Adrian Roberts

ATLAS SHRUGGED: a First Time Reader’s Thoughts.
 
WARNING – CONTAINS SPOILERS!
 
I joined this forum in late 2015, having become intrigued by Ayn Rand from what I read on the internet, and then reading “The Voice of Reason” and “The Romantic Manifesto”. I then tackled “Atlas Shrugged”, and with all the other things in my life it took nearly a year to read it.
 
To clarify my perspective: I am not your typical “Atlas Shrugged” reader. I am an Englishman in my late 50s; I work for the National Health Service [NHS], the ultimate in socialised medicine, and for much of my life I have been a Christian and a socialist. The socialism started to crumble in my 30s when I realised that I valued individualism and heroic achievement too much, but altruism and politically correct liberalism are more deeply entrenched. My Christianity crumbled over the last fifteen years, primarily over the issue of human suffering vis-à-vis a supposedly all-loving and all-powerful God. So Objectivism offered an intriguing new perspective that in some ways struck a chord with me (remember that Ayn Rand is hardly known this side of the Atlantic, so it really was new to me).
 
The first thing to say is that Ayn Rand’s descriptions, of people, of nature, and of cities, are evocative and often lyrical and a masterful use of language. This is remarkable considering that English was not her first language, and that from what we see in film clips of her speaking, her speech was not as articulate as her writing. Her writing is a little less assured when it comes to dialogue and to action sequences (such as the last chapter where the main characters turn into something like the Three Musketeers and D’Artagnan). There is frequent and valid criticism that she should have allowed more editing; she makes the same points many times, and there are long discourses that interrupt the narrative. The tramp Jeff Allen launches into a ten-page account of the demise of the Twentieth-Century Motor Corporation  having just been at death’s door from starvation. It is scarcely conceivable that President Thompson and his team, let alone the rest of the nation, would have sat through more than the first few minutes of John Galt’s speech, let alone going from seeing him as their enemy to trying to force him to be their ruler. Would they have really have been dense enough not to see the contradiction there, and desperate enough to give up their own power? But none of this need detract from the book’s message. I treated those passages like the songs in a musical; you suspend notions of reality during the songs and return to the plot when they finish.
 
Rand’s choice of technology as a plot driver is interesting. In the 1950’s when the book was written, airlines rather than railroads were seen as the future. During that decade the USA had the most comprehensive system of domestic feeder-airlines that has any country has ever had or probably ever will have. Their story would have fitted in well with her themes: small entrepreneurs struggling to keep their airlines independent, but finding it impossible without government subsidy and then having to accept Federal regulations to stay in business. But AR is clearly not confident with aviation; her references to aircraft are usually somewhat vague, though her evocative description of the view during Dagny’s night flight suggests she may have flown as a passenger at night. In reality, Dagny wouldn’t have had time to learn to fly during the busiest period of her life, or survived an unintentional spin close to the ground in poor visibility (I have some experience as a pilot but have only experienced intentional spins). But Ayn Rand writes about what she knows and she is clearly inspired by railroads; she describes their workings in convincing detail and uses the locomotive as a metaphor for something with power and purpose. Her description of Dagny’s journey in the cab of the Taggart Comet is a superb piece of writing with plenty of detail, especially of the cab itself, and I wonder if AR had managed to have a journey in a diesel engine cab as part of her research. Her description of Hank Reardon’s steelworks is sufficiently atmospheric to suggest that she has visited one.
 
The heart of the book is her Objectivist political and moral philosophy. Does she overstate her case? She certainly repeats it many times. In the UK we think of the 1950s as the decade of the American Dream, of individualism rather than statism. Perhaps Americans have a different view. Certainly it was also the decade of McCarthyism. But there was a Republican Administration, under Eisenhower. Were things that bad? Was there ever anything at the time she was writing in the real world comparable to the “anti-dog-eat-dog” legislation? Even before America’s downfall in the book, the rest of the world are already People’s Republics. This sounds ridiculous, but in reality, Britain in the late 1940s was as near to being a Socialist state as it has ever been, though not of course a republic. Every major industry was nationalised. Medical care was nationalised as the NHS (which sounds socialist to Americans but we are still rather attached to it). And we gave the design of the most advanced jet engine in the world, the Rolls-Royce Nene, to the Russians: the Americans were less than happy when they found out, especially when it was used to power the MiG-15 that opposed them in Korea.
 
Jeff Allen’s description of the way in which people turned on each other like animals after the workers were given control of the Starnesville factory appears exaggerated, especially if what is being described is merely a social democratic, liberal society as most of Europe now is. It really isn’t that bad! On the other hand, the press in the UK occasionally carries stories of how delinquent children have allegedly been taken on foreign holidays at the taxpayers expense, or pregnant teenagers are automatically given their own flats. But the fact that these headlines are critical should give us hope. If, however AR is describing a Marxist utopia, then perhaps it would be as bad as she described; as for instance the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China. Certainly in the book, the imposition of Directive 10-289 sounds like a full-blown totalitarian take-over, but Fascist rather than Communist, given the alliance of business with government. But when we meet the dictator, Mr Thompson, he seems disappointingly colourless and indecisive (but then, how often have we met managers who make us wonder how they got their jobs?).
 
Has the tide is turned away from the socialism that AR feared? Under Reagan and Thatcher, there came about a greater degree of freedom for business. In the UK, the nationalised industries were sold off to private enterprise. The left has never accepted this and the debate continues, e.g. about whether the railways provided a better service when nationalised than now that they are privatised. The issue of a state health service is viewed very differently in the UK than the USA. Here, no government would survive taking away our free health service. This is the main area where I would compromise Objectivist principles: I do not believe that in a civilised society people should die from not being able to afford healthcare. In Atlas Shrugged, there is a passage dealing with the supposed evils of state controlled medication; the fear is that Doctors will be forced by the government to decide which patients die and which live; there is a similar chapter by Leonard Peikoff in The Voice of Reason. All I can say is that I work with Doctors in the NHS and they don’t seem particularly oppressed and powerless to me. The issue of funding the NHS is another matter. It isn’t really free of course; it is funded by taxpayers, whether they like it or not. But its debt is increasing and its service provision is decreasing unsustainably. There are howls of protest from the Left at any suggestion of wholesale privatisation. Certainly the government is increasingly selling certain functions to the private sector which then provides the care under government contract. I am prepared to apply Reason here, and say that if we do believe in a Health Service funded by the taxpayer rather than paid for by the directly by consumer, does it matter if some of it is provided by private health companies under contract to the government, rather than directly by the state-run service? There is a valid debate about which model is the most efficient. But the Left will not even consider more privatisation of the Health Service and this is clearly ideologically driven rather than derived from Reason.
 
AR’s attitude to violence has given many readers cause for concern. The most controversial passage is when Hank Rearden, normally portrayed as entirely honourable, threatens to hit his wife during their row when he leaves her. If the reader is expected to disapprove, this is not made clear. AR appears to be saying that Hank’s threat was acceptable because he was morally superior to Lilian. Even allowing for the difference between 1950s social attitudes and 21st century ones, it is hard to make excuses for this. (And yet, we are supposed to believe that Hank did not get in the least angry with Dagny when she left him for John Galt!). Some of this is an example of AR’s very black and white views of people that she either approves of or disapproves of. In the last chapter, Dagny shoots a terrified man in the back when she could have tied him up; the only justification being that he was a snivelling wimp. And every single passenger who died in the tunnel accident apparently deserved it, including the children. (It makes me feel the way I used to when I was a Christian and had to justify the genocide when Joshua’s Israelite army sacked Jericho). On the other hand, the language that AR uses when describing the horror of the sound-ray gun, the ultimate weapon, is reminiscent of the language used by CND about nuclear weapons. I wonder what AR thought about nuclear weapons? The military is never spoken of positively in Atlas Shrugged. (Incidentally: Ragnar Danneskjold – where was the US Navy?).
 
The concept of all the independently minded geniuses and wealth-creators removing themselves from the economy was an original thought at the time. But leaving their responsibilities raises many questions. It foresees the “turn-on, tune-in and drop-out” of Timothy Leary’s hippy culture but predates it by over ten years. In some ways the values of Woodstock and the values of Galt’s Gulch are diametrically opposed, but if we see the hippies as irresponsible, then how are Ellis Wyatt, Francisco D’Anconia et al also not irresponsible? The Objectivist answer would be about not allowing their talents to be exploited by Government, though what the hippies would have said would have been not dissimilar. But did they need to also destroy the means of producing their commodities – Wyatt’s Torch? I understand that AR herself described the whole concept as a plot device, so maybe we are not meant to scrutinise the plot, as distinct from the philosophy, too closely. It certainly makes the point that wealth is not created by labour alone. But the community in Colorado seems a little too cosy to be true. One wonders how they would have coped with dissent between their members, especially considering how badly the Objectivist movement coped with it from the 60’s onwards.
 
So what difference has the book made to my life and am I an Objectivist? I don’t know how many total sceptics have read the book and been converted. When I decided to read it, I was at least sympathetic to its ideals of reason, freedom and human achievement. Several times at work since, I have pulled back from using phrases such as “perhaps we should….”, or “I wonder if…” in emails, and used the kind of more assertive phrase that Dagny would have approved of. And I am less likely to have a negative or cynical reaction when I see someone in a very expensive car; I am now more likely to assume that are entitled to it because they work hard and take financial risks. I was annoyed when BBC Radio broadcast a series on Andrew Carnegie, JD Rockefeller etc titled “The Robber Barons”. I didn’t have time to listen to the programmes but the title didn’t bode well for their impartiality. But I cannot go as far as AR would on state medicine and social care. A civilised society cannot let people die in the streets, even if that means taxing some people against their will. If you are going to apply Reason to an argument, you have to define your framework, and what is Reasonable must be informed by human decency and compassion. AR was not an anarchist. On the other hand, as I observed above, the country cannot afford to fund all the demands on the NHS, any more than the US could afford Obamacare. I hope that medicine can continue to be free at the point of use, but I am more open than most of my colleagues to at least consider funding private companies to provide the care.
 
I disagree with the premise that there is always a right and a wrong and the middle-ground is always evil. For instance, if the two extremes are of dictatorship and anarchy, then the middle ground is more nearly right. I try to be more open-minded about Donald Trump than most of my compatriots, though I read that even Alan Greenspan has said that he did not vote for either presidential candidate. Is Trump an Objectivist? He appears to be far too interventionist. Perhaps he is an Orren Boyle rather than a Hank Rearden. It is a weakness of the book that Hank is the only industrialist to have started off poor and so illustrate the book’s premise that anyone can get rich by hard work and using their brain: Dagny and Francisco had inherited wealth.  Those in our time who are closer to AR’s vision are such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Jimmy Wales, Richard Branson.
 
John Galt says in his speech that the vilest form of self-abasement is to subordinate your mind to the mind of another. I followed world-views unthinkingly in the past and am not going to do so again. As soon as I say “I am an Objectivist, and that means I agree with all that Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff etc say without criticsm”, I stop being an Objectivist because I have surrendered my critical faculties once again. But if asked am I sympathetic to Objectivism and its ideals, and has it informed my thinking to a considerable degree, then my answer is yes.
 
Adrian Roberts
February 2017
 
 

ATLAS SHRUGGED: a First Time Reader’s Thoughts.
 
WARNING – CONTAINS SPOILERS!
 
I joined this forum in late 2015, having become intrigued by Ayn Rand from what I read on the internet, and then reading “The Voice of Reason” and “The Romantic Manifesto”. I then tackled “Atlas Shrugged”, and with all the other things in my life it took nearly a year to read it.
 
To clarify my perspective: I am not your typical “Atlas Shrugged” reader. I am an Englishman in my late 50s; I work for the National Health Service [NHS], the ultimate in socialised medicine, and for much of my life I have been a Christian and a socialist. The socialism started to crumble in my 30s when I realised that I valued individualism and heroic achievement too much, but altruism and politically correct liberalism are more deeply entrenched. My Christianity crumbled over the last fifteen years, primarily over the issue of human suffering vis-à-vis a supposedly all-loving and all-powerful God. So Objectivism offered an intriguing new perspective that in some ways struck a chord with me (remember that Ayn Rand is hardly known this side of the Atlantic, so it really was new to me).
 
The first thing to say is that Ayn Rand’s descriptions, of people, of nature, and of cities, are evocative and often lyrical and a masterful use of language. This is remarkable considering that English was not her first language, and that from what we see in film clips of her speaking, her speech was not as articulate as her writing. Her writing is a little less assured when it comes to dialogue and to action sequences (such as the last chapter where the main characters turn into something like the Three Musketeers and D’Artagnan). There is frequent and valid criticism that she should have allowed more editing; she makes the same points many times, and there are long discourses that interrupt the narrative. The tramp Jeff Allen launches into a ten-page account of the demise of the Twentieth-Century Motor Corporation  having just been at death’s door from starvation. It is scarcely conceivable that President Thompson and his team, let alone the rest of the nation, would have sat through more than the first few minutes of John Galt’s speech, let alone going from seeing him as their enemy to trying to force him to be their ruler. Would they have really have been dense enough not to see the contradiction there, and desperate enough to give up their own power? But none of this need detract from the book’s message. I treated those passages like the songs in a musical; you suspend notions of reality during the songs and return to the plot when they finish.
 
Rand’s choice of technology as a plot driver is interesting. In the 1950’s when the book was written, airlines rather than railroads were seen as the future. During that decade the USA had the most comprehensive system of domestic feeder-airlines that has any country has ever had or probably ever will have. Their story would have fitted in well with her themes: small entrepreneurs struggling to keep their airlines independent, but finding it impossible without government subsidy and then having to accept Federal regulations to stay in business. But AR is clearly not confident with aviation; her references to aircraft are usually somewhat vague, though her evocative description of the view during Dagny’s night flight suggests she may have flown as a passenger at night. In reality, Dagny wouldn’t have had time to learn to fly during the busiest period of her life, or survived an unintentional spin close to the ground in poor visibility (I have some experience as a pilot but have only experienced intentional spins). But Ayn Rand writes about what she knows and she is clearly inspired by railroads; she describes their workings in convincing detail and uses the locomotive as a metaphor for something with power and purpose. Her description of Dagny’s journey in the cab of the Taggart Comet is a superb piece of writing with plenty of detail, especially of the cab itself, and I wonder if AR had managed to have a journey in a diesel engine cab as part of her research. Her description of Hank Reardon’s steelworks is sufficiently atmospheric to suggest that she has visited one.
 
The heart of the book is her Objectivist political and moral philosophy. Does she overstate her case? She certainly repeats it many times. In the UK we think of the 1950s as the decade of the American Dream, of individualism rather than statism. Perhaps Americans have a different view. Certainly it was also the decade of McCarthyism. But there was a Republican Administration, under Eisenhower. Were things that bad? Was there ever anything at the time she was writing in the real world comparable to the “anti-dog-eat-dog” legislation? Even before America’s downfall in the book, the rest of the world are already People’s Republics. This sounds ridiculous, but in reality, Britain in the late 1940s was as near to being a Socialist state as it has ever been, though not of course a republic. Every major industry was nationalised. Medical care was nationalised as the NHS (which sounds socialist to Americans but we are still rather attached to it). And we gave the design of the most advanced jet engine in the world, the Rolls-Royce Nene, to the Russians: the Americans were less than happy when they found out, especially when it was used to power the MiG-15 that opposed them in Korea.
 
Jeff Allen’s description of the way in which people turned on each other like animals after the workers were given control of the Starnesville factory appears exaggerated, especially if what is being described is merely a social democratic, liberal society as most of Europe now is. It really isn’t that bad! On the other hand, the press in the UK occasionally carries stories of how delinquent children have allegedly been taken on foreign holidays at the taxpayers expense, or pregnant teenagers are automatically given their own flats. But the fact that these headlines are critical should give us hope. If, however AR is describing a Marxist utopia, then perhaps it would be as bad as she described; as for instance the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China. Certainly in the book, the imposition of Directive 10-289 sounds like a full-blown totalitarian take-over, but Fascist rather than Communist, given the alliance of business with government. But when we meet the dictator, Mr Thompson, he seems disappointingly colourless and indecisive (but then, how often have we met managers who make us wonder how they got their jobs?).
 
Has the tide is turned away from the socialism that AR feared? Under Reagan and Thatcher, there came about a greater degree of freedom for business. In the UK, the nationalised industries were sold off to private enterprise. The left has never accepted this and the debate continues, e.g. about whether the railways provided a better service when nationalised than now that they are privatised. The issue of a state health service is viewed very differently in the UK than the USA. Here, no government would survive taking away our free health service. This is the main area where I would compromise Objectivist principles: I do not believe that in a civilised society people should die from not being able to afford healthcare. In Atlas Shrugged, there is a passage dealing with the supposed evils of state controlled medication; the fear is that Doctors will be forced by the government to decide which patients die and which live; there is a similar chapter by Leonard Peikoff in The Voice of Reason. All I can say is that I work with Doctors in the NHS and they don’t seem particularly oppressed and powerless to me. The issue of funding the NHS is another matter. It isn’t really free of course; it is funded by taxpayers, whether they like it or not. But its debt is increasing and its service provision is decreasing unsustainably. There are howls of protest from the Left at any suggestion of wholesale privatisation. Certainly the government is increasingly selling certain functions to the private sector which then provides the care under government contract. I am prepared to apply Reason here, and say that if we do believe in a Health Service funded by the taxpayer rather than paid for by the directly by consumer, does it matter if some of it is provided by private health companies under contract to the government, rather than directly by the state-run service? There is a valid debate about which model is the most efficient. But the Left will not even consider more privatisation of the Health Service and this is clearly ideologically driven rather than derived from Reason.
 
AR’s attitude to violence has given many readers cause for concern. The most controversial passage is when Hank Rearden, normally portrayed as entirely honourable, threatens to hit his wife during their row when he leaves her. If the reader is expected to disapprove, this is not made clear. AR appears to be saying that Hank’s threat was acceptable because he was morally superior to Lilian. Even allowing for the difference between 1950s social attitudes and 21st century ones, it is hard to make excuses for this. (And yet, we are supposed to believe that Hank did not get in the least angry with Dagny when she left him for John Galt!). Some of this is an example of AR’s very black and white views of people that she either approves of or disapproves of. In the last chapter, Dagny shoots a terrified man in the back when she could have tied him up; the only justification being that he was a snivelling wimp. And every single passenger who died in the tunnel accident apparently deserved it, including the children. (It makes me feel the way I used to when I was a Christian and had to justify the genocide when Joshua’s Israelite army sacked Jericho). On the other hand, the language that AR uses when describing the horror of the sound-ray gun, the ultimate weapon, is reminiscent of the language used by CND about nuclear weapons. I wonder what AR thought about nuclear weapons? The military is never spoken of positively in Atlas Shrugged. (Incidentally: Ragnar Danneskjold – where was the US Navy?).
 
The concept of all the independently minded geniuses and wealth-creators removing themselves from the economy was an original thought at the time. But leaving their responsibilities raises many questions. It foresees the “turn-on, tune-in and drop-out” of Timothy Leary’s hippy culture but predates it by over ten years. In some ways the values of Woodstock and the values of Galt’s Gulch are diametrically opposed, but if we see the hippies as irresponsible, then how are Ellis Wyatt, Francisco D’Anconia et al also not irresponsible? The Objectivist answer would be about not allowing their talents to be exploited by Government, though what the hippies would have said would have been not dissimilar. But did they need to also destroy the means of producing their commodities – Wyatt’s Torch? I understand that AR herself described the whole concept as a plot device, so maybe we are not meant to scrutinise the plot, as distinct from the philosophy, too closely. It certainly makes the point that wealth is not created by labour alone. But the community in Colorado seems a little too cosy to be true. One wonders how they would have coped with dissent between their members, especially considering how badly the Objectivist movement coped with it from the 60’s onwards.
 
So what difference has the book made to my life and am I an Objectivist? I don’t know how many total sceptics have read the book and been converted. When I decided to read it, I was at least sympathetic to its ideals of reason, freedom and human achievement. Several times at work since, I have pulled back from using phrases such as “perhaps we should….”, or “I wonder if…” in emails, and used the kind of more assertive phrase that Dagny would have approved of. And I am less likely to have a negative or cynical reaction when I see someone in a very expensive car; I am now more likely to assume that are entitled to it because they work hard and take financial risks. I was annoyed when BBC Radio broadcast a series on Andrew Carnegie, JD Rockefeller etc titled “The Robber Barons”. I didn’t have time to listen to the programmes but the title didn’t bode well for their impartiality. But I cannot go as far as AR would on state medicine and social care. A civilised society cannot let people die in the streets, even if that means taxing some people against their will. If you are going to apply Reason to an argument, you have to define your framework, and what is Reasonable must be informed by human decency and compassion. AR was not an anarchist. On the other hand, as I observed above, the country cannot afford to fund all the demands on the NHS, any more than the US could afford Obamacare. I hope that medicine can continue to be free at the point of use, but I am more open than most of my colleagues to at least consider funding private companies to provide the care.
 
I disagree with the premise that there is always a right and a wrong and the middle-ground is always evil. For instance, if the two extremes are of dictatorship and anarchy, then the middle ground is more nearly right. I try to be more open-minded about Donald Trump than most of my compatriots, though I read that even Alan Greenspan has said that he did not vote for either presidential candidate. Is Trump an Objectivist? He appears to be far too interventionist. Perhaps he is an Orren Boyle rather than a Hank Rearden. It is a weakness of the book that Hank is the only industrialist to have started off poor and so illustrate the book’s premise that anyone can get rich by hard work and using their brain: Dagny and Francisco had inherited wealth.  Those in our time who are closer to AR’s vision are such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Jimmy Wales, Richard Branson.
 
John Galt says in his speech that the vilest form of self-abasement is to subordinate your mind to the mind of another. I followed world-views unthinkingly in the past and am not going to do so again. As soon as I say “I am an Objectivist, and that means I agree with all that Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff etc say without criticsm”, I stop being an Objectivist because I have surrendered my critical faculties once again. But if asked am I sympathetic to Objectivism and its ideals, and has it informed my thinking to a considerable degree, then my answer is yes.
 
Adrian Roberts
February 2017
 
 

It is certainly true that most of the Leave faction want to have their cake and eat it. It is often said that if we vote to leave, the negotiations are likely to be protracted and messy, and leave us in limbo for a long time, probably years, which won't be great for the economy, especially investment and therefore employment. Even if ultimately we can do better out of the EU, the effects of the change will be very long-lasting.
In terms of immigration: I don't think too many people have a problem with French or Polish people coming over here to work, especially as an equal number of Brits work in other EU countries. There is concern about what happens if Turkey joins the EU, but other EU countries have the same reservations. The main concern at present is the refugees from the middle east and North Africa, and the possibility of terrorists using the refugee routes as cover. I wonder whether, if we were not in the EU, the French would simply allow all theirs to come over here, and we would be faced with huge refugee camps similar to the one in Calais. So, to what extent do we sacrifice our own needs for others?
Most of our immigrants are nothing to do with the EU; they come from the Commonwealth Nations, in particular Nigeria, India and Pakistan. In that sense, we are the victim of our own success in creating a comparatively pleasant society. There are some localities in the big cities dominated by various immigrant communities, and no doubt there are some jihadist mullahs in some of the mosques, and some people especially the older women who have never learned to speak English. But the majority have assimilated very well. Sometimes their young people in the poorer areas form into criminal gangs, but so do some disaffected white youths. Of course immigration has to be controlled, but the country would grind to a halt without it's ethnic minorities. The National Health Service is largely staffed by Nigerians and Zimbabweans (at least in London - and I'm not exaggerating; in my NHS team I am the only white male). If we go out for a meal we will almost always go to an Indian curry house; the plumbers and electricians are mostly Polish; Starbucks and Pizza Express are mainly run by Czechs; and the prostitutes are mainly Hungarian (I'm told!)

What do Objectivists on this forum think about the EU Referendum? Should the UK leave or remain in the European Union?
 
I am especially interested to hear what other British forum members think, but Americans or members of any other nationality are welcome to give their perspective;
 
Undoubtedly, the European Union is bureaucratic, controlling; clearly a statist organisation. But it was intended to be an organisation to break down national boundaries and allow freedom of trade and business. It was intended to facilitate Capitalism; contrary to the some of it’s opponents it is not a Socialist organisation – social democrat maybe, reflecting the governments of many of the component states.  And of course it became bloated and bureaucratic: that is human nature; show me an organisation that hasn’t.
 
The above suggests that I am making excuses for it; admittedly I am leaning towards voting to stay in, if only as a “least worst” option. But I have not yet totally made up my mind. Are the “Leave” camp any less statist? During the 1975 referendum, I was too young to vote, but I remember thinking that those who wanted to leave the EEC (as it was called then) were the extremists on both sides: Tony Benn on the Left; Enoch Powell on the Right. It is the same today. Generally the extreme Left want to leave. Admittedly Jeremy Corbyn has said he is in favour of  staying in (for Americans: he is the leader of the Labour Party; makes Bernie Sanders look like Milton Friedman). This may be more about the unity of his party than his personal convictions. But the likes of George Galloway (makes Lenin look like Milton Friedman) are certainly in favour of leaving: the Left certainly don’t see the EU as a socialist organisation.
 
The Right Wing elements of the Leave campaign certainly present themselves as individualists, who seek freedom from being controlled by unelected bureaucrats. But their policies would involve a considerable degree of Trade Protectionism and therefore state interference in British Industry. And many would seek to restrict individual freedom in areas of abortion and sexuality. Nigel Farage is presented as the acceptable face of the United Kingdom Independence Party, and he is probably relatively Libertarian and secular. But in his party and the others of the Right, there are a lot of people who would like to control people’s sexuality, and discriminate against ethnic minorities and women, which can only be done by state interference. There is also an undercurrent of religious motivation among the extreme right; some are evangelical Christians who believe that the EU is the “beast” of the book of Revelation.
 
I am not going to be voting for reasons of nationalism or patriotism. These sentiments have no place in Objectivism. Certainly “my country right or wrong” is not justifiable using Reason. If the honest application of Reason leads us to see that our country or lifestyle is preferable to other countries, that would be a different matter. In fact the values of Britain and the USA probably are superior to most others in terms of individual liberty and affluent lifestyles – but that can he said about most of the EU countries. The question of Immigration plays a large part in the EU debate, often as a cover for racism. But Objectively, it should be purely a practical issue about how many more people can be allowed into the country and how we can control the flow.
 
So, the choice should be made purely on the basis of which option is best for the economy of the nation and therefore best for me, and on whether leaving or staying gives us more or less control over immigration. And frankly it is very difficult to decide on the answers to these when experts give totally opposing predictions. I fear that a huge decision for the nation will be decided purely by the prejudices or at best the gut feelings of the voters, rather than on reasoned analysis.
 
Has the reasoned analysis of anyone here led them to a specific conclusion?

In the UK, religion doesn't have the same influence as in the USA, though when people reject organised religion they tend to take refuge in some kind of vague spirituality. They will say "my dead relative is now an angel in heaven", which isn't even Christian theology, but avoids the reasonable but unpalatable conclusion that there is no afterlife. And the politically correct brigade seek to impose a new kind of puritanism on us, and of course its fine to criticise Christianity but we must never criticise Islam.
As you say, people are not demanding a laissez-faire economy. To be fair, I don't think it occurs to most people that we need an alternative to what we have got. The Welfare state has become part of our national psyche. The answer to any problem is to spend more money on it. There are howls of protest and on-line petitions if someone is denied a new and very expensive medical treatment on the grounds that it will take money away from other needy people. I don't think I could go as far as dismantling the welfare system altogether, but the unpalatable truth is that there is just not enough money to for the government to do all that people think it should do. "Wishing it was true don't make it so".
The nightmare scenario would be Jeremy Corbyn getting into power and trying to turn the clock back to the 1970s. If the electorate are really fed up he may just get the vote in the same way as Donald Trump might.
 
 

Once more, Objectivism is challenging my thinking in areas that I had not been open about before. I became interested in Objectivism because I had always admired individualism, heroism and achievement, but had balked at some of the implications - such as those I cited above. But now I can see that this was based on assumptions that I had never questioned, but that are very deeply ingrained (perhaps more so in Europe where I come from, than in the USA).
I read the Amazon review that Reidy posted a link to, of Block's Defending the Undefendible. There is a quote from the forward by Hayek that sums it up:
"Looking through Defending the Undefendable made me feel that I was once more exposed to the shock therapy by which, more than fifty years ago, the late Ludwig von Mises converted me to a consistent free market position. … Some may find it too strong a medicine, but it will still do them good even if they hate it. A real understanding of economics demands that one disabuses oneself of many dear prejudices and illusions...."
I've always liked to think of myself as open-minded but there are clearly some sacred cows that I haven't thought to question.
However, this leads to another question. Block, Hayek, etc are Libertarians, and this is a position that I find attractive. One of the Amazon reviews of the book pointed out that Ayn Rand opposed the Libertarian position. I was aware of this from reading "The Voice of Reason", but it is not very clear from that book (which is a selection of essays, not always in a clear context) what the distinction is between Objectivism and Libertarianism. Can someone sum up the distinction and the reasons for AR's opposition, please?

Hi! Welcome to the forum. 
Lot's of things in your post and many of them probably merit a topic of their own. So, I'm going to respond only with a few quick and most important points.
First, and most important, working in the NHS and helping people is not altruism. Since you're my age, regardless of philosophy, you've probably realized that working purposefully is the most important thing for your own happiness. Family, friends etc. are important, of course, but your own purpose is what animates you and makes you you, and enables you to make the most of those relationships. Obviously that does not mean that the job does not suck much of the time :), but that's life: the ups , the downs and the boring too.
Second... if you're intimidated by the size of Atlas, why not try The Fountainhead. It is a less ambitious book because its theme is more personal, but that's good too. Too many people agree with Rand's political message, but give secondary importance to her message about making the most of one's own personal (and only) life on earth. 
Don't be too intimidated. If you like a good yarn, Rand's fiction will grip you and you'll find the philosophy secondary even though it is pervasive. In other words, the books are not propaganda; they're novels. I'd love to send you a Xmas gift, welcoming you to a journey I begun decades ago. If you message me your address, it'll be in the mail this weekend. My only advice: don't start it until you think you have 3 or 4 hours to sit down without interruption and dive into it. You need to focus and get into the swing at the beginning.
Whether you stay with Objectivism or choose something else after exploring this, I wish you all the best. One life: have fun.