However, if we are talking about how to equitably distribute societal benefits on an equitable level, then we’d better rethink the formula.
Let’s take education for example. The simpleton would say, give the opportunity to the highest achiever on the SAT, LSAT, GRE, MCAT or other Educational Testing Service (ETS) exam. But let’s say the exam is given in Spanish or the language of the Ibo tribesmen in Western Africa. Any question that the average Anglo American would cry foul? They would say that it was unfair to give us tests that excluded our language. Proportional equality. They were at a disadvantage because they didn’t speak the language in which the test was given.
So we recognize that there can be inequality in any scheme of meritocracy. But it can be even more complex than this. Forget language. Suppose the inequity is in the fact that one race has been the slaves of another race, and they have never been afforded the opportunity to catch up. In fact, in many instances if any of them did learn to read and write they would be hung from the nearest tree. And this went on for hundreds of years, until John Galt comes along and argues that all those people whom his forefathers held as slaves are holding him back. That socialism denies him the right to assume dominance over victims of past discrimination. Some right, huh?
There are all kinds of ways of gaining subjugation over others. Meritocracy is merely a formula for perpetuating the inequity. Galt’s thesis was just the last gasp of someone who didn’t get it.
Ayn Rand was a reactionary Russian, dime-store author, who saw greats like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley gaining notoriety by publishing extreme political novels. So she tried her best at the extreme right-wing novel. However, as Herbert Marcuse effectively showed, there is nothing novel in that which has already gone into the past.
