The Journals of Ayn Rand (112 page)

[The following dialogue between a businessman and Francisco was cut from an early draft of the party scene.
]

“I mean, is it necessary to hurt anybody’s feelings? There’s some truth to whatever it is you said. On the other hand, there’s some truth to what Jim Taggart says. Jim’s got a pretty decent record of public spirit and service. What I say is, do we have to go to extremes?”

“To extremes of what?”

“Of anything.”

“No, we don’t have to. They’ll come to us.”

“Who?”

“The extremes.”

He walked off, leaving the businessman staring after him.

 

 

From Chapter XI:
Rearden cannot deal successfully with the parasites—he is disarmed by his guilt. He thinks: “They’re evil—but so am I. Who am I to cast the first stone? ... Don’t think of it. Just work. Work harder. Don’t look around you.” (If he were certain of their total, inexcusable evil—and of his own righteousness—he would have smashed them, or died in the attempt; and he would have won.)

 

 

 

They stop at small hotels or sleep in the woods. They talk little. But they drive in silence and can talk to each other in the middle of a train of thought—“gloating” about the John Galt Line, or plans for the future. They are enjoying, “assimilating” their achievement—and “getting charged” for new journeys (“because joy is one’s fuel”). Rearden’s self-centered enjoyment: the way he carries her across a stream, the way he breaks a branch out of their path, the way he makes a fire. The emphasis is not on the views they see, but on
their
seeing it. The point is their active estimate of value; if a tourist sees something without a judgment of value and an emotional reaction of his own—what’s the point of gazing at things? People are willing to be mirrors or blotters; but not Rearden—
he
is a ray of light, bringing things into sight and meaning. His manner of comment is always what can be done—or what one can learn from what has been done—always the
active,
purposeful reaction.

They sleep together in a ravine, under the remnant of a trestle. She thinks that this is an
underground
honeymoon, and wonders why it has to be “underground.” No, it is not an accident of his being a married man, of his having first chosen the wrong woman—she senses dimly some connection between their secret wandering and the desolation of the country around them.

The slovenly auto court landlady—who sneers at them because she knows that they enjoy sex (that they are held together by nothing but pleasure) and because they have a good, expensive car. The denunciation of sex, of pleasure, of
self
-indulgence—and of the rich and the industrialists at the same time. Both have a common root.

Dagny realizes (in indifferent wonder) that she and Rearden are expected to feel guilty. People look at them as at enemies.

March 10, 1949

The purpose of every step of this history is to show the futility of men possessing material means, if they do not have the mind to know how to use them.

(This is the answer to the whining attitude of: “If I only had the money, or the factory, or the movie studio, etc.” or “It isn’t fair that one guy inherits a factory—nobody gave
me
a factory ... etc.”)

The parasites (the second-handers incapable of independent judgment, of new rational connections) own an inexhaustible means of wealth in the Motor Company—
Galt’s motor
—but they do not know what to do with it, and so it doesn’t do them any good. With the means—property and equipment—of the best motor company in existence, the parasites can achieve nothing but ruin. This answers the fools who think that they’d do wonders if only somebody would hand them the tools of achievement. It is not the
tools
that achieve. And the man with the mind capable of using the tools will earn his own tools.

While showing the above, in the history of the motor company, show also the kind of motives, morals, ideas, and human characters who make the “something-for-nothing, give-me-a-chance” attitude (and actions) possible.

Also:
show the savage, “range-of-the-moment” irresponsiblity of those who think that making money is a matter of speculation, of putting something over on somebody, of exchange without production—the parasites who think that wealth is a matter of grabbing a material possession and palming it off on somebody fast, not realizing that the profit they thus make (on the re-sale of the factory, for instance) is made possible only by someone being a
producer.
When there are no producers, the material wealth is worthless. The “short-range” savage may think: what the hell, he got away with it—but did he? And can we have a society geared to giving a chance to these parasites? Will such a society remain productive long? (In a
free
economy, the Reardens sweep these types out, just as productive citizens eliminate criminals who are then only “marginal”; a controlled economy eliminates the Reardens and breeds the “short-range” savages or speculators of the moment.)

(A proper trader is one who performs a real service of distribution of goods, a service
needed by the producers
of the goods. Such a trader takes intelligent risks [based on] his knowledge and long-range judgment. A speculator functions on the confusion or trouble of the moment, without plan. No, they cannot be differentiated by any law. The objective reality of their performance, in a free economy, builds up the first and destroys the second. The trader creates his own function where his services are needed, where no one else is doing this particular job. A speculator functions when proper exchange and proper traders are restricted by force. As example: a blockade-runner is a trader; a black-marketeer who pays off the bureaucrats, who is their representative or partner, is a speculator.)

 

 

(For the scene with Dagny and the old worker from the Twentieth Century Motor Corporation, and for the general theme.)

Under capitalism, the motive and basic principle throughout the whole system is
the positive good,
and human ability. A worker works so that he himself will make a profit, the boss will make a profit, and the customers who have earned the price of the product will buy it. The motive throughout is reward (satisfaction), an
earned
reward, and the standard of value is
ability.