by Tom Pratt
If you want to know what you lost when I quit and when my strikers deserted your world—stand on an empty stretch of soil in a wilderness unexplored by men and ask yourself what manner of survival you would achieve and how long you would last if you refused to think, with no one around to teach you the motions, or, if you chose to think, how much your mind would be able to discover—ask yourself how many independent conclusions you have reached in the course of your life and how much of your time was spent on performing the actions you learned from others—ask yourself whether you would be able to discover how to till the soil and grow your food, whether you would be able to invent a wheel, a lever, an induction coil, a generator, an electronic tube—then decide whether men of ability are exploiters who live by the fruit of your labor and rob you of the wealth that you produce, and whether you dare to believe that you possess the power to enslave them. Let your women take a look at a jungle female with her shriveled face and pendulous breasts, as she sits grinding meal in a bowl, hour after hour, century by century—then let them ask themselves whether their “instinct of tool-making” will provide them with their electric refrigerators, their washing machines and vacuum cleaners, and, if not, whether they care to destroy those who provided it all, but not “by instinct.” (pp. 1048-1049)
In the narrative of the novel we have seen that the incompetents of the business, political, and cultural world propose to rule and organize and direct the ones whose competence is finally seen to be indispensable. They have the guns and propose to coerce the minds of those who do not comply and they rely on guilt and envy and resentment and a host of hateful characteristics in man to accomplish their purposes.
You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you’re incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others—that you’re unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler—that you’re unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of assistant greaser. (p. 1049)
Galt calls this the “cult of zero-worship,” a religion of man in the image of non-existence, of “impotence.” Its hymn of degradation points to the “congenital dependent.” It is in conclusion:
Your image of man and your standard of value, in whose likeness you strive to refashion your soul. “It’s only human,” you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept ‘human’ mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure—as if “to feel” were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not—as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not. (pp. 1049-1050)
Those who hold such a view of man will accept the mystics of muscle as rulers and will support them in rule as long as they get what they consider their “fair share” of whatever can be extracted from the producers. They are like the beggars who accost people on the streets aggressively seeking hand-outs and shaming those who will not comply with their wishes. They concur with the politicians who decry the “greed” of the “rich” and imply that the poor are their victims. These all cry and plead for “help” in the tone of a threat and count on the guilt created by the false morality of “sacrifice” and the obliteration of self respect and independent moral judgment to achieve the objective of a hand out. Addressing these moochers and looters, Galt declares, “You expect us to feel guilty of our virtues in the presence of your vices, wounds and failures—guilty of succeeding at existence, guilty of enjoying the life that you damn, yet beg us to help you to live.” (p. 1050) Once again the question reverberates and is answered:
Did you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who would not do penance for my virtues or let them be used as the tools of my destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer martyrdom at the hands of those who wished me to perish for the privilege of keeping them alive. I am the first man who told them that I did not need them, and until they learned to deal with me as traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me, as I would exist without them; then I would let them learn whose is the need and whose the ability—and if human survival is the standard, whose terms would set the way to survive. (p. 1050)
Conclusion
The final stage of the radio address from Galt’s Gulch is an exhortation to make a choice that is clear and concrete. It is a call to all those who have wavered between two opinions and those who have secretly understood in some sense Galt’s message throughout their lives, perhaps without the ability to articulate it and/or the courage to force the issue in their private and public experience. He calls for a “judgment” of the mind followed by an action of the body that will celebrate the superiority of life over death. No compromise is permitted when these are at stake. “The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world.” (p. 1054) This is because there is a right and a wrong in every dispute and the man who is wrong at least has respect for the issue and makes a choice. The compromiser is the one who believes there really is no truth to be found and is the truly evil one. The principle involved is universally applicable: “When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.” (pp. 1054-1055
In his final appeal Galt points to his own example and urges those who are fearful and uncertain to follow his example and find a new existence for themselves as he did. He assures them it is not too late, not least because he and the men and women on strike will return when the collapse of the present system forces the rulers to abandon their guns. He does not claim they need perfection in what he has discovered to make the first steps. All they need to do is take the first steps.
Evil is not in ignorance but in the refusal to know in deference to “feeling”:
Give the benefit of the doubt to those who seek to know; but treat as potential killers those specimens of insolent depravity who make demands upon you, announcing that they have and seek no reasons, proclaiming, as a license, that they ‘just feel it’—or those who reject an irrefutable argument by saying: ‘It’s only logic,’ which means: ‘It’s only reality.’ The only realm opposed to reality is the realm and premise of death. (p. 1059)
Recognize the system you have:
“You did not care to compete in terms of intelligence—you are now competing in terms of brutality. You did not care to allow rewards to be won by successful production—you are now running a race in which rewards are won by successful plunder. You called it selfish and cruel that men should trade value for value—you have now established an unselfish society where they trade extortion for extortion. Your system is a legal civil war, where men gang up on one another and struggle for possession of the law, which they use as a club over rivals, till another gang wrests it from their clutch and clubs them with it in their turn, all of them clamoring protestations of service to an unnamed public’s unspecified good. You had said that you saw no difference between economic and political power, between the power of money and the power of guns—no difference between reward and punishment, no difference between purchase and plunder, no difference between pleasure and fear, no difference between li
fe and death. You are learning the difference now. (pp. 1065-1066)
Stop supporting your destroyers:
If, in the chaos of the motives that have made you listen to the radio tonight, there was an honest, rational desire to learn what is wrong with the world, you are the man whom I wished to address. By the rules and terms of my code, one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who’re making an effort to know. Those who’re making an effort to fail to understand me, are not a concern of mine.
I am speaking to those who desire to live and to recapture the honor of their soul. Now that you know the truth about your world, stop supporting your own destroyers. The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they’re setting the rules. Do not seek the favor of those who enslaved you, do not beg for alms from those who have robbed you, be it subsidies, loans or jobs, do not join their team to recoup what they’ve taken by helping them rob your neighbors. One cannot hope to maintain one’s life by accepting bribes to condone one’s destruction. Do not struggle for profit, success or security at the price of a lien on your right to exist. Such a lien is not to be paid off; the more you pay them, the more they will demand; the greater the values you seek or achieve, the more vulnerably helpless you become. Theirs is a system of white blackmail devised to bleed you, not by means of your sins, but by means of your love for existence. (pp. 1066-1067)
Make a choice, not a compromise:
That choice is yours to make. That choice—the dedication to one’s highest potential—is made by accepting the fact that the noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four. Whoever you are—you who are alone with my words in this moment, with nothing but your honesty to help you understand—the choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical error, to declare: “I am, therefore I’ll think.” (p. 1058)
Chapter 10 - The anti-Anti-Christ
As the voice of John Galt ceased to vibrate the airwaves, reaction in the halls of power was immediate and predictable from those who had long-since become the muscle-men Galt portrays them to be. It was not unlike the reaction to Atlas Shrugged when it came to publication in 1957. Was that for real? Did we really hear that? And in answer, We seem to have heard it. We couldn’t help it. One lesser technician tried to bolt the room and was ordered to stay put by Mr. Thompson, who then proceeded to demand an explanation for the occurrence. James Taggart spoke for most: “Why is he so sure he’s right? Who is he to go against the whole world, against everything ever said for centuries and centuries? Who is he to know? Nobody can be sure! Nobody can know what’s right! There isn’t any right!” (p. 1071) Then the spin-control (an anomalous phrase here we know) began. How do we play this out? Immediately refute the speech, someone yells. Shut down the radio music that has resumed, says another. Thompson has the answer: Don’t let the public think they hadn’t authorized the speech or were unable to stop it. “Broadcasts as usual!” ordered Mr. Thompson. “Tell them to go on with whatever programs they’d scheduled for this hour! No special announcements, no explanations! Tell them to go on as if nothing had happened!” (p. 1071) Eugene Lawson protests loudly that they cannot appear to endorse the speech. “It’s horrible! It’s immoral! It’s selfish, heartless, ruthless! It’s the most vicious speech ever made! It . . . it will make people demand to be happy!” (p. 1071) Thompson soothes the group by pointing out he had no intention of endorsing any of it, because it was just a speech. And round the room leaders of each faction offer reasons why their followers will not endorse it either. Dr. Ferris sums it up with, “People are too dumb to understand it.”
Much of this kind of invective greeted the book when it first arrived on bookshelves around the US. Not one “critic” gave it a favorable review, from the “right” or the “left.” It was a profound disappointment to Rand and her inner circle of friends. But the book quickly sold its first run and went on to be a New York Times bestseller and has now become the most circulated hardcover book in the history of publishing except for the Bible. Rand’s disappointment, by all accounts available to us, did not stem primarily from personal rejection but from the realization that her hope for respect among the intellectual establishments of the day, respect that could get her views a fair hearing at least, was not in the offing. The upshot of this rejection, in her opinion, was that the American economic and spiritual haven to which she had fled from the Soviet slave state was bound on a course that would inevitably lead to the degradation and sorrow and bloodshed she had left behind. It was beyond all reason as she saw it that not one literary or political or cultural pundit would take a stand with her. Instead she was personally and professionally excoriated in the most harsh and vitriolic terms. The words of Dagny Taggart in the midst of the conversation above (first paragraph) echo what happened when Atlas Shrugged appeared: “You know the truth, all of you,” she said, “and so do I, and so does every man who’s heard John Galt! What else are you waiting for? For proof? He’s given it to you. For facts? They’re all around you. How many corpses do you intend to pile up before you renounce it—your guns, your power, your controls and the whole of your miserable altruistic creed? Give it up, if you want to live. Give it up, if there’s anything left in your mind that’s still able to want human beings to remain alive on this earth!” (p. 1073)
To Rand, and many others, the actual facts of the past century in the world would seem to be irrefutable. The cult of collectivism pitted against the freedom and creativity of the individual in economics and politics has produced nothing but misery where it has actually been placed in operation. It has no track record to commend it. It leaves death and poverty and planetary pollution in its wake. It pits people and constituencies against one another in resentment and envy. It grows government to totalitarian dimensions because there is no way to stop regulating and taxing, since it is regulation and regimentation and taxation that cause the misery in the first place and reduces all to the same pitiful level, except for the aristocracies of power.[35] The insidious nature of the monster is that it convinces masses of people philosophically and religiously (this term is intended to convey the meaning of Rand’s “mysticism”) that this way is the best way because it satisfies some sense of the need to “look out for the little guy” while being best for the most in a modern society. In addition it satisfies the need to assuage a vague guilt in the Western world about the prosperity that has seemed to overtake this civilization in the pat 300 years. In short, it answers to the Galt-ian concern for what’s really “wrong with the world.” Surely the “answer” cannot be that one needs to be more “selfish.” Surely it cannot be that the individual should be exalted over the society, or more hopefully, the “community.” And, especially for the serious Christian, surely it cannot be in the exaltation of the mind of man over “faith.” Some even go so far as to label John Galt as the equivalent of Anti-Christ, the creation of an atheistic mind gone to seed on capitalism and materialistic greed. Surely the “answer” to the world’s problems economically and politically cannot be found in a man deemed to be so perfect as to be incomparable in his dedication to virtue, his fearless rejection of the “evil” he sees, the clarity with which he sees the “truth,” and the fierceness of his love of life on this earth! Most disturbing of all, how is it possible to find truth in a character who rejects “original sin” as a fundamental category for evaluating man on this earth?
The remainder of our book will explore these issues, and any others that bear upon these basics, and seek to offer a ground for learning from the good of Atlas Shrugged while clearly critiquing the areas that are incompatible with Christianity and with philosophical consistency. This chapter will explore the almost eerie comparison of the narrative journey in the book compared to the Bibl
e and the character of John Galt in it as a “Christ” figure, a device used repeatedly in the Western world of literature and art and politics. We have found no evidence that Rand intentionally built in all that we will touch on here, but the similarities and differences are so striking that we have found ourselves unable to ignore them. Rand, of course, at various points in the speeches of the book refers straightforwardly to apparent biblical and Christian themes with pejorative intent. Our next chapter will analyze some of the impressions she is working from in her dislike for what she sees in the Christian tradition. At the very least the use made over two thousand years in the West of the figurative “Christ” in art and literature is plain even in a cursory reading of Atlas. That fact has led in our thinking to some other striking reflections as we have structured this study. Stay with us for the ride!
Rand’s stated purpose for writing her greatest novel was to put her objectivism on display in such a way as to concretize that which would come across as heavy and dense abstractions in a philosophical treatise. She has chosen a narrative structure to convey the truth of what to her is a coherent system of thought. She couches it in standard literary forms using mystery, romance, intrigue, human failing, heroism, and action sequences to carry a storyline and a reasoned argument to a plausible conclusion. It should be obvious to anyone familiar with the nature of Western literature from the earliest stages of human thought that the narrative style has always carried the mostest-for-the-mostest when it comes to communicating on a level that reaches more than an intellectual constituency that handles heavy abstractions well. She succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation in doing just that by taking us by the hand and getting us to read 1200 pages of narrative and philosophy that is the sine qua non of the genre—except for the Bible. And this is the uncanny truth: the Bible is just such a book as well. It is a grand narrative written over a period of more than a thousand years with one great theme and one great philosophical and theological purpose that goes from the Garden to the Great City. The marvel of the Bible is that it has the hand of many humans upon it and purports to be the result of the work of the one living God upon the minds and mouths of those writers and speakers, yet the narrative is consistent in its theme and builds to its climax and finish with the same kind of intensity seen in Atlas. We would commend a reading of it by Atlas readers from cover to cover repeatedly just as they may have treated Rand’s work.[36] The dramatic meta-narrative of Scripture is overwhelming in its consistency and literary power, but it will not yield its fruit to the merely curious or the nibbler any more than objectivism does to a like reader of Atlas Shrugged.
