How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis

Adam Weiner

Oct 2016 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

Literature can be used to disseminate ideas with devastating real-life consequences. In How Bad Writing Destroyed the World, Adam Weiner spans decades and continents to reveal the surprising connections between the 2008-2009 financial crisis and a relatively unknown nineteenth-century Russian author.

A congressional investigation placed the blame for the financial crisis on Alan Greenspan and his deregulatory policies-his attempts, in essence, to put Ayn Rand's Objectivism into practice. Though developed most famously in Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Objectivism sprouted from the Rational Egoism of Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to be Done? (1863), an enormously influential Russian novel decried by the likes of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Nabokov for its destructive radical ethics. In tracing the origins of Greenspan's ruinous ideology, How Bad Writing Destroyed the World combines literary and intellectual history to uncover the danger of hawking “the virtues of selfishness,” even in fiction.

Ratings and reviews

You morons... the financial crisis of 2007/2008 was not caused by "unfettered capitalism". It was the very child of state interference in the markets... or have we forgotten the roles of Fannie and Freddie in that crisis? Ayn Rand's book recognizes that there is "unfettered capitalism" and then there is "crony capitalism", which isn't really capitalism at all, but really a kind of fascism. It does this beautifully. If Rand's writing has a flaw, it is in the fact that government is a necessary evil that requires the socialization of some aspects of life-- the "banding together" of individuals to collectivize certain aspects of operating as a nation, or even just as a civilization. This is a question of degrees, and there isn't a clear boundary between those things which much be socialized and those which should be left the province of individuals and private action. That isn't a serious flaw... one can immediately imagine how this should be addressed. But in any case, I think Ayn Rand would have condemned Greenspan and his central planning around a fiat currency. One of the clear premises of Atlas Shrugged was the gold is the only real money-- not worthless fiat currency. Don't listen to some idiot who studied literature and doesn't know his elbow from his *ssh*le when it comes to economics, business or politics, as this idiot author.

A book written by someone who doesn’t understand atlas shrugged or the 2008 financial crisis. How on this beautiful blue pearl the author thinks banks being given government backing to loan to people who will never be able to pay it back (something that by the by happens in atlas shrugged and that bank fittingly fails) is Ayn Rand approved baffles me. Also in what world is a government bailout unfettered capitalism? A piss poor book written by someone with absolutely zero grip on reality. Do yourself a favour and just read atlas shrugged with an open mind like I just did for the first time and realize you too probably have some misconceptions about it such as those propagating by this tool.

Poorly written drivel. Author makes it quite clear he has never read Rand but has committed Marx to memory. The connections he attempts to make are so easily disproven that I'm amazed he was able to publish this garbage at all. Unfortunately this trash is what passes as "edgy" and intelligent today. Back to your echo chamber comrade!

About the author

Adam Weiner is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Wellesley College, USA. He is the author of By Authors Possessed: The Demonic Novel in Russia (1998).