I’m trying to figure out what I can do – concretely do – to help the world. While it comes down to “keep on writing,” I think a bit more is needed. I think that we need to talk about the problem leftists have with art and messaging.
Short form: leftist and liberal political institutions fucking hate art. Or, more exactly, they hate the idea of art and artists butting into political business.
A Comparison of the Political Importance of Artists: Frank Herbert, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Ayn Rand
Most artists are at least left-leaning, but there’s a strong pressure to create an intellectual or even ironic distance from the art one loves. So, despite almost all the best artists being made by left-leaning people, the intellectual-ironic distance strips away the political potential for art. For instance, most artists don’t feel that they should dictate to people what they mean, preferring to allow multiple interpretations of their work, even if those interpretations are wildly at odds with the artist’s intended meaning.
As a writer, I’ll use writing to make my point, but I believe the point stands regardless of the medium. The two left-leaning novels I will use as examples are Dune and The Lord of the Rings. Both novels are still incredibly relevant in today’s world.
Dune is about a grass-roots, indigenous resistance to extractive, imperialist industries. In all three filmed versions of Dune, the homeworld of the Harkonnens looks like an oil refinery, and in both the David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve versions, Baron Harkonnen literally bathes in an oil-like substance. While the main theme of the book is “messiahs become tyrants,” it is bound up with how extractive industries, clearly based on oil companies, are imperialist shitheads standing in the way of social, economic, and environmental justice.
The Lord of the Rings shares a highly similar theme. It is about how industrialization without wisdom or mercy becomes of an all-consuming military juggernaut that destroys civil society and the environment. This is most noteworthy in the transformation of Isengard from an idyllic paradise to an industrial hellscape, furthering Sauron’s newfound military ambitions to conquer. However, the description of Mordor is equally nightmarish in its invocation of the consequences of industrialism in pursuit of militarism.
Despite the enduring cultural and artistic impact of both novels, their political influence is minimal. It’s difficult to find a politician who says, “Oh, I read Dune and learned to despise oil companies like the life-destroying Harkonnens they are.” No politician says, “I want the US to be more like the Shire than Isengard.” They are seen as pop culture phenoms and enduring artistic works, yes, but no one bases anything REAL on the messages!
I’m going to pivot to discussing what may be the most influential English-language novel of the 20th century, at least in terms of political and economic impact, which is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. There is no comparison in terms of art between Atlas Shrugged with Dune or The Lord of the Rings. Altas Shrugged is artistically awful. I’ve written about its flaws before.
However, it would be very challenging to find a 20th-century novel with more political and economic impact. Here are some interesting facts about the people who really love Atlas Shrugged (and Rand, generally.) Alan Greenspan, perhaps the most significant chairman of the Federal Reserve in US history, who served from 1987 to 2006, was quite literally a “disciple” of Ayn Rand’s. Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky from 2011, and his father, a former senator from Kentucky, also admired the novel. Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state during the first Trump administration, loved the book so much that he filled his cabinet with Objectivists, which is the philosophy that Rand created. Mike Pompeo, former CIA director, cites the importance of Ayn Rand on his politics and work. Gary Johnson, a New Mexico governor, made his fiancee read Atlas Shrugged! Holy shit, right? Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House, made his interns read it and gave it out as a Christmas gift! Donald Trump is also a big fan of Ayn Rand.
Regardless of the artistic merits of Atlas Shrugged, it has transformed American politics. If you want to read more about it, there is a critical biography about Rand called Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, which charts how this atheist Russian Jewish woman became the patron saint of fundamentalist conservatives. There aren’t similar books about the lives of Frank Herbert or J. R. R. Tolkien because they don’t have that kind of influence. Their art – while culturally and aesthetically significant – is politically unimportant. Even though Herbert and Tolkien’s books are fundamentally very political with messages of extreme modern significance. They are every bit as philosophical as anything Rand wrote, not to mention better written. But not politically significant.
To me, that begs the question, “Why?”
The Left and Liberal Relationship with Art
Liberals and leftists, without question, routinely produce better art (no link because that’s fucking obvious.) Almost anything anyone likes is the product of artists who at least lean to the left because that’s where most of the good artists are. Additionally, liberals, by large measures, encourage wide-ranging artistic expression and exploration. They might not like what you have to say, but they’ll let you say it. It’s one of the few areas that they’ll even fight to let you say it. They understand that freedom requires free speech and a free press, so it is of little surprise that artists tend to swing that way. They know that they can say what they want, how they want to say it, and that’s important to most of us. So, why don’t liberals and leftists have these powerful narratives that shape generations of politicians in the same way the right does?
Part of it is that liberals tend to have better liberal arts educations than conservatives. In modern art criticism, it is considered gauche for the artists to tell the audience how to interpret a work. Authorial intent is a relatively small part of modern art criticism.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are extremely happy to tell people how to interpret a book. Which, factually, Rand did with Atlas Shrugged. Even before it was published, she used her friends and contacts to let everyone know what the book was meant to say. Shortly after its publication, Rand founded the Ayn Rand Institute to promote her works and the proper interpretation of her ideas, with an offshoot, the Atlas Society, focusing more on her philosophy. So strongly was she able to influence people before Atlas Shrugged’s publication that criticism tends to ignore the story itself to follow Rand’s suggestions! This is as true of Atlas Shrugged’s detractors as its supporters! I believe I am the only person who regularly says that Atlas Shrugged isn’t a novel about the failures of socialism and religion in the face of capitalist super-people but point out that it’s about a cabal of 1%ers who form a terrorist conspiracy. One of them is literally a pirate! Literally a fucking pirate! But so powerfully did Rand prep her audiences that even her detractors don’t point out that the content of the novel is about the success of terrorists using a weapon of mass destruction to overthrow legally elected governments. The message of Atlas Shrugged is “sabotage works,” not “socialism will collapse due to internal contradictions.”
Frank Herbert and Tolkien never stopped people from interpreting their works differently than they intended, much less used their influence to aggressively tell everyone “what they really meant.”
Some writers – particularly those on the actual left – will sometimes do so, albeit to a lesser extent than Rand. George Orwell and Ursula K. LeGuin wrote both novels and essays that leave little doubt about authorial intent. And, certainly, 1984 and Animal Farm are some of the most politically influential works of the 20th century. But Orwell – while making his position clear – never thought to use his income from 1984 and Animal Farm to create a foundation to spread his works, along with their correct interpretation. He was largely content to let people figure it out for themselves. The same is true of LeGuin. She was clear about what she meant but didn’t organize to get her works promoted, along with correct interpretations, for political reasons.
This is to say, right-leaning artists are far more able and willing to organize to be sure that people correctly interpret their cultural products. Other than Ayn Rand’s massive success, one could view the whole right-wing news industry, from Fox News to Breitbart, as being a top-down way of ideological interpretation of narratives. While liberals present the facts without too much ideology (perhaps because their arguments are overall much stronger,) conservatives have coopted news to create ideological solidarity. In short, while the stories that conservatives tell are artistically inferior, they are aggressive in telling people how to interpret them. The same behavior is frowned on in liberal and leftist circles as being gauche and manipulative.
The Democratic Party’s Role in Art
It isn’t just academic art critics and the modern tendency for artists to allow independent interpretation of their works, even if those interpretations are at odds with their intent. Unfortunately, I gotta talk about how shitty Democratic politicians are… and I don’t mean that as an ideological attack, either! While I think that Democrats don’t go nearly as far as they should, the real problem they have is they are experts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not only are they ideologically chickenshit, they’re also losers. The second is the bigger problem.
Rather than try to chart all the ways that Democrats choose to lose, the important thing here is that the party leadership is incredibly intolerant of anyone who rocks their boat. They would rather keep their position as party bosses and lose than allow upstarts to circumvent them, even if it would mean victory for the party. The Republicans would rather win races and shape policy than cling to party power. It’s a big difference.
Rand is a perfect example of how the Republicans are structurally more flexible than the Democrats. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957. Ayn Rand was a Russian Jewish atheist woman. One of the protagonists in the novel, Dagny Taggert, is a female industrialist who fucks her way through US boardrooms because capitalists give her steamy thigh sweats. To Cold War-era Republicans, this was not an easy sell.
Despite its popularity, it was initially dismissed by conservative critics. The arch-right National Review said it “can be called a novel only by devaluing the term” and wrote, “a voice can be heard… commanding: ‘To a gas chamber – go!'” That’s a brutal review from what was then the flagship of American conservatives. Nevertheless, by the 1960s, the Republicans had made peace with Rand. They found a way to ignore her ethnicity, Judaism, atheism, and pro-sex femininity. Now, she is the de facto philosopher of the Republican Party.
There is simply no comparable story in Democratic politics. None that I know, anyway. The very idea of it sounds absurd! There is no credible way that the Democrats would allow a mere writer to gain so much political clout!
(We can see shades of this in the 2024 election. After Biden left the race, there was no attempt at democracy but simply an exertion of the power of the DNC. Without debate, 99% of the delegates decided that the deeply unpopular Kamala Harris would be next to run. She had deeply underwater approval ratings for three years prior to her nomination! Who nominates someone who is deeply underwater? As ever, the Democratic Party leadership preferred a status quo that kept them in charge of the party rather than a victory that would lessen their authority.)
In short, the Democratic leadership dismisses the direct political contributions of artists. Whereas Republicans are happy to let artists directly contribute, both ideologically and in office. Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are the most significant Republicans of their respective generations and two of the most significant Presidents ever, regardless of what one thinks of their politics. Republicans aren’t frightened of artists in their midsts.
What to Do?
To me, some of this is obvious. It is now time to discard the liberal and leftist notion that it’s bad to let people know what the fuck you mean. It is time for artists to be clear. It is also time for them to be political and philosophical. It’s okay for an artist to say, “That’s not what I meant. Let me tell you.”
This style of literary criticism has a long history, too! Until the 19th century, it was commonplace for one specific interpretation of a piece of art to be taught. The idea of leaving everyone free to misinterpret what they did was downright horrifying! (For instance, can you imagine the horror of the Wachowskis – trans women – seeing The Matrix’s iconography subverted by the manosphere! “Red pilling” is used by sexist, homophobic, and transphobic dipshits to erase their identity! I… cannot imagine how much that must hurt.) There is no reason that can’t be the case again. Maybe the Wachowskis should use some of their money to go to influencers to let everyone know that the correct interpretation of The Matrix has nothing to do with toxic masculinity and is a metaphor for trans empowerment. I would like to see a competent argument about why this is bad. Let’s bring back the importance of authorial intent!
The problems with the Democratic Party are structural, though. They won’t suddenly wake up and realize that, hey, maybe they should let go of their grip on the party and embrace the changes necessary to win. They didn’t do it in 2024, which is probably the most important election in US history since 1860, so to imagine they’ll change now seems absurd. It would take something dramatic, like the rise of a third party (which would also face tremendous structural resistance) or an actual revolution inside the Democratic Party.
Though artists who were free to talk about their intent might help with that, too. While probably out of my wheelhouse, a political novel about the many flaws of the Democratic National Committee, combined with the clarity afforded by authors freely discussing their intent, might help the situation. It would create some of the same pressure that Republicans get from their media explainers. That’s speculatory, though, on several fronts.
Regardless, I think that authors need to make their intentions known. It’s past time to stop worrying about what career academic art critics think about popular interpretation! It’s okay to have a point, to make that point in a novel, and tell people what you just did. Don’t let some intellectuals stop you! Own your intent!