"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." - John Galt

Happy Atlas Shrugged Day! Today marks the 50th anniversary (originally published October 12, 1957) of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

The Wall Street Journal pays tribute:

Fifty years ago today Ayn Rand published her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged." It's an enduringly popular novel -- all 1,168 pages of it -- with some 150,000 new copies still sold each year in bookstores alone. And it's always had a special appeal for people in business. The reasons, at least on the surface, are obvious enough.
[...]
Hank Rearden, the innovator resented and opposed by the others in his field, has not created a new type of music, like Mozart; rather he struggled for 10 years to perfect a revolutionary metal alloy that he hoped would make him a great deal of money. Dagny Taggart is a gifted and courageous woman who leads a campaign -- not to defend France from England on the battlefield, like Joan of Arc -- but to manage a transcontinental railroad and, against impossible odds, to build a new branch line critical for the survival of her corporation. Francisco d'Anconia, the enormously talented heir to an international copper company, poses as an idle, worthless playboy to cover up his secret operations -- not to rescue people from the French Revolution, like the Scarlet Pimpernel -- but to rescue industrialists from exploitation by ruthless Washington kleptocrats.
[...]
The central action of "Atlas" is the strike of the producers, their withdrawal from a society that depends on them to sustain itself and yet denounces them as morally inferior. Very well, says their leader, John Galt, we will not burden you further with what you see as our immoral and exploitative actions. The strike is of course a literary device; Rand herself described it as "a fantastic premise." But it has a real and vital implication.
[...]
This is the lesson that most people in business have yet to learn from "Atlas," no matter how much they may love its portrayal of the passion and the glory possible in business enterprise. At a crucial point in the novel, the industrialist Hank Rearden is on trial for violating an arbitrary economic regulation. Instead of apologizing for his pursuit of profit or seeking mercy on the basis of philanthropy, he says, "I work for nothing but my own profit -- which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage -- and I am proud of every penny that I have earned in this manner…"

In today's world, corporations are still considered to be the evil boogie men. We hear about "big oil" or "big business," but we often take for granted that these corporations provide us with the goods to live our lives. What if the builders that build our homes or the insurance companies that protect us from loss or the oil companies that provide the product we need to get from point "a" to point "b" suddenly stopped or...shrugged? The world would come to a stand still. Maybe that is what some want.

Trade is mutually beneficial and capitalism is the very definition of individual rights, human dignity and liberty. Ayn Rand delivered the message of capitalism and the moral defense (The Virtue of Selfishness) of it very well.

If you are a businessman or a politician that reads this site please read Atlas Shrugged.

Doug Mataconis also shares his thoughts on Atlas Shrugged here, here and here.