The mystery that has compelled much of the novel's plot so far is finally explained in this chapter. The decline of industrial civilization has occurred not solely as a result of the looters' socialist policies. The decline has been hastened by the finest minds in the United States going on strike. The sudden retirements and the disappearance of the country's finest brains now make sense to Dagny (and to the reader). John Galt, the inventor who once worked at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, has kept his word; he is on the verge of stopping the motor of the world by halting invention, production, and all other economic progress.
Galt was the first person in the group of great minds to understand that the only way rational men can live freely is to withdraw their support of the looters' corrupt code and permit the current economic system to collapse. Only after that happens can the thinkers rebuild the world based on the principles of individual rights and political freedom — on the realization that the human mind must be free. Galt's oath, inscribed over the door leading to the generator, explains the essence of the strikers' code. The strikers are egoists: They believe that each individual has an inalienable right to his own life, that a person should pursue his own happiness, and that the individual has no moral obligations to others except to respect their rights to pursue happiness. Galt's oath repudiates the code of altruism practiced by the looters, a creed that demands selfless service to others. His oath specifies that an individual must neither sacrifice his values for others nor demand that others sacrifice their values for him.
