Clash of Titans

by Tom Pratt

  All of you welfare preachers—it’s not unearned money that you’re after. You want handouts, but of a different kind. I’m a gold-digger of the spirit, you said, because I look for value. Then you, the welfare preachers . . . it’s the spirit that you want to loot. I never thought and nobody ever told us how it could be thought of and what it would mean—the unearned in spirit. But that is what you want. You want unearned love. You want unearned admiration. You want unearned greatness. You want to be a man like Hank Rearden without the necessity of being what he is. Without the necessity of being anything. Without . . . the necessity . . . of being. (p. 884)

  The final act of this year-long drama finally reaches its destination as Cherryl arrives home to find Jim and Lillian Rearden performing sexually in the slovenly service of disdainful treatment of the relationship they have with Henry. The confrontation between Cherryl and Jim resolves itself into his repeatedly delivering withering blasts of contempt and hatred toward her for her background and lowliness and lack of apparent “gratitude” for the way he has lifted her out of her circumstances and given her the good life. It dawns on her that the opposite of Jim’s desire for an “unconditional love” is the nature of his love to her. We quote it at length so it can be seen clearly for what it is:

  “Why did you marry me?”

  “Because you were a cheap, helpless, preposterous little guttersnipe, who’d never have a chance at anything to equal me! Because I thought you’d love me! I thought you’d know that you had to love me!”

  “As you are?”

  “Without daring to ask what I am! Without reasons! Without putting me on the spot always to live up to reason after reason after reason, like being on some goddamn dress parade to the end of my days!”

  “You loved me . . . because I was worthless?”

  “Well, what did you think you were?”

  “You loved me for being rotten?”

  “What else did you have to offer? But you didn’t have the humility to appreciate it. I wanted to be generous, I wanted to give you security—what security is there in being loved for one’s virtues? The competition’s wide open, like a jungle market place, a better person will always come along to beat you! But I—I was willing to love you for your flaws, for your faults and weaknesses, for your ignorance, your crudeness, your vulgarity—and that’s safe, you’d have nothing to fear, nothing to hide, you could be yourself, your real, stinking, sinful, ugly self—everybody’s self is a gutter—but you could hold my love, with nothing demanded of you!”

  “You wanted me to . . . accept your love . . . as alms?”

  “Did you imagine that you could earn it? Did you imagine that you could deserve to marry me, you poor little tramp? I used to buy the likes of you for the price of a meal! I wanted you to know, with every step you took, with every mouthful of caviar you swallowed, that you owed it all to me, that you had nothing and were nothing and could never hope to equal, deserve or repay!”

  “I . . . tried . . . to deserve it.”

  “Of what use would you be to me, if you had?” (pp. 902-903)

  She ran. She ran and ran and ran and ran in the streets of New York until there was no place to run but off the bridge into empty space.

  Chapter 7 - The Clash of the Titans

  A superficial reading of Atlas Shrugged creates the impression that the main struggle of the plot is about capitalism as opposed to socialism or some variant of it. One might also choose the individual as opposed to the collective and would come close. If you point out selfishness as a foil to altruism, you would be following the ideas of many readers and critics. On we could go with producers vs. looters and moochers, rationalism vs. irrationalism, godlessness vs. Christian concern, etc. All of these themes play their parts as the story gradually unfolds. But none of these captures the essence of the literal battle at the center of the plot—the unrelenting stalker, John Galt, who seems always to be one step ahead of Dagny Taggart in taking away just what she needs at critical moments to preserve the ever-dwindling treasure that is Taggart Transcontinental. She comes to hate first the reference to him in the question, “Who is John Galt?” and then comes to hate him as a person insofar as she can imagine him, the one she calls “the destroyer.” We learn, of course, that it is no coincidence that it seems he is always a step ahead of her as she frantically does everything it takes to save her family’s heritage in TT. He has deliberately targeted her for defeat in his vow to “stop the motor of the world.” Yes, he loves her from afar, but he will not give in to that urge to go to her and declare his love until he has first defeated her. For amazingly enough, she is the enemy of the first order that stands between him and his overarching goal—to show the world once and for all “what is wrong” with it.

  We get a growing knowledge of this “problem” through various speeches and private screenings of the thought processes of both protagonist and antagonists.[30] We are teased by the mystery of why one by one the strikers are persuaded to quit, or is it that they just grew overwhelmingly weary? Gradually we become convinced with Dagny that “the destroyer” is the key to it all. But who is he and where is he and how does he convince such people to leave their sources of worth and happiness to disappear from societal view, never to be found? The question begins to arise especially when d’Anconia speaks with Rearden and with Dagny from time to time. Who is really the destroyer? Is Francisco the playboy who destroys his own family’s wealth in a series of disastrous investments and mismanagement decisions? How can one who speaks like he does reconcile his profligate lifestyle with professions of love and devotion to the highest values? Check your premises he will say, as does Hugh Akston in the diner where Dagny eats the best burger she ever had. In this way Rand pulls us along to decipher the real story line behind the apparent window dressing.

  For a while the relationship between Hank and Dagny provides solace for the two of them in a world gone mad, literally, for the irrationality of the looters is nothing short of certifiable as insanity when put up against a simple definition: Insanity is doing the same action again and again and expecting a different outcome. Or, insanity is perverting the language until up means down and down means up and believing your own perverse use of it. In a world like that, where those around you have surrendered to the perversion and insanity, it is sheer joy to be able to have a normal conversation and work with someone who does not try to convince you of the irrationality of the universe. Such is the relationship that Rearden and Dagny have, which also leads to their becoming lovers at the completion of the building of the John Galt Line. But even this joy is to be short-lived, as Francisco predicted when she named the line after the non-man of the universal question in the novel. Francisco knows what the question means and to whom it refers and he warns Dagny about using the name. She defies whoever it is to come and take the line from her. Francisco assures her he, John Galt, will do just that. Meanwhile, it is she and Rearden who seem to stand alone against the encroaching darkness, as lights are going out all over the world’s cities, rail traffic is slowing and diminishing in volume, mining and steel making are being reduced to trivial production of consumer goods instead of industrial uses, gangs of looters and marauders roam the countryside looking for victims, ghost trains are abandoned in the expanses between cities, and the world is gradually coming to an economic standstill.

  Still she cannot quit and damns those who have and in so doing have left her to fight alone it seems. In it all the mystery motor the two found at Twentieth Century Motor Company is in the hands of a young scientist, Quentin Daniels, who is working at a closed college in Utah as a janitor so he can have free use of the lab and its equipment. He has been sending reports and she has been sending him checks. Eventually, she gets a letter from him that he is quitting. His reasons are worth reading at length:

  Dear Miss Taggart:

  I have fought it out for three weeks, I did not want to do it, I know how this will hit you and I know every argument you could offer me, because I have use
d them all against myself—but this is to tell you that I am quitting. I cannot work under the terms of Directive 10-289—though not for the reasons its perpetrators intended. I know that their abolition of all scientific research does not mean a damn to you or me, and that you would want me to continue. But I have to quit, because I do not wish to succeed any longer. I do not wish to work in a world that regards me as a slave. I do not wish to be of any value to people.

  If I succeeded in rebuilding the motor, I would not let you place it in their service. I would not take it upon my conscience that anything produced by my mind should be used to bring them comfort. I know that if we succeed, they will be only too eager to expropriate the motor. And for the sake of that prospect, we have to accept the position of criminals, you and I, and live under the threat of being arrested at any moment at their whim. And this is the thing that I cannot take, even were I able to take all the rest: that in order to give them an inestimable benefit, we should be made martyrs to the men who, but for us, could not have conceived of it. I might have forgiven the rest, but when I think of this, I say: May they be damned, I will see them all die of starvation, myself included, rather than forgive them for this or permit it!

  To tell you the full truth, I want to succeed, to solve the secret of the motor, as much as ever. So I shall continue to work on it for my own sole pleasure and for as long as I last. But if I solve it, it will remain my private secret. I will not release it for any commercial use. Therefore, I cannot take your money any longer. Commercialism is supposed to be despicable, so all those people should truly approve of my decision. And I—I’m tired of helping those who despise me.

  I don’t know how long I will last or what I will do in the future. For the moment, I intend to remain in my job at this Institute. But if any of its trustees or receivers should remind me that I am now legally forbidden to cease being a janitor, I will quit. You had given me my greatest chance and if I am now giving you a painful blow, perhaps I should ask you to forgive me. I think that you love your work—as much as I loved mine, so you will know that my decision was not easy to make, but that I had to make it. It is a strange feeling—writing this letter. I do not intend to die, but I am giving up the world and this feels like the letter of a suicide. So I want to say that of all the people I have known, you are the only person I regret leaving behind. (p. 645)

  Dagny’s response to this letter is what gets her eventually into Galt’s Gulch, for she calls Daniels and urgently insists that he wait until she has gotten there and had time to talk to him. Meanwhile the destroyer arrives and convinces Daniels to go with him and the reason he does is two-fold. The intruder walks to the blackboard and writes out a formula that Daniels will recognize as the key to the workings of the motor. The second is his validation of the things we see in the letter above. The excitement of the moment makes him forget that he had promised to wait for Dagny and he and the destroyer are just taking off enroute to Galt’s Gulch when she arrives in her plane. She follows them until they disappear and then eventually crash lands with the consequences we have noted above.

  At last she meets the destroyer and is challenged with his insistence that she is the problem still left in the world. “Did you know who I was, when you saw me for the first time?” “Oh yes. My worst enemy but one.” “What?” She had not expected it; she added, more quietly, “Who’s the worst one?” “Dr. Robert Stadler.” “Did you have me classified with him?” “No. He’s my conscious enemy. He’s the man who sold his soul. We don’t intend to reclaim him. You—you were one of us. I knew it, long before I saw you. I knew also that you would be the last to join us and the hardest one to defeat.” (p. 778) Later he tells her “Every man that your railroad needed and lost in the past ten years,” he said, “it was I who made you lose him…I have pulled every girder from under Taggart Transcontinental and, if you choose to go back, I will see it collapse upon your head.” (p. 780) Over the weeks of her stay with the strikers she hears from one and another and another again and again that what has held these once in chains has been resolved for them. Their very determination to follow their own understanding of virtue and goodness with total dedication was being used against them to make them support a world that despised them and disdained their achievements and taxed and regulated them for the benefit of the lazy and indolent and dissipated and villainous in the name of love and brotherhood and compassion and the common good and the benefit of the whole and a thousand other clichés. These victims had now decided no longer to be victimized for the future of a world that could not live without them and which they themselves despised for its dedication to irrationality and phony altruism. That world was now collapsing under its own weight and they were doing what they could to hasten its demise. Her maintenance of the lifeblood of rail transportation was one of the last links to civilization left. That made her an enemy of the strikers themselves, but it also made her an enemy of her own values. This final step, which they had all taken, was her most formidable hurdle. She explains on the last day before departing, “If you want to know the one reason that’s taking me back, I’ll tell you: I cannot bring myself to abandon to destruction all the greatness of the world, all that which was mine and yours, which was made by us and is still ours by right—because I cannot believe that men can refuse to see, that they can remain blind and deaf to us forever, when the truth is ours and their lives depend on accepting it. They still love their lives—and that is the uncorrupted remnant of their minds. So long as men desire to live, I cannot lose my battle.” The response is chilling: “Do they?” said Hugh Akston softly. “Do they desire it?” (p. 807) Another “check your premises” moment!

  The principle in operation here, a virtuous person refusing to give up on a world that is bound to take her life-blood from her an ounce at a time while damning her right to live from her own efforts and productivity, is called “the sanction of the victim.” John Galt clarifies it in his famous speech:

  Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality—and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collective countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.” (p. 1048)

  From this moment, the time when Twentieth Century Motor Company put in place its famous “plan” for implementing “from each according to his ability to each according to his need,” Galt vowed to live a life that would not produce a profit or benefit to another other than his own survival (and for others, their dependents) and would pursue and persuade others to do the same until the motor of the world stopped. Dagny was clearly one of those who lived as the others had, to find happiness in productive living and let the extras fall where they might to the benefit of others. She did not live off the effort of others, and she applauded the achievement of those whose talents and abilities brought additional wealth to her life. She, therefore, was a target for the destroyer until she joined the strike
rs in understanding what must be done, but only of her own volition and without pitying the others or thinking she must do it for them.

  On the other hand, Dr. Stadler was a true enemy for whom their was no hope, for he had joined the other side. He was a betrayer who had once held to the same values as Galt and was his teacher. But he had joined the looters by making the Science Institute at Patrick Henry University an adjunct of the state that was now named the State Science Institute. He claimed it was for the common good and the benefit of the people as a whole. He prided himself in not being part of the pursuit of profits. He had cut out certain privileges for himself in pursuit of his own pet projects that he claimed would benefit all the people and not just some greedy businessman after a profit. Of course, he justified taking state money and making its products a possession of the state by claiming it was all for good and altruistic purposes, not his own benefit. The truth was, however, he had become a servant of the state whose work was being used to produce instruments of destruction and torture that would be put in service to those seeking the coercion of men and women deemed to be enemies of the states social policies. These included especially businessmen who were recalcitrant to the new emergency rules, but they had already been demonstrated in their power to terrorize the masses with their destructive capabilities. Eventually John Galt will become their primary object lesson. Stadler cannot be reclaimed, but Dagny is an “enemy” that can be “beaten” in a fair fight.