(The pretense of an explanation in this case is only a routine remembered from the world of the creators, performed but no longer understood or taken seriously. This is one example of the sickening way in which remnants of a rational world still persist in this insane asylum, in the shape of meaningless hulks, automatic routines gone through for no particular reason, just because no one took the initiative to stop it. It is the letter without the spirit, something like the maintenance of an airport for which there are no longer any planes (they do that, too). There must be many examples of this in the story—in their business and personal lives.)

  The third stage is when nobody wants a position of responsibility any longer. Nobody wants a top job. The desperate competition is for small jobs, the smaller the safer; it is a scramble for anonymity in a world aimed at and geared to anonymity, the world without a person, without identity, without individuality. It has now become dangerous to be important, even important only in show, even to be only an inflated windbag or figurehead. They don’t liquidate “the specialists,” as in Russia, but the public figures; the big-shot figureheads are beginning to be blamed for the accelerating failures and disasters, for the state of the world (even if no specific personal responsibility can be pinned on any one of them). The big shots collectively (didn’t they want that?) are beginning to be tagged with a collective blame, there are cries of: “Something has to be done. ” (Nobody knows what to do—everybody knows that it has to be done.)

  There have been a few cases when top parasites got caught in their own stupidities and criminal negligences, when they weren’t able to wriggle out of the responsibility, and were publicly exposed and disgraced, and lost their fortunes, factories, or positions. This has scared the rest of the top parasites. So now there are gaping vacancies in top jobs; the parasites are afraid to take them, the honest average men won’t take them, because they know that the job is hopeless, no honest work can be done in this kind of world, particularly not in any responsible executive position. The rules and regulations, which the parasites erected earlier for their own “protection,” are now such that no one can untangle them or make a step, or know where he stands—and an honest man cannot accept responsibility when he knows he won’t be left free to perform the work for which he is responsible. (Nor will he allow himself to be held responsible for the actions and mistakes of others, whom he can’t control, who control him; a slave or a robot cannot be responsible.)

  And, of course, the creators are not there to take these top jobs. (They wouldn‘t, in these conditions, even without a strike—as we see today. It’s strange that Soviet Russia has such trouble getting experts and top executives, isn’t it?) At this point in the story there must be some important desertions of the few remaining creators to the ranks of the strikers—with disastrous results for the parasites left behind, causing the beginning of the parasites’ panic.

  The performance of the “authorities” and celebrities begins to be grotesquely ludicrous during this period (which is just a little worse than it is right now). Authorities are picked by mere chance and sheer accident. At first, the parasites were pushing themselves and their friends into celebrity [status]; now they are afraid of it. So the field of fame is open to anyone and everyone, by blind chance; fame without any cause, achievement, or reason (merely because people have to talk about somebody, so somebody’s got to be a celebrity). This is fame by default—and another remnant of a better world, the remnant of the conception of greatness, without content. (Something like the way books become best-sellers now, practically without merit, by sheer accident; something’s got to sell, one is no better and no worse than another, it actually makes no difference, nobody really cares.)

  So any adventurer, ambitious empty-headed bitch, or naive second-hander can leap (or stumble accidentally) into the class of celebrity. Then he or she becomes an “authority”—and people grasp avidly at their opinions or advice, for guidance, never questioning what is said or why the celebrity became a celebrity or whether there is any reason to respect his opinion. The chance remark of almost anybody can convince people that almost anybody else is a reliable authority. Nobody questions who made the first remark nor who started the “authority run.” People really don’t want to question that; it is so much safer to believe that you’re dealing with an expert and not to look into his [qualifications] too closely; everybody is eager to rest on somebody else’s assertion and to think that the somebody else knew what he was talking about, since no person knows that in regard to his own talk. The pattern is: “Why, sure, Joe Blow is the greatest expert on economics—John Doakes said so and John must have his reasons—so I don’t have to look into the reasons, it’s perfectly safe to follow the advice of Joe Blow.”

  This is another example of evasion—and another distorted remnant of a better world: the realization that there are such things as experts, that they must be individuals, not a nameless collective, since any judgment can proceed only from a mind, and an expert is a man with trained, self-confident judgment, who knows first-hand what he is talking about. That much of a form is left in people’s minds, but an empty form, without content, with no realization of what specifically constitutes an expert on how to recognize him, so that the public attitude is a desperate search for a leader, without any understanding of what he must be or where or how he must lead them. The blind search for a great individual in a world that has discarded the concepts of individualism and greatness. And of the whole crazed herd, the celebrities and authorities are, at this point, the most frightened ones of all.

  At this stage, the awful staleness of society is becoming apparent and unbearable to all; this is when they go in for revivals of the past (like the theater now), because nothing new is being produced.

  The [fourth] stage is the hysterical compromise, in a growing panic. The parasite begins to see that his principles won’t work—but he can’t abandon them. He needs the creators—and he can’t admit that he needs them. He can’t do the work, but it’s got to be done—so he wants somebody who’ll do it for him. He proceeds in his usual twisted, irrational way—his halfway. He wants creators without having to call them creators or give them the conditions they require in order to function. He wants creators as tools—a contradiction in terms; but he thinks it’s only a matter of finding some who are willing to be tools.

  He embarks upon a course compounded of flattery and insults, bribery and threats, incentives and [punishments], all at the same time. He attempts to develop experts and leaders, but to keep them in check, safely harnessed. He fosters a kind of “home-grown substitute for creators,” a kind of “ersatz creators.” He features individuals too much, offers exorbitant rewards (usually material), names movements and public monuments after them—yet sits guard over them, fiercely and jealously, to see that the “leader” has the proper collectivist spirit, the proper humility, no independence, not too much initiative that could flame into a rebellion; in other words, he wants the performance of a creator with the soul of a parasite, a timid, cowardly soul like his own, a soul that won’t demand too much nor develop an actual ego. He wants these alleged creators to function, yet “be kept in their place.” And all the rewards and incentives he offers are of a blatantly collectivist, second-handed nature (money, titles, public honors)—he could not venture to offer personal rewards, such as freedom, choice, actual authority and responsibility.

  Under these conditions, one can imagine what kind of leaders he gets. Those who swim to the top now, those boosted into leadership, are the criminal element—the type of Soviet commissars or G.P.U. agents, the real gangster type, without even the saving grace of a neurosis (if that’s a saving grace). These new figures are the reemergence of the savage, the harbingers and symbols of the final retrogression. They have no scruples, principles, or anti-individualist complex; they don’t even have a conception of what any of that means; they don’t mind carrying out the orders of the parasite and they don’t care about his reasons or motives; they know they are not actually carrying out anyone’s orders—they are there to loot. They are beasts of prey in the simplest and lowest sense of the word. They are the savages who have no other conception of existence except to grab what they can, where they can, at and for the moment—the exponents of man without a mind, trying to exist through naked brute force. [This type is represented in the novel by the character of Cuffy Meigs. ]

  Their relation to the parasite, who is their official boss and who is now mere window dressing in public top positions of alleged authority, is that of G.P.U. agents to [Communist] Party theoreticians; public strutting and abject fear on the side of the latter, a silent leering contempt on the side of the former; both know who is doing whose dirty work and who is the real boss. (Or, somewhat, the relation of Toohey and Gus Webb.)

  And whenever (not often) one of these new leaders turns out to be more naive or a better man than the rest of them, whenever he shows signs of something like real ability, sincerity or popularity, he is promptly liquidated by the parasite. The vicious paradox of the parasite’s position is that he must destroy the man who could possibly save him, the moment that man shows signs of such a possibility—and he must leave the field clear to those who are [his own] real destroyers. In an unstated, unadmitted way, the parasite knows this. This is one of the reasons for his growing hysteria, his panic, and his desperate attempts to escape from any thought, from facing any facts. (There must be a concrete incident and relationship like that for James Taggart and some of his last employees.)

  Men like these new leaders, with no force to oppose them, would destroy the world quickly, in any stage, at any time. But when it is attempted to have them run the remnants of an industrial civilization, the end comes that much quicker. So this stage does not last long. It is merely a period of accelerated disintegration and destruction.

  The [fifth] and final stage is the abject surrender to the creators—without an honest admission or realization of it. The parasite who admits or realizes anything ceases being a parasite. By now, he is not capable of that, if he ever was. But the surrender is there, and the parasite knows it, and his panic at this stage is sheer running from himself, the screaming panic within. The surrender is in the attempts to find Galt, to beg him for help, then to torture him—torture being the last and only resort of the parasite’s method: brute force, man expected to act without mind, with pain as sole impetus and motivation. This is the climax, the revelation, the parasite showing his trump card, the thing he has been holding in reserve all this time, his claim upon the world-this is the symbol of what he has considered as the source of his right to loot, exploit, rule and devastate the world all these centuries—this is his badge, his banner, his essence: torture.

  And this is the realization that even James Taggart cannot escape, nor bear. This is the meaning of the scene with the priest. The end of James Taggart is the end of the parasite.

  Consider: since the theme is, in a basic way, that the material comes from the spiritual and the collectivists cannot even feed themselves without the mind—it would be interesting and proper to show the same relationship for sex, as per my note on the “Pattern of the Parasites.”

  [AR’s grasp of the relation of sex and economics is evidence of her unique capacity for integration; she was expert at identifying the common essence that unites seemingly different facts or areas. The above integration of sex and economics was not only one of the outstanding philosophic achievements in Atlas Shrugged—it was also crucial to her development of the plot. After completing the novel, she remarked in an interview: Rearden, as I first saw him, was the abstraction of the martyred industrialist. He had to be the Atlas who carries the world and receives nothing but torture in payment. But I saw him only as this abstraction, and I could not get anywhere with the idea. I could not get the center of any kind of plot until I changed the conception ofRearden.

  The [above] note about the issue of sex and its relationship to economics was made before I had thought of the Rearden-Dagny relationship.... Then one day it suddenly struck me what type Rearden should be and that the romance between Rearden and Dagny should be the central plot line. And it’s from that decision that the rest of the plot fell into place quite easily. That seemed to tie the whole story.]

  To [work out]:

  The specific, detailed parallel between the methods of a totalitarian economy exploiting a free one and the personal methods of a parasite toward the creators. ([Use as models:] P.H., the girl reader, V.J.—in concrete detail of method, motive, and action.)

  The pattern of a dictatorship as the detailed performance of a crumbling world trying hysterically to save itself.

  The pattern of Galt versus Taggart in basic terms, from the beginning.

  The pattern of disintegration (such as happens to TT) as it would take place in businesses I know—the publishing and the movie industries. Discover the abstract progression of what happens and why—then translate it [for TT’s disintegration].

  Pick out from “Pattern of the Parasites” the specific points to illustrate in concrete action for James Taggart and his friends.

  The supposition of man’s physical descent from monkeys does not necessarily mean that man’s soul, the rational faculty, is only an elaboration of an animal faculty, different from the animal’s consciousness only in degree, not in kind. It is possible that there was a sharp break, that the rational faculty was like a spark, added to the animal who was ready for it—and this would be actually like a soul entering a body. Or it might be that there is a metaphysical mistake in considering animals as pure matter. There is, scientifically, a most profound break between the living and the non-living. Now life may be the spirit; the animals may be the forms of spirit and matter, in which matter predominates; man may be the highest form, the crown and final goal of the universe, the form of spirit and matter in which the spirit predominates and triumphs. (If there’s any value in “feelings” and “hunches”—God! how I feel that this is true!)

  If it’s now added that the next step is pure spirit—I would ask, why? Pure spirit, with no connection to matter, is inconceivable to our consciousness; and what, then, is the sense, purpose or function of matter? That division into spirit and matter as antagonists or opposites, that idea of “setting man free from matter,” is untenable, irrational, and vicious (and has led only to man’s agony on earth, to rejection of his joy in living—the highest expression of his spirit). The unity of spirit and matter seems unbreakable; the pattern of the universe, then, would be: matter, as the tool of the spirit, the spirit giving meaning and purpose to matter. [...]

  Also to be noted here: the spiritual is the totally individual, since it is a consciousness and a consciousness is an “I.” (Whether it’s God, man, or an animal, a universal consciousness or the faintest flicker of it—it’s an indivisible “I.” This is why the Oriental idea of consciousness dissolving into an impersonal universal spirit is nonsense, irrational, and a contradiction in terms. Once the indivisible unity, integrity, continuity of an “I” is broken, there’s no “consciousness” to speak about.)

  Men’s intellectual capacities have always been so unequal that to the thinkers the majority of their brothers have probably always seemed sub human. And some men may still be, for all the evidence of rationality, or lack of it, that they give. We may still be in evolution, as a species, and living side by side with some “missing links.” [...]

  We do not know to what extent the majority of men are now rational. (They are certainly far from the perfect rational being, and all the teachings they absorb push them still farther back to the pre-human stage.) But we do know that mankind as a whole and each man as an individual has a chance to survive and succeed only to the degree of their general and individual intelligence. That is all that a rational man can deal with, count on or be concerned with. Let him, without wondering about actual numbers or percentages of intelligence in others, act on the basis of “addressing himself to intelligence” —and he will win. And he will find that he does not have to fear stupidity. (Most men now are rational beings, even if not too smart; they are not pre-humans incapable of rational thinking; they can be dealt with only on the basis of free, rational consent.)

  If it’s asked: what about those who are still pre-human, or near enough to it, and incapable of rationality as a method to guide their lives? What if such do exist among us? The answer is: nothing. Their way of living is not ours; in fact, they have no way of living, no method or means of survival—except through imitating us, who have acquired the human method and means. Leave us to our way of living, man’s way—freedom, individual independence-and we’ll carry them along by providing an example and a world of safety and comfort such as they can never quite grasp, let alone achieve.

  We do this—but even if we didn‘t, so what? If those creatures incapable of rational existence are sub-human, are we to sacrifice ourselves or be sacrificed to them? Are we to descend to their level? Are we to make them the goal of our existence, and service to them our only purpose? If these pre-humans are incapable of rational thinking and of independence, and therefore they need an enslaved, controlled, regimented, “protective” society in order to survive—we cannot survive in such a society. By definition, we are then two different species. Their requirements are opposite to ours. They’ll perish without us, anyway. But we will not be sacrificed to them. We will live in freedom—whether or not others will or can live that way.

  April 27, 1946

  Specific Instances of Parasite Methods to Be Dramatized (For James Taggart, and others like him)

  Overall: the escape from the necessity to make an independent rational judgment. (The escape from decision, from responsibility.)