The parasite with a two-cent achievement, who wants to destroy all great achievements, so that his will be tops (and even his achievement is not authentic, not original, but a borrowed composite). On a railroad, this would be a man who makes Taggart reject a great improvement, in order to adopt his silly little one. (Or it can be Taggart himself.)

  The parasite who thinks that in order to get a top job he only has to destroy the creator holding it. He succeeds—and merely destroys the job. This can be Taggart himself—if he got his position not through inheritance, but special pull (against Dagny), such as government pressure. (His share of inheritance did not entitle him to be president of the company; he forced his way into that.) If not, then it must be a specific, important case of a parasite who thus destroys a business needed by TT. It is also Taggart forcing a competing, rising new railroad company (which is only a branch so far) out of business through political means—then finding that passengers won’t use his substitute, he has merely destroyed the market, and it has cost him more than he could afford (thus weakening TT).

  This is also a number of lesser parasites: a critic who forces his way into the place of an honorable one—and finds that people no longer pay attention to reviews. The pseudo-philosopher, who takes the place of the philosopher on strike—and sees his classes shrinking, people losing interest in philosophy, and wonders why it is that he can’t be “an influence,” as the other man was. The no-melody composer, who takes the place of Gerhardt—and wonders why people don’t go to concerts any more, why records of old classics are so popular. The girl-writer’s publishers—who see the public reading fewer and fewer books. The automobile manufacturer who sees the public going back to horse-buggies. (This point is eloquent and important, so it can be used in many typical instances, some in detail, some just indicated, as small “bits.”)

  The parasites who try to “protect” themselves by restricting and destroying competition (by stopping others). [Hence, the] unions with their rules for the performance of useless duties, and quotas of admission, to keep their profession limited. Also, James Taggart and other businessmen like him ganging up on a newcomer in their line, to drive him out (and then TT needs the product he was manufacturing—and the whole damn gang can’t deliver it).

  James Taggart, in his quest for superiority, goes to great lengths to beat some creator, instead of performing some needed achievement of his own. (This might be the railroad which he destroys.)

  In his personal relations, the more Taggart gets, the less satisfied he is and the more he demands.

  Taggart gives orders for the sheer sake of being obeyed (sometimes even knowing that the order is preposterous—that is why he wants to force an abler man to obey it), and he causes untold damage to TT that way. Dagny is fighting that constantly.

  [Regarding] Taggart’s desire to “influence others”: he gives advice to some helpless person (perhaps a poor girl he’s trying to have a “romance” with), finds that the advice is wrong and detrimental to her—and insists that she carry it out, just because it’s his advice and he wants to see his influence realized. The actual result of his advice means nothing to him. (Here is the parasite’s unreality: the girl asked him to save her, instead he’s destroyed her, but he considers that beside the point; she took his advice, doesn’t that make him great and powerful?)

  Taggart’s nagging jealousy and his insistence on beingfirst in the affections of any woman or friend is sickening and becomes unbearable even to the weaklings whom he picks for affection.

  Taggart is always surrounded by inferiors—a kind of personal court of fawning moochers. When he brings them into his business (forcing them on TT in the manner of and for exactly the same motive as Caligula and his horse) the results are disastrous. This may be one important incident in the contest between Taggart and Winslow: Taggart forces an offensive mediocrity into the position of Winslow’s boss.

  Taggart steals someone’s invention or idea for TT—then tries to destroy the creator, in order to take the credit (like the designers who steal from Adrian).

  Taggart is extremely “touchy” about his “feelings.” He believes [subconsciously] that all he has to do is want something and he should get it; if he doesn‘t, then he hates the universe. It never occurs to him that before you can want anything, you must have defined standards, purposes, and reasons; that is, desires proceed from the rational faculty and, therefore, will be (and must be) based on reality. The rational man will not want the impossible, the undefined, the self-contradictory; nor will he merely sit and want something, but will know clearly what he wants and how to get it, and will act to get it. But Taggart’s attitude is a chronic damning of the universe, because he just wants and nothing happens.

  Taggart’s hatred for the creators is an all-pervading theme-song in his actions. The immediate objects of it are Dagny, Rearden, Winslow. (And in the background, there is always his dread of John Gait.)

  An incident when Taggart, after having eliminated a better competitor, stuns Dagny by declaring (she forces this out of him) that he has no desire to improve TT or to make more money now. He wanted to run three trains a day when his competitor ran two, and he wanted to make two million dollars to the competitor’s one. But now he is perfectly satisfied to run just one train a day and to make just half a million. It’s not the fact that counts, not the actual, objective value—but the relation of beating that other man. (This is toward the end of the story, and Dagny begins to realize the horror of a parasite’s nature; she sees a faint hint of an explanation for what’s wrong with the world—and she begins to hate her brother.)

  Taggart is forever engaged in forming “collaborations,” “cooperatives,” “agreements,” gangs and cliques—and forever running to Washington to have laws passed for “protection.” Toward the end, he no longer has any clear sense of what it is that he must be protected from, and his efforts have no practical meaning at all, they are like the convulsions of an animal getting more and more tangled in the thread he has unraveled.

  Taggart hates any success or happiness, even of those unrelated to him. Incidents when he double-crosses friends or protégés, just because they seemed happy or had succeeded in something.

  Taggart will always sneer and make disparaging remarks whenever anyone is praised in his presence--even if it’s only some professor of botany or some prize-cattle farmer. (He likes all the “debunking” biographies, the news and gossip about “feet of clay.”)

  Taggart’s envy—of everything and everyone—is constant, ever-present, and motivates most of his actions.

  Taggart loves to talk about and gloat over any misfortune.

  Taggart hates Dagny and needs her. He wants to destroy her and to get all he can out of her. One way of doing this is to try to ruin her personal life, make her unhappy, yet permit her to function in business, even hoping that this would make her function better. This is what Taggart does in relation to Stan Winslow.

  Taggart’s dependence on the material (like the big, luxurious home) reflects his crazy half-notion that his spiritual greatness will come from that. Yet he is extremely stupid about spending money on luxuries (flat, no imagination) and he gets no pleasure from it.

  There must also be one of the parasites who will start poor, make a Peter Keating kind of career, and go to pieces when he reaches the top, when he sees that money does not give him what he wanted.

  Examples of parasites who don’t want to make but to “take over.”

  Taggart always talks about “striving being better than achievement” and “and man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” etc.

  Examples of collectivists that are inordinately concerned with material wealth, and of creators that are calmly indifferent about it—not really indifferent, but self-confident.

  Important incident (near the end of the story) showing James Taggart’s abject terror of some of his own gangsters.

  April 28, 1946

  Note for Galt, while he is being tortured:

  He tells them that torture is the only weapon they have—and this is limited by his own will to live. “You can get away with it only so long as I have some desire of my own to remain alive, for the sake of which I will accept your terms. What if I haven’t? What if I tell you that I wish to live in my own kind of world, on my own terms—or not at all? This is how you have exploited and tortured us for centuries. Not through your power—but through ours. Through our own magnificent will to live, which you lack, the will that was great enough to carry on, even through torture and in chains. Now we refuse you that tool—that power of life, and of loving life, within us. The day we understand this—you’re finished. Where are your weapons now? Go ahead. Turn on the electric current.”

  (The electric current was invented by one of the creators—and this is the use parasites put it to, when the creators give it to them.)

  Even in Dagny’s suffering there is a sense of beauty, strength, and hope. Even in Taggart’s joys there is a sense of guilt, shame, and disgust.

  Important: dramatize the connection between joy in living and the rational faculty. The reason is clear: the basic sense of joy in living [arises from] the firm realization and conviction that you have the means to satisfy your desires, to achieve joy. Joy is the emotional reaction to a satisfied desire. Reason “produces” the desire and the means to achieve it; joy is the “consumption” of this production. The parasite, who has discarded reason as impotent in his desire to escape reality, is left with the unadmitted, but implicit, conclusion that he has no means to achieve joy—hence his chronic sense of frustration and misery. This primary joy in living is present and shown in all the strikers, but most eloquently in John Galt and Dagny.

  For the “reversed process of expansion”: just as Henry Ford opened the way (created the chance) for scores of new industries, James Taggart kills the chances of any attempted endeavor that comes in contact with his business. Show lesser, but potentially important, inventions that are killed through his rejection, and more important, through his retrenchment of the particular line where they would be useful. Example: somebody suggests lunch cars on trains; somebody else has a gadget that would make quick, compact lunches possible and could have many uses besides those on trains, could grow into a valuable industry; Taggart declares that there’s no reason to give the passengers quick lunches, let them carry lunch boxes, they have no other means of transportation, they’ll ride on floors in boxcars if necessary, why should he give them lunches? The gadget and the unborn industry are killed. (This example is not necessarily the one to use, but this is the pattern.)

  In clear connection with that, show the method of Hank Rearden, who expands everything he touches (and gets penalized for it in the parasite’s world), and [perhaps] have flashbacks to the career of Taggart’s great-great-grandfather, founder of TT, who functioned like Henry Ford. Show the spreading creativeness of the creators-and the contracting destructiveness of the parasites.

  Show instances of the irrational state of the world in retrogression. Progress proceeds logically and new industries grow when and as they are needed, but there can be no logical retrogression. The economy in the parasite’s world presents all the senselessness of destruction: [the attempt to maintain] difficult, complex industries, while primary necessities are gone. They’re manufacturing—with difficulty and at incredible cost—a few botched tractors a year, when the farmers have no simple plows. They manufacture double-deck observation cars, and have no passenger coaches. There are (botched) television sets for the officials—and no safety pins for the public. It is the spectacle of an erratic, unnatural, irrational shrinking; the signs of the break up, of retrogression. For man, retrogression can only be unnatural; it has to be irrational, because where reason is in control, there is expansion and progress.

  Show an instance of penalizing ability: early in the story, Taggart rejects an able employee (the young engineer?) for reasons such as: “He’s too good—too brilliant—which will make it difficult for the other employees—there will be no harmony, no balance—we’ll do better with a lesser, milder man who’ll fit in.” Then show the specific results: what the brilliant one would have done, and what the “milder” one does (and the consequences for TT). (In connection with the Tunnel catastrophe.)

  Show an instance of an employee (of medium importance) forced to act on his worst, not his best (toward the end of the second stage)—with results disastrous to TT. This, in a higher, more complex sense, also applies as a main line for Stan Winslow.

  Show specific, repeated instances when the honest average men (particularly in the later stages) run to the “thinkers” of the period (the pseudo-philosopher, the pseudo-critic, etc.) for spiritual guidance in their growing bewilderment and despair. What they actually need is the basic, profoundly philosophical advice which the thinkers who are on strike could have given them; the advice they get only pushes them into the general horror.

  In each instance of creators working with the parasites, show where and how the creators contribute to their own destruction (like Dietrich Gerhardt). The pattern is that of Soviet Russia stealing foreign ideas and inventions, hiring foreign engineers and experts, repudiating loans and debts. The free enterprises must not deal with anyone except free enterprises, otherwise they are working for their own destruction. This means: you cannot work against your own principles, there is no “middle road” or compromise here; if you do, you’ll pay for it. Principles are absolute. And, applied to the creators on strike: you cannot compromise or work against the basic life principles of the creators.

  April 29, 1946

  Notes for tomorrow (for detailed thinking out):

  A society of parasites is like a body with hemophilia: the slightest cut can be fatal and lead to bleeding to death; the slightest error, failure of routine, or new circumstance can destroy a whole industry (or society)—there is no power of recovery in the body, no thinking mind.

  Pat is an example of the penalizing of ability. The conservatives actually reject her for being too good; they prefer [Edgar] Queeny, who is “milder,” i.e., less good. Their purpose is to save capitalism. Their result is to [further] the spread of collectivism.

  Earle Balch [Isabel Paterson’s publisher] is an example of the average man who could be good, efficient and productive in a society of creators, but not in a society of parasites. The reasons? Either his disgust, or discouragement, or giving in. Either he’s not good, strong and brave enough to buck a society of parasites, or else he swims with the current and delivers just what the society around him requires. This is an example of how a society of producers brings out the best in the average man by rewarding him for his best—while a society of parasites brings out the worst in him by penalizing his best and rewarding his worst. One rewards him for producing, the other for faking. How long can a society go on in that last way? (This is an important point.)

  The average man doesn’t have the strength to do what is right at any cost, against all men. Only the genius can do that. The genius clears the way for the average man. But when the genius goes, the best in the average man goes with him. (John Galt and Stan Winslow?) [This is AR’s last reference to the character of Stan Winslow.]

  The general pattern of the crack-up is this: first, the ground is cut from under all men and all professions; i.e., the primary base—the metaphysical, philosophical, moral, political premises—are undercut. These are discovered, formulated, stated and defended by the thinkers, the geniuses, the creators. They are the necessary first premises for all men, before they can even begin to live and work properly as men. These are destroyed—and the thinkers, who could fight the destruction, do nothing about it, they let their work be destroyed, they offer no other [premises] and no resistance. In the place of the thinkers, there appear the Marxists, the Fadimans [Clifton Fadiman was book editor of The New Yorker], and such others. Instead of [reason], individualism, and capitalism men get mysticism, determinism, altruism, and collectivism.

  The average man is stopped and destroyed right there. He cannot correct the premises himself—and the genius won’t help him. Therefore, the spiritual life of mankind becomes a hopeless, joyless, purposeless, senseless, cynical muddle of bewilderment and helplessness. From then on, [economic events] follow suit; the material is the expression and consequence of the spiritual. [This continues] until men can no longer maintain their material existence, i.e., can no longer feed themselves. (And the average man becomes the helpless prey of any parasite—only the genius and the proper principles could protect his human rights, his status as a man.)

  In the material realm, the crack-up will embrace the whole [society], every activity. It is only a matter of selecting the key points, of illustrating the most important, the most eloquent, the most representative aspects of it (and showing it progressively, in logical sequence, in order of importance).

  Here’s what I say to the parasites, in effect: “You miserable little bastards! You can’t conceive of or value our scale of living—but you think you can get its advantages without its essence, by enslaving and destroying us. You think you can enjoy our advantages on your level. All right. Try it.”

  When a man destroys a competitor and takes his place, he does not get the place but merely destroys the market. For instance: if a bad writer destroyed all good writers, he would not get their public and market; people would stop reading books. The manufacturer of a bad car, destroying the better manufacturers, would stop people from using cars. (All the parasite can count on is the interim period of disintegration, while people struggle with his bad product, then give up.) This process can be seen now very eloquently in book publishing, the theater and movies. People do not take the trash: they merely stop reading new books, or going to the theaters.