Although it is clearly set in the imaginary communist equivalent of the United States, Atlas Shrugged lacks orientation in time. As Ronald E. Merrill notes, The American economy seems, structurally, to be in the late nineteenth century, with large industrial concerns being sole proprietorships run by their founders. The general tone of the novel, however, is that of the 1930s, a depression with the streets full of panhandlers. The technological level, as well as the social customs, are those of the 1950s. And the political environment, especially the level of regulation and the total corruption, seems to anticipate the 1970s. We are simultaneously in a future in which most of the world has gone Communist, and the past in which England had the world's greatest navy.
Nonetheless, the novel's clear warning against the economic and.....
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