E40 - >>Fast Forward>> Part 1 of The 20th Century Motor Company

A Socialist Reads Atlas Shrugged

In this episode, we "Fast Forward" to the Story of the 20th Century Motor Company (located in Chapter 10 of Part 2; p.616-627 in the Signet paperback edition). There are not many places on the internet to find the excerpt except for this link.
Jonathan begins the Fast Forward episodes on the 20th Century Motor Company by doing a case study of the post-Soviet economy of Estonia, responding to a speech given by Mart Laar at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in 2006 (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lasy0pfn1is). Much of Ayn Rand's purpose in this section of Atlas Shrugged is to argue that socialist policies will fail to produce prosperity and instead produce misery. Laar argues that free market ideology caused the prosperity of Estonia. Jonathan complicates both these portrayals by 1) looking deeper at the historical context of post-Soviet Estonia, and 2) examining the cultural resonance of the Communist dictum, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
Regarding Estonia, some sources that Jonathan drew from to prepare for this episode are:

• Kukk, K. (1997). The Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In P. Desai (Ed.), Going global: transition in the world economy (pp. 243–272). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Kukk, Merike, and Karsten Staehr. 2014. “Income Underreporting by Households with Business Income: Evidence from Estonia.” Post-Communist Economies 26 (2): 257–76.
• Feldmann, Magnus. 2018. “Extraordinary Politics and Durable Reform: Lessons from Trade Liberalisation in Estonia and Poland.” Post-Communist Economies 30 (3): 365–81.
• Tamm, Marek. 2016. “The Republic of Historians: Historians as Nation-Builders in Estonia (Late 1980s–early 1990s).” Rethinking History 20 (2): 154–71. doi:10.1080/13642529.2016.1153272.

This episode contains references to the work of Brene Brown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bren%C3%A9_Brown).
My five themes to explore in this podcast's close read of Atlas Shrugged are:

1. What is human nature?
2. Straw-man arguments and their impact on the world Ayn Rand creates.
3. Dagny Taggart as a true hero.
4. How empathy can be de-legitimized.
5. What is Capitalism and what is wrong with it?

Questions or comments? Email me at: [e-mail]
Learn more about Jonathan Seyfried at their website, https://jonathanseyfried.art
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The intro/outro music was composed by John Sib.
The podcast theme image was created by Karina Bia

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