As parasites, they have no long-range policy. Long-range planning belongs to the producer. The parasite acts on the psychology of the animal or the savage: grab the kill or the bananas of the moment and don’t worry about tomorrow; tomorrow you will start looking for another victim.

  The parasites will not face the fact that they are destroying their own providers, their own means of survival. If they think anything at all on the subject, it’s something like this: there will always be some genius around, we can milk one of them dry, destroy him, and then pick on the next one. The geniuses will always come along to be picked—it’s only a question of how much we can get away with. And this has always been true: the geniuses did come along and the parasites got away with as much as the traffic of any particular time would bear. When the parasites went too far, a civilization collapsed into dark ages; then the geniuses were free (by default, by the parasites’ impotence amidst ruins) to rebuild the world, and then the parasites climbed on their shoulders—and it started all over again. (This is what Galt wants to stop once and for all.)

  How do [the parasites] act toward any man of ability in practical life? In a way which is as contradictory as their philosophic premise. First, they hate him. Second, they want to get all they can out of him. They want to destroy him and to use him at the same time. They put every possible impediment in his way and want as much production as they can get out of him. They refuse to recognize his rights—but they want him to recognize and accept their right to exploit him. They act on the premise of exploiting the better man—yet refuse to admit that he is better. They act on the premise of exploiting his productive genius—yet refuse to admit that production comes from his genius.

  Above all, they want him to think (and they want others to think it and would like to fool themselves into thinking it) that what they get out of him is not charity and alms, but is theirs by right. The theories and methods to achieve this and the rotten trickery involved are infinite—but it all comes down to collectivism and altruism. (They do not mind so much if their exploitation is thought of as loot—this gives them a sense of having bested the genius in some way—but they do not want it to be called charity. This is the touchy vanity of the parasite.)

  (This is the attitude of James Taggart toward Dagny, Rearden, the young engineer, and any man of ability he encounters.)

  Now-what happens in a world where there is nothing but parasites left? What happens in a world run by parasites? What happens to the parasites when they are left on their own, left to their own devices and methods?

  April 25, 1946

  Before answering the last question, one more note on the parasites. Is parasitism basically a desire for undeserved material wealth, which then leads to the spiritual parasitism? Is the basic motive material—and the spiritual evil only the means to an end, the justification, a result of and a disguise for it? No. The material proceeds from the spiritual, not vice versa. The material is the expression of the spiritual, the form of the idea, the flesh of the soul. The spiritual intention determines its material expression. Not the other way around.

  Therefore, the parasite’s basic motive, premise, and evil is spiritual. It is, of course, self-hatred [caused by] the discarding of his rational faculty and of the kind of life (the only kind possible to man) which the rational faculty implies and demands. The first crime is against his own ego. All the other crimes follow.

  What makes a man do that? This is a huge question by itself. It seems that self-reverence (which is the root of self-confidence, which is the root of independence) is a primary axiom for man—the axiom of survival, the life principle. This must be thought out in detail. Here, I trace the course of the parasite from that first crime on. (Nowadays, of course, the reason is the huge pressure of the teachings of altruism. But what is the essential cause here? What was the reason of the primary, original error? Was it fear? If so, what cases that kind of fear?)

  If a parasite hates himself, he has to become an irrationalist, in order to survive. Otherwise, he would have to destroy himself, to be consistent.

  Once he has [rejected] reason, he has lost or discarded his capacity to produce, his understanding of the source and nature of production, and also his spiritual entity, his self, and the entire realm of his spiritual life. No spiritual life is possible without the mind, without reason; the spiritual is the rational. On the irrationalist premise, there is nothing but a sickening chaos left, since the man is doing constant violence to himself, acting contrary to his nature—and, of course, suffering constant pain, as he would physically if he insisted on acting contrary to the requirements of his body. Also, no spiritual life is possible [to a man who] hates himself; spiritual life has to begin with a strong, proud, happy sense of identity; but that is precisely what the parasite has discarded and is trying to escape. Without the rational faculty, no independence is possible, i.e., no inner existence at all. The parasite is trying to escape from any inner reality; he has discarded the essence of what constitutes life.

  But he goes on existing. So he has to find a substitute [for reason]—he thinks that’s possible, just as he thinks it’s possible to exist without self, without identity. (The process without object? The movement without that which moves?) The obvious substitute of the spiritual is the material. The reversal is similar to what he has already done. As a second-hander, he placed others first, above self. Actually, all relations with others are secondary, and a result of one’s entity, one’s attitude toward oneself; but he decided that his entity will be determined by and emerge from that relation. (“My virtue is to be determined by the good I do for others,” etc.) So now he performs another reversal: instead of realizing that man’s material activity and production is the result of his spiritual entity (his thinking, his desires, his purposes) and that the material is meaningless except as the form given to the satisfaction of a primarily spiritual need—he decides that his spiritual happiness will proceed from the material, that the material will give him a spiritual entity. He places the material first.

  A simple example of this reversal is the man who wants a big, beautiful, luxurious house—without realizing that the [value] of such a house depends on what he wants to do in it. What if it’s big—but he has nothing to do in the rooms and all that space is wasted? What if it’s beautiful—if he has no standards, understanding, or appreciation of beauty? What if it’s luxurious—when luxury is the lavish satisfaction of desires, and he has no desires? The material is only an answer to a spiritual need, an expression of it, a tool of it. Otherwise—it’s meaningless. Without a purpose in his activity, without standards of judgment, without desires—the man might as well live in a rotting shack (or not live at all). He won’t acquire these spiritual possessions from the house—the house had to come from them, be an answer to them.

  (Sex is a very eloquent and complex example of that, too. Think it over in detail sometime.)

  The parasite thinks that the material will give him, not only the happiness he lacks, but also the capacity for happiness which he has discarded. And not understanding (or not admitting to himself) the source of material wealth, he thinks that he can acquire wealth second-hand, through others (as he expects to find virtue, happiness, or importance through others). (He is not a second-hander because he wants to be fed by others; he wants to be fed by others because he is a second-hander; the spiritual reversal, or crime, was first.)

  From this [reversal], the parasite acquires two qualities: first, an exaggerated greed for material wealth, with no purpose for which to use it, wealth as an end in itself, and not as the means to an end (which is all that material wealth can be); second, the conviction that the way to get wealth is through others, that his activity must be directed toward the human, not the objective, productive aspect. (This is the source of: “A creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. A parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.” [This quote is from Roark’s speech.])

  This is why the parasite wants, not to make, but to “take over.” This is why he is concerned not with merit, but with pull; not with actual performance, but with faking a performance for someone else’s eyes. That is why he sees no necessity to produce anything—but only the necessity of convincing someone that he’s gone through the motions, so that he gets paid. That is why he doesn’t think it necessary to do a good job, but only to please the boss; and it doesn’t matter whether he fools the boss into thinking it was a good job—he aims to please the boss through means not connected with the job, such as personal flattery or social charm; he even thinks that the safe way to please the boss is one unrelated to the job, to the actual performance and result; wealth, he thinks, is acquired through these side-means, through any means, except production.

  How—in view of this attitude—he manages to escape facing the implication that somebody else produces the wealth he wants to expropriate, by quite different methods, is an interesting question. Of course, he never quite escapes it. Hence his miserable uneasiness and uncertainty. Hence, also, the disgusting, undefined, untenable theories (they are really shouted slogans, not theories) about wealth being a matter of natural resources (forgetting who and what made resources out of matter that was useless per se), about wealth and success being just a matter of luck, and all the variations of determinism. (Under determinism, nothing has to be explained too clearly: other men produce wealth in some unstated manner, because they’re predetermined, or conditioned, that way; he, the parasite, isn’t; he’s predetermined to his method, and it’s all a matter of fate, nothing can be changed, it works that way because it has to work that way, so it’s quite all right.) Besides, irrationalism helps him to avoid the implications and the contradiction. A “contradiction” is a rational conception; an irrationalist doesn’t have to make sense.

  Now, then, the parasite concentrates his ambitions and activities on getting material wealth. He may invent all sorts of minor spiritual justifications to cover up his material parasitism, but these are secondary; the parasitical convictions are not accepted in order to permit him to loot; the desire to loot was the result of the original parasitical conviction, the primary spiritual act of second-handedness. And since no “existence through others” is possible, the nearest a parasite can come to it is to exploit others materially, getting physical sustenance or unearned wealth from them, expropriating the results of their work, enslaving them.

  [As part of the] proof that the parasite’s primary motive is not material: material wealth never gives him any happiness and he doesn’t know what to do with it if he gets it.

  It is not a paradox that the creator, who is not primarily concerned with material wealth, can and does enjoy it when he has it, and the parasite, who places wealth first, goes to pieces with it.

  This is why the successful parasites, the Peter Keatings, are completely miserable when they reach success; this is why [so many] celebrities turn to drink, dope, or dissipation at the height of their success; this is [the source of] the vicious talk about success being only a disappointment, and the striving is better than the achievement, and the striving is all there is to do, we must always strive, never succeed, and “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” etc.

  Of course, the parasite’s kind of success is the deadliest disaster for him. (Since the goal is improper, its achievement can only be disastrous.) He has hunted wealth as a substitute for his inner entity; he has thought that he would get a spiritual life out of his material possessions, that he would get virtue, happiness, inner satisfaction, all the spiritual values which he lacks. He discovers that he doesn’t get any of it; that he has not escaped from himself nor found a substitute for himself. He has nowhere else to seek and nothing to do. He is in a blind alley. From this point on, the parasite goes to pieces.

  This is why those who preach “selflessness” spiritually are so inordinately concerned with material wealth—why the collectivists think that material “security” is the supreme ideal that will solve everything, while the individualist, who defends a system of private property and so-called greed, attaches little importance to material wealth, can do without it and is not afraid of poverty; he is the man who makes wealth and he knows its exact meaning.

  Therefore, the “material parasite” and the “spiritual parasite” are interrelated aspects of the same thing, different stages of the same disease (and the two stages are never quite separate—one is merely more pronounced than the other in any particular man at any particular time). The “material parasite” seems somewhat more pleasant, more healthy, than the spiritual one; at least he is active, though in his own disgusting way; he works at being a parasite—like Peter Keating. The spiritual corruption and second-handedness are there, of course, but total disintegration has not yet set in. When Peter Keating succeeds he reaches the stage of P.H. or M.F., who were born with money, and he discovers what they have already discovered—the impotence of material wealth in regard to their problem. Then he goes to pieces, as they did in the first place. Then he turns to their neuroses, their purposeless existence, and their malice toward the whole universe. They are merely advanced stages of his disease.

  So there is no essential difference between the two types of parasite, not in what they do if they succeed, nor in their ultimate goal and fate.

  There is one more stage for the parasite, the third and final stage, which they do not always reach (some may die before they reach it or succeed in avoiding it all their lives). This is their real hell and their real retribution. It is the stage when a parasite discovers—or is forced to face—the truth about himself.

  His whole, twisted, tortuous, miserable performance has been a search for personal value; he wanted personal virtue—but he tried every possible substitute for virtue; he ran from the realization of his own worthlessness or inferiority, and he has spent his life trying to fool himself about that, in every way possible, including the attempted denial of any value, virtue, or objective reality. In his stage of spiritual parasitism, he was still fighting against any realization of the truth—hence his malice, his mysticism, his collectivism, etc. But if and when some event forces him to see the truth—to see himself as he really is—to see and admit to himself, in full, his own evil-that is probably the worst thing a human being can go through. This is Peter Keating after Toohey’s speech. This is James Taggart after the priest’s refusal. In that stage, there’s literally nothing left of the parasite—not even the activity of malice. Then it’s total indifference—the passive—the Nirvana.

  I suspect that a parasite who reaches this stage either goes insane, commits suicide, or soon dies from a lack of the will to live. (He doesn’t know that he actually discarded that will long ago in his first act of second-handedness, when he discarded his rational faculty, man’s means of survival; now the ultimate consequences have caught up with him in the only form that was possible, the form he asked for: self-destruction.)

  Since success is the worst punishment for a parasite (the success of a man functioning on the principle of destruction has to be destruction), the worst thing the creators could possibly do to the parasites is precisely what John Galt does: let the parasites succeed, turn the world over to them—and let them see what happens.

  Of course, the parasite’s greatest wish (in practice) is to exploit and enslave the creator, but the wish is a contradiction in terms: the creator cannot be enslaved, he cannot function that way; what we see in actual life is only his miserable struggle for the scraps of freedom he tears out of the parasites’ hands, and he functions only to the extent of those scraps. So the parasite’s wish, in factual terms, is to destroy the creator. To enslave the creator is to destroy him. (“The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.”)

  Therefore, John Galt grants the parasite his wish: he removes the creators. He doesn’t destroy them, of course, but they do not exist as far as the parasite is concerned; they take no part in his world, they contribute nothing, they do not interfere with him or oppose him. He gets what he wanted—a world without creators. Then the horror follows—the destruction of the world—the logical consequences of the parasite’s principle of death; and the parasite’s inner horror must match, if not surpass, the horror of the world’s material collapse. (This is for the last scene with James Taggart and the priest.)

  The parasite could exist only so long as he had the creators to lean on, to be fed by, to exploit; in this sense, the creators were responsible for him—by permitting him to do it. This is just like totalitarian economics that can exist only on the energy stolen from the free economies, who thus create their own Frankenstein monsters. This is what John Galt wants the creators to understand and to stop.

  This, then, is the meaning of John Galt’s strike. This must be shown clearly, explicitly, and unmistakably (in detail, in more and broader ways than just the disintegration of James Taggart).

  Notes

  Dietrich Gerhardt-as the composer on the pattern of Shostokovitch (but not of that nature), who, by dealing with his enemies, helps to perpetuate their hold on him, to perpetuate his own slavery and precipitate his own destruction (this last, in symbol, through the destruction of a woman he loves, a singer, or of a talented young composer-protégé).

  James Taggart’s hysterical fear of Galt—before he even sees him or hears of him, just fear of someone like Galt, from his own knowledge that such a person must exist, his knowledge that this is what is missing in the world and this is the retribution that will come some day. Taggart’s insane, irrational attempts to avoid that day—and the climax is when he comes face to face with Galt. (That is Galt’s place in his life.) (Taggart hates the expression “Who is John Galt? ”—instinctively, without reason.)

  As a possibility: the scene where James Taggart finds Dagny in her garret, scrubbing the floor. (He’s had detectives looking for her.) He finds that he cannot beg, bribe, or force her back—that he has nothing to offer her. He wants something from her—he has nothing to give in return. The position of any parasite—the exploitation made possible only by the generosity of the creator. And Dagny is cured of that. (This scene can show the exact nature of charity.) Dagny tells him that the cleanliness of her floor means more to her than the millions of bushels of wheat in the stomachs of the millions of people who need the train to get the wheat. What do those people intend to do to her with the energy they’ll get from the wheat she gives them?