FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Egoist

Each question is a challenge to reality, not to the facts of The Speech. Wesley Mouch fears the public will think it was an authorized broadcast, but Head of State Thompson understands the consequences of the public thinking that the men in the room have lost control of the airwaves. Thompson demands the return of normal broadcasting and no mention of The Speech. Chick Morrison orders a lock on the story in the Mainstream Media.

Morrison doesn’t think that people of refined spirit will listen to Galt’s message. Tinky Holloway, who can’t speak for labor, says that the workingman won’t buy it. Ma Chalmers, who really can’t speak for women, says it’s no sale for women. Dr. Simon Pritchett, the nihilist philosopher who can’t speak for science, says scientists won’t accept it. Mouch thinks that Galt may be a friend of big business, and that prospect terrifies Mr. Mowen. Dr. Floyd Ferris thinks that people are too dumb to understand it, but it is Fred Kinnan who brings them all back to earth with his statement about people not wanting to starve.

Dagny tells them they have no choice but to surrender because their future is one of total destruction. Thompson sandbags Dagny, telling her he and the men need to evaluate the situation first.

But as soon as Dagny leaves, Dr. Robert Stadler, the one man of science in the room, tells Thompson that he must find Galt and kill him; it’s life or death now. Stadler advises Thompson to follow Dagny; she has to be in league with Galt and his deserters. Thompson tells Mouch to put a tail on Dagny, and if she leads them to Galt, they must bring him in alive. They need Galt because he has a corner on the men of intelligence.

As Dagny and Eddie walk on empty sidewalks past abandoned shops through a city where the lights in buildings above the 25th floor are turned off, he tells her that he recognized the voice of John Galt as his Anonymous Rail Worker friend. She tells him not to seek Galt if he values the life of his friend. She promises him she won’t desert. Thing are falling apart rapidly now, and the men of government will soon throw in the towel.

The Mainstream Media asks people not to be alarmed by The Speech but to see it as just one opinion. The country is silent until:

Thompson has the government sending continuous radio messages to John Galt asking him to come in for negotiations. Silence. The Unification Board tries to fill management jobs. Few will take them. Official broadcasts tell the nation that the government will soon work with John Galt, and stories are spread by Morrison that Galt is already in Washington conferring with government leaders. America’s industrial base grinds toward collapse. Hyperinflation erupts.

There are rumors of covered wagons traveling by night to avoid gangs of raiders, and of lights appearing in distant buildings not known to exist, but soldiers won’t dare to investigate. The Sign of the Dollar appears on abandoned buildings and government installations.

Rearden Steel is nationalized as the property of a deserter. People from the Boyle faction and Meigs faction fail to get the plant to produce, so they settle for looting the company and shipping its physical plant to friends in Europe and Latin America. An old and loyal worker who remembers Hank Rearden finally burns the plant to the ground in revenge for his boss.

Thompson asks Dagny what to do; she tells him to start the process of decontrolling people and removing taxes. Thompson balks and tells Dagny he hopes that Galt is still alive. The government is breaking into factions, and one faction wants to introduce official state terror and mass murder to get people to shut up and obey. He hopes to frighten her enough to lead them to Galt, and she is too obtuse to see the ruse.

So Dagny, who should know better, takes a 4 AM walk through a Manhattan that looks like Starnesville to find the apartment of John Galt. Based on the Taggart personnel records, she knocks on the registered address of John Galt, an apartment in a run-down building. He answers, sweeps her in and kisses her longingly. Dagny thinks they are safe, but John disabuses her of that notion; they have about thirty minutes before the “midnight knock on the door”. They will torture her in his presence if they realize the link between them, and he’d rather commit suicide than place her in that kind of jeopardy. Dagny must feign sympathy with the government, and John gives her the alibi she must use as she turns him in for the reward. He gives her a tour of the apartment he has lived in for the past twelve years, including his lab, run by his motor.

Their brief moment of happiness is interrupted by the knock. Three soldiers and a bureaucrat enter, and Dagny turns Galt in to the authorities. But the civilian says his job is to greet Galt in the name of the people and convey him to the national leadership. Their attempt to get into Galt’s lab reveals a room full of white dust; the self-destruct mechanism has done its job.

Galt is ensconced in the Wayne-Falkland, guarded by troops and government agents; there are public statements that he has joined the government. Thompson assures Galt he is not a prisoner, although he can’t leave, and offers him Wesley Mouch’s job. Galt says that if Thompson is serious, he will abolish all income taxes immediately. Thompson bridles at this, and Galt tells him that he cannot function as Economic Dictator, telling people to be free at the point of a gun. If Thompson wants him to sit at a desk and issue directives drawn up by the Head of State, he will comply, but he doesn’t have any ideas on how to fix the current system other than to abolish it.

Chick Morrison notes that the people are not reacting to promises that John Galt will deliver prosperity; they no longer believe anything the government says. Neither Mouch, Morrison nor Kinnan make any headway talking to Galt, although Kinnan understands him perfectly. Eugene Lawson screams that he can’t talk to Galt.

Although the government has announced the John Galt Plan, things are deteriorating rapidly.

Thompson asks Dagny for advice, and she plays along with Galt’s strategy of making Thompson believe she is on the government’s side. What Galt wants, she explains, is the whole earth; those are the stakes. But she pulls a fast one by convincing Thompson to let Galt see the confidential reports on how the nation is crumbling.

Arriving at her apartment, Dagny receives a note from Francisco giving her instructions on how to help and a phone number by which to reach him.

Galt meets with Thompson and Jim Taggart, who gives a long lecture on selfishness and accuses Galt of egoism. Morrison hands Galt petitions from schoolchildren, cripples, ministers and mothers begging Galt to tell the country what to do. Dr. Ferris lectures Galt on moral responsibility, suggesting that the government may order children and the elderly to be put to death for lack of food; this so enrages Thompson that he ejects Ferris from the room. Galt asks to speak to Dr. Stadler.

Eddie tells Dagny that a failed attack by raiders on the Taggart bridge over the Mississippi is not the only problem; a faction in the California civil war is holding Taggart trains for ransom in San Francisco. Eddie decides to fly to San Francisco on an army plane to take charge of the crisis. He finally admits his feelings to Dagny, and she tells him she has known for years.

Stadler has resisted the meeting with Galt, but government thugs escort him to Galt’s room with a warning to behave. At the sight of Galt, Stadler falls apart and begs for forgiveness while Galt simply says nothing. Stadler flees his former student’s presence.

Morrison arrives with a valet to get Galt prepared for an official dinner in formal attire. At the ballroom, to the applause of hundreds, Galt sits at the center of the official table; even Dagny is there, although Stadler is absent. The event is covered live on radio and television, and a newsman announces the inauguration of the John Galt Plan for Peace, Prosperity and Profit. The government men make speeches in praise of Galt and the plan, but when it’s Galt’s turn to speak, he has one simple message: “Get the hell out of my way!”

Howdy Pub'!

Houseguests today so I'll have to post and run. After last week's orgy of philosophy and anger Rand is back to the plot, and so much of this will be a repetition of your excellent synopsis anyway. Here goes:

The shock waves from Galt’s speech have reverberated through room and country in Chapter 28, “The Egoist,” and now it behooves Rand to pick up the strands of her narrative and re-establish the pace. We will consider in a moment whether the interposition of a 60-page philosophical manifesto has fatally wounded the novel or merely paused it.

The speech certainly takes the ruling class back a bit. From an initial disbelief there comes a panicked moment when Wesley Mouch fears that the playing of a march to fill the dead air will lead people to believe that they authorized the speech; Mr. Thompson, quicker than Mouch, counters

“You damn fool!” cried Mr. Thompson. “Would you rather have the public think that we didn’t?”

It’s a point, actually – the issue now is control of a country roiling with revolution, and it’s fairly clear that the current bunch isn’t up to it. Each of them presumes to describe how the various constituent parts of the Aristocracy of Pull will react – Holloway for labor, Ma Chalmers for women (all of them, presumably, except Dagny, who is sitting silently in front of them), Dr. Pritchett for the scientists – each of these declares stoutly and unconvincingly that his group will have none of it. And what is most curious about this is that none of these individuals is really the representative of the respective classes at all. From the real nominal head of labor, for example – Fred Kinnan – the real nominal head of science, Dr. Stadler, we hear none of these protests. Jim Taggart seems to fraying rapidly, screaming his disbelief of the speech; the reader is a little uncertain but suspects that despite his hysteria Jim really does appreciate what the issues and the stakes are here. His partners in crime’s only hope is that he is alone in that. The speech,

…said Dr. Floyd Ferris, “It was too intellectual. Much too intellectual for the common man. It will have no effect. People are too dumb to understand it.”

He is, of course, assuming that people must understand the fine points of deontological ethics before they’ll be affected by Galt’s diatribe. It isn’t the case. In a country that unstable, even nonsense words, timed correctly, can be the pebbles that start avalanches.

“In the first place,” said Dr. Ferris, encouraged, “People can’t think. In the second place, they don’t want to.” “In the third place,” said Fred Kinnan, “they don’t want to starve. And what do you propose to do about that?”

Once again Kinnan brings them up short with a cold dash of reality. Nor will he help them by telling them what to do. The fellow who once demanded full control of the Equalization Board was after power, not the opportunity to lead. They are two quite different things.

It is, ironically, Dagny who gives them their best course of action simply by speaking the truth. Who can tell them what to do?

“I can,” she said, addressing Mr. Thompson. “You’re to give up… God damn it! You’re able to understand. It isn’t possible you haven’t understood. .. There’s nothing but destruction ahead, the world’s and your own. Give up and get out.”

Harmless enough, but then…

“You wish to live, don’t you? Get out of the way, if you want a chance. Let those who can, take over. HE knows what to do. You don’t. HE is able to create the means of survival. You aren’t.”

Disaster. For Dr. Stadler understands the issues, and after Dagny departs with Eddie, he urges them to murder Galt. They are as taken aback as if he had recommended using a bag of gold as a boat anchor, because despite Dagny’s explanations they really don’t understand Galt at all. But they – Thompson, especially – do know a potential asset when they see one, someone who might be bribed to be a figurehead, someone who might act as a fall guy, someone who might even have an idea they’d consider worth trying.

“How am I to find him?” asked Mr. Thompson, speaking slowly and carefully.

“I can give you a lead. Watch that Taggart woman. She’ll lead you to him sooner or later.”

“Mr. Thompson,” said Mouch, choking, “I’m afraid he’s a man who’s not open to a deal.”

“There’s no such thing,” said Mr. Thompson.

He is, after all, correct, but not in the way he thinks. Will Galt deal? Yes, of course – but on his terms. And unfortunately for the ruling class those terms specify its dissolution.

The country is exploding. Clearly Galt’s speech has had an effect – government representatives are being beaten up on its basis, inflation is rampant, overprinted money worthless, jails full, and people are really beginning to starve. And with each successive catastrophe it becomes clearer to Thompson and his government that they really do need Galt, if only as a sacrifice.

Dagny knows this, and she has sternly ordered Eddie, who now knows who his track-worker friend of all these years really is, not to seek Galt. She knows what the stakes are. But in a fantastically irresponsible lapse of self-discipline she seeks Galt herself. It is, actually, a little out of character, but smart people sometimes do disastrously stupid things, and this is very, very stupid indeed. If before I have mocked Eddie Willers for his lack of discretion, at least he did not know to whom he was betraying them all. She does, and as a conspirator Dagny must now rank among the most hapless amateurs in all of modern literature. Rand offers us no real explanation for this other than her loneliness. She lasted only ten days. One sympathizes. but in truth it is quite simply her worst moment in the novel.

She is followed, of course, and they are caught. Galt has quite a place tucked away among the tenements, a laboratory, workshop, a slice of Galt’s Gulch on the East River, his refuge during his twelve working years watching over Dagny at Taggart Transcontinental. He is apparently a wizard of some expertise as well, for all that the invading police find of his wonderland of inventions is dust, the same thing that he had mentioned would happen if anyone were to violate the sanctity of his generator house at Galt’s Gulch. But they don’t need his inventions, they have him.

He has insisted that Dagny pretend to have betrayed him, an act which she accomplishes with the cold efficiency which, had she shown it before setting out to traipse across Manhattan at 4 AM, she would hardly need now. And so off with him to a highly secure suite in the Wayne-Falkland hotel, where he will be wined and dined as, one by one, the leaders of the ruling class try to convince him to use his formidable intellectual skills to pacify a country in revolution. And one by one, they fail.

One of them has not entirely wasted his time, the only one who has seemed to know the score throughout the novel. It is labor mobster Fred Kinnan.

“Nobody can talk to him,” said Dr. Floyd Ferris. “It’s a waste of time. He doesn’t hear a word you say.”

Fred Kinnan chuckled. “You mean, he hears too much, don’t you? And what’s worse, he answers it.”

“Well, why don’t you try it again?” snapped Mouch. “You seem to have enjoyed it. Why don’t you try to persuade him?”

“I know better,” said Kinnan. “Don’t fool yourself, brother. Nobody’s going to persuade him. I won’t try it twice… Enjoyed it?” he added, with a look of astonishment. “Yeah…yeah, I guess I did.”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you letting him win you over?”

“Me?” Kinnan chuckled mirthlessly. “what use would he have for me? I’d be the first one to go down the drain when he wins… It’s only…that he’s a man who talks straight.”

“Trouble is, he doesn’t want anything,” said Mouch. “What can we offer a man who doesn’t want anything?”

“You mean,” said Kinnan, “what can WE offer a man who wants to live?”

The implication is that, as Kinnan predicted, their scam is coming to an end all too soon, and that they are likely to pay for it with their lives. It is a stark warning, far more believable now with the country falling apart than it was when they were discussing the fine points of Directive 10-289. Jim, who is obviously at the end of his tether, begins screaming again.

A parenthetical moment. Twice in the text we have Galt described to us as an “egoist,” hence the chapter title, and Rand does so with a precision of meaning that sends us to the dictionary to discover the difference between the term and its more prevalent cousin, “egotist.” An egoist is, in this sense, an individual for whom self-interest, rational or otherwise, is the basis for morality, which describes the Objectivist ideal to a T. An egotist is someone with an exaggerated sense of self who expresses it by self-aggrandizement. Although the two terms overlap there are subtle shades of difference. Rand’s code demands the former and sees the latter as a weakness. That’s quite a bit of mileage to get out of a single letter of the alphabet.

Galt won’t cooperate, of course, and Mr. Thompson resorts to asking the opinion of the one who guided them to him, Dagny Taggart. She recommends they let Galt know from their confidential reports what the state of the country is. It is two-edged advice: Thompson thinks it will impel Galt to help them, she knows it will only steel his resolve. But that evening, while she is contemplating the reward money (now worthless in any case) she spies an envelope. And in a familiar handwriting, one she last saw mocking the entire city of New York, she reads

Dagny: Sit tight. Watch them. When he’ll need our help, call me at OR 6-5693. F.

We are as relieved as Dagny is that a competent conspirator has finally come along to take charge of the thing, and Francisco is both master dissimulator and man of action. The time for dissimulation is almost over; soon it will be the time for force.

We come at last to a climactic meeting – philosophically speaking – between Galt and his old teacher, Robert Stadler. Dr. Stadler delivers an apologia that is rife with self-justification and hostility toward the man who has held to the standards that Stadler taught and betrayed. Galt doesn’t have to say a word to leave Stadler a trembling puddle of self-realization and self-loathing.

Galt’s voice had the same unbending austerity as his eyes: “You have said everything I wanted to say to you.”

And now Mr. Thompson tries one last time to create a propaganda vehicle that will quell the rising violence. It is a plot device that Rand has used three times now for dramatic effect and frankly, it’s getting a bit predictable: first Dagny, in her abortive debate with Bertram Scudder over the merits of Rearden Metal, then the radio broadcast in which she declared her affair with Hank, then the broadcast that ended up being “This Is John Galt Speaking,” and finally this one, in which the country’s new savior, John Galt himself, is to be introduced as a figurehead of the new government. It is no more successful than the others.

“And now you will hear his own voice – now you will hear his own message! Ladies and gentlemen,” [Mr. Thompson] said solemnly, “John Galt – to the collective family of mankind!”

The camera moved to Galt…then, standing straight, facing the cameras, looking at all his invisible viewers, he said: “Get the hell out of my way!”

It is perhaps not entirely the message Mr. Thompson was looking for. But anyone who has heard Galt’s polemic on the radio knows exactly what he means, whether they understood deontological ethics or not. He isn’t playing along. They’re on their own. And at long last, the main course for the hungry looters will be the government itself.

Have a great week, Publius!

If, say, a General Wesley Clark ordered a unit you commanded to round up enemy prisoners immediately taken in battle, make them dig a long deep trench and then execute them, would you:

a. Follow the orders to the letter, and then challenge the orders afterwards.
b. Ask for authentication of said orders.
c. other action

I would follow orders. This happened during World War II to German soldiers taken prisoner by Americans, as dramatized in HBO's "Band of Brothers". It was nasty, but it was done.

I would follow orders.

Interesting...that you didn't chose to have the orders authenticated before following them.

I was thinking of a real situation, the massacre of the Polish Officers by the Red Army and the Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners by the Wermacht.

In the instance of the Bonus Army assault, your are mistaken. Hoover specifically ordered no assault to take place. MacArthur exceeded his authority and IIRC ignored direct orders from Hoover transmitted by Eisenhower and proceeded to attacked unarmed former brothers in arms and their families burning them out with the resultant deaths.

The Bonus Army Marchers sought early payment of the bonuses promised them as signed into law by the Congress of the USA. That a minority contingent of Wobblies was among them was used publicize them as a . socialist threat to the nation. Sounds similar to the events at Waco
[A side note; my first post at FR was about the Bonus Army.]

If then:

Obama orders federal troops into Washington, D.C. (1968 DC riot precedent), orders them to disperse The National Tea Party Protest and the ROE include lethal force

Because of foreign deployments reservists are called up to confront the Tea Party. You are among the reserve officer.

Is your answer still:

I will follow orders?

"I, Publius (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71)

And I'll shoot all the miserable sons-of-bitches that Obama tells me to.

Note the difference between the officer's oath and the enlisted oath below.

...That I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

The officer's oath requires loyalty to the Constitution and all enemies foreign and domestic, not to officers above them.

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