Difference between revisions of "John Galt"

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John Galt is the mysterious protagonist, or more accurately anti-villain, in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. For much of the novel he is merely a name without a face, about whom people ask, "Who is John Galt?" without knowing what or whom they're talking about. Eventually John Galt answers them directly, in a manifesto for individualism and capitalism.

Back story

John Galt came to the Patrick Henry University (not to be confused with the actual Patrick Henry College set up by James Falwell) "parentless, penniless, and tie-less," according to the account given by Hugh Akston, professor and chairman of philosophy. He came determined to pursue a double major: physics and philosophy, the science of the world and the science of the mind. While at PHU, he met two other students who entered when he did, each of whom had a background radically different from his. One was Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia, the current descendant of a famous Spaniard who established the family fortune by digging for copper in the Andes Mountains of Chile. The other was Ragnar Danneskjold, a Scandinavian aristocrat. (His specific nation of origins is never specified.)

Remarkably, all three pursued the double major in physics and philosophy. The three men also became fast friends. But not a man among the three suspected how closely they would be working together after they graduated.

Stop the motor

John Galt took his degree and signed on as a junior engineer with the Twentieth Century Motor Company, Rome, Wisconsin. There he conceived the idea that he could extract static electricity from the atmosphere and use it as an almost limitless source of energy. He actually completed an experimental prototype and prepared to demonstrate it to his employer, Gerald "Jed" Starnes.

Then disaster struck. Gerald Starnes died, and his three children—two brothers, Gerald Jr. and Eric, and their sister Ivy—proposed a radical change in management for the factory. Under this system, people would work according to their ability, but be paid according to their needs.

The employees actually voted in favor of this plan, with no conception of what it would mean. This vote took place in the main assembly bay of the factory. After this vote, Gerald Starnes, Jr. stood up to announce the results. According to the skilled lathe-operator and shop foreman who witnessed it, Mr. Starnes said the following: "This is a great moment in the history of our country! Remember that none of you may leave this place, for you are all bound here by the moral code which we all accept!"

"I don't," said John Galt, who quietly stood up in his place. Every eye sank when it beheld him, because "he stood like a man who knows that he is right."

Galt went on, "I will put an end to this once and for all." Then he turned to walk out of the bay.

Gerald Starnes called after him, "How?"

Galt turned and said, "I will stop the motor of the world."

To understand what John Galt meant by that provocative statement, one needs to understand what is the motor of the world. Ayn Rand's point was that man's mind is the motor of the world—and if you punish a man for using his mind, then sooner or later the mind will refuse to move the world. Thus John Galt proposed not only to quit the factory (which he did, after deliberately wrecking his prototype and removing most of his notes, leaving only enough notes to remind people of what might have been) but also to quit a system that, even beyond one factory with three misguided heirs running it, rewarded failure and punished success.

John Galt's plan was simple: he would approach men when they were most vulnerable, when the world socialistic system had meted out one insult too many, or one injury too many, and then he would tell them, "Why put up with this? Go on strike." This, then, was the essence of how John Galt planned to stop the motor of the world: tell men of the mind, like himself, to go on strike against the collectivistic system that thanklessly exploited them.

At first, the strike rules were as simple as the plan itself. Anyone having savings to retire on, retired. Any other man would take the lowest job that he could find, a job bringing in just enough to put food on the table.

The first two men whom he recruited to join him in this strike of the men of the mind were his two former fellow students, Francisco d'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjold. Francisco was devastated. He could not argue with his old friend's logic. But for him personally, the logical endpoint was that stepping down as head of D'Anconia Copper SA would not be enough. He must deliberately destroy the family enterprise. As he would later say to Dagny Taggart, the last holdout among the people of the mind, "I am not merely leaving it as I found it; I am leaving it as Sebastian d'Anconia found it. And let the world try to get along without him or me!" As cover for his activities, Francisco d'Anconia cultivated a reputation as a typical "millionnaire playboy," or what is sometimes called a "trust fund kiddy." Thus people regarded his actions as irresponsible. No one would suspect, until far too late, that his actions were in fact deliberate and calculated.

Ragnar Danneskjold followed his own chain of logic. Like Francisco d'Anconia, he did not believe that merely quitting the world was sufficient. He proposed to go to active war with it. The world system robbed men of the mind; he, therefore, would take back from that world and give back to them whom the world had robbed. Thus he became a privateer, and for the next twelve years he built a reputation as the scourge of the high seas. John Galt did not ask him to do this, but John Galt did not actively oppose him, either—for if anything, Ragnar Danneskjold was an even more competent philosopher than Galt was.

Galt's Gulch

The defection of Michael "Midas" Mulligan, a noted banker, changed the John Galt strike plan radically. Midas Mulligan became embroiled in a lawsuit after he refused a business loan to one Lee Hunsacker, who had bought the old Twentieth Century Motor Company in a fire sale after the Starns heirs finally ran that company completely into the ground. Hunsacker sued Mulligan. The original trial judge (Judge Narragansett) found for Mulligan, but that judgment was reversed on appeal. Naturally, John Galt approached Midas and Judge Narragansett and encouraged them to go on strike.

Mulligan's answer was to liquidate his bank totally, though he made sure that no depositor lost any money in the liquidation. He then took the proceeds and bought a secluded valley in the Rocky Mountains. There he built a home and stocked it with supplies sufficient to let him retire there for life. Judge Narragansett then asked Midas whether he would be willing to rent some land to him, and Midas agreed.

Midas did more than that. He asked Galt to advertise leaseholds in his valley to other strikers. Galt did, and then the strikers began to populate the valley and even turn it into a functioning society and economy. Midas received rents from everyone and even reopened his bank. John Galt became the de facto mayor of what he called Mulligan's Valley (because Midas Mulligan actually owned the land) and the other strikers called Galt's Gulch (because John Galt was still their spiritual and political leader). In addition to acting as mayor, John Galt was also the chief utility provider—because the motor he had invented, that could draw static electricity from the atmosphere, now became the main power plant of the valley, which he housed in a building guarded by a sound lock that would respond only to a repetition of the Oath of the Men of the Mind that he had coined:

The judicial power rested with Judge Narragansett, and legislation was by the rough equivalent of a New England town meeting.

So now, joining John Galt's strike meant leaving a punitive political and economic system, and joining a true republic in which capitalism and property rights were paramount.

Yet John Galt did not spend all his time in the valley. He spend eleven months out of the year as a track walker in the New York City terminal of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. His purpose was twofold. On one hand, he functioned, quite simply, as a spy, and cultivated a relationship with a junior executive (Eddie Willers) who would talk freely. On the other hand, he was spying on a particular executive with whom he had fallen in love: Dagny Taggart, the President's sister, who served as Vice President in Charge of Operations.

The last three years

John Galt's last three years were his busiest. In those years he accomplished his most numerous and most consequential recruitments. The consequences were, quite simply, devastating for the world system. As the United States government added outrage after outrage (with names like "Equalization of Opportunity Act" and "Directive 10-289," both of which presaged Richard Nixon's wage and price controls and Barack Obama's present program), John Galt found recruitment that much easier.

Yet his two most important prospects continued to elude him, and to resist the efforts by his friend Francisco d'Anconia to recruit them. One was Dagny Taggart. The other was Henry Rearden, the owner of a steel company who had developed his own new version of steel that included copper as well as iron. (The government had in fact confiscated the formula for "Rearden Metal," but the only steelmaker to try to copy the formula had to abandon the attempt after Ragnar Danneskjold shelled his factory to ruins by an offshore bombardment.)

The scab

In July of the last year of the strike, John Galt completed his recruitment of another striker, perhaps not quite realizing that Dagny Taggart was in hot pursuit. As he took off for Mulligan's Valley, he realized that an aircraft was in fact on his tail. He took no showy evasive action (perhaps his aircraft was not built for aerobatics), but simply flew to the valley and ducked behind the refractor-ray screen that he had installed, at an altitude of 700 feet above ground level (8700 feet above sea level), to create a mirror in the sky and make the valley look rocky instead of green and lush. To his horror, the pursuing aircraft followed him down, and impinged upon the screen. The rays struck the aircraft with a bright flash and instantly shut down its engine, causing it to spiral down. The pilot made one last desperate control input before crash-landing in the grass near the Valley airstrip. To Galt's further horror, Dagny Taggart was the pilot. To his immense relief, she survived with nothing more serious than a few broken ribs.

Having little choice, John Galt hand-carried Dagny into the center of the little town and introduced her to the members of his community. He did not delude himself into thinking that she would join his strike immediately, and so he introduced her as "the scab." In actual fact, he allowed the townspeople to speak for him. Each one told her why he or she had quit the world, and also showed her some of what they had invented in the valley.

One of the more brief visitors was Ragnar Danneskjold. Galt would not allow Ragnar to speak, in front of Dagny, about his meeting with Henry Rearden after the passage of Directive 10-289. Ragnar did speak of his privateering operations and his proposal to refund the income taxes of all the strikers. Dagny indignantly refused to accept any of Danneskjold's money and asked John Galt to hire her as his cook and housemaid, so that she could earn her room and board. Galt, beside himself with mirth, accepted the proposal.

The valley dwellers had one occasion to be alarmed about two weeks into Dagny's stay: another aircraft dipped into the upper reaches of the cone that formed the valley, in an obvious search for Dagny's aircraft. Dagny gave a start of recognition, but denied it to Galt. Whether Galt was fooled by this, the story does not make clear—but in any case he would obviously learn later that the pilot of this search aircraft was Henry Rearden, with whom Dagny was having an affair at the time.

Galt entertained a small hope that Dagny would change her mind after he and Francisco d'Anconia invited her to see "D'Anconia Copper No. 1," a copper mine that Francisco had dug into the side of one of the mountains that formed the valley wall. Dagny pointed out that Francisco was wasting time he couldn't afford to waste by transporting the copper ore on muleback to the valley floor. She quickly sketched a plan to lay rail from the mine to the valley. But at the last minute, she bewailed that she could not bear to lay only a mile or two of track and abandon a transcontinental system.

In the end, Dagny Taggart did not consent to remain in the valley. So John Galt took her out to the nearest airport—blindfolded, so that she would not be able to find the valley again.

The last recruits

On September 2 of that year, the parliament of the People's State of Chile prepared to nationalize the D'Anconia Copper Company. But in synchrony with the striking of the speaker's gavel to call the parliament to order, Francisco d'Anconia blew up the last of his facilities.

Francisco then went to work at the Rearden Steel Company, under an assumed name, as a furnace foreman. In October, a staged riot broke out at Rearden Steel, and Francisco led a contingent of regular workers to defeat the rioters, who were in fact government infiltrators. Henry Rearden was injured in the incident, and Francisco rescued him. Francisco talked to Rearden after he regained consciousness and finally persuaded him to join the strike. With Rearden came a very large contingent of his regular and long-standing employees.

Now only Dagny Taggart remained in the larger world. John Galt was determined to recruit her. So now John Galt took his greatest risk.

The great speech

The President of the United States proposed to make a "report on the world crisis" on every radio and television channel, on November 22. On that day, John Galt simply jammed the airwaves with his own signal that overrode all the others. Then, promptly at 8:00 p.m., John Galt delivered his message: on voice only, but clear, distinct, and, depending on the listener, either inspiring, infuriating, or terrifying. In three hours, John Galt expounded on the strike of the men of the mind and his reasons for calling it. He made no demands. Instead he made a simple suggestion to any man of the mind still left in the world to go on strike himself, each in his own way.

The abridged text

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Thompson will not be speaking to you tonight. His time is up. I have taken it over. You were to hear a report on the world crisis. That is exactly what you are going to hear.

For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who has taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?

Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.

We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.

I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.

You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's impossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.

And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?

Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.

You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.

Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.

To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.

If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.

The world will change when you are ready to pronounce the oath that I took at the start of my battle:

I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

The unraveling

Thousands of listeners took John Galt's advice. They could not contact him, so they could not come to Mulligan's Valley. But many of them set up their own versions of Mulligan's Valley, chiefly armed camps in various forests and other "wilderness" regions.

John Galt now made his almost-fatal mistake. He remained in New York City long enough for Dagny Taggart to come to him. But, unknown to her, she had the FBI on her tail, and in consequence, John Galt was arrested.

The authorities could not charge him with anything. Instead, President Thompson tried to urge him to take the post of "Economic Dictator" of the country, a suggestion that Galt found laughable. To illustrate the absurdity of the proposition, Galt said that his first order would be to abolish all income taxes and fire all government employees. Naturally, Thompson rejected those proposals.

A number of senior administration officials then tried to plead with Galt, all to no avail. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute did not plead; he threatened. Specifically he threatened to institute a program of executions of "unproductive citizens," a program he said would be necessary if Galt did not cooperate. Thompson was horrified and said that Ferris was not serious. Galt was having none of that. He said,

The last person to see Galt, and this at Galt's seemingly incongruous request, was his former chairman of physics at PHU, Dr. Robert Stadler, now the (nominal) Director of the State Science Institute. Galt said nothing; he merely allowed Stadler to babble at him about how much he wanted a laboratory and what he could have done with it. But Stadler talked too much, and revealed his conclusion that Galt was now the man who had to be destroyed. Stadler tried to take that back, but Galt said to him,

Finally, the authorities put on a television show and announced a new "John Galt Plan for Peace and Prosperity," and ordered Galt (at the point of a gun) to dress for the occasion and appear on camera. Galt cooperated until at last the time came for him to speak. And then, moving swiftly enough that the viewers could not miss the gun aimed at him, he rushed to the on-stage podium and said,

The authorities stopped the show immediately and then took Galt to the headquarters of the State Science Institute. They then tried to examine him under torture by electric shock—but Galt was prepared for it, and knew in advance that they would not dare deliver to him a lethal shock.

Then the electroshock generator broke down, and the operator could not repair it. John Galt himself gave the diagnosis of the trouble and suggested a repair, and the rich irony of the situation caused the operator to flee in terror. The three interrogators also fled, after one of them (James Taggart) cried out that he wanted "to make him scream," and then screamed himself, now that he realized exactly what sort of man he had become.

Not long afterward, Francisco d'Anconia, Dagny Taggart, Henry Rearden, and Ragnar Danneskjold staged a commando raid on the laboratory, killed several security guards, and rescued John Galt. As their escape plane overflew the Eastern seaboard, the entire ground fell dark in an instant. The collapse of the world system was now complete.

Galt returned to Mulligan's Valley and spent his first winter there. In the next spring, John Galt would declare that the world couldn't threaten them anymore, and it was time to come back.

Spoilers end here.

Analogous situations

The Northeast Blackout of 1965 is especially memorable to anyone who called himself a student of Objectivism at the time. Nearly everyone with a passing familiarity with Ayn Rand's work spoke only half-jokingly of trying to tune in their radio to see whether they could catch someone saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Johnson will not be speaking to you tonight. His time is up. I, John Galt, have taken it over."

Present day

With the election of Ronald Reagan, any thought of replicating the John Galt Strike was abandoned. The Objectivists had only one quarrel with Reagan, and that concerned the issue of abortion. On every other point, they agreed with his stated principles.

Today, the Ayn Rand Institute has enjoyed frequent citations on the Fox News Channel and especially by commentator Glenn Beck, who has interviewed its current head several times on his program.

More to the point, "to go Galt" has now become a catch phrase for quitting a system that now begins to look like the extremely collectivistic system that Ayn Rand projected in her novel. Regardless of multiple accusations in the liberal media, no one has—yet—proposed to "go Danneskjold", i.e. turn privateer and make an active, not merely a passive, war.