As the novel opens, protagonist Dagny Taggart, executive of the railroad company Taggart Transcontinental, attempts to keep the company alive in difficult economic times marked by collectivism and statism. Dagny's brother, James Taggart, the railroad's President, seems peripherally aware of the company's troubles but will not make any difficult choices, preferring to avoid responsibility for any actions. While this unfolds, Dagny is disappointed to discover that Francisco d'Anconia, her childhood friend, first love, and king of the copper industry, appears to have become a worthless playboy who is destroying his own business.

In the final section of the novel, Taggart discovers the truth about John Galt, who is leading an organized "strike" against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society's productive members. With the collapse of the nation and its rapacious government all but certain, Galt emerges to reconstruct a society that will celebrate individual achievement and enlightened self-interest, delivering a long speech (fifty-six pages in one paperback edition) serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, in the book's longest single chapter.[23]