The Journals of Ayn Rand (74 page)

The Constitutional guarantee of free speech reads: “Congress shall pass no law ...” It does not demand that private citizens lend any form of support to those whose ideas they do not share.

The Communists have perverted the issue of free speech into the following sort of claim: Since a man has the right to hold any ideas he wishes, he must not suffer any kind of loss, discomfort, damage, or penalty, legal or private, as a consequence of his ideas. This is the totalitarian conception which recognizes no difference between public, government action and the private actions of private citizens. This is not the American conception of legality, rights, or free speech.

Under the American system, a man has the right to hold any ideas he wishes, without suffering any government restraint for it, without the danger of physical violence, bodily injury, or police seizure. That is all. Should he have to suffer some form of private penalty for his ideas from private citizens who do not agree with him? He most certainly should. That is the only form of protection the rest of the citizens have against him and against the spread of ideas with which they do not agree.

Should the Hollywood Ten suffer unpopularity or loss of jobs as a result of being Communists? They most certainly should—so long as the rest of us, who give them jobs or box-office support, do not wish to be Communists or accessories to the spread of Communism. If it is claimed that we must not refuse them support—what becomes of our right of free speech and belief?

PART 4

11

AR organized her journals for
Atlas Shrugged
by subject Her handwritten notes were put in folders marked “Philosophical,” “Plot,” “Characters,” “Outlines,” “Research Material,” and “Miscellaneous.” Here the notes are presented chronologically without regard for subject, so the reader may see the progression of her thought in developing the novel.

 

AR originally envisioned
Atlas
Shrugged as a shorter novel than The Fountainhead. In a 1961 interview, she recalled:

 

As with
The Fountainhead
journal, I have used the names of characters as they appear in the novel. In the course of writing, AR changed the first names of several characters. Dagny’s name was Mamy for a while; Francisco was originally spelled Francesco because AR thought of the character as more typically Italian than Spanish; Rearden’s name was Andrew, then William, before she settled on Hank; Danneskjöld’s name was Hjalmar, then Ivar, then Kay, before it finally became Ragnar.

Atlas Shrugged
was a chapter title until 1956 when AR’s husband, Frank O‘Connor, suggested that it be the title of the novel. Her working title throughout was
The Strike.

 

 

 

 

Theme:
What happens to the world when the prime movers go on strike.

This means: a picture of the world with its motor cut off. Show: what, how, why. The specific steps and incidents—in terms of persons, their spirits, motives, psychology, and actions—and, secondarily, proceeding from persons, in terms of history, society and the world.

The theme requires showing who are the prime movers and why, how they function; who are their enemies and why, what are the motives behind the hatred for and the enslavement of the prime movers; the nature of the obstacles placed in their way, and the reasons for it.

This last paragraph is contained entirely in
The Fountainhead.
Roark and Toohey are the complete statement of it. Therefore, this is not the direct theme of
The Strike
—but it is part of the theme and must be kept in mind, briefly restated in order to have the theme clear and complete.

The first question to decide is on whom the emphasis must be placed—on the prime movers, the parasites, or the world. The answer is:
the world.
The story must be primarily a picture of the whole.

In this sense,
The Strike
is to be much more a “social” novel than
The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead
was about “individualism and collectivism within man’s soul”; it showed the nature and function of the creator and the second-hander. The primary concern there was with Roark and Toohey—showing
what they are.
The other characters were variations on the theme of the relation of the ego to others—mixtures of the two extremes, the two poles: Roark and Toohey. The story’s primary concern was the characters, the people as such, their
natures.
Their relations to each other—which is society, men in relation to men—were secondary, an unavoidable, direct consequence of Roark set against Toohey. But it was not the theme.

Now, it is this
relation
that must be the theme. Therefore, the personal becomes secondary. That is, the personal is necessary only to the extent needed to make the relationships clear. In
The Fountainhead
I showed that Roark moves the world—that the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it, while the Tooheys are consciously out to destroy him. But the theme was Roark—not Roark’s relation to the world. Now it will be the relation.

In other words: I must show in what concrete, specific way the world is moved by the creators. [I must show] exactly
how
the second-handers live on the creators, both in
spiritual
matters
and
(most particularly) in concrete physical events. (Concentrate on the concrete, physical events—but don’t forget to keep in mind at all times how the physical proceeds from the spiritual.)

(A new sidelight here: the dreadful desolation of the world, not only in closed factories and ruins, but also in the spiritual emptiness, hopelessness, confusion, dullness, grayness, fear. As keys to that: L. L. and M. K. joining the Catholic Church.
Or:
the relation of people to
me,
what they seem to seek from me—think of Marjorie [Hiss], Faith [Hersey], all my girl friends—and even Pat [Isabel Paterson].)

However, for the purpose of this story, I do not start by showing
how
the second-handers live on the prime movers in actual, everyday reality—nor do I start by showing a normal world. (That comes in only in necessary retrospect, or flashback, or by implication in the events themselves.) I start with
the fantastic premise of the prime movers going on strike.
This is the heart and center of the novel. A distinction carefully to be observed here: I do not set out to glorify the prime mover (that was
The Fountainhead).
I set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers, and how viciously it treats them. And I show it on a hypothetical case—
what happens to the world without them.

The difference from
The Fountainhead
here will be as follows: in
The Fountainhead
I did not show how desperately the world needed Roark—except by implication. I did show how viciously the world treated him, and why. I showed
mainly what he is.
It was Roark’s story.
This
must be the world’s story—in relation to its prime movers. (Almost—the story of a body in relation to its heart—a body dying of anemia.)

I do not show directly what the prime movers
do
—that’s shown only by implication.
I show what happens when they don’t do it.
Through that, you see the picture of what they do, their place and their role. (This is an important guide for the construction of the story.)

Now to state the theme consecutively: the world lives by the prime movers, hates them for it, exploits them and always feels that it has not exploited them enough. They have to fight a terrible battle and suffer every possible torture that society can impose—in order to create the things from which society benefits immeasurably and by which alone society can exist. In effect, they must suffer and pay for the privilege of giving gifts to society. They must pay for being society’s benefactors. That is what happens in [practice] and what society demands and expects in theory, by the nature of its altruist-collectivist philosophy.

The course of each great cultural step forward runs like this: a genius makes a great discovery; he is fought, opposed, persecuted, ridiculed, denounced in every way possible; he is made a martyr—he has to pay for his discovery and for his greatness, pay in suffering, poverty, obscurity, insults, and sometimes in actual arrest, jail, and death. Then the common herd slowly begins to understand and appreciate his discovery—usually when he is too old, worn, embittered, and tired to appreciate that which they could offer him in exchange, i.e., money, fame, recognition, gratitude and, above all, freedom to do more. Or [the appreciation of the genius comes] long after he is dead; then the herd appropriates the discovery—physically, in that they get all the practical benefits from it,
and spiritually,
in that they appropriate even the glory.
This is the most important point of the book.
The public monuments erected to the great men in city squares (for the pigeons to dirty) are only an empty gesture—a hypocritical concession, a bribe. Just like the acknowledgment of the great men’s achievements in school books—to bore children with. Nobody takes it seriously. Nobody gives it any thought. Nobody takes it into any spiritual account. Children go on being taught and men go on believing that the “collective” is the source of all virtue, greatness, and creation. The achievements of the great men are embezzled by the collective—by becoming “national” or “social” achievements.

This is the subtlest trick of “collectivization.” The very country that opposed and martyred a genius becomes the proud author of his achievement. It starts by using his name as the proof and basis of its glory—and ends up by claiming credit for the achievement. It was not Goethe, Tchaikovsky, or the Wright brothers who were great and achieved things of genius—it was Germany, Russia, and the United States. It was “the spirit of the people,” “the rhythm of the country,” or whatever. The great man was only the robot—he “expressed the aspiration of the people,” he was “the voice of the country,” he was “the symbol of his time,” etc.

The intent in all this is single and obvious: the expropriation of the great man’s credit. After taking his life, his freedom, his happiness, his peace, and his achievement, the collective must also take his glory. The collective wants not only the gift, but the privilege of not having to say “thank you.” The collective hates the man of genius—because he is a man of genius. It wants to torture him and expects him to struggle against [the collective] —in order to bring it the gifts, without disturbing its vanity and inferiority. Then it wants to steal the gifts and the giver’s glory—so that it would not have to admit to its own filthy, petty, twisted mind that it is an inferior, a charity object, a debtor, a beggar.

(Good examples of this: the Wright brothers against the Smithsonian Institution; any country’s boasting of the great artists it martyred, such as France and Victor Hugo; the radio program’s slogan—“In a democracy art belongs to all the people”; the Soviet boast about its miserable North Pole expedition being greater than the achievements of individual enterprise, i.e., greater than the man who first discovered the North Pole, and greater than the Wright brothers who created the airplane; the “Zola” movie—where you see France putting Zola through hell for fighting against the collective France of his time, then hear it said at his funeral that Zola represented “the heart of France.”
This
is how the genius is made the victim of the collective’s crime and the whitewash for that crime.)