Atlas Shrugged Part I, Chapter 6: The Non-Commercial (Part 1) - When Art Meets Philosophy

Chapter 6 is called “The Non-Commercial” and it opens by doing something Rand hasn’t really done yet. She takes us inside Hank Rearden’s personal life. Not the steel mills, not the business deals. His home. His marriage. His wedding anniversary party. And honestly, it’s painful to read.

Rearden’s Private Hell

Hank is standing in front of a mirror, trying to put on shirt studs for a party he forgot about. His secretary had to remind him. The man runs a steel empire, works eighteen-hour days, invented a revolutionary metal alloy, but he can’t bring himself to get dressed for his own wedding anniversary celebration.

Here’s the thing that makes this scene land. Rearden doesn’t blame his wife for being upset. He takes all the guilt on himself. He thinks he’s the broken one because he’d rather be reading test reports on Rearden Metal airplane engines than making small talk with strangers. His whole family treats his love for work like an addiction, like something shameful. His mother, his wife Lillian, his brother Philip, they all take turns making him feel guilty for caring about the thing he’s best at.

I grew up around people who felt that way about their work under the Soviet system. If you were too good at something, too passionate, people got suspicious. The tall poppy gets cut. Rand understood that dynamic in her bones.

The Equalization of Opportunity Bill

While getting dressed, Rearden reads a newspaper clipping about something called the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. This proposed law would forbid any person or corporation from owning more than one business. The reasoning? In tough economic times, it’s “unfair” for one person to hoard multiple enterprises while others have none.

Rearden can’t take it seriously. He’s spent his entire life dealing with concrete reality, with steel and chemistry and engineering. The idea that the government would pass something so obviously destructive seems absurd to him. His Washington lobbyist, Wesley Mouch, assures him the bill will be defeated.

If you’ve read any history, you know this kind of confidence is dangerous. The people who build things often can’t imagine that the people who destroy things actually mean it.

The Party From Hell

Rearden finally goes downstairs, and what follows is one of the best party scenes in the book. Not because it’s fun. Because it’s a parade of intellectual rot.

First up is Dr. Pritchett, a philosophy professor at Patrick Henry University, who spends the evening telling anyone who’ll listen that man is meaningless, reason is a superstition, and the purpose of philosophy is to prove that knowledge is impossible. When someone asks about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, he says he supports it because “we must control men in order to force them to be free.” A guest points out that this is a contradiction. Dr. Pritchett waves it away. “The universe is a solid contradiction,” he says.

Then there’s Balph Eubank, the “literary leader of the age” who has never sold more than three thousand copies of any book. He proposes a law limiting book sales to ten thousand copies, because that would “throw the literary market open to new talent.” A young woman asks: what if more than ten thousand people want to buy a certain book? “That is irrelevant,” he says.

I have to admit, Rand writes these intellectuals with a sharp pen. The scene where Pritchett, Eubank, and the composer Mort Liddy do a little round of one-upping each other is darkly funny. “Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature.” “Just as logic is a primitive vulgarity in philosophy.” “Just as melody is a primitive vulgarity in music.” It reads like satire, but you’ve probably seen people talk exactly like this on social media.

Lillian’s Little Power Play

There’s a small but important detail when Rearden comes down the stairs. Lillian has loaded herself up with diamond jewelry, but on her wrist she wears the Rearden Metal bracelet, his first gift to her from the new alloy. Surrounded by diamonds, the bracelet looks cheap. It’s deliberate. She’s making a statement, humiliating the thing that matters most to him while smiling about it.

Rearden also discovers that Lillian invited Bertram Scudder to the party. Scudder is the editor who wrote a vicious hit piece about Rearden called “The Octopus.” When Rearden confronts Lillian, she tells him not to be “narrow-minded.” In his own house. At his own anniversary party. She invited the man who publicly trashed him and expects him to be polite about it.

Dagny Appears

Dagny Taggart shows up at the party in a black evening gown, and for the first time in the book we see her outside of work. Rand describes her in a way that suggests Dagny the woman and Dagny the railroad executive are almost two different people to the outside world. The discovery that she has “fragile and beautiful” shoulders is treated as almost shocking.

The scene between Dagny and Rearden is awkward. She’s there to celebrate the first sixty miles of Rearden Metal track being laid in Colorado. She’s genuinely happy about it. But Rearden is cold, formal, distant. He won’t let himself react. A businessman nearby notices how Dagny looks, but Rearden apparently won’t allow himself to notice. By the time she turns back, he’s gone.

Francisco Steals the Show

The highlight of the first half of this chapter is Francisco d’Anconia’s arrival. Rearden despises him on sight, seeing him as the worst kind of person: someone who inherited greatness and squanders it.

But Francisco immediately starts running circles around every intellectual in the room. He deflates Dr. Pritchett with a single line, mentioning that he studied under Hugh Akston, a philosopher of reason who has mysteriously retired. Then he corners James Taggart and delivers one of the book’s great speeches about the San Sebastian Mines.

Francisco’s argument is devastatingly simple: I did everything you people say is moral. I was selfless. I didn’t pursue profit. I hired based on need, not ability. I left the enterprise in the hands of the workers. And the result was total failure. So why are you mad at me?

Taggart has no answer. He just storms off. Betty Pope giggles. The crowd watches with amusement. Nobody seems to grasp that Francisco is making a deadly serious philosophical point.

What’s Really Happening Here

This chapter is Rand’s showcase for cultural decay. Every guest at this party represents a piece of the problem. The philosopher who says thinking is useless. The writer who says stories shouldn’t have plots. The composer who says music shouldn’t have melodies. The politician’s brother who supports laws that would destroy his own family’s business. And in the middle of it all, Rearden, the man who actually produces things, standing alone by a window, watching the distant glow of his steel mills and wishing he were there instead.

It’s heavy-handed, sure. Rand never met a point she couldn’t hammer. But the party scene works because each character, even the minor ones, feels like a specific type of person you’ve met. The professor who sounds deep but says nothing. The artist who blames the market for not buying his work. The relative who resents your success while living off it.

We’ll pick up the second half of this chapter in the next post, where things get even more interesting between Francisco and Rearden.

Previous: Part I, Chapter 5: The Climax of the d’Anconias (Part 2)

Next: Part I, Chapter 6: The Non-Commercial (Part 2)

This is part of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (35th Anniversary Edition, ISBN: 978-1-101-13719-2). New posts daily.