“The Moratorium On Brains” is the title of chapter 17, but it is, as we have seen, a moratorium on considerably more than brains; it is, in effect, a moratorium on new economic activity and a contradictory and impossible insistence that the old economic activity proceed as it did before. The reason for this is that there are two different conceptions of economics both in Atlas Shrugged and in the real world: first, the dynamic model wherein wealth is created, risk and reward are balanced, and inequities in distribution of wealth make for the flow that is economic activity. Second, the notion that wealth is static; that it is a pie to be sliced up in even portions and that if the portions are uneven it is up to the State to rectify the matter. That the pie itself might shrink or expand is irrelevant to “social justice” and hence is resolutely ignored until at last there is no pie at all and a scapegoat must be found.
Nations move back and forth between those models depending on which of their adherents is in power - those that thrive on the first model build up enough surplus for the disastrous consequences of transitioning to the second to be masked for a time. The Soviet Union lasted seven decades under those conditions, Zimbabwe, seven years.
It is the latter conception that resulted in Directive 10-289. Both production and consumption are commanded to proceed unchanged while the underpinnings of the economy are expropriated by the Aristocracy of Pull, quite as nonsensically as if a waterwheel were ordered to continue turning while the river is stopped because there would be social consequences if it didn’t.
The chapter opens with Eddie in another soliloquy, speaking to his voiceless track-worker confidante. Dagny has quit illegally and the government has started to arrest “deserters” and then stopped when it became obvious that there were too many to be kept. A temporary situation, one suspects, before the prison camps are constructed.
Eddie will tell no one where she is, although keeping a secret doesn’t seem to be one of Eddie’s strong suits. The fellow would make an awful Mafioso or spy. We learn, however, that his friend’s shoulder will be unavailable for a month as he – a manual laborer, mind you – takes his annual month-long vacation in parts unknown. We may recall that the chief engineer of the late and unlamented Twentieth Century Motor Company did the same thing. It is certainly a bit odd, but the track-worker has done so for his entire employment with Taggart Transcontinental, which turns out to be twelve years. Twelve years since…but there we would be getting ahead of ourselves.
Hank Rearden takes a walk. After dark, in the countryside, and with a revolver in his pocket – it isn’t the act of a prudent individual but by now Hank really doesn’t care. And he is waylaid by a blond highwayman who presses a gold bar into Hank’s hands representing a down payment on all the money that was stolen from him by the looters – in this case, through income taxation – and it is one of Rand’s better dramatic moments when we learn his name. He is none other than the pirate Ragnar Danneskjold.
It is an interesting conversation, another outreach by a Destroyer, and yes, there do appear to be three of them, which should surprise no one at this point. It is amusing to learn that Danneskjold wishes to slay Robin Hood – not the real character, but his false contemporary image promoting the virtue of stealing from rich and giving to the poor. In fact, Danneskjold is not stealing from the poor and giving to the rich but stealing from the looters and returning the loot to its rightful owners. Hence the gold bar. And he goes just a bit further in preventing Orren Boyle from profiting from the theft of Rearden Metal by shelling the factories Boyle had readied, knowing that the theft was imminent.
Danneskjold is uncharacteristically far inland, standing in for a friend who would otherwise have been at Rearden’s side. Suicidally so, in fact, for the cops are hot on his trail, and Hank, although he expresses open contempt for criminal activity (this is a fellow who would not snitch a piece of fruit when, at age 14, he was starving), finds himself covering for Danneskjold by claiming him to be a new bodyguard. It is, in at least a sense, not altogether a lie. There is one jarring moment:
[Policeman] “Did you happen to see a man anywhere around these parts, a stranger moving along in a hurry?”
“Where?”
“He’d be either on foot or in a battered wreck of a car that’s got a million-dollar motor.”
No, no, no, this won’t do at all. The clear implication is that Danneskjold is running his jalopy on the sort of mystery motor whose wreckage was discovered in the Twentieth Century rubble, whose tragedy was that nobody recognized it for what it was. It isn’t impossible that its inventor made another one for Danneskjold, but it is quite impossible for a policeman to know of it. That editor that Rand did not use should have spotted this one. It’s a tiny point, really (curable by the excision of a single phrase) but a telling one in the overall consideration of whether Atlas Shrugged could have used a sympathetic editor with an unsympathetic axe. In my opinion the novel would have been the better for it, or at least shorter, which is frequently the same thing.
We move to the consideration of one Mr. Kip Chalmers, who is on a tight schedule – he has been granted a private car attached to the transcontinental express train, the Comet, for his trip to California, where he hopes to solidify his position in the Aristocracy of Pull by being formally elected a Legislator, although it is a little vague what that title might entail. He isn’t even from California. How absurd to imagine that someone could simply move into a state and become a senior elected official merely because political operators found it convenient, especially a state as large and important as California…or New York, where one Hillary Clinton did precisely that. Maybe not so absurd.
Chalmers’s place in the bureaucracy depends on this election and he has dawdled to attend a cocktail party and now finds himself on the wrong side of the Rocky Mountains with the campaign rally looming. It shouldn’t be a problem, really, at least until a rail splits and the engine pulling the Comet ends up on its side.
There should have been a spare diesel. That locomotive was plucked from its pre-positioning at the mouth of the eight-mile Taggart tunnel by Dagny’s replacement, for whom pleasing a VIP took precedence over having a diesel in reserve. It was an expedient move – and a fatal one.
Chalmers must get through, and he knows what strings to pull, and through a systematic abdication of responsibility by everyone in the chain of command the Comet is sent into the tunnel behind an old coal-burning locomotive.
Rand spends some time on each stage of the decision-making process and why each one in turn failed to halt the fatal proceeding. Lest we consider this overkill we might step back and consider the chains of events resulting in other such industrial disasters. Chernobyl, for example. There, dozens of mistakes and misfortunes combined to create an unholy amalgam of total catastrophe: safety measures deliberately overridden (for a legitimate reason albeit a bad one), wrong or inexperienced personnel in place, decisions made from incomplete and conflicting information. The incredible heroism that followed only compounded the tragedy.
In the case of the Taggart Tunnel disaster Rand presents us with each detail and relates it to the toxic culture that has been created over the years and now resides in the highest seats of power as well as in the berths of the Comet. The knowledge that the tunnel ventilation is suspect is suppressed. Experienced personnel have quit or been replaced by hangers-on. The spare diesel, as we have seen, has been expropriated by political pull. And no single individual in a decision-making capacity is capable of intervening, right down to the unfortunate switchman who finally directs the train into the tunnel knowing of the danger.
In the moment when he threw the switch and saw the headlight jerk sidewise, he knew that he would now hate his job for the rest of his life.
At least he’ll have one. For the occupants of the train the rest of theirs is measured in minutes.
Rand expends some effort – two pages of it – in sketching the lives of the victims, all of whom are participants after one fashion or another in the septic culture that engendered the catastrophe.
These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt’s Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.
An eerie and symbolic image, and into the darkness they go, never to return. We are left unsatisfied by Rand’s description of grim recompense. There were at the very least two children aboard whose only crime was to be those of a bureaucrat, and Rand’s nascent theology does not include the idea of Original Sin. Or does it? Some chapters ago I posed the question of whether there are, in the act of Atlas shrugging, no innocent victims. Rand here implies that there are not, at least insofar as this particular tragedy is concerned, yet her narrative clearly describes them. For the rest it is a form of cosmic justice, for the children it is a tragedy. There will be more, far more, as the country collapses. The true cost of the culture of looting is measured in the blood of the innocent, and the redemption, if any, had better be worth it.
It is a grim and disturbing chapter, and it was meant to be.
Have a great week, Publius!
We know how the USSR solved the problem of too many prisoners to feed and house.
Two points worthy of bringing to attention. The pie needs to exist and it needs to be accessible to the looters. Lacking either, the beast starves.
as nonsensically as if a waterwheel were ordered to continue turning while the river is stopped
But, but, but....
the waterwheel NEEDS to turn:)
“He’d be either on foot or in a battered wreck of a car that’s got a million-dollar motor.” No, no, no, this won’t do at all.
For readability I imagined this as a phrase that meant they had given chase earlier but couldn't catch up. Perhaps because it was well tuned by a competent mechanic. I'm sure, however, that Rand was implying it was more than that.
I posed the question of whether there are, in the act of Atlas shrugging, no innocent victims. Rand here implies that there are not
I believe that this applies to Rands take on the Robin Hood reference as well. The serfs are not able or willing to stand up to the injustices they are subjected to.
Thanks for the post Billthedrill.
Or Bobby Kennedy before her, whose presence in the Senate was deemed so important to the Nation that silly rules of residency had to be waived by New York State in order that he might serve. Unfortunately, the short-sightedness of the Founding Fathers precluded just adding a new seat in Massachusetts. Ahh, the Vision of the Anointed! At least Hillary is a Jewish Yankee fan, thus more of a New Yorker than the Irish Red Sox fan Kennedy.
Kirk
Perhaps Rand was simply being ironic in the two pages describing the victims and how they participated in causing the situation that resulted in their deaths. After all, two pages is nothing for her.
I interpreted Ragnar’s car having a “million dollar engine” to mean that, like everything else, the Strikers work at perfection. Ragnar or someone else would keep the engine of the car in tip-top shape because that is what they do. Not that it was the mystery engine. The creator would never have let a working model out amongst the Looters. Too much risk. Also, Rand is setting up a metaphor here. The “engine of the world” powering a rust-bucket jalopy.