The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 5

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 32; pb 33.]

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve "the common good." It is true that capitalism does-if that catch-phrase has any meaning-but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 20.]

The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival....

Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man's survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don't. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.

[Ibid., 17.]

It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature-the connection between his survival and his use of reason-that capitalism recognizes and protects.

In a capitalist society, all human relations.h.i.+ps are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the inst.i.tution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree-and thus keeps the road open to man's most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

[Ibid., 19.]

It is ... by reference to philosophy that the character of a social system has to be defined and evaluated. Corresponding to the four branches of philosophy, the four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirements of man's nature and survival-epistemotogically, reason-ethicaUy, individual rights, politically, freedom.

[Ibid., 20.]

Capitalism demands the best of every man-his rationat.i.ty-and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living-and of thought-ever higher for all those who take part in mankind's productive activity.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 24; pb 25.]

The economic value of a man's work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand.

["What Is Capitalism" CUI, 26.]

The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade-i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges-the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and compet.i.tion among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another.

["The Roots of War," CUI, 39.]

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relations.h.i.+ps. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.

[Ibid., 38.]

History The flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual nature. While archeologists are rummaging through the ruins of millennia for sc.r.a.ps of pottery and bits of bones, from which to reconstruct some information about prehistorical existence-the events of less than a century ago are hidden under a mound more impenetrable than the geological debris of winds, floods, and earthquakes: a mound of silence.

["Introduction," CUI, vii.J The nineteenth century was the ultimate product and expression of the intellectual trend of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, which means: of a predominantly Aristotelian philosophy. And, for the first time in history, it created a new economic system, the necessary corollary of political freedom, a system of free trade on a free market: capitalism.

No, it was not a full, perfect, unregulated, totally laissez-faire capitalism-as it should have been. Various degrees of government interference and control still remained, even in America-and this is what led to the eventual destruction of capitalism. But the extent to which certain countries were free was the exact extent of their economic progress. America, the freest, achieved the most.

Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism. They were all that the national economies of the time could afford. Capitalism did not create poverty-it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof-the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 per cent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 per cent per century.

["Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," PWNI, 80; pb 66.]

Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal.

["Theory and Practice," CUI, 136.]

If a detailed, factual study were made of all those instances in the history of American industry which have been used by the statists as an indictment of free enterprise and as an argument in favor of a government-controlled economy, it would be found that the actions blamed on businessmen were caused, necessitated, and made possible only by government intervention in business. The evils, popularly ascribed to big industrialists, were not the result of an unregulated industry, but of government power over industry. The villain in the picture was not the businessman, but the legislator, not free enterprise, but government controls.

["Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise," CUI, 102.]

Capitalism cannot work with slave labor. It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out-as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized world of the nineteenth century.

What greater virtue can one ascribe to a social system than the fact that it leaves no possibility for any man to serve his own interests by enslaving other men? What n.o.bler system could be desired by anyone whose goal is man's well-being?

["Theory and Practice," CUI, 136.]

Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history-a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized orld-from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

It must be remembered that the political systems of the nineteenth century were not pure capitalism, but mixed economies. The element of freedom, however, was dominant; it was as close to a century of capitalism as mankind has come. But the element of statism kept growing throughout the nineteenth century, and by the time it blasted the world in 1914, the governments involved were dominated by statist policies.

Just as, in domestic affairs, all the evils caused by statism and government controls were blamed on capitalism and the free market-so, in foreign affairs, all the evils of statist policies were blamed on and ascribed to capitalism. Such myths as "capitalistic imperialism," "war-profiteering," or the notion that capitalism has to win "markets" by military conquest are examples of the superficiality or the unscrupulousness of statist commentators and historians.

["The Roots of War," CUI, 38.]

Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is)-yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed-yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic-yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

Capitalism has been called cruel-yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe.

As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem-these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism.

["Global Balkanization," pamphlet, 15.]

It is often asked: Why was capitalism destroyed in spite of its incomparably beneficent record? The answer lies in the fact that the lifeline feeding any social system is a culture's dominant philosophy and that capitalism never had a philosophical base. It was the last and (theoretically) incomplete product of an Aristotelian influence. As a resurgent tide of mysticism engulfed philosophy in the nineteenth century, capitalism was left in an intellectual vacuum, its lifeline cut. Neither its moral nature nor even its political principles had ever been fully understood or defined. Its alleged defenders regarded it as compatible with government controls (i.e., government interference into the economy), ignoring the meaning and implications of the concept of laissez-faire. Thus, what existed in practice, in the nineteenth century, was not pure capitalism, but variously mixed economies. Since controls necessitate and breed further controls, it was the statist element of the mixtures that wrecked them; it was the free, capitalist element that took the blame.

Capitalism could not survive in a culture dominated by mysticism and altruism, by the soul-body dichotomy and the tribal premise. No social system (and no human inst.i.tution or activity of any kind) can survive without a moral base. On the basis of the altruist morality, capitalism had to be-and was-d.a.m.ned from the start.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 30.]

If the good, the virtuous, the morally ideal is suffering and selfsacrince-then, by that standard, capitalism had to be d.a.m.ned as evil. Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, but to pursue enjoyment and achievement, here, on earth-capitaHsm does not tell men to serve and sacrifice, but to produce and profit -capitalism does not preach pa.s.sivity, humility, resignation, but independence, self-confidence, self-reliance-and, above all, capitalism does not permit anyone to expect or demand, to give or to take the unearned. In all human relations.h.i.+ps-private or public, spiritual or material, social or political or economic or moral-capitalism requires that men be guided by a principle which is the ant.i.thesis of altruism: the principle of justice.

["The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age," pamphlet, 9.]

See also AMERICA; "CONSERVATIVES"; FREE MARKET; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; INDIVIDUALISM; INTERVENTIONISM (ECONOMIC); JUSTICE; MIXED ECONOMY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PHYSICAL FORCE; POLITICS; PROPERTY RIGHTS; TRADER PRINCIPLE; TRIBAI, PREMISE (in ECONOMICS); STATISM; TAXATION; WELFARE STATE.

Career. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.... A central purpose serves to integrate all the other concerns of a man's life. It establishes the hierarchy, the relative importance, of his values, it saves him from pointless inner conflicts, it permits him to enjoy life on a wide scale and to carry that enjoyment into any area open to his mind; whereas a man without a purpose is lost in chaos. He does not know what his values are. He does not know how to judge. He cannot tell what is or is not important to him, and, therefore, he drifts helplessly at the mercy of any chance stimulus or any whim of the moment. He can enjoy nothing. He spends his life searching for some value which he will never find.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," March 1964, pamphlet, 6.]

"Productive work" does not mean the blind performance of the motions of some job. It means the conscious, rational pursuit of productive career. In popular usage, the term "career" is applied only to the more ambitious types of work; but, in fact, it applies to all work: it denotes a man's att.i.tude toward his work.

The difference between a career-man and a job-holder is as follows: a career-man regards his work as constant progress, as a constant upward motion from one achievement to another, higher one, driven by the constant expansion of his mind, his knowledge, his ability, his creative ingenuity, never stopping to stagnate on any level. A job-holder regards his work as a punishment imposed on him by the incomprehensible malevolence of reality or of society, which, somehow, does not let him exist without effort; so his policy is to go through the least amount of motions demanded of him by somebody and to stay put in any job or drift off to another, wherever chance, circ.u.mstances or relatives might happen to push him.

In this sense, a man of limited ability who rises by his own purposeful effort from unskilled laborer to shop-foreman, is a career-man in the proper, ethical meaning of the word-whi!e an intelligent man who stagnates in the role of a company president, using one-tenth of his potential ability, is a mere job-holder. And so is a parasite posturing in a job too big for his ability. It is not the degree of a man's ability that is ethically relevant in this issue, but the full, purposeful use of his ability.

["From My 'Future File,' " ARL, III, 26, 3.]

A career requires the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression toward a goal.... In the course of a career, every achievement is an end in itself and, simultaneously, a step toward further achievements.... In a career, there is no such thing as achieving too much: the more one does, the more one loves one's work.

["Why I Like Stamp Collecting," Minkus Stamp Journal, v. 6 (1971), no. 2, 2.]

PLAYBOY: Do you believe that women as well as men should organize their lives around work-and if so, what kind of work?

RAND: Of course. I believe that women are human beings. What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. The basic principles are the same. I would not attempt to prescribe what kind of work a man should do, and I would not attempt it in regard to women. There is no particular work which is specifically feminine. Women can choose their work according to their own purpose and premises in the same manner as men do.

PLAYBOY: In your opinion, is a woman immoral who chooses to devote herself to home and family instead of a career?

RAND: Not immoral-I would say she is impractical, because a home cannot be a full-time occupation, except when her children are young. However, if she wants a family and wants to make that her career, at least for a while, it would be proper-if she approaches it as a career, that is, if she studies the subject, if she defines the rules and principles by which she wants to bring up her children, if she approaches her task in an intellectual manner. It is a very responsible task and a very important one, but only when treated as a science, not as a mere emotional indulgence.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 7.]

See also AMBITION ; PRODUCTIVENESS ; PURPOSE.

Causality. The law of causality is the law of ident.i.ty applied to action. All actions are caused by ent.i.ties. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the ent.i.ties that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.... The law of ident.i.ty does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it.

[GS, FNI, 188; pb 151.]

To grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, i.e., the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence. Whether its basic const.i.tuent elements are atoms, or subatomic particles, or some yet undiscovered forms of energy, it is not ruled by a consciousness or by will or by chance, but by the law of ident.i.ty. All the countless forms, motions, combinations and dissolutions of elements within the universe-from a floating speck of dust to the formation of a galaxy to the emergence of tife-are caused and determined by the ident.i.ties of the elements involved.

["The Metaphysical vs. the Man-Made," PWNI, 30; pb 25.]

Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific ident.i.ty, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," IT'OE, 147.1 Choice ... is not chance. Volition is not an exception to the Law of Causality: it is a type of causation.

(Ibid., 149.]

See also CHANGE; FINAL CAUSATION; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; MIRACLES; NECESSITY.

Censors.h.i.+p. "Censors.h.i.+p" is a term pertaining only to governmental action. No private action is censors.h.i.+p. No private individual or agency can silence a man or suppress a publication; only the government can do so. The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one's own antagonists.

["Man's Rights," VO.S, 132; pb 98.]

Censors.h.i.+p, in its old-fas.h.i.+oned meaning, is a government edict that forbids the discussion of some specific subjects or ideas-such, for instance, as s.e.x, religion or criticism of government officials-an edict enforced by the government's scrutiny of all forms of communication prior to their public release. But for stifling the freedom of men's minds the modern method is much more potent; it rests on the power of non-objective law; it neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men's lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. It spares the bureaucrat the troublesome necessity of committing himself to rigid rules-and it places upon the victims the burden of discovering how to please him, with a fluid unknowable as their only guide.

No, a federal commissioner may never utter a single word for or against any program. But what do you suppose will happen if and when, with or without his knowledge, a third-a.s.sistant or a second cousin or just a nameless friend from Was.h.i.+ngton whispers to a television executive that the commissioner does not like producer X or does not approve of writer Y or takes a great interest in the career of starlet Z or is anxious to advance the cause of the United Nations?

["Have Gun, Will Nudge," TON, March 1962, 9.) For years, the collectivists have been propagating the notion that a private individual's refusal to finance an opponent is a violation of the opponent's right of free speech and an act of "censors.h.i.+p."

It is "censors.h.i.+p," they claim, if a newspaper refuses to employ or publish writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy.

It is "censors.h.i.+p," they claim, if businessmen refuse to advertise in a magazine that denounces, insults and smears them....

And then there is Newton N. Minow [then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission] who declares: "There is censors.h.i.+p by ratings, by advertisers, by networks, by affiliates which reject programming offered to their areas." It is the same Mr. Minow who threatens to revoke the license of any station that does not comply with his views on programming-and who claims that that is not censors.h.i.+p....

[This collectivist notion] means that the ability to provide the material tools for the expression of ideas deprives a man of the right to hold any ideas. It means that a publisher has to publish books he considers worthless, false or evil-that a TV sponsor has to finance commentators who choose to affront his convictions-that the owner of a newspaper must turn his editorial pages over to any young hooligan who clamors for the enslavement of the press. It means that one group of men acquires the "right" to unlimited license-while another group is reduced to helpless irresponsibility.

["Man's Rights," VOS, I 31; pb 98.]

See also "CONSERVATIVES" vs. "LIBERALS"; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FREE SPEECH; GOVERNMENT; GOVERNMENT GRANTS and SCHOLARs.h.i.+PS; PROPERTY RIGHTS.

Certainty. "Certain" represents an a.s.sessment of the evidence for a conclusion; it is usually contrasted with two other broad types of a.s.sessment : "possible" and "probable." ...

Idea X is "certain" if, in a given context of knowledge, the evidence for X is conclusive. In such a context, all the evidence supports X and there is no evidence to support any alternative....

You cannot challenge a claim to certainty by means of an arbitrary declaration of a counter-possibility, ... you cannot manufacture possibilities without evidence....

All the main attacks on certainty depend on evading its contextual character....

The alternative is not to feign omniscience, erecting every discovery into an out-of-context absolute, or to embrace skepticism and claim that knowledge is impossible. Both these policies accept omniscience as the standard: the dogmatists pretend to have it, the skeptics bemoan their lack of it. The rational policy is to discard the very notion of omniscience. Knowledge is contextuat-it is knowledge, it is valid, contextually.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 6.]

Infallibility is not a precondition of knowing what one does know, of firmness in one's convictions, and of loyalty to one's values.

["The Shanghai Gesture." ARL, 1, 14, 3.]

"Don't be so sure-n.o.body can be certain of anything." Bertrand Russell's gibberish to the contrary notwithstanding, that p.r.o.nouncement includes itself; therefore, one cannot be sure that one cannot be sure of anything. The p.r.o.nouncement means that no knowledge of any kind is possible to man, i.e., that man is not conscious. Furthermore, if one tried to accept that catch phrase, one would find that its second part contradicts its first: if n.o.body can be certain of anything, then everybody can be certain of everything he pteases-since it cannot be refuted, and he can claim he is not certain he is certain (which is the purpose of that notion).

["Philosophical Detection," PWNI, 17; pb 14.]

See also ABSOLUTES ; AGNOSTICISM; ARBITRARY; AXIOMS; CONTEXT;KNOWLEDGE; "OPEN MIND" and "CLOSED MIND"; POSSIBLE; REASON.

Chance. Since things are what they are, since everything that exists possesses a specific ident.i.ty, nothing in reality can occur causelessly or by chance.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The a.n.a.lytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," ILOF, 147.]

Choice, however, is not chance. Volition is not an exception to the I.aw of Causality: it is a type of causation.

[Ibid., 149.]

See also CAUSALITY; FREE WILL; IDENt.i.tY; POSSIBLE.

Change. They proclaim that there is no law of ident.i.ty, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the fact that change presupposes the concepts of what changes, from what and to what, that without the law of ident.i.ty no such concept as "change" is possible.

[GS, FNI, 192; pb 154.]

See also CAUSALITY; ENt.i.tY; IDENt.i.tY; MOTION; "STOLEN CONCEPT," .. FALLACY of Character. "Character" means a man's nature or ident.i.ty insofar as this is shaped by the moral values he accepts and automatizes. By "moral values" I mean values which are volitionally chosen, and which are fundamental, i.e., shape the whole course of a man's action, not merely a specialized, delimited area of his life.... So a man's character is, in effect, his moral essence-his self-made ident.i.ty as expressed in the principles he lives by.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), question period, Lecture 2.]