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→The strike as a political movement
Nor would "going on strike" necessarily require building anything as elaborate as [[Galt's Gulch]]. The spontaneous organization, after John Galt's speech, of the "miniature Mulligan's Valleys" in various forest and similar regions is a far more likely scenario.
Nor would "going on strike" necessarily require building anything as elaborate as [[Galt's Gulch]]. The spontaneous organization, after John Galt's speech, of the "miniature Mulligan's Valleys" in various forest and similar regions is a far more likely scenario.
=== A new theory of abstract science ===
Galt's lecture program, and the private research program that it supported, illustrate Ayn Rand's radically new theory of the pursuit of abstract science. Today, government and other "non-profit" grantors support the development of "abstract knowledge." Rand was having none of that. To her, all knowledge is practical, and all knowledge can find practical application. That application need not be immediate, so long as men of business—men of this earth—had the good sense to educate themselves on it.
Accordingly, John Galt runs his own research program in abstract physics. Then he publishes his findings, not to "peer-reviewed journals" that pay him no remuneration, but to industrialists who might find a direct application of his discoveries in their own industries. This was something that [[Robert Stadler]] would never have done, of course—which was why he sought grant monies to begin with, and why he inevitably would "sell out" to the government. And it is something that modern "pure scientists" never do, convinced as they are that "pure knowledge" has no practical value.
Thus, in the Ayn Rand system, "spinoffs" are the natural product of any research program, and are in fact its ''object.'' Rand refused to distinguish between "pure" and "applied" science. She reminded her readers rather sharply that even "pure science," in the hands of the government, often finds very dire applications.
=== Defensibility ===
=== Defensibility ===