Who is John Galt? This question opens Ayn Rand’s acclaimed novel Atlas Shrugged. At first just a joke, this query begins a serious investigation on the part of protagonist Dagny Taggart to discover the identity of this man. She discovers Galt’s motor, a motor that would have revolutionized the power industry; however, the motor is left in a factory, unfinished.
The motor spurs a quest because Dagny cannot fathom leaving such a monumental invention to rust in an empty factory. Through her own struggles to keep Taggart Transcontinental, her business, operating, she discovers what John Galt has already learned: to deprive a person of the products of his mind is theft.
During the novel, Dagny strives to safeguard her business from the monopolizing regulations the government imposes. She lives in a world in which the majority of people want the community to succeed instead of the individual. The conformists are ashamed they do not think; that is, they believe thought is dead, and it no longer exists. Since all ideas have already been thought, they believe no one should claim sole ownership of what she believes to be her own thoughts.
In Ayn Rand’s For the New Intellectual, guilt and fear over not thinking destroy both the consciousness of the “non-thinkers” and the capitalistic culture—socialism arises as a protector against reality and insists that a person’s work belongs to society because no person has the right to live for herself (47–49). Rather than force their minds to work, the non-thinkers demolish the institution that requires them to do so. Hiding behind a state that makes people equal, the non-thinkers hope they will not appear cognitively inadequate.
Their communistic mentality is apparent in the anti-dog-eat-dog rule, which eliminates competition and creates monopolies: “The Rule provided that the members of the National Alliance of Railroads were forbidden to engage in practices defined as ‘destructive competition’ ” (76). So, the most efficient railroad is not permitted to operate. Only the one with seniority is allowed to function.
Once Dagny realizes she can no longer allow the government to control her, she breaks with the world by uttering the mantra of John Galt, which she hears him speak on the radio: “I swear—by my life and by my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (1,047).
Unable to work under the communist ideals of the Washington men, she learns that she cannot continue to sacrifice herself for a society that not only takes all she has invented but also gives her nothing in return. Nothing she does is ever enough, and no one thanks her for solving Taggart Transcontinental’s problems and keeping the trains on schedule. Just as a child cannot rely upon its parents forever, the world cannot depend on Dagny for its survival:
“Man’s mind is the basic tool for survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch—or build a cyclotron—without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.” (930)
Propelling the world, the individual acts as a god to society. Without that special person who decides to change a chemical formula or test a hypothesis, there would be no growth. If the caveman never discovered fire, humans would still reside in the cave. Dagny learns that her mind is her most valuable weapon, and without her mind, she would be reduced to an animal—little more than a hair-covered, instinct-following beast. Stripped of her mind, she too will perish.
After Dagny breaks her ties with the non-thinkers, she feels relieved. Freed from the restricting mentality these men imposed, the world opens itself to new ideas—ideas with which to help humanity, not with which to hinder its development. “She knew what Nat Taggart [her grandfather] had felt at his start and that now, for the first time, she was following him in full loyalty: the confident sense of facing a void and of knowing that one has a continent to build” (1,065).
Although her railroad is ravaged by men who do not know how to operate it, Dagny no longer expresses anger. Unobstructed by the men who formerly stood in her way, she can invent new creations exempt from the fear they will be usurped. Those who recently held authority have no power because Dagny, with a productive mind, will refuse to concede to their dictates.
Without the inhibitions of thoughtless individuals, Dagny can exert all her mental power, not in dealing with those who want to restrain her achievements, but in soaring to even greater intellectual heights than she ever before thought possible.
Sources
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Signet, 1957.
———. For the New Intellectual. New York: Random House, 1961.
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