Producers vs looters and parasites

David Kelley

Atlas Shrugged as a Philosophical Novel

Lecture II

“The best within us”

“You ought to do something great...I mean, the two of us together.” “What?” she asked. He said, “I don’t know. That’s what we ought to find out. Not just what you said. Not just business and earning a living. Things like winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains.... The minister said last Sunday that we must always reach for the best within us. What do you suppose is the best within us?”

“I said, ‘not business or earning a living’... but, Dagny, business and earning a living and that in man which makes it possible—that is the best within us, that was the thing to defend.”

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

A. Rand’s conception of the ideal man

B. Self, world, and others

C. The Producer

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

“The Goal of My Writing”

The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself....

Since my purpose is the presentation of an ideal man, I had to define and present the conditions which make him possible and which his existence requires. Since man's character is the product of his premises, I had to define and present the kind of premises and values that create the character of an ideal man and motivate his actions; which means that I had to define and present a rational code of ethics. Since man acts among and deals with other men, I had to present the kind of social system that makes it possible for ideal men to exist and to function…

Romantic Manifesto, 162, 164

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

A. Rand’s conception of the ideal man

B. Self, world, and others

C. The Producer

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

Prime Mover

He is true to his own truth—he knows no other. Tradition and custom—what others have done before him or what others wish him to do now—have absolutely no meaning for him. He is a first motive, a prime mover, a creator of values, a creator in the only possible sense of the word. He is the life-giving principle itself, personified in a man. His work is his only reality and his only great passion. His happiness depends on nothing but his own achievement. And he finds, in that achievement, a sensation beyond happiness, a sensation for which the word ecstasy is inadequate, a sensation which is a reason in itself, which justifies all existence: Man at the highest possible to him.

Journals, 223

Self, World, Others

Self

World Others

Creative workAchievement

Purpose

Respect, loveAutonomyIndependence

Reverence for the self

Prime Mover: self-generated thinking and valuing, exaltation

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

A. Rand’s conception of the ideal man

B. Self, world, and others

C. The Producer

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

“The Goal of My Writing”

The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself....

Since my purpose is the presentation of an ideal man, I had to define and present the conditions which make him possible and which his existence requires. Since man's character is the product of his premises, I had to define and present the kind of premises and values that create the character of an ideal man and motivate his actions; which means that I had to define and present a rational code of ethics. Since man acts among and deals with other men, I had to present the kind of social system that makes it possible for ideal men to exist and to function…

Romantic Manifesto, 162, 164

“The Goal of My Writing”

The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself....

Since my purpose is the presentation of an ideal man, I had to define and present the conditions which make him possible and which his existence requires. Since man's character is the product of his premises, I had to define and present the kind of premises and values that create the character of an ideal man and motivate his actions; which means that I had to define and present a rational code of ethics. Since man acts among and deals with other men, I had to present the kind of social system that makes it possible for ideal men to exist and to function…

Romantic Manifesto, 162, 164

The Producer

"Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes.... That shining vision which they talk about as belonging to the authors of symphonies and novels—what do they think is the driving faculty of men who discovered how to use oil, how to run a mine, how to build an electric motor? That sacred fire which is said to burn within musicians and poets—what do they suppose moves an industrialist to defy the whole world for the sake of his new metal….”

Atlas Shrugged, 728

Self, World, Others

Reason Mind-body unityLife, happiness, virtue

Prime Mover: self-generated thinking and valuing, exaltation, reverence for the self

Self

World Others

ProductionCreative workAchievement

Purpose

Trade, cooperationRespect, loveAutonomyIndependence

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

A. The spirit of production

B. Rearden as Atlas

C. The world

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

Motive power

Motive power—thought Dagny, looking up at the Taggart Building in the twilight—was its first need; motive power, to keep that building standing; movement, to keep it immovable. It did not rest on piles driven into granite; it rested on engines that rolled across a continent."

They are alive, she thought, because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.

They are alive, she thought, but their soul operates them by remote control. Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal this achievement. Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going—… the power of a living mind—the power of thought and choice and purpose.

Atlas Shrugged, 67, 234-235

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

A. The spirit of production

B. Rearden as Atlas

C. The world

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

Atlas

"Mr. Rearden," said Francisco,' his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of this strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?"

"I … don't know. What … could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."Atlas Shrugged, 424

Rearden as producer

Vision Will

Self-mover

He saw an evening when he sat slumped across his desk in that office. It was late and his staff had left; so he could lie there alone, unwitnessed. He was tired. It was as if he had run a race against his own body, and all the exhaustion of years, which he had refused to acknowledge, had caught him at once and flattened him against the desk top…. He had burned everything there was to burn within him; he had scattered so many sparks to start so many things—and he wondered whether someone could give him now the spark he needed, now when he felt unable ever to rise again. He asked himself who had started him and kept him going. Then he raised his head. Slowly, with greatest effort of his life, he made his body rise until he was able to sit upright with only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling arm to support him. He never asked that question again.

Atlas Shrugged, 37

Rearden as producer

Vision Will Independence Responsibility Pride

Because it’s mine Because it’s good

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

A. The spirit of production

B. Rearden as Atlas

C. The world

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

The World

Theme: What happens to the world when the prime movers go on strike….

The first question to decide is on whom the emphasis must be placed—on the prime movers, the parasites, or the world. The answer is: the world. The story must be primarily a picture of the whole….

In The Fountainhead I showed that Roark moves the world—that the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it, while the Tooheys are consciously out to destroy him. But the theme was Roark—not Roark's relation to the world. Now it will be the relation….

Journals, 390 ff

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

A. The enemy

B. The problem of evil

IV. The meaning of the strike

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

A. The enemy

B. The problem of evil

IV. The meaning of the strike

The problem of evil

We the Living: Collectivism crushes all hope

Anthem: Escape and rebuild

The Fountainhead: Appeal to reason and justice

Atlas Shrugged: The impotence of evil

The sanction of the victim

The strike

In The Fountainhead I showed that Roark moves the world—that the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it, while the Tooheys are consciously out to destroy him. But the theme was Roark—not Roark's relation to the world. Now it will be the relation….

However, for the purpose of this story, I do not start by showing how the second-handers live on the prime movers in actual, everyday reality—nor do I start by showing a normal world…. I start with the fantastic premise of the prime movers going on strike.

Outline

I. The Eternal Conflict

II. Characterization: Producers, looters, and the worlds they make

III. Plot implementation: the strike

IV. The meaning of the strike

The meaning of the strike

"I've done nothing. And that's the whole of my secret."

The strikers’ goals Better terms Sending a message

Passive resistance?

“Privileged groups rarely give up their privileges without strong resistance. Hence the basic question which confronts the world's oppressed is: How is the struggle against the forces of injustice to be waged? The alternative to violence is non-violent resistance. The non-violent resister must often express his protest through non-cooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that non-cooperation and boycotts are not ends in themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent.”

Martin Luther King, 1957

The meaning of the strike

"I've done nothing. And that's the whole of my secret."

The strikers’ goalsBetter termsSending a messageLetting nature take its course

"No one has ever believed in the irrational; what they do believe in is the unjust…. We do not seek to force our code upon them….”

Atlas Shrugged, 686, 688