The opposite of Atlas Shrugged?
I mentioned last week that next year I will teach a course on the moral foundations of capitalism. One of the pro-capitalism readings will be Atlas Shrugged. So I was interested in this MeFi discussion: "What book is the opposite of Atlas Shrugged?"
It's a Wonderful Life.
Posted by: Max | November 27, 2007 at 08:01 AM
What else is on the reading list?
Posted by: Ted Craig | November 27, 2007 at 08:57 AM
Your students may be interested in discussing the recently wildly successful videogame "Bioshock", which has a fairly detailed plot that is essentially a response to Atlas Shrugged. (Rather obvious in some places, with a Galt's Gulch-esque underwater city founded by *Andrew Ryan* and another character named Atlas.) It's rare to see a video game review in the Boston Globe whose review starts by mentioning Whitaker Chambers's review of Atlas Shrugged, but this is rare game.
http://www.boston.com/ae/games/articles/2007/08/27/bioshock_lets_users_take_on_fanaticism_through_fantasy
Posted by: John Thacker | November 27, 2007 at 09:24 AM
Bellemy's _Looking Backward_.
Posted by: Greg Ransom | November 27, 2007 at 10:55 AM
Bellemy's _Looking Backward_.
Posted by: Greg Ransom | November 27, 2007 at 10:56 AM
Bellemy's _Looking Backward_.
Posted by: Greg Ransom | November 27, 2007 at 10:56 AM
I recommend Le Guin's The Dispossessed. It is a novel (in both senses of the word) image of utopian, pacifist socialism. It is, I think, what Marx would have advocated had he ever bothered to offer an alternative to capitalism.
Posted by: B.H. | November 27, 2007 at 11:18 AM
Certainly not the polar opposite, but the works of traditionalist conservatives (Burke & Chesterton for starters) offer a very different worldview from that of Rand.
Posted by: david foster | November 27, 2007 at 11:48 AM
Since Whittaker Chambers' unfavorably reviewed Atlas Shrugged in 1957:
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp
in one sense, his 'Witness' would be the opposite. And, in another sense, while it's autobiographical, it reads like a novel. Which Atlas Shrugged doesn't.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan | November 27, 2007 at 12:48 PM
The Republic by Plato
Utopia by Thomas More
Posted by: Ken | November 27, 2007 at 07:26 PM
Any sociology textbook I read from grades 9 through college (individualism is bad, except deviancy to traditional norms).
Posted by: Eric | November 27, 2007 at 10:03 PM
The Communist Manifesto?
Posted by: CF | November 28, 2007 at 12:04 PM
uh huh. And Dr. Newmark, when you're teaching your course on morality, will your sources come from the professional literature or from your own personally preferred catalogue of partisan think-tanks, such as the AEI?
Frankly, a Newmark is the last person I'd consult on a moral or ethical standard (read the wife's blog if you don't know what I'm talking about [she’s more verbose and thus more obliviously authoritarian than hubby]). Which is the price an apparatchik pays for servicing the party.
Posted by: anon | November 29, 2007 at 07:42 PM
On Walden Pond
Owen, Robert. A New View of Society and Other Writings. London: Everyman’s Library, 1927. 298 pages.
Posted by: jorod | January 07, 2008 at 12:02 PM
New Atlantis by Bacon
Posted by: jorod | January 07, 2008 at 12:08 PM