Re: Robert Sherwood writing a biography of Harry Hopkins. This is such a shocking example of a parasite feeding on a parasite (in the intellectual realm) that a parallel must be found and used. [Robert Sherwood was an American playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for Idiot’s Delight (1936); Harry Hopkins was a politician who served as a special assistant to President Roosevelt during World War II. ]

  The looter, the man who wants to grab some material wealth and run, living for the profit of the moment (or the man who is only after money, not production), wants the effect without the cause—that is why he is doomed to fail, is destructive and acting contrary to nature, his action being irrational.

  Reason is the ability to understand the connections of fact and to use them by acting accordingly. Man must act through “final causation” (the choosing of his purpose) and must use “efficient causation” to achieve his purpose. The looter sets his purpose at “getting money” and tries to get it without the necessary steps of the cause that produces the effect of “money”—the cause being productive activity. That is why the looter usually fails himself (though not immediately, and the chain of steps and reasons is not always obvious) and why a society built on the principles of looting, a society that leaves man no freedom for anything else, will fail and destroy itself.

  The productive man wants material wealth or money as the natural, logical, rational, inevitable result of his productive activity—and that is why he won’t work without the profit motive; consciously or unconsciously he knows that such work is evil, being unnatural and irrational. Even if he were free to function (which he can’t be in a collectivist State without property rights), even if such a situation could be achieved, he would not work without the profit motive—indifferent as he may be to money, his love and interest being in his work, in his creative activity. (Besides, he knows that money, the private ownership of the wealth he has created, is his means to further work.)

  The parasite, true to his perverted basic premise and his irrationality, wants the money, with no concern for the productive process, for the work; in fact, with an active hatred for work and those who work—the hatred of dread (and dependence). This is the psychology of the looter-executives in the fourth stage of collapse.

  Specific Steps Toward a Railroad’s Destruction

  The last one: a crucial branch is closed to get track for the last, main line. Without the industries served by the branch, the main line cannot exist for long. (This is “living off capital.”)

  The collapse of TT’s freight train bridge: the last break. Most of the other rival lines are gone by then. (This is the “helplessness before nature.”)

  Disorganization (chaos): no fuel where fuel was expected for the

  Comet’s last ride. (This is the plain moron’s inability to understand the need of work and action.)

  The “transportation pull” deals: Major (and fatal) example of it—“help to a needy section which has an industry the country ought to [support].” At a crucial harvest time (when there is a good harvest after several bad years), Taggart unexpectedly refuses trains and cars to the farming section involved and uses these trains for the “preferred” section. Result—hunger for the country, farmers go bankrupt and quit, banks close, endless industries suffer—and TT, returning to its old branch, finds itself running it at a loss, yet unable (and afraid) to close it—“the section must be revived, this is just temporary.”

  Minor examples of the same method—deals on a smaller scale, involving individual shippers, through which the “gambler-speculator” industrialists ruin the few remaining producers. Each time—there is a final loss to TT.

  (These are the “second-handers’ motives” in action.) Incident of the death of a section (the first one in the story, as part of the plot): TT closes its branch—one man in the section attempts to organize a pony express—the collective begins to hamper him with rules—John Galt tells him to stop—the section dies. (This illustrates parasite methods and [what happens in] the absence of a creator.) Specific incident of an industry closing because of the railroad’s failure: Loss of crucial, irreplaceable freight in switching yards’ tie-ups and snarls. Later—freight found in some most incongruous place. (Incompetence.)

  A major traffic snarl: through break-down of signals or telegraph service. (Incompetence.)

  The return to flags and lanterns. (Retrogression.)

  The progressive disappearance of: diners, sleepers, air-conditioning, heating, water, lighting. And of: refrigerator cars, stock cars, tank cars. (Retrogression.)

  The progressive deterioration of motive power: The use of old locomotives, and locomotives ruined just to make one run. (The parasite’s “range of the moment.”) The looting chicanery to get locomotives from other systems—a barely veiled highjacking called “nationalization,” which the looters claim is “temporary, just for the emergency.” [They pass] some law such as that the remaining locomotives belong to the one who can “prove” the biggest “public good,” a grotesque kind of “priorities.” (The absence of inventors and “living off capital.”)

  In connection with this: an incident of a locomotive high-jacked by Dagny (against priorities). Their own locomotive was taken through “priorities” by someone else.

  The tunnel collapses—it cannot be repaired and reopened—miserable, shaky, make-shift steps to run the railroad around it by going back to the rusted remains of an older, pre-tunnel era. (The “return of nature.”)

  One incident of a disastrous flood in which a line is destroyed and cannot be repaired. The section dies. Memories of how such disasters were repaired in the past. (The “return of nature.”)

  One incident of a crucial train run in which a great deal is at stake (in the plot), and the failure of the train destroys it. The failure is due to a cause that seems infinitesimal on the surface (like one loose screw in the rails), but is really huge as an indication of the cause behind it, of the second-handers in charge and the bestial idiocy of their methods. (Incompetence.)

  In connection with lumber industry—the untreated ties and the result. (Lack of inventors.)

  The “equal rates” introduced by Taggart (“for democracy”) that ruin the more distant farming sections (or a distant but growing and heathy industry that should have had a future). (Second-handers’ motives.)

  Incident of Taggart deciding that a competitor is ruining him, that everything would be all right if it weren’t for “unfair competition”—so he ruins the competitor (with political help) and finds that he can’t run the line and that people won’t use it. This one can be connected with the first death of a section. (Second-handers’ envy, and idea that the job creates the man.)

  Accidents: one major railroad wreck directly connected to Taggart’s methods, and a few lesser ones (each progressively worse than the one before). Minor accidents and breakdowns—constantly. (This is plain, eloquent, screaming destruction—the direct physical expression of the essence, purpose, and final result of the parasite.) One incident of a new invention taken over and the inventor kicked out. Then the parasites don’t know how to use it and have to abandon it. It can be a young engineer with a new engine as a solution to their power problems. Or it can even be an invention of Galt‘s, possibly an early one—and he has now vanished—and Dagny looks for him, not knowing his name, she merely wants “the man and the brain who could do this.” (This is “the moron with the dishwasher.”)

  June 26, 1946

  Key Steps (Railroad)

  1. Taggart ruins a competitor—and destroys the line.

  2. Taggart introduces the “equal rates”—and the consequences.

  3. Invention taken over and young inventor kicked out, with the invention then failing.

  4. Dagny finding Galt’s early engine in abandoned factory.

  5. Factory (needed by TT) closes when irreplaceable freight is lost in switching. Later—freight found in incongruous place.

  6. The first death of a section and the young man of the pony express.

  7. The crucial train run that fails (due to an infinitesimal reason [that is a consequence] of the parasites’ technique).

  8. The looting of one another’s locomotives—and the incident of Dagny’s stolen locomotive.

  9. The “transportation pull” deal for “preferred” section that kills off a farming section and a branch of TT.

  10. The tunnel collapse—and the return to an old rusted track.

  11. The major railroad wreck.

  12. Last: branch closed, track ripped for main line—and collapse of bridge.

  Key Stages (“Pattern of Disintegration ”)

  First stage: Stalling on decisions, evading, routine, destruction of creators. Smaller disasters. Steps 1, 2, and 3.

  Second stage: Parasites discover responsibility and are scared. Buck-passing, double-cross, parasites leaning on parasites. First serious disasters; parasites alibi themselves. Consequences of steps 1 and 2. Also—step 4.

  Third stage: Nobody wants top positions of responsibility. Disasters become crashes. Some parasites caught. Almost no creators left. Beginning of parasites’ panic. Steps 5, 6, 7, and 8.

  Fourth stage: The “ersatz-creators”—the emergence of the criminal type as executive, the looter. Now it is plain, accelerating “living off capital.” Steps 9 and 10.

  Fifth stage: Surrender to the creators—the plea to John Galt. Steps 11 and 12.

  Incident: the professor, who stole one of Galt’s early inventions (he was Galt’s teacher in college). “Who is John Galt?” has become the professor’s secret torture (his conscience), growing violently, pathologically unbearable to him as the story progresses. Late in Part I, in a scene with Dagny, the professor talks about this slang-sentence, involuntarily betraying more than he cares to. In answer to Dagny’s wonder about the meaning and origin of the phrase, he says that he knew John Galt, but Galt must have died long since. He had a brain such that: “If he had lived, the whole world would be talking of him now.” “But the whole world is talking of him.” This had never occurred to the professor before; he is struck and stunned. “Yes ...” he whispers softly, terrified. “Why? ... What is he doing?”

  But as Dagny tries to question him, he drops the subject, telling her that it’s all preposterous, just a coincidence, the name is common enough, it’s a popular piece of slang without significance. He will give her no clue to Galt’s identity or profession. She thinks that this is just another one of those occasions when people claim first-hand knowledge of John Galt.

  Note: J.H. as one of the typical parasites. He is mild and friendly to everyone—he admires anything and anyone who makes money (or is popular), indiscriminately, without analysis or understanding or reason-then he acts to destroy the very things and people he wants to use. He feels sad and bewildered about this—but he becomes mean and evil on one point only: any suggestion of the necessity for him to think about it, i.e., for him to assume the responsibility of an independent rational judgment. (His preoccupation with “polls” and “trends.”) He is truly the “moron with a dishwasher,” the savage thrown into civilization—understanding nothing about it, not even that understanding is necessary.

  More for the professor: He stole Galt’s invention, early in his career (shortly before Galt vanished) for the following reason: in the growing poverty of the world, there is less and less endowment of science; the professor was passionately devoted to his work, paid little attention to anything else and understood nothing about men, principles or the world; he wanted the government to finance his scientific research work and he had sold himself the idea that he was working for “the common good”; the bureaucrats in charge wanted concrete proof of the practical importance of his work; so he stole Galt’s idea—justifying this to himself by the notion that he stole it “for the common good,” that “science belongs to the people,” that he can do so much for mankind if he gets his laboratory, therefore stealing Galt’s idea is all right, since it will give him the laboratory, etc. He got the laboratory.

  Later he is forced by circumstances to invent the deadly weapon which he did not want to invent. Show the gradual disintegration of his conscience and of his work (or its direction) in the course of one collectivist compromise after another.

  In the end—he betrays and destroys everything he had lived for, everything for which he made his compromises (he thought of them as “sacrifices”): science, rationality, intelligence. He upholds: brutality, violence, evil, stupidity. (To decide: either circumstances force him to this, i.e., the parasites [force him] through the very power he has given them; or—his own mind and convictions, being totally perverted now, bring him to this and lead him to demand the destruction of John Galt.)

  June 27, 1946

  Added Points:

  The dreadful state of TT’s research laboratory. Routine and second-handedness : the alleged scientists spend their time proving that new things “can’t be done”—this in order to justify their inactivity and keep their jobs, which is all they are concerned with. Dagny’s constant clashes with this, her helpless anger and indignation. (This ties to and leads to her interest in Galt’s old engine.)

  James Taggart discontinues the research laboratory. The excuse: “Why look for the new when everybody hasn’t got everything of the old? Let’s stop progress until everybody is equal, then we will all go forward together slowly.”

  James Taggart tries to have the whole economy frozen and stopped, so that he will have “security”—a set market, a set amount of traffic, a set routine. (“How can I do anything when things change all the time? I would be a great executive if only people weren’t so unreliable and unpredictable.”) The attempt [to freeze the economy] takes place toward the last third of Part I.

  Galt’s Relation to the Other Characters

  Here is what Galt represents to them (in specific story terms): For Dagny—the ideal. The answer to her two quests: the man of genius and the man she loves. The first quest is expressed in her search for the inventor of the engine. The second—her growing conviction that she will never be in love (and her relations with Rearden).

  For Rearden—the friend. The kind of understanding and appreciation he has always wanted and did not know he wanted (or he thought he had it—he tried to find it in those around him, to get it from his wife, his mother, brother, and sister).

  For Francisco d‘Anconia—the aristocrat. The only man who represents a challenge and a stimulant—almost the “proper kind” of audience, worthy of stunning for the sheer joy and color of life.

  For Danneskjöld—the anchor. The only man who represents land and roots to a reckless wanderer, like the goal of a struggle, the port at the end of a fierce sea voyage—the only man he can respect.

  For the composer—the inspiration and the perfect audience.

  For the philosopher—the embodiment of his abstractions.

  For Father Amadeus—the source of his conflict. The uneasy realiza tions that Galt is the end of his endeavors, the man of virtue, the perfect man—and that his means do not fit this end, that he is destroying his ideal for the sake of those who are evil.

  To James Taggart—the eternal threat. The secret dread. The reproach. His guilt. He has no specific [connection] with Galt—but he has that constant, causeless, unnamed, hysterical fear. And he recognizes it when he hears Galt’s broadcast and when he sees Galt in person for the first time.

  To the professor—his conscience. The reproach and reminder. The ghost that haunts him through everything he does, without a moment’s peace. The [man] that says “No” to his whole life.

  June 29, 1946

  Note on Proper Cooperation (for Dagny’s attitude)

  The principle of proper cooperation among men is that no man should be forced to do anything, within the specified province of his job, that he considers wrong [by his own judgment].

  The decision here must be his. His superiors must not expect him to obey against his own reason. Of course, they must have the right to decide when they are acting properly or improperly. But if they know they are forcing him (through sheer obedience to an order, not through his rational consent), they are acting improperly (but strictly within their legal rights). His protection—and his proper course, in this last case—is to resign.

  Now, this presupposes that in proper cooperation, the specific job of each individual man is clearly and objectively defined. It has to be—and, for success, the definitions must be rationally accepted by all the men involved (rationally accepted—not merely accepted because it’s a majority decision, or the boss’s decision).

  Any boss has the legal right to establish the rules for the organization he heads—and his employees have the choice to work for him on his conditions or not. But the rational definition of jobs is crucially necessary for the success of any organization; the boss (if he is good at his job) is the one who has to work out the proper definitions, make them clear to his employees and make it his policy to see that all of them (including himself) act accordingly. The failures, inefficiencies, hard feelings and chicaneries going on in big corporations, particularly the less efficient ones, are probably due to the lack of such definitions, explicitly or implicitly, in the company’s policies.

  No work (neither mental nor physical) can be done collectively. All work is done individually. All human energy is individual—generated by and within one man: spiritual energy, mental energy, physical energy. A “collective” piece of work is only the sum of the individual work involved. (And “a collective piece of work” is a sloppy, meaningless corruption; what is meant by it is something like an automobile that comes out of a factory where thousands of men have worked and contributed to the production of the automobile. Well, they didn’t “blend” or “fuse” their work, their minds, bodies, or energies into a collective whole or process; they worked individually as individuals.)