Evonomics — Ayn Rand Meets Her Match: David Sloan Wilson Fights Fiction with Fiction

October 31, 2020

From the editor:

When it comes to justifying the “Greed is Good” ideology of neoliberal economics, Ayn Rand is mentioned as often as major economists such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Adam Smith. Rand regarded herself as a philosopher and labelled her philosophy Objectivism, but it was her novel Atlas Shrugged that had the greatest influence, selling over seven million copies since its publication in 1957. Rand understood that fiction can be more effective than equations and dry intellectual discourse when she wrote “Art is the essential medium for the communication of a moral ideal.”

For all the critiques of neoliberalism by economists and intellectuals of all stripes, no one has thought to challenge Rand on her own fictional turf. Until now, with the publication of David Sloan Wilson’s novel Atlas Hugged.

Wilson is perhaps uniquely qualified to write an anti-Rand novel. Not only is he actively engaged in rethinking economics as a scientist, with numerous articles in prestigious economics journals, but fiction runs in his family. His father, Sloan Wilson, wrote two iconic novels of the 20th century: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), which described the corporate army that formed after World War II, and A Summer Place (1958), which described changing sexual mores during the same period. David Sloan Wilson regards his first novel as a kind of homecoming.

In the Preface to Atlas Hugged, Wilson recounts how the idea of fighting fiction with fiction was suggested by someone else during one of the first workshops on economics from an evolutionary perspective that he had organized. Within minutes, the title and beginning of a plotline flashed into his mind. The main character would be John Galt III, the grandson of Rand’s main character, whose father was a libertarian media giant like Rush Limbaugh. Ayn Rand was not a character in her own novel, but—since anything goes in fiction–Wilson could transport her into his novel in the form of Ayn Rant. It was too delicious not to indulge!

Atlas Hugged is so anti-Rand that it isn’t even being sold. Instead, it is being gifted for whatever the reader wishes to give in return, with all proceeds going to Wilson’s new nonprofit organization, Prosocial World. How fitting, since the very word “give” was banned from the vocabulary of the ideal society imagined by Rand in her novel.

Evonomics.com is proud to publish an excerpt from Atlas Hugged. The e-book and paperback can be ordered on www.AtlasHugged.world.…

Summary of the book follows.

Evonomics
Ayn Rand Meets Her Match: David Sloan Wilson Fights Fiction with Fiction

Editor