And now Chapter 16, “Miracle Metal.” The meaning of the title won’t be apparent until the end of the chapter when the dust has settled. We are at the halfway point through Atlas Shrugged, and at last we see the bad guys, the Aristocracy of Pull, make their move. And what a move it is!
“But can we get away with it?” asked Wesley Mouch. No one answers him right away, and at last the only one with the courage to do so is one Mr. Thompson, in whom Rand personifies the legitimate government for whatever that term is worth. Thompson is the “Head Of The State” – one notices that Rand does not use the term “President,” largely after the pattern of the sketchy European countries who are all now “People’s States.” It’s all the structure we need for the moment – it is apparent that the true power lies elsewhere.
In fact, most of it is sitting in the room with them. We have the industrialists, a beaten and subservient crowd at the beck and call of the bureaucrats, traded like cattle. We have the unions, represented by their capo de tutti capi Fred Kinnan, their own membership traded in exactly the same manner. And lastly we have the bureaucrats themselves, the ruling class, the cadre. It is their moment.
Why the trepidation? They have the official if tacit support of the sitting government, the media, the academics, and in another bit of Randian prescience, the popular entertainers. It is a combination that seems bitterly familiar to contemporary conservatives. What could they have to worry about?
Well, responsibility, for one thing. There is a truism of command that one can delegate authority, but never responsibility. That stays with the delegator. But not in the Aristocracy of Pull, whose residents are adepts in the opposite: maintaining authority while passing responsibility. It is the ladder to the top of a very unstable structure.
They’re going to take over the economy, and hence the country itself. And they’re going to establish a fully centrally-planned and centrally-directed economy by simple fiat. This is Directive 10-289. A lesser author might have preferred to be vague about it, but Rand gives the specifics. This is how a country is taken over by a gang of thieves:
Point One – workers can’t quit. Non-workers over 21 will report to the Unification Board and work where it tells them. Point Two – companies and their owners can’t quit or they’ll be nationalized or imprisoned respectively. Point Three – no more patents, trademarks, or brand names. Patented objects and their income will be ceded to the government, by force if necessary. Point Four – no new inventions. Point Five – no changes in production. Point Six – no changes in consumption. Point Seven – wage and price freeze. Point Eight – any problems go to the Unification Board, whose decisions are final.
It is, in essence, an economy built after the Fascist model – the means of production remain nominally in private hands but their control and their product are strictly in the hands of the State. It is a frantic attempt to freeze a collapsing economy in a state of pre-collapse. It is also an outright coup d’etat on behalf of this Unification Board, whose membership will wield an arbitrary, dictatorial control over the country from which there is no appeal. Membership on this board is the acme of power, and the bureaucrats consider that to be reserved for themselves.
Not so fast. First the program has to be sold to the unwilling, or at least enough of them to force the remaining unwilling to play along. And that’s where union boss Fred Kinnan comes in.
“All I’ve got to say is that you’d better staff that Unification Board with my men,” he said. “…Or I’ll blast your Point One to hell.”
(Point One states that nobody can quit).
“I intend, of course, to have a representative of labor on that board,” said Mouch dryly…”
“No cross-sections,” said Fred Kinnan evenly. “Just representatives of labor. Period.”
“But that will give you a stranglehold on every business in the country!” [objects Orren Boyle]
“What do you think I’m after?”
“That’s unfair!” yelled Boyle. “I won’t stand for it! You have no right!”
“Right?” said Kinnan innocently. “Are we talking about rights?”
“But, I mean, after all, there are certain fundamental property rights which – “
“Listen, pal, you want Point Three, don’t you?”
(Point Three deals with the government expropriating all patents and copyrights).
“…Then you’d better keep your trap shut about property rights from now on.”
Kinnan is forcing the gaggle of self-deluders to face what they really are doing. He certainly knows what he is doing.
“…Only I’m not going to say that I’m working for the welfare of my public, because I know I’m not. I know that I’m delivering the poor bastards into slavery…and they know it, too. But they know that I’ll have to throw them a crumb once in a while if I want to keep my racket, while with the rest of you they wouldn’t have a chance in hell…I’m a racketeer – but I know it and my boys know it, and they know that I’ll pay off. Not out of the kindness of my heart, either, and not a cent more than I can get away with, but at least they can count on that much. Sure, it makes me sick sometimes, but it’s not me who’s built this kind of world – YOU did – so I’m playing the game as you’ve set it up and I’m going to play it for as long as it lasts – which isn’t going to be long for any of us!”
I hope no one considers me overly cynical for observing that this arrangement is essentially indistinguishable from that between employer and employee in Rand’s ethical world, although the latter is expressed in somewhat more idealistic terms. Francisco’s Mexican employees, for example. And these are the terms under which Rearden is purchasing black-market coal. Kinnan is a brute observing an ineluctable law of the universe; Rearden and d’Anconia are refined intellects observing that law as well, and the law remains the same. Kinnan knows he must keep his word. From this I suggest that Rand may have considered Kinnan a more moral individual than the bureaucrats who were trying to disguise the fact that they were jobbing the system for their own good on behalf of the People. Certainly he gets the best lines. Like this:
“Well, this, I guess,” said Fred Kinnan, “is the anti-industrial revolution.”
“That’s a damn funny thing for you to say!” snapped Wesley Mouch. “We can’t be permitted to say that to the public.”
“Don’t worry, brother. I won’t say it to the public.”
...and...
“It’s a total fallacy,” said Dr. Ferris. “Every expert has conceded long ago that a planned economy achieves the maximum of productive efficiency and that centralization leads to super-industrialization.”
“Centralization destroys the blight of monopoly,” said Boyle.
“How’s that again?” drawled Kinnan.
For a brute he isn’t doing badly, is he? They’re playing under two sets of rules. For Kinnan words have meaning and for the others, they don’t. But the latter is only an intellectual fantasy, and it comes at a price. Where words have no meaning, evil becomes very difficult to recognize as it sits down to dine.
“I’m inclined to think,” said Dr. Ferris hastily, “that Point Two is the most essential one…we must put an end to that peculiar business of industrialists retiring and vanishing. We must stop them…in times of crisis, economic service to the nation is just as much of a duty as military service. Anyone who abandons it should be regarded as a deserter. I have recommended that we introduce the death penalty for those men, but Wesley wouldn’t agree to it.”
“Take it easy, boy,” said Fred Kinnan in an odd, slow voice. He sat suddenly and perfectly still, his arms crossed, looking at Ferris in a manner that made it suddenly real to the room that Ferris had proposed murder. “Don’t let me hear you talk about any death penalties in industry.”
They weren’t quite that reluctant in Soviet Russia, which is where Rand learned most of this process. And once it started they weren’t reluctant in the least. For those for whom words have no meaning, “death” is one of them – as long as it happens to somebody else. For the soft-handed discussing it in a boardroom or salon, death is simply another of those abstractions that may be played with like counters on a board, an unfortunate necessity – no, not always that, but a necessity – for the building of an imagined world whose inhabitants are as abstract as the words that denote them: bourgeoisie, capitalist, counter-revolutionary, wrecker, spy. Kulak. Jew. Not real people, merely abstractions.
This is a culture of death, and Rand calls it by name.
Dagny’s reaction to this systematic outrage is predictable, so much so that both Francisco and Eddie make sure they’re on hand when somebody – it turns out to be Eddie, who gets most of the dirty jobs around there – has to tell her. She quits. Oh, it isn’t legal, of course, and had Ferris his way she might end up at the business end of a firing squad for it, but nobody stops her. It’s off to a remote cabin where she can transition to a new life. Not at the hand of any Destroyer, not because she’s given up, but because of what Francisco terms, derisively and accurately, the “moratorium on brains.”
Rearden’s trusted foreman Tom Colby quits as well, and for the same reason. The sides are lining up now, and Rearden’s minder the Wet Nurse has made up his mind which one he’s on.
“Mr. Rearden,” he said, “I wanted to tell you that if you want to pour ten times the quota of Rearden Metal or steel or pig iron or anything, and bootleg it all over the place to anybody at any price – I’ll fix it up. I’ll juggle the books, I’ll fake the reports, I’ll get phony witnesses, I’ll forge affidavits…”
“Now why would you want to do that?” asked Rearden, smiling, but his smile vanished when he heard the boy answer earnestly:
“Because I want, for once, to do something moral.”
“That’s not the way to be moral – “ Rearden started, and stopped abruptly, realizing that it was the way, the only way left, realizing through how many twists of intellectual corruption this boy had to struggle toward his momentous discovery.
The Wet Nurse begs Rearden not to sign over his ownership of Rearden Metal to the government. He knows it isn’t right. He thinks there is no right or wrong, and yet he knows it isn’t right. That is a contradiction. Check your premises, young man.
And yet, when Rearden is closeted with the representative of the Unification Board, Dr. Ferris, that is precisely what Rearden does do. It is the Orren Boyle school of management - they have the goods on him, courtesy of James Taggart, who has those goods from Lillian Rearden. She has closed her transaction with the Aristocracy of Pull and has delivered her husband to them.
Hank hasn’t the least concern that a scandal will damage him, but he knows who the one Ferris proposes to stir up will damage. It is a vulnerability he has handed them. They are threatening Dagny. And so Rearden has to decide which he cares for more, his life’s work, or the woman who represents the ideals under which it was achieved.
He thinks back to their first encounter. Even then she was brave and free and admirable; now she is his lotus floating spotless in a pool of filth. The decision is not a difficult one.
“Well, Mr. Rearden? Are you going to sign?” asked Dr. Ferris.
“Oh, that?” said Rearden.
He picked up a pen and with no second glance, he signed his name at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and pushed the Gift Certificate across the desk.
And so Rearden Metal becomes Miracle Metal with the sweep of a pen, and we have an explanation for the chapter title. No more trademarks, remember? It’s Point Three of Directive 10-289. Stroke of the pen, law of the land.
Have a great week, Publius!
Physical violence, for one thing. The public seem for the most part to react to stupidity and privation passively, but not always, and if they ever decided to literally fight back, these boys without meaning would be in serious trouble. I'd probably set the population of AS's America at 80-100 million, against maybe a few hundred thousand of the looting class.
Only I’m not going to say that I’m working for the welfare of my public, because I know I’m not. I know that I’m delivering the poor bastards into slavery…and they know it, too. But they know that I’ll have to throw them a crumb once in a while if I want to keep my racket, while with the rest of you they wouldn’t have a chance in hell…I’m a racketeer – but I know it and my boys know it, and they know that I’ll pay off. Not out of the kindness of my heart, either, and not a cent more than I can get away with, but at least they can count on that much.
I actually kind of like Kinnan. He's a crook, but he's an "honest crook" so to speak. I wouldn't cooperate with the guy, I'd do everything I could to defeat him, but he's not pathetic and he doesn't arouse the sense of disgust the others do.
Superbly insightful as usual, Bill. The "principles" of Directive 10-289 are absolutely essential to the implementation of a socialist system, since no one, even one so enlightened as Obama or Hillary Clinton could possibly manage a dynamic economy against real time. Although Hillary claimed that McCain couldn't, and by implication that she could. I guess she never noticed that most start-up businesses, and ultimately even large successful ones, fail for lack of their managers' ability to manage even that small part of the economy where they have expertise.
Note please that all of the points of the Directive have been put in place somewhere at some time in the real world (some even now), and all have failed in their objectives. Perhaps if they were all in place, and there were a means of enforcing them...hmm, might take some kind of new enforcement tool. Sonic beams spring to mind, no need for Zyklon B, which renders it's "subjects" so distressingly in need of a period of decontamination; much neater this way.
And the key difference between the "capitalist without conscience" and what Rand proposes is the concept of enlightened self-interest. You don't screw the person with whom you trade, because you need his trust and integrity to enforce the agreement.
Kirk
BTW, could someone explain how to install a tag-line? I can't seem to figure it out. I'd like to use: "Stimulate the economy: Buy guns NOW, while you still can!" That ought to get me on the OHS radar. Oh, well, the FBI still has my license plate numbers from the '60's.
“For a brute he isn’t doing badly, is he? They’re playing under two sets of rules. For Kinnan words have meaning and for the others, they don’t. But the latter is only an intellectual fantasy, and it comes at a price. Where words have no meaning, evil becomes very difficult to recognize as it sits down to dine.”
One of my favorite observers of history is George Orwell. He once expressed the sentiment that whoever owned the language owned debate. Many conservatives have cowered before the accurate use of language and gutlessly bow down before the god of obfuscation. I’m not advocating vulgarities or obscenities, but to me the false use of language is even more offensive.
Kinnan is also one of my favorite characters in the book. He is a thug but makes no moralistic pretense that he is anything otherwise. In my circle of acquaintances is an astonishing number of people who advocate Stalinism but couch it in the most unctuous moralistic drivel you have ever heard. They truly believe that collectivism is the most “moral” dynamic.