Part 3 ch. 5
Here we see further devastation to society, when need is still held as a claim on those of ability, Dagny thinking:
Did it matter— she thought, looking at the map— which part of the corpse had been consumed by which type of maggot, by those who gorged themselves or by those who gave the food to other maggots? So long as living flesh was prey to be devoured, did it matter whose stomachs it had gone to fill? There was no way to tell which devastation had been accomplished by the humanitarians and which by undisguised gangsters. There was no way to tell which acts of plunder had been prompted by the charity-lust of the Lawsons and which by the gluttony of Cuffy Meigs— no way to tell which communities had been immolated to feed another community one week closer to starvation and which to provide yachts for the pull-peddlers. Did it matter? Both were alike in fact as they were alike in spirit, both were in need and need was regarded as sole title to property, both were acting in strictest accordance with the same code of morality. Both held the immolation of men as proper and both were achieving it. There wasn’t even any way to tell who were the cannibals and who the victims— the communities that accepted as their rightful due the confiscated clothing or fuel of a town to the east of them, found, next week, their granaries confiscated to feed a town to the west— men had achieved the ideal of the centuries, they were practicing it in unobstructed perfection, they were serving need as their highest ruler, need as first claim upon them, need as their standard of value, as the coin of their realm, as more sacred than right and life. Men had been pushed into a pit where, shouting that man is his brother’s keeper, each was devouring his neighbor and was being devoured by his neighbor’s brother, each was proclaiming the righteousness of the unearned and wondering who was stripping the skin off his back, each was devouring himself, while screaming in terror that some unknowable evil was destroying the earth.
Why do people think that need is a claim on others? What happens when they can no longer get things off those others? It’s becoming increasingly hard to in the novel, isn’t it? Many of those of ability have gone on strike, and what is left, is for the ‘vultures’ to pick over.
What were they thinking now, the champions of need and the lechers of pity?— she wondered. What were they counting on? Those who had once simpered: “I don’t want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they’ll never miss it!”— then, later, had snapped: “The tycoons can stand being squeezed; they’ve amassed enough to last them for three generations”— then, later, had yelled: “Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?”— now were screaming: “Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?” What were they counting on?— she wondered.
So Taggart asks Dagny what do you want me to do?
“Give up— all of you, you and your Washington friends and your looting planners and the whole of your cannibal philosophy. Give up and get out of the way and let those of us who can, start from scratch out of the ruins.”
“No!”
Then D’Anconia Copper right before it’s nationalized, was destroyed intentionally:
The People States of Chile and Argentina are left with a pile of rubble and hordes of unemployed on their hands.
And right after hearing all of the news Dagny thinks to herself:
Thank you, my darling— thank you in the name of the last of us
And what Dagny and Rearden essentially do, in regards to the wheat farmers and the coming harvest, him trying to get his metal to them on credit, so they have equipment to harvest:
We’re helping producers […] We’re supporting ability, not need.
Speaking of ability vs. need, here comes Rearden’s brother to the mill wanting a job:
Rearden pointed to the figures of men in the steaming rays of the furnace. “Can you do what they’re doing?”
“I don’t see what you’re—”
“What will happen if I put you there and you ruin a heat of steel for me?” “What’s more important, that your damn steel gets poured or that I eat?” “How do you propose to eat if the steel doesn’t get poured?”
So Philips “need” is not a claim on a job at Rearden steel. Ability is. Sound business practice, isn‘t it? If you unable to do a job, or are unwilling to do the job when hired, why should you even have the job, simply because you need it? How would you run a business like that, with a bunch of incompetents on a job not there based on their ability to do the job?
And then we see what happened when governmental intervention in the economy did to the wheat harvest. Instead of the full amount of cars intended for the wheat harvest, many were redirected by government, elsewhere. To soybeans.
“Well, after all, it is a matter of opinion whether wheat is essential to a nation’s welfare— there are those of more progressive views who feel that the soybean is, perhaps, of far greater value”— and then, by noon, she stood in the middle of her office, knowing that the freight cars intended for the wheat of Minnesota had been sent, instead, to carry the soybeans from the Louisiana swamps of Kip’s Ma’s project.
Just think, what would have happened if Rearden and Dagny were left alone in the market place, what their profit motive could have done for not only themselves, but to the nation.
Later in the chapter, Dagny sees Galt, then her follows her underground, they have sex and then talk afterwards:
Atlantis is hidden from men by nothing but an optical illusion—
That actually sounds both a literal (as in the light rays shielding the valley) and a figurative statement.