Prompt: At his trial, Hank Rearden declares: “The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!” What does he mean? How does this issue relate to the rest of the novel and its meaning? Explain.

When Hank Rearden sells four thousand tons of steel in mutual trade, he is tried as a criminal for breaking economic regulations. Rearden’s resounding declaration at this end of his speech during his trial carries two significant concepts that reverberate throughout Atlas Shrugged: the illegitimacy of the principle of collective good, and the removal of the sanction of the victim from acts of evil.

“The public good” is the political extension of the moral principle of “the greater good”- a concept that implies the existence of some single good that supersedes the good and well-being of the individual. This underlies one particular category of the philosophies that the novel’s heroes vehemently oppose: collectivism. Whether they truly believe in it or not, many of the villains in the book use the notion of collective good as their stated motive for action. It permits them to initiate the use of force against individuals in the name of a supposed higher justice. More importantly, the justice entailed by a “greater good” is so ambiguous and incalculable that it provides a blank check of moral authority to those who wield it, granting nearly any whim the ruse of righteousness.

Rearden had committed no moral crime. Much to the prosecutor’s confusion, he neither offers any official defense nor throws himself upon the mercy of the court. Defending himself, he argues, would not only be an admission of guilt, but sanction of the processes and principles that would be invoked to deprive him of his life, liberty, and property, only perpetuating “the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice” to onlookers. “If [my fellow men] believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it – well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act.” Through his denial of participation in his trial and his imposed duties of citizenship, Rearden affirms that he will not consent to involvement in the system of supposed values entailed by “the public good.” The trial is the defining moment in Atlas Shrugged in which Rearden, a victim of society’s false morality, wholly refuses to give sanction to his oppressors.

After his mills pour the first order of Rearden Metal, a triumphant personal success following a decade of hardships, Rearden goes home and gives his wife a bracelet made of his innovation. In return, his wife ridicules his romantic obsession with his work, while his mother and brother deride him for what are, in actuality, his virtues. What Rearden truly feels for his family is contempt, but he is also reluctant to take a stand against them; he cannot understand their actions, and thus feels obligated to tolerate (and support them) them for their weaknesses. Rearden remains a victim who allows legitimacy to his domination by his family and society, until he tells his brother Philip that his fate does not interest him anymore. He realizes that this was what had caused him to bear the condemnations for nearly ten years, and revokes his sanction.

The National Alliance of Railroads (an organization allegedly created to protect the welfare of the railroad industry) votes on and passes the “Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule,” a precaution claiming to eliminate “destructive competition” by not permitting more than one railroad to operate in a region. However, beyond its stated altruistic, common-interest motive, the rule’s passage is part of a personal deal between Orren Boyle and James Taggart to exert influence in Washington to cripple Rearden Steel in exchange for destroying Taggart Transcontinental’s primary competition in Colorado: Dan Conway’s Phoenix-Durango. When Dagny Taggart confronts Conway about fighting back to keep his railroad, he responds, “… they had the right to do it… I promised to obey the majority. I have to obey… It would be wrong. I’m just selfish.” Though he had been wronged by the expropriation of his line, Conway gives his predators sanction for their actions by not fighting the seizure of his property, and even recognizing their right to do it despite his beliefs to the contrary.

Quite differently from Conway, Ellis Wyatt issues an ultimatum to Taggart Transcontinental to serve his needs or be destroyed with him, essentially denying permission to the predators to harm him. This is reflected later on when he disappears, not only removing his productivity from the reach of the looter society, but also setting his oil wells on fire. His burning wells become known as Wyatt’s Torch, a symbol of defiance- a refusal of sanction that burns until the heroes can return to reclaim the world.

The ever-increasing regulations issued by the looter government in the name of “the public good” until and after the passage of Directive 10-289 destroy all remaining incentives for production and soon afterward halt the growth of the economy. Directive 10-289 gives the government a limitless range of “emergency” economic powers, freezes wages, consumption, and innovation. Employment becomes based on need instead of productivity, as determined by the Unification Board, while the new-found power of those residing in government is exploited to grant favors to friends and other preferred classes. Production and commerce come to a halt; quality plummets as the worst companies receive windfall demand for essential commodities; the good of the public becomes the good of the cronies and scavengers as wealth is pried from the corpse of what was once an economic giant. The philosophy of sacrifice results in a reality of destruction.

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Though Rearden had not yet met John Galt at the time of his trial, he unsurprisingly reiterates a form of Galt’s oath when he rejects the “public good” that aims to shackle him to the needs of society. No matter how altruistically its actors behave, any system which emphasizes the moral righteousness of sacrifice is barbarous as a principle in compromising one individual for the benefit of another. Beyond that, it is corruptible. It serves as a means of exploitation of man’s passionate desire to live: the villains of Atlas Shrugged are numerous and of many philosophical colors, but they all are similar in advocating coercion as a means to their ends. The “public good” is merely one pretext by which they seek to guilt those who produce into volunteering their livelihood away without resistance. Should the productive reject the public and not proffer their labor, the villains then have no value to offer the individual- as one offers a value in exchange for another in mutual trade- but merely a “zero,” the promise that they will not kill, imprison, or otherwise harm the productive if they submit to their demands. When the Atlases of the world- the producers- shrug their burdens and consent to their subjection no longer, the villains will have no control over individuals who understand rationality and production as the only true means of survival. They will no longer possess an avenue to evade reality. They invariably must face that reason is law, that creation is sustenance, that A is A; to do otherwise is to perish.

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