Life and Value in
Ayn Rand's Ethics
 

One of the most interesting of Rand's fictional characters, for many readers, is a minor character in Atlas Shrugged, a bureaucrat assigned to regulate the steel mills owned by Rand's industrialist hero Hank Rearden. His name is Tony, but the reader only learns that in his very last scene; in all his earlier appearances he's called "the Wet Nurse," supposedly a sarcastic name given to him by Rearden's steelworkers. Rand shows him originally coming to Rearden Steel to ride herd on Rearden; but during the course of his stay there, he learns to admire Rearden, and ultimately to change his loyalties. That change costs him his life; when he proposes to warn Rearden of a plot to seize or destroy his plant, the plotters beat him and throw him down a slag pile, mortally injuring him.

Rearden discovers this as he returns to his plant and sees a hint of motion by the side of the road. He goes down, picks up Tony, and carries him back to the plant, hoping to save him — but the hope isn't granted. Tony lives long enough to deliver his warning, and then dies, saying that this must be how it feels to want something very badly and to attain it.

This scene is one of Rand's most moving. But by her own statement of the logic of value, Tony's actions have no value.

The ultimate value is one's own survival. But Tony knows he's dying; he has no hope of anything past living long enough to give his warning. The effort of giving that warning costs him dearly, in pain and struggle, and may very well shorten his life by consuming his last strength. And where is the payoff? Rearden's continued possession of his mills, or even Rearden's life, won't prolong Tony's life, and after Tony is dead it certainly won't cause him to survive or flourish; so it can't have any value either. Tony is giving up some of the last fragments of value he will ever have — a few moments more of life, and a chance to minimize his own pain, the most direct possible experience of disvalue — in order to gain something whose payoff will only come after he's past caring. How can this make sense?

It's possible, of course, to say that if Tony did survive, then Rearden's friendship and respect for him would be a great value, and that by acting as if he were going to survive, he gains a few last moments of living as he ought to, as a being who pursues values. But the sense of oneself as a being who pursues values surely depends on one's actually pursuing values. If Tony's feeling that he cares intensely about Rearden is sufficient to make his devotion to Rearden a value, then values are subjective, and Rand always denied this. But the standard she proposes as an objective measure of value says that Tony is not attaining an objective value: his own survival or anything that can contribute to it and therefore, any joy he takes in his own action is unfounded. It's like taking joy in having a banknote from a bank that has failed, rather than considering it a worthless scrap of paper.

But I've never found it possible to read of Tony's last moments unmoved, or to think that he would have been better off huddled at the base of the cliff, waiting to die, or that his final happiness was meaningless. Rand the storyteller knows better than Rand the logician. But where did Rand the logician go wrong?