Who is John Galt?
Does Midas Mulligan still live in Russell Gulch?
Atlas Shrugged was possibly the most popular novel among college kids in the 1950′s, maybe as popular as On the Road. The book still sells over half a million copies each year. When I saw a young man reading Ayn Rand’s tome in our local coffee shop recently, I couldn’t help asking, “So, who is John Galt?” He chuckled and said, “I’ve seen the bumper sticker.” The bumper sticker refers to Ayn Rand’s novels and to the cultists who follow her philosophy of “reasoned selfishness.” The young reader in the coffee shop is not sure he follows Ayn’s philosophy, but he asked me the questions so many folks ask. “Which gulch in Colorado did Ayn Rand have in mind? Where in Colorado did she center the retreat for her “master’s of the universe?” Did that gulch really exist? Does it still exist? Some Ayn Rand cultists do think such a place exists.
The Philosophy of Reasoned Selfishness
Atlas Shrugged is a long and complex story about the “good” of unbridled and unregulated capitalism versus the “bad” of socialism and government regulation. Her novel centers around a special Colorado valley, a wide gulch. There a few like-minded capitalists gather around the mysterious inventor John Galt. They are living in this Colorado gulch as they wait for the U.S. to implode. Over the course of 1,000 pages Atlas Shrugged makes the same point over and over again. Only the smart people who are looking out for “number one” can create a great society. Selfishness is the best virtue and the only one which can save the country. In that valley, in their perfect free market environment, all balances out for the best.
Ayn Rand was a beautiful and brainy Russian refugee who hated government and gathered a group of admirers about her for years to discuss her philosophy. She divided the world into the “masters of the universe” and the bad people like Wesley Mouch. Mouch, in her novel, was typical of those who lead the mindless masses. They spend and spend and regulate and regulate until the nation is brought to its’ knees. Like in her famous novel, there was only one woman in the center of her believer’s group, Ayn herself.
Up there in that gulch, the lovely and tough Dagny Taggart ruled. Perhaps Ayn thought of herself like her fictional Dagny Taggart. Dagny was the dedicated railroad heiress who brings together the last few souls not corrupted by socialism. All of the “masters” lust after Dagny, but you’ll have to read the novel to see who gets her. Her fictional little group includes men like the composer Richard Halley, the steel maker Hank Reardon, the miner Francisco d’Anconia, and the indispensable Midas Mulligan. Midas, the gold miner, is one of these “last producers of wealth” who are finally revealed to be the “masters.” Ayn seems not to have noticed that the biggest scientific discoveries of the last century have been made at research institutions. Co-operative research, most of it government funded, has lead to the big scientific prizes. The lone inventors she so cherishes exist, but are really rare. I suppose she’d argue that only the rare “master,” who hates government as much as she, makes the big finds the other socialists take credit for.
Was John Galt a Zeke?
The valley in Ayn’s novel functions because of it’s energy production. Since John Galt invented his energy-producing machine, there’s been no worry about energy, though everyone has to work at food production up around 9,000 feet. If only the socialists had let Galt produce his energy-making machine, he’d have saved the world. But, instead they wanted to place taxes on him. So, he retreated to the gulch where energy “too cheap to meter” is pumped out. Naturally the reader thinks of the 1950s when nuclear power was predicted to supply us all with energy too cheap to measure. But, the bad government (in the mind of Rand’s followers) kept it off the market.
The Russell Gulch hypothesis does sort of dovetail here. We certainly did have several visionary inventors around the state who were working with nuclear power. At least one of them did reportedly live in Russell Gulch. Another inventor, the famous Nikola Tesla, was sure he could eventually suck energy from the clouds. We did have (maybe still have) some Midas Mulligan types pulling out gold up in Russell Gulch and secreting it way. So, conceivably Russell Gulch was the model for Ayn’s hideaway for the productive “masters.”
Back To The Real World
Ayn Rand was, after all, a novelist. We’ll never find which Colorado Gulch housed her “masters” and Midas Mulligan didn’t really own it. But, here in the real world we do have those who follow Ayn Rand’s cult. Plenty of folks around these hills will tell you that if the big bad government didn’t get in the way, our capitalists would create all sorts of things and prosperity would be all around us. Some even would argue that John Galt’s process for getting oil out of oil shale quickly and easily is no dream at all. In true Ayn Rand style, they argue that it’s only a few “enviros” and “pinkos” who keep us from the riches tied up in those rocks. Ayn’s doctrine of reasoned selfishness is attractive to many, but I don’t see it working.
I recently read an article profiling top bankers and leaders of the finance world. This article was in the New York Times and was reprinted in part here in the state. Turns out a great many big Wall Street Banker types not only read Ayn Rand, but like her philosophy. I’m not impressed by what they’ve produced, however. Despite the huge bonus checks they cut for themselves, they still don’t act like very smart “masters” of the world of finance. There are many reasons for our current economic downturn, but wild speculation by top financiers was clearly one major cause. Andrew Hall at Citibank may think he deserves that $100 million bonus Obama is trying to take away. He may even like reading Ayn Rand. But Citibank got $45 billion in a bailout a little over a year ago from the hated government. I’m not impressed with Hall’s mastery or grieving his possibly withheld bonus. None of this is to say that all bankers are bad sorts only looking out for number one. That same article pointed out how many banks which were given TARP loans have repaid them with interest. Some of the top leaders of those banks have forgone bonus checks.
Good Luck Finding John Galt
I tried not to be too preachy with the young man reading Atlas Shrugged, but he did ask me what I thought of the book. He’s hanging around the area for a couple of weeks and I’ll see him in the coffee house. I promised to buy him a copy of The Weekly Register-Call if he’d like to read this article. I hope I wasn’t too much of an old “you know what,” but the Ayn Rand philosophy has never made any sense to me since I first read Atlas Shrugged in about 1959. I’m aware that there are a number of Rand cultists who meet and speculate about which gulch she may have visited and written about, and Russell Gulch is definitely in the running. Maybe I’ll wander that gulch one day soon. The residents there have a reputation for being private, though, and some have guns. In the mean time the question remains: “Who Is John Galt?”