All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace: Everyone loves a good montage.

Adam Curtis began his latest documentary series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace on BBC2 this week and I tried my darnedest to grasp what he was on about and this is what I came up with, see what you reckon...

Ayn Rand was Russian lady, novelist and the founder of Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophy based on the individual's achievement of happiness through pure self interest, out with government/religion and their restrictions, right? Right. So Ayn Rand wrote this book in the late 50s, Atlas Shrugged, based on this philosophy. In the book a group of innovators and business leaders take themselves away from the contsraints of society to live in the hills somewhere and watch smugly as the society collapses without them. After a while, when the economy is well and truly fucked, they come back to tell everyone how to construct a better society, focussing on the above mentioned principles of objectivism. Yes, this is a reductive explanation of a long and complicated book but that's the basic gist.

One of Rand's inner circle, Allen Greenspan, went on to become the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the most powerful man in the American economy and therefore pretty much the most powerful man in the world. Greenspan believed that computer networks could maintain order without central government control. This idea of the world being connected by these networks became known as the Californian ideology. Thus far I was kind of following but it wasn't long before my mind began boggling.

During Clinton's time in office, there were budget cuts in order that the market could right the deficit and public spending was encouraged, creating the boom of the 90s. Now here's where the machines come into it; the computers created mathematical models to keep the market stable so people are borrowing and spending like nobodies business. A New Economy has been made. But something isn't right, productivity rates are not increasing yet the predicted profits are rising. Greenspan notices this, tries to warn everyone but then changes his mind, deciding it's all going to be fine after all because the computers will sort it. But soon, of course, it all falls apart, the markets, Clinton and Rand's collective and everyone's in the shit, especially Asia, who's westernised economies take the biggest hit. China are well pissed off at this and begin flooding the west with cheap goods that the western markets can't match and so industry gets a kicking and the west is plunged into recession. Basically, I think that's it, okay? Okay.

So the moral of the story seems to be, don't be a selfish dick, think about how your actions will effect others ie. don't lend huge wads of cash to countries to aid their economies and then fuck their markets up, sending them straight into Third World status. While I may not have grasped all of the complex ideas Curtis raises, the economy has always been a bit of a mystery to me, I did enjoy the style and soundtrack. Numerous montages are accompanied by haunting/raucus/beautiful tracks and insightful parallels are drawn to illustrate that this self involved philosophy of objectivism is damaging to the individual as well as to the broader world, economic or otherwise. Never having seen a Curtis film before, I thought the style was captivating: he made a fairly depressing and at times frightening subject an aesthetically enjoyable experience.