The plot of Atlas Shrugged is basically a moral fable that reverses the moral premises of early twentieth-century socialism and of midcentury welfare state liberalism. The novel represents the “producers” who own and run industrial capitalism as sexy, gorgeous, brilliant, and thoroughly admirable heroes, as contrasted with the flabby, unattractive, incompetent, unproductive moochers and state-backed bureaucratic looters, parasites, and thugs. Originally titled “The Strike,” the novel outlines the impact on the world when the producers—the creators and innovators of industry, science, and intellectual life—rather than the unionized workers—withdraw their labor. The “engine of the world” progressively collapses, until the lights literally go out in New York City in a scene of desperate chaos. The producers have withdrawn to the hero John Galt’s Gulch, planning to return once the world collapses without them.