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Posted on 05/30/2009 7:31:15 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
The Comet rolls across Nebraska with Dagny’s private car in the consist. Dagny hears the shout of the conductor throwing a hobo off the vestibule of her car, but she rescues the hobo and asks him to be her dinner guest. He vaguely remembers her as “the lady who ran a railroad”, and he has been roaming the country for the past six months looking for work. Jobs are being hoarded for the friends of Unification Board members, and he is heading west to avoid them. Farmers aren’t happy to feed hobos, what with tax collectors and gangs of raiders – deserters from their jobs – on the prowl. As dinner arrives, the hobo tells of his last job at Hammond in Colorado – but mentions that he is a survivor of the disaster at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, and boy, does he have a story to tell! It was he who invented the telltale question, “Who is John Galt?” And so begins a tale...
The Starnes heirs had made speeches in favor of The Plan, and although few understood it, most felt obligated to vote for it. Hadn’t every newspaper and movie and public speech spoken in favor of such sentiments? The hobo compares it to pouring water into a tank while a pipe drains it out faster than you can fill it; then the more you fill it, the wider the drainpipe grows until you are working without rest or hope. It’s a vision of hell.
Twice a year, the workers voted on whose need was foremost – after all, weren’t they all one big family? Soon everyone became a beggar, valuing his miseries above those of his fellow workers. As production fell, the workers voted on who were the best workers and made them work even harder. People weren’t paid by time, but by need. People watched each other like hawks, hiding their abilities and making sure no one worked better or faster than themselves. One man came up with a process that saved thousands of man-hours, got himself labeled as “exceptionally able” and found himself sentenced to double shifts. They had been told that the world of capitalism was vicious, but it was nothing like this, where people competed to do the worst job possible. People turned to drink, and the only thing they made was babies because that increased their allowance. People brought in every sort of shiftless relative to increase their need. The Plan had been put in place to facilitate love and brotherhood, and now people hated each other, spying and informing at will. Sick family members became a bane, one of whom may have been murdered because she was a drain on the collective.
Eric Starnes became the Director of Public Relations and spent his time fraternizing with the workers to show that he was one of them. Gerald Starnes was Director of Production and spent entire fortunes on parties. Ivy Starnes was Director of Distribution and evaluated the needs of her workers, paying them as she saw fit on a scale of bootlicking.
The best men left and the company fell apart. Gerald went to customers demanding they buy from Twentieth Century, not because the motors were good, but because the workers needed the orders. After four years, the experiment ended and the company collapsed.
Back at that first meeting when The Plan was announced, a young engineer quit, refusing to accept Gerald Starnes’ moral order and announcing that he would put an end to it once and for all by stopping the motor of the world. His name was John Galt.
Dagny awakens to find the Comet stopped somewhere on the tracks of the Kansas Western, and no member of the crew is on the train. But Owen Kellogg is! They are on a frozen train, abandoned by the railroad’s employees. Dagny is actually elated that her employees have rejected serfdom, but is dejected when she sees that it was old reliable Pat Logan who was driving the coal burning steam locomotive. Dagny informs the passengers of what has happened, and she and Kellogg walk down the line to find a working phone box. The hobo, Jeff Allen, is hired on the spot as the new conductor to keep order on the train.
As they walk, Dagny offers Kellogg a job on the railroad, but he refuses; the only job he would want with the railroad is menial work. He is helping Dagny because he needs to get somewhere for a month’s vacation with friends. They reach the first phone to find it’s broken; they must march another five miles to the next one. Kellogg offers her a cigarette; it bears the sign of the dollar. He won’t tell Dagny where the cigarettes come from, but tells her the dollar sign is the current symbol of depravity. Dagny wants to buy the pack, and Kellogg agrees to sell it to her for five cents – in gold.
Dagny and Kellogg finally reach a phone box that works, but find themselves in a struggle over the phone with the night dispatcher of the Kansas Western who is afraid to do anything until Dagny takes responsibility for his actions.
A short distance from the tracks is a bright beacon that marks an airstrip on which sits a Dwight Sanders plane. The airport attendant is no smarter than the night dispatcher, so Dagny writes him a check for fifteen thousand dollars and darkly hints at a secret mission from important men in Washington. That gets her the plane. Dagny takes off for Utah in the darkness.
As the sun comes up, she lands near Afton, the home of Utah Tech, and looks for a rental car. But she quickly discovers that Quentin Daniels is just now taking off with a stranger who came for him a few hours earlier. Dagny realizes it’s The Destroyer! She jumps in her plane, takes off and follows them over Colorado. Just when she thinks the plane with Daniels should climb, it banks and prepares to land, but where? The landscape appears to be jagged peaks. Then the plane disappears entirely. Dagny drops and circles, trying to find the plane, but discovers that the view of the valley floor hasn’t changed at all, and the light doesn’t seem right. It’s an image – a hologram! As Dagny penetrates it, a bright flash of light hits her, and the plane’s engine dies. Dagny goes in for a dead stick landing. As she hurtles toward the ground, she says, “Oh hell! Who is John Galt?”
Discussion Topics
My first job out of school, the boss told me that he always looked to hire people who wanted to start their own firm, even though he knew that meant they would leave him.
Here it is in a nutshell. The great John Galt Declaration of War against.........what exactly?
And what is "the motor of the world" that he will stop. Daunting questions. Especially for those of us who want to learn and understand how to cope and hopefully overcome the destruction of the world we see all around us.
According to Rand, Galt is declaring war against the philosophy of Altruism that forces some men to live for the benefit of other. Albeit willingly.
And for Rand the motor of the world is the entrepreneur. The creative genius. The man who goes where no man has gone before and succeeds. And in succeeding he brings all mankind up out of the muck pit. And the preeminent great man is John Galt.
John Galt. The man who will not sacrifice his life for another man nor ask another man to sacrifice his life for him. By convincing the afore mentioned entrepreneurs, creative geniuses and other successful men to stop using their minds for the benefit of the looters and political fixit artists. He withdraws the sanction of the victims. He pulls the plug on the world. And Rand wants us to believe that this is the Greatest Moral Act of History.
When I read AS and think about it....and it's implications for me personally and for the real world....I am faced with three critical questions....at least for me. I am sure others will have different questions but for me they matter most as a moral guide to how to live one's life.
1) Is John Galt a man I would follow?
2) Is the world better off that John Galt lived?
3) From where did the genius of John Galt come?
Here are the answers I have come with from a life lived as a small businessman and father and citizen.
1) No. I would not follow JG into battle. But not being a Philosopher I can only explain my answer in practical terms.
Every father and mother on this site knows that sacrificing yourself for your children is a great moral good. Every American, and fellow FReeper I dare say, knows about the sacrifices of our Founding Fathers.....most of us have read Rush Limbaugh's father's tribute to the Signers of the D of I and how each and every man among them suffered....and for whom? For us ! Every man who has ever experienced combat knows that the knowledge of the potential self sacrifice of his friends for the team is what keeps him going. I don't see John Galt pledging his life, Fortune and Sacred Honor to his fellows countrymen. Dangy's first impression is right. Galt is a destroyer.
2) Again I must answer no. In the end he was a net loss for the world. The millions and millions of people left to die because "The Great Man" removed the motor of the world is a testimony to his inner destroyer nature. By their fruit you shall know them. Compare the real life fruits of our Founding Fathers who sacrificed everything for us. And the young men of all the wars who sacrificed all their tomorrows so that we may have a free and happy today. John Galt insults that sacrifice by rolling hand grenades into the industrial plant of America.
3) My answer is GOD. AR never answers this question because she can't. Not only becasue she is an atheist but because to answer it would....must.... admit that Galt's great gifts of genius are just that. A gift. Galt is not a self-creator. Whether one believes in the Christian God or not....a honest man will admit that some people are born with great gifts....and this random, luck of the draw aspect of talent should not give a any man the feeling he is superior to his fellow man. And is why I have always, and will always, fear the concrete realization of a Randian World.
To fight what we are now called on to fight in modern day America will need something more rallying to bring men to our banner than a celebration of selfishness. Her title of another book said it all...."The virtue of Selfishness". I don't think men will die with that emblazoned on their flag.
I believe Rand is a great author. And AS is a great read. But we need Great Builders not Great Destroyers to beat what is coming our way in Obama Land. And dare I say it.....men who are willing to sacrifice for the common good ! As our ancestors did from Valley Forge to Normandy and beyond.
Thanks, Pub, for the oppurtunity to say my piece.
I couldn't agree more. I'm totally finished now, and it was with this chapter that I truly began to consistently enjoy the book.
This one has a mouthful himself, twelve pages of a single story that we already know. One might think that would qualify it for the cutting-room floor. Hardly; in my opinion it’s twelve of the best pages in the book.
Again, I agree. The full depravity of the situation can only be demonstrated from the POV of someone who lived through it, in fact someone who at first thought it might work out well for him.
Well, the most immediate think he was fighting was the "tyranny of the majority", the idea that a body of which he was a member could by majority vote, agree to take rights from one who voted with the minority. Sound farmiliar?
I'll attempt to answer your three excellent questions as they pertain to me: 1) Is John Galt a man I would follow?
Qualified "Yes". He fights with the only weapon he has access to which can hurt those who are unjustifiably hurting him. Does he have a right to do this? Do you have a right to shoot someone burglarizing your home and endangering you or your family? Now I agree that Galt and the gulchers get a little hypertheoretical about this and ignore the value of charity, freely given when needed. I had a conversation with Billthedrill about this.
2) Is the world better off that John Galt lived?
Yes, definitely. Yes, people died. So what? Americans and British died in the Revolutionary war. If you had the power to alter history, would we still be paying King George tax on tea with no seats in Parliament? Would Hitler still be gassing Juden and homos? The point is that people in general were better off with the FINAL results of Galt's decisions than they would have been had he gone along to get along. People allow their children to undergo painful operations or medical treatment because they judge that the long term results will be superior enough to make it worth the sacrifice.
3) From where did the genius of John Galt come?
I have to agree with you on this one, from God. Rand misses this, as she is doomed to do by her atheism. But take ancient Israel as an example. There was no law against becoming rich. Employees, slaves (more like what we would think of as indentured servants), and animals were all to be treated with kindness and respect. Provision was made for widows, orphans, and the legitimate poor to support themselves by their own labor (prohibition on gleaning right to the edge of a field), thus preserving their dignity. But there was nothing that said that a farmer who was smarter or harder working than his neighbor was a bad guy.
The biggest problem with unions today is that workers do not have a choice in the matter. Once a union is in, they collect the dues from everyone, including the workers who don’t want to be represented by the union. The result is a disconnect between the workers and the union bosses because the people running the unions know that they’ll collect the money regardless of their performance. If workers at union shops were free to leave the union, the union bosses would wise up PDQ.
I can't see holding yourself up in the Highlands of the Rockies, while the rest of the country goes down the shitter, as a particularly noble thing to do. Where would we be today if Washington and the boys just headed west to open up new territory and declare a new country instead of fighting it out east of the Appalachians. And in the process the 66% of the country ambivalent or opposed to the war being left to the tender mercies of the Red Coats. They didn't because they understood sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves
On your answer for question #2 I think there is a qualitative difference between soldiers dying in battle fighting for freedom and people getting crushed in a war of attrition by the productive elite against the looters. I see this as if I burned down my shop with some of my employees inside because I have the tax looters trapped inside also. I admit an imperfect analogy but you get my point. There are innocent people in Rand's world that are just trying to make a living. She pretty much rolls over them on her way to Nirvana.
My final point is that question #1 was a personal preference sort of thing. I would, personally, have trouble following John Galt. I get the feeling he would sacrifice all his troops to the last man to destroy his enemies. Sorry, but my guts and his glory, as they say, makes for a bad leader.
The quote at the head of my profile comes from this chapter. I think it sums up the whole book.
“She had pale eyes that looked fishy, cold and dead. And if you ever want to see pure evil, you should have seen the way her eyes glinted when she watched some man who’d talked back to her once and who’d just heard his name on the list of those getting nothing above basic pittance. And when you saw it, you saw the real motive of any person who’s ever preached the slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
“This was the whole secret of it. At first, I kept wondering how it could be possible that the educated, the cultured, the famous men of the world could make a mistake of this size and preach , as righteousness, this sort of abomination - when five minutes of thought should have told them what would happen if somebody tried to practice what they preached. Now I know they didn’t do it by any kind of mistake. Mistakes of this size are never made innocently. If men fall for some vicious piece of insanity, when they have no way to make it work and no possible reason to explain their choice - it’s because they have a reason that they do not wish to tell. And we weren’t so innocent either, when we voted for that plan at the first meeting. We didn’t do it just because we believed that the drippy old guff they spewed was good. We had another reason, but the guff helped us to hide it from our neighbors and from ourselves. The guff gave us a chance to pass off as virtue something we’d be ashamed to admit otherwise. There wasn’t a man voting for it who didn’t think that under a setup of this kind he’d muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn’t a man rich and smart enough but that he didn’t think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better’s wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he’d get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about all his inferiors who’d rush to drain him just as he hoped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his bosses, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own.”
I can't see holding yourself up in the Highlands of the Rockies, while the rest of the country goes down the shitter, as a particularly noble thing to do.
I take your point but have two points of disagreement. First, he isn't holed up in the Rockies 11 months of the year. He's lived in a shitty apartment on a track worker's wages for 12 years when he could have had a better standard of living by going along, and the vast majority of those he's persuaded to take an oath to shrug are living out in the real world as well.
Second, different enemies take different tactics and strategies. Just as the war on terror can't be fought using the same techniques that might have worked on 3 million Russians pouring through the Fulda Gap, so the most effective weapon against the looters may simply be to withdraw oneself from the field, or at least to withdraw one's brain from the market. I'm not saying this IS so, I mean the "maybe" quite literally.
On your answer for question #2 I think there is a qualitative difference between soldiers dying in battle fighting for freedom and people getting crushed in a war of attrition by the productive elite against the looters.
There certainly is, but nations know there will be collateral damage, and while they try to minimize it, they will still fight a fight if they have to, even knowing that. People who defend the nuclear bombing of Japan often say that doing so saved not just countless American lives, but countless Japanese as well.
I see this as if I burned down my shop with some of my employees inside because I have the tax looters trapped inside also. I admit an imperfect analogy but you get my point.
I think the analogy is somewhat flawed in the sense that if you were Galt and you had any good honorable workers, you'd probably have convinced them to shrug, so there would be none left in the factory except those believing in the looters way.
And your last point also is convincing PROVIDED the remaining employees where active accomplishes in the looting. Otherwise I still maintain that they would be like the poor salesman on the Comet killed when they mountain feel down. Just trying to get along in a FUBAR system. Is that a Capital Crime?
But your second point caused me to recall a statement by a Roman historian ( or was it Greek? ) that the Romans made a desert and called it peace. Your collateral damage argument made me wince.....and made me think that perhaps Galt made a desert and called it freedom.
“accomplishes” above....should be accomplices.
It makes me wince too. It's not an accident that I say "Those who defend the nuclear bombing of Japan...". I'm ambivalent about it in a way myself, yet it's probably beyond dispute that had that terrible decision not been made, tens or hundreds of thousands more Japanese and Americans would have died miserable deaths, so maybe the defenders are right.
And in the AS case, it's equally undeniable that the vast majority who survived lived a much better life after the crushing of the looters than they would have otherwise.
Sorry, I hit Post before finishing my thought about the desert thing. If your back yard is full of weeds and you want to grow a garden, you have to wipe it clean, in effect to create a desert first, in order to enable the valuable plants to grow, so desert-to-freedom is not entirely an unreasonable concept.
I realize I’m twisting the metaphor, but who wouldn’t rather live in a literal desert as their own man than to live in a verdant paradise as the host organism for a looter? Besides, the paradise won’t last long anyway if looters are allowed to be in charge.
But this comment gets to the root of our disagreement:
And in the AS case, it's equally undeniable that the vast majority who survived lived a much better life after the crushing of the looters than they would have otherwise.
We will never know whether your statement would be true. But , first, given the level of physical destruction and decay described by Rand it would seem reasonable to think they where back to a pre-industrial condition.
And, second, without getting ahead of ourselves in the story, can we really be sure the hearts and minds of the people where changed? I gotta tell ya, what I know of human nature tells me that there will be a hell of a lot of pissed off people coming out of the ashes. But that's for a later thread!
The experience I had in 30+ years of computer programming for large banks and insurance companies was exactly what you stated. Risk and effort were not rewarded due to bureaucratized procedures that made reward impossible. Moochers or innocent bystanders would get credit for what you did. When an unqualified lady got a promotion that should have gone to me, I quit on the spot and retired. I have never regretted that decision.
This is one of the big problems with working for a living. No matter the good you do, the recognition and reward for your work often disappears. Mother Theresa said, "Do good anyway," but there also comes a time when a man has to stop casting pearls before swine. Simply put, if you were running a business, and a difficult customer pestered you for extra goods, you might give them to him for a while to keep his business. But your accountant will eventually find you out. You'll have to tell your customer that he can't have any extra, because he isn't paying for it.
Employees are very good at determining what the employer will tolerate. Joe knows that Fred receives the same salary and makes constant mistakes, mistakes that Joe has to correct. Joe realizes that they are paying $50,000 to Fred for X, and they are paying $50,000 to Joe for 2X. The math doesn't lie, and Joe eventually realizes the fair market price for X.
What is Joe going to about it? A couple of books like, "Quit Your Job Now" offer helpful advice to those who will follow it. I'm glad you were able to retire and get out of it. The advice in that particular book was to find another employer who would pay you what you were worth. It does work, although it requires extra effort and patience, as well as the ability to relocate.
I disagree. I believe it is indisputably true. The leeches, at least the ones in power, were dead or deposed. That in itself should qualify as a vast improvement even if living conditions didn't improve, which they couldn't help but do.
But, first, given the level of physical destruction and decay described by Rand it would seem reasonable to think they where back to a pre-industrial condition.
But you can't charge that decay to the gulchers. The decay is in almost every case the proximate result of the beliefs and policies of the looters and wouldn't be prevented even if the able gulcher-types kept on trying. Look at the decay Dagny suffered on the railroad while she refuses to shrug. And in even those cases where no one is immediately to blame or where shrugging gulchers are the proximate cause, the blame properly belongs on the mooching looters.
And, second, without getting ahead of ourselves in the story, can we really be sure the hearts and minds of the people where changed? I gotta tell ya, what I know of human nature tells me that there will be a hell of a lot of pissed off people coming out of the ashes. But that's for a later thread!
You make an excellent and frightening point here. I'd hope they'd be able to see for the reasons I've outlined that it's not the gulchers but the looters they have to blame.
If you choose to live in a system where incompetence cause death and destruction, is your death the fault of the incompetents or of those who were unable to stop them?
The book has numerous references to the destructive effects of socialism. It also illustrates the efforts of people like Bertram Scudder and Floyd Ferris to deceive people about the nature of what is happening. Some, like Ellis Wyatt, abandon the effort. There are mentions of others who likewise remove themselves from the fray. It's one thing if you burn your business down and the people inside it die. It's something different if you leave your business to those who were trying to steal it, and they burn it down. That's what is happening in Atlas Shrugged. Discussions about semantics clouds the issue. Would more people die if you burned the business than if the looters promised free goods to everybody, filled the business with people, and then burned it down?
Responsibility lies with the person who lit the match.
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