John Galt is the industrialist hero of Ayn Rand’s 1957 masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. The book explores a dystopian United States where the productive and innovative refuse to be exploited by society. Galt leads a strike by the producers and outlines Rand’s philosophy in his 60-page radio address. Galt describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the "minds" that drive society's growth and productivity. In their efforts, these producers and innovators demonstrate that a world in which the individual is not free to create is doomed, that civilization cannot exist where men are enslaved by the state and the "collective good", and that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society.
