POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY -ayn rand

1. What Is the Basic Issue in the World Today?
    The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.
    Individualism holds that man has inalienable rights which cannot be taken away from him by any other man, nor by any number, group or collective of other men. Therefore, each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
    Collectivism holds that man has no rights; that his work, his body and his personality belong to the group; that the group can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare. Therefore, each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.
    These two principles are the roots of two opposite social systems. The basic issue of the world today is between these two systems.
    2. What Is a Social System?
    A social system is a code of laws which men observe in order to live together. Such a code must have a basic principle, a starting point, or it cannot be devised. The starting point is the question: Isthe power of society limited or unlimited?
    Individualism answers: The power of society is limited by the inalienable, individual rights of man. Society may make only such laws as do not violate these rights.
    Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.
    Example: Under a system of Individualism, a million men cannot pass a law to kill one man for their own benefit. If they go ahead and kill him, they are breaking the law -- which protects his right to life -- and they are punished.
    Under a system of Collectivism, a million men (or anyone claiming to represent them) can pass a law to kill one man (or any minority), whenever they think they would benefit by his death. His right to live is not recognized.
    Under Individualism, it is illegal to kill the man and it is legal for him to protect himself. The law is on the side of a right. Under Collectivism, it is legal for the majority to kill a man and it is illegal for him to defend himself. The law is on the side of a number.
    In the first case, the law represents a moral principle.
    In the second case, the law represents the idea that there are no moral principles, and men can do anything they please, provided there's enough of them.
    Under a system of Individualism, men are equal before the law at all times. Each has the same rights, whether he is alone or has a million others with him.
    Under a system of Collectivism, men have to gang up on one another -- and whoever has the biggest gang at the moment, holds all rights, while the loser (the individual or the minority) has none. Any man can be an absolute master or a helpless slave -- according to the size of his gang.
    An example of the first system: The United States of America. (See: The Declaration of Independence.)
    An example of the second system: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.
    Under the Soviet system, millions of peasants or "kulaks" were exterminated by law, a law justified by the pretext that this was for the benefit of the majority, which the ruling group contended was anti-kulak. Under the Nazi system, millions of Jews were exterminated by law, a law justified by the pretext that this was for the benefit of the majority, which the ruling group contended was anti-Semitic.
    The Soviet law and the Nazi law were the unavoidable and consistent result of the principle of Collectivism. When applied in practice, a principle which recognizes no morality and no individual rights, can result in nothing except brutality.
    Keep this in mind when you try to decide what is the proper social system. You have to start by answering the first question. Either the power of society is limited, or it is not. It can't be both.
    3. What Is the Basic Principle of America?
    The basic principle of the United States of America is Individualism.
    America is built on the principle that Man possesses Inalienable Rights;

that these rights belong to each man as an individual -- not to "men" as a group or collective;
that these rights are the unconditional, private, personal, individual possession of each man -- not the public, social, collective possession of a group;
that these rights are granted to man by the fact of his birth as a man -- not by an act of society;
that man holds these rights, not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective -- as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross;
that these rights are man's protection against all other men;
that only on the basis of these rights can men have a society of freedom, justice, human dignity, and decency.
The Constitution of the United States of America is not a document that limits the rights of man -- but a document that limits the power of society over man.
    4. What Is a Right?
A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which can be exercised without anyone's permission.
If you exist only because society permits you to exist -- you have no right to your own life. A permission can be revoked at any time.
If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society -- you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
Do not make the mistake, at this point, of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission -- but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job. A slave cannot.
    5. What Are the Inalienable Rights of Man?
The inalienable Rights of Men are: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
The Right of Life means that Man cannot be deprived of his life for the benefit of another man nor of any number of other men.
The Right of Liberty means Man's right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative, and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.
The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness, and to work for its achievement so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that Man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.
    6. How Do We Recognize One Another's Rights?
    Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another.
    For instance: a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another. He has the right to be free, but no right to enslave another. He has the right to choose his own happiness, but no right to decide that his happiness lies in the misery (or murder or robbery or enslavement) of another. The very right upon which he acts defines the same right of another man. and serves as a guide to tell him what he may or may not do.
    Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: "I'll do as I please at everybody else's expense." An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man -- his own and those of others.
    An individualist is a man who says: "I'll not run anyone's life -- nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone -- nor sacrifice anyone to myself."
    A collectivist is a man who says: "Let's get together, boys -- and then anything goes!"
    7. How Do We Determine That a Right Has Been Violated?
    A right cannot be violated except by physical force. One man cannot deprive another of his life nor enslave him, nor forbid him to pursue happiness, except by using force against him. Whenever a man is made to act without his own free, personal, individual, voluntary consent -- his right has been violated.
    Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division -- not subject to differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. NO MAN HAS THE RIGHT TO INITIATE THE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AGAINST ANOTHER MAN.
    The practical rule of conduct in a free society, a society of Individualism, is simple and clear-cut: you cannot expect or demand any action from another man, except through his free, voluntary consent.
    Do not be misled on this point by an old collectivist trick which goes like this: There is no absolute freedom anyway, since you are not free to murder; society limits your freedom when it does not permit you to kill; therefore, society holds the right to limit your freedom in any manner it sees fit; therefore, drop the delusion of freedom -- freedom is whatever society decides it is.
    It is not society, nor any social right, that forbids you to kill -- but the inalienable individual right of another man to live. This is not a "compromise" between two rights - but a line of division that preserves both rights untouched. The division is not derived from an edict of society -- but from your own inalienable individual right. The definition of this limit is not set arbitrarily by society -- but is implicit in the definition of your own right.
    Within the sphere of your own rights, your freedom is absolute.
    8. What Is the Proper Function of Government?
    The proper function of government is to protect the individual rights of man; this means to protect man against brute force.
    In a proper social system, men do not use force against one another; force may be used only in self-defense, that is, in defense of a right violated by force. Men delegate to the government the power to use force in retaliation -- and only in retaliation.
    The proper kind of government does not initiate the use of force. It uses force only to answer those who have initiated its use. For example when the government arrests a criminal, it is not the government that violates a right; it is the criminal who has violated a right and by doing so has placed himself outside the principle of rights, where men can have no recourse against him except through force.
    Now it is important to remember that all actions defined as criminal in a free society are actions involving force and only such actions are answered by force.
    Do not be misled by sloppy expressions such as "A murderer commits a crime against society." It is not society that a murderer murders, but an individual man. It is not a social right that he breaks, but an individual right. He is not punished for hurting a collective. He has not hurt a whole collective -- he has hurt one man. If a criminal robs ten men -- it is still not "society" that he has robbed, but ten individuals. There are no crimes against "society" -- all crimes are committed against specific men, against individuals. And it is precisely the duty of a proper social system and of a proper government to protect an individual against criminal attack -- against force.
    When, however, a government becomes an initiator of force, the injustice and moral corruption involved are truly unspeakable.
    For example: When a Collectivist government orders a man to work and attaches him to a job, under penalty of death or imprisonment, it is the government that initiates the use of force. The man has done no violence to anyone -- but the government uses violence against him. There is no possible justification for such a procedure in theory. And there is no possible result in practice -- except the blood and the terror which you can observe in any Collectivist country.
    The moral perversion involved is this: If men had no government and no social system of any kind, they might have to exist through sheer force and fight one another in any disagreement; in such a state, one man would have a fair chance against one other man: but he would have no chance against ten others. It is not against an individual that a man needs protection -- but against a group. Still, in such a state of anarchy, while any majority gang would have its way, a minority could fight them by any means available. And the gang could not make its rule last.
    Collectivism goes a step below savage anarchy: it takes away from man even the chance to fight back. It makes violence legal -- and resistance to it illegal. It gives the sanction of law to the organized brute force of a majority (or of anyone who claims to represent it)-and turns the minority into a helpless, disarmed object of extermination. If you can think of a more vicious perversion of justice -- name it.
    In actual practice, when a Collectivist society violates the rights of a minority (or of one single man), the result is that the majority loses its rights as well, and finds itself delivered into the total power of a small group that rules through sheer brute force.
    If you want to understand and keep clearly in mind the difference between the use of force as retaliation (as it is used by the government of an Individualist society) and the use of force as primary policy (as it is used by the government of a Collectivist society), here is the simplest example of it: it is the same difference as that between a murderer and a man who kills in self-defense. The proper kind of government acts on the principle of man's self-defense. A Collectivist government acts like a murderer.
    9. Can There Be A "Mixed" Social System?
    There can be no social system which is a mixture of Individualism and Collectivism. Either individual rights are recognized in a society, or they are not recognized. They cannot be half-recognized.
    What frequently happens, however, is that a society based on Individualism does not have the courage, integrity and intelligence to observe its own principle consistently in every practical application. Through ignorance, cowardice, or mental sloppiness, such a society passes laws and accepts regulations which contradict its basic principle and violate the rights of man. To the extent of such violations, society perpetrates injustices, evils, and abuses. If the breaches are not corrected, society collapses into the chaos of Collectivism.
    When you see a society that recognizes man's rights in some of its laws but not in others, do not hail it as a "mixed " system and do not conclude that a compromise between basic principles, opposed in theory, can be made to work in practice. Such a society is not working; it is merely disintegrating. Disintegration takes time. Nothing falls to pieces immediately -- neither a human body nor a human society.
    10. Can A Society Exist Without a Moral Principle?
    A great many people today hold the childish notion that society can do anything it pleases; that principles are unnecessary, rights are only an illusion. and expediency is the practical guide to action.
    It is true that society con abandon moral principles and turn itself into a herd running amuck to destruction. Just as it is true that a man can cut his own throat anytime he chooses. But a man cannot do this if he wishes to survive. And society cannot abandon moral principles if it expects to exist.
    Society is a large number of men who live together in the same country, and who deal with one another. Unless there is a defined, objective moral code, which men understand and observe, they have no way of dealing with one another -- since none can know what to expect from his neighbor. The man who recognizes no morality is a criminal; you can do nothing when dealing with a criminal, except try to crack his skull before he cracks yours. You have no other language, no terms of behavior mutually accepted. To speak of a society without moral principles is to advocate that men live together like criminals.
    We are still observing, by tradition, so many moral precepts that we take them for granted, and do not realize how many actions of our daily lives are made possible only by moral principles. Why is it safe for you to go into a crowded department store, make a purchase and come out again? The crowd around you needs goods, too; the crowd could easily overpower the few salesgirls, ransack the store, and grab your packages and pocketbook as well. Why don't they do it? There is nothing to stop them and nothing to protect you -- except the moral principle of your individual right of life and property.
    Do not make the mistake of thinking that crowds are restrained merely by fear of policemen There could not be enough policemen in the world if men believed that it is proper and practical to loot. And if men believed this, why shouldn't the policemen believe it, too? Who, then, would be the policemen?
    Besides, in a Collectivist society the policemen's duty is not to protect your rights, but to violate them.
    It would certainly be expedient for the crowd to loot the department store -- if we accept the expediency of the moment as a sound and proper rule of action. But how many department stores, how many factories, farms or homes would we have, and for how long, under this rule of expediency?
    If we discard morality and substitute for it the collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it's done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong), how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered.
    If you think that this is just abstract theory, take a look at Europe for a practical demonstration. In Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, private citizens did the foulest work of the G.P.U. and the Gestapo, spying on one another, delivering their own relatives and friends to the secret police and the torture chambers. This was the result in practice of Collectivism in theory. This was the concrete application of that empty, vicious Collectivist slogan which seems so high-sounding to the unthinking: "The public good comes above any individual rights."
    Without individual rights, no public good is possible.
    Collectivism, which places the group above the individual and tells men to sacrifice their rights for the sake of their brothers, results in a state where men have no choice but to dread, hate and destroy their brothers.
    Peace, security, prosperity, co-operation and good will among men, all those things considered socially desirable, are possible only under a system of Individualism, where each man is safe in the exercise of his individual rights and in the knowledge that society is there to protect his rights, not to destroy them. Then each man knows what he may or may not do to his neighbors, and what his neighbors (one or a million of them) may or may not do to him. Then he is free to deal with them as a friend and an equal.
    Without a moral code no proper human society is possible.
    Without the recognition of individual rights no moral code is possible.
    11. Is "The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number" A Moral Principle?
    'The greatest good for the greatest number" is one of the most vicious slogans ever foisted on humanity.
    This slogan has no concrete, specific meaning. There is no way to interpret it benevolently, but a great many ways in which it can be used to justify the most vicious actions.
    What is the definition of "the good" in this slogan? None, except: whatever is good for the greatest number. Who, in any particular issue, decides what is good for the greatest number? Why, the greatest number.
    If you consider this moral, you would have to approve of the following examples, which are exact applications of this slogan in practice: fifty-one percent of humanity enslaving the other forty-nine; nine hungry cannibals eating the tenth one; a lynch mob murdering a man whom they consider dangerous to the community.
    There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the Nazi government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory.
    But, you might say, the majority in all these examples did not achieve any real good for itself either? No. It didn't. Because "the good" is not determined by counting numbers and is not achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.
    The unthinking believe that this slogan implies something vaguely noble and virtuous, that it tells men to sacrifice themselves for the greatest number of others. If so, should the greatest number of men wish to be virtuous and sacrifice themselves to the smallest number who would be vicious and accept it? No? Well, then should the smallest number be virtuous and sacrifice themselves to the greatest number who would be vicious?
    The unthinking assume that every man who mouths this slogan places himself unselfishly with the smaller number to be sacrificed to the greatest number of others. Why should he? There is nothing in the slogan to make him do this. He is much more likely to try to get in with the greatest number, and start sacrificing others. What the slogan actually tells him is that he has no choice, except to rob or be robbed, to crush or get crushed.
    The depravity of this slogan lies in the implication that "the good" of a majority must be achieved through the suffering of a minority; that the benefit of one man depends upon the sacrifice of another.
    If we accept the Collectivist doctrine that man exists only for the sake of others, then it is true that every pleasure he enjoys (or every bite of food) is evil and immoral if two other men want it. But, on this basis, men cannot eat, breathe, or love. All of that is selfish. (And what if two other men want your wife?) Men cannot live together at all, and can do nothing except end up by exterminating one another.
    Only on the basis of individual rights can any good -- private or public -- be defined and achieved. Only when each man is free to exist for his own sake -- neither sacrificing others to himself nor being sacrificed to others -- only then is every man free to work for the greatest good he can achieve for himself by his own choice and by his own effort. And the sum total of such individual efforts is the only kind of general, social good possible.
    Do not think that the opposite of "the greatest good for the greatest number" is "the greatest good for the smallest number." The opposite is: the greatest good he can achieve by his own free effort, to every man living.
    If you are an Individualist and wish to preserve the American way of life, the greatest contribution you can make is to discard, once and for all, from your thinking, from your speeches, and from your sympathy, the empty slogan of "the greatest good for the greatest number." Reject any argument, oppose any proposal that has nothing but this slogan to justify it. It is a booby-trap. It is a precept of pure Collectivism. You cannot accept it and call yourself an Individualist. Make your choice. It is one or the other.
    12. Does The Motive Change The Nature Of A Dictatorship?
    The mark of an honest man, as distinguished from a Collectivist, is that he means what he says and knows what he means.
    When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate -- not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.
    You cannot say that "man has inalienable rights except in cold weather and on every second Tuesday," just as you cannot say that "man has inalienable rights except in an emergency," or "man's rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose."
    Either man's rights are inalienable, or they are not. You cannot say a thing such as "semi-inalienable" and consider yourself either honest or sane. When you begin making conditions, reservations and exceptions, you admit that there is something or someone above man's rights who may violate them at his discretion. Who? Why, society -- that is, the Collective. For what reason? For the good of the Collective. Who decides when rights should be violated? The Collective. If this is what you believe, move over to the side where you belong and admit that you are a Collectivist. Then take all the consequences which Collectivism implies. There is no middle ground here. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. You are not fooling anyone but yourself.
    Do not hide behind meaningless catch-phrases, such as "the middle of the road." Individualism and Collectivism are not two sides of the same road, with a safe rut for you in the middle. They are two roads going into opposite directions. One leads to freedom, justice and prosperity; the other to slavery, horror and destruction. The choice is yours to make.
    The growing spread of Collectivism throughout the world is not due to any cleverness of the Collectivists, but to the fact that most people who oppose them actually believe in Collectivism themselves. Once a principle is accepted, it is not the man who is half-hearted about it, but the man who is whole-hearted that's going to win; not the man who is least consistent in applying it, but the man who is most consistent. If you enter a race, saying: "I only intend to run the first ten yards," the man who says: "I'll run to the finish line," is going to beat you. When you say: "I only want to violate human rights just a tiny little bit," the Communist or Fascist who says "I'm going to destroy all human rights" will beat you and win. You've opened the way for him.
    By permitting themselves this initial dishonesty and evasion, men have now fallen into a Collectivist trap, on the question of whether a dictatorship is proper or not. Most people give lip-service to denunciations of dictatorship. But very few take a clear-cut stand and recognize dictatorship for what it is: an absolute evil in any form, by anyone, for anyone, anywhere, at any time and for any purpose whatsoever.
    A great many people now enter into an obscene kind of bargaining about differences between "a good dictatorship" and a "bad dictatorship," about motives, causes, or reasons that make dictatorship proper. For the question: "Do you want dictatorship?," the Collectivists have substituted the question: "What kind of dictatorship do you want?" They can afford to let you argue from then on; they have won their point.
    A great many people believe that a dictatorship is terrible if it's "for a bad motive," but quite all right and even desirable if it's "for a good motive." Those leaning toward Communism (they usually consider themselves "humanitarians") claim that concentration camps and torture chambers are evil when used "selfishly," "for the sake of one race," as Hitler did, but quite noble when used "unselfishly," "for the sake of the masses," as Stalin does. Those leaning toward Fascism (they usually consider themselves hard-boiled "realists") claim that whips and slave-drivers are impractical when used "inefficiently," as in Russia, but quite practical when used "efficiently," as in Germany.
    (And just as an example of where the wrong principle will lead you in practice, observe that the "humanitarians," who are so concerned with relieving the suffering of the masses, endorse, in Russia, a state of misery for a whole population such as no masses have ever had to endure anywhere in history. And the hard-boiled "realists." who are so boastfully eager to be practical, endorse, in Germany, the spectacle of a devastated country in total ruin, the end result of an "efficient" dictatorship.)
    When you argue about what is a "good" or a "bad" dictatorship, you have accepted and endorsed the principle of dictatorship. You have accepted a premise of total evil -- of your right to enslave others for the sake of what you think is good. From then on, it's only a question of who will run the Gestapo. You will never be able to reach an agreement with your fellow Collectivists on what is a "good" cause for brutality and what is a "bad" one. Your particular pet definition may not be theirs. You might claim that it is good to slaughter men only for the sake of the poor; somebody else might claim that it is good to slaughter men only for the sake of the rich; you might claim that it is immoral to slaughter anyone except members of a certain class; somebody else might claim that it is immoral to slaughter anyone except members of a certain race. All you will agree on is the slaughter. And that is all you will achieve.
    Once you advocate the principle of dictatorship, you invite all men to do the same. If they do not want your particular kind or do not like your particular "good motive," they have no choice but to rush to beat you to it and establish their own kind for their own "good motive," to enslave you before you enslave them. A "good dictatorship" is a contradiction in terms.
    The issue is not: for what purpose is it proper to enslave men? The issue is: is it proper to enslave men or not?
    There is an unspeakable moral corruption in saying that a dictatorship can be justified by "a good motive" or "an unselfish motive." All the brutal and criminal tendencies which mankind -- through centuries of slow climbing out of savagery -- has learned to recognize as evil and impractical, have now taken refuge under a "social" cover. Many men now believe that it is evil to rob, murder, and torture for one's own sake, but virtuous to do so for the sake of others. You may not indulge in brutality for your own gain, they say, but go right ahead if it's for the gain of others. Perhaps the most revolting statement one can ever hear is: "Sure, Stalin has butchered millions, but it's justifiable, since it's for the benefit of the masses." Collectivism is the last stand of savagery in men's minds.
    Do not ever consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists." The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more—and nothing less. The rest—everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything “noble and just,” and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history—was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle. The first consequence was the principle of political freedom, i.e., an individual’s freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by the government. The next was the economic implementation of political freedom: the system of capitalism.

The professional businessman is the field agent of the army whose lieutenant-commander-in-chief is the scientist. The businessman carries scientific discoveries from the laboratory of the inventor to industrial plants, and transforms them into material products that fill men’s physical needs and expand the comfort of men’s existence. By creating a mass market, he makes these products available to every income level of society. By using machines, he increases the productivity of human labor, thus raising labor’s economic rewards. By organizing human effort into productive enterprises, he creates employment for men of countless professions. He is the great liberator who, in the short span of a century and a half, has released men from bondage to their physical needs, has released them from the terrible drudgery of an eighteen-hour workday of manual labor for their barest subsistence, has released them from famines, from pestilences, from the stagnant hopelessness and terror in which most of mankind had lived in all the pre-capitalist centuries—and in which most of it still lives, in non-capitalistic countries.

The Antitrust laws—an unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable mess of contradictions—have for decades kept American businessmen under a silent, growing reign of terror. Yet these laws were created and, to this day, are upheld by the “conservatives,” as a grim monument to their lack of political philosophy, of economic knowledge and of any concern with principles. Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.” There is only one difference in the legal treatment accorded to a criminal or to a businessman: the criminal’s rights are protected much more securely and objectively than the businessman’s.

All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy. The giants of American industry—such as James Jerome Hill or Commodore Vanderbilt or Andrew Carnegie or J. P. Morgan—were self-made men who earned their fortunes by personal ability, by free trade on a free market. But there existed another kind of businessmen, the products of a mixed economy, the men with political pull, who made fortunes by means of special privileges granted to them by the government, such men as the Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad. It was the political power behind their activities—the power of forced, unearned, economically unjustified privileges—that caused dislocations in the country’s economy, hardships, depressions, and mounting public protests. But it was the free market and the free businessmen that took the blame.

America’s industrial progress, in the short span of a century and a half, has acquired the character of a legend: it has never been equaled anywhere on earth, in any period of history. The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not—and the more advanced the stage of a country’s statism, the wider and more discretionary the powers wielded by a bureaucrat. If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.

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 competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another.

When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.

A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations.

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.”

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.

The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination.

It is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists’ aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State.

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

“Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule . . . a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose

“Economic growth” means the rise of an economy’s productivity, due to the discovery of new products, new techniques, which means: due to the achievements of men’s productive ability.

Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by a free, general, “democratic” vote—by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. Whenever you buy one product rather than another, you are voting for the success of some manufacturer. And, in this type of voting, every man votes only on those matters which he is qualified to judge: on his own preferences, interests, and needs. No one has the power to decide for others or to substitute his judgment for theirs; no one has the power to appoint himself “the voice of the public” and to leave the public voiceless and disfranchised.

Now let me define the difference between economic power and political power: economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman’s tool is values; the bureaucrat’s tool is fear.

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.

Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else.

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

Since the things man needs for survival have to be produced, and nature does not guarantee the success of any human endeavor, there is not and cannot be any such thing as a guaranteed economic security. The employer who gives you a job, has no guarantee that his business will remain in existence, that his customers will continue to buy his products or services. The customers have no guarantee that they will always be able and willing to trade with him, no guarantee of what their needs, choices and incomes will be in the future. If you retire to a self-sustaining farm, you have no guarantee to protect you from what a flood or a hurricane might do to your land and your crops. If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty—as the practical results of every totalitarian economy, communist or fascist, have demonstrated.

Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t. “If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.” (“Man’s Rights” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) There can be no such thing as the right to enslave, i.e., the right to destroy rights.

Tyranny is any political system (whether absolute monarchy or fascism or communism) that does not recognize individual rights (which necessarily include property rights). The overthrow of a political system by force is justified only when it is directed against tyranny: it is an act of self-defense against those who rule by force. For example, the American Revolution.

The constitutional concept of “states’ rights” pertains to the division of power between local and national authorities, and serves to protect the states from the Federal government; it does not grant to a state government an unlimited, arbitrary power over its citizens or the privilege of abrogating the citizens’ individual rights.

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure—terrifying, that is, if one’s motive is men’s welfare.

Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly.

If a man proposes to redistribute wealth, he means explicitly and necessarily that the wealth is his to distribute. If he proposes it in the name of the government, then the wealth belongs to the government; if in the name of society, then it belongs to society. No one, to my knowledge, did or could define a difference between that proposal and the basic principle of communism.

The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man’s right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man’s existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.

Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness—not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy.

The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men.

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

Man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced.

If concern for human poverty and suffering were one’s primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask: Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in subhuman misery? History and, specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the nineteenth century, would give an immediate answer: capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance—and the key to capitalism is individual freedom.

Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others—misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement—failure is not a mortgage on success—suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence—man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause—life is not one huge hospital.

We are not a capitalist system any longer: we are a mixed economy, i.e., a mixture of capitalism and statism, of freedom and controls. A mixed economy is a country in the process of disintegration, a civil war of pressure-groups looting and devouring one another.

A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force.

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.

Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is entitled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone’s claims, desires, or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one’s wishes are limited only by the power of one’s gang. In order to survive under such a system, men have no choice but to fear, hate, and destroy one another; it is a system of underground plotting, of secret conspiracies, of deals, favors, betrayals, and sudden, bloody coups.

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”

Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another.

For instance: a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another. He has the right to be free, but no right to enslave another. He has the right to choose his own happiness, but no right to decide that his happiness lies in the misery (or murder or robbery or enslavement) of another. The very right upon which he acts defines the same right of another man, and serves as a guide to tell him what he may or may not do.

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”

A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort . . . .

The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property.

The right of free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without danger of suppression, interference or punitive action by the government. It does not mean that others must provide him with a lecture hall, a radio station or a printing press through which to express his ideas.

Any undertaking that involves more than one man, requires the voluntary consent of every participant. Every one of them has the right to make his own decision, but none has the right to force his decision on the others.

There is no such thing as “a right to a job”—there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man’s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no “right to a home,” only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no “rights to a ‘fair’ wage or a ‘fair’ price” if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no “rights of consumers” to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no “rights” of special groups, there are no “rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.” There are only the Rights of Man—rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.

Property rights and the right of free trade are man’s only “economic rights” (they are, in fact, political rights)—and there can be no such thing as “an economic bill of rights.” But observe that the advocates of the latter have all but destroyed the former.

The moral purpose of a man’s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and incidental—as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence—and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life.

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

Reason is man’s tool of knowledge, the faculty that enables him to perceive the facts of reality. To act rationally means to act in accordance with the facts of reality. Emotions are not tools of cognition. What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong.

That which [man’s] survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.

[Reason] is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort.

In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. 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.

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December 2004 -- "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." —Ayn Rand, Appendix to Atlas Shrugged.

Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-82). In novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand dramatized her ideal man, the producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects envy. Rand laid out the details of her worldview in nonfiction books such as The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and The Romantic Manifesto.

In practical terms, Objectivism is a philosophy that identifies the principles behind living a happy, thriving, free life. To do this, Objectivism addresses the major questions of religion and philosophy in every branch, from the most basic theory of reality to the nature of knowledge and the purpose of art. Every principle of Objectivism locks up logically with every other, and all of them are rooted in the facts of reality we know through science and common sense. The elements of Objectivism do not fit together because Rand or anyone wants them to: They fit together because they have to.

The most essential aspects of Objectivism can be expressed in four basic values: freedom, achievement, individualism, and reason. To understand Objectivism as a system, one needs to grasp what these values are and how they fit together.

Freedom

Ayn Rand described herself as a "radical for capitalism." Objectivists see capitalism not simply as a system of money exchange but as the political system based on the principle that each person has the right to his own life—i.e., the right to live free from force. Objectivists are for laissez-faire capitalism, in which the state is separated from business activity just as today in America it is separated from any church. Under laissez-faire, no one may force you to work in any manner other than what you choose; no one may take your property by force; no one may interfere by force with what you say or do on private property. No corporation is insulated from competition, and no one has greater rights under the law than you as an individual. You are robustly free, unless and until you yourself initiate the use of force. Laissez-faire is the system of individual responsibility and of justice for each individual.

Objectivism envisions a radical reduction in the size of government. It envisions a country in which customers—not the government—regulate product quality by their choices to buy or not buy. It envisions a country in which doctors—not the government—decide what services to offer, to what patients, and at what prices. It envisions a country in which individuals are responsible for saving for retirement—their own lives are at stake, after all; it's not the government's business. It envisions a society in which people have the right to choose whatever consensual sexual relationships they like and in which people have the responsibility to live with the consequences of their choices—your sex life is definitely not the government's business.

But then, what is the government's business? First and foremost, it is to protect our freedom. We need government to provide a military defense against foreign threats. We need it to provide police protection against domestic threats. And we need it, most importantly, to provide and enforce a system of objectively defined laws. The rule of law is indispensable if we are to enjoy the freedom to make and enforce contracts, to form voluntary associations like firms and clubs, and to live secure from the threat of capricious changes in the ground rules.

Today's bloated, unrestrained regimes—from brutal dictatorships to ever-expanding welfare/regulatory states—fulfill their proper functions poorly or not at all, and they restrict our liberty unnecessarily. As they continue to metastasize, these cancerous governments pose a profound threat to free choice, social diversity, technological progress, and economic prosperity. Objectivism, by contrast, advocates a small but potent government, one that promotes freedom abroad and does everything necessary to enable freedom at home—and strays not an inch from its appointed role.

In the West today, governments universally receive their popular legitimacy from the fact that their leadership is selected by vote. This mistakes the real basis of governmental legitimacy. Democratic elections are an effective means of choosing a government. But elections do not give leaders carte blanche. Government's fundamental purpose is not defined by the whims of the majority on any given issue, but by the objective requirements of individual freedom. The root of a free government, then, is its respect for individual rights. The measure of whether a government is legitimate or not fundamentally boils down to the degree to which it respects the rights of its citizens to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Achievement

Objectivists are radicals for capitalism because we see capitalism as an "unknown ideal." Capitalism is not a mere "necessary evil"; it is not, as some would say, a system of short-sighted greed and crass "materialism"; it is emphatically not, as the radical Left would have it, a system of "oppression." No, capitalism implemented in its pure form is a system dedicated to objective law and principled respect for the rights of individuals, under which mankind would be liberated to reach its greatest heights and live the finest lives. It is the moral way to organize a society.

But it can be moral only to a worldview that prizes achievement. In an Ayn Rand novel, the heroes are not warriors or saints. They are businesspeople, architects, artists, scholars, scientists, and engineers: the people whose achievements have built our civilization. Objectivism does not admire self-sacrifice or self-destruction. It admires creation, production, and the achievement of happiness. Objectivism rejects envy and sees the lowest villainy in those who hate the excellent, denigrate the achieving, pooh-pooh the creative, or sneer at the productive.

Achievement is the leitmotif of the Objectivist moral vision. Philosophically, this is because Objectivism sees the basis of value as such—in other words, the basis of right and wrong—in the nature of human life. As Ayn Rand wrote in The Virtue of Selfishness, “The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges good or evil—is man's life, or: that which is required for man's survival qua man.” If one's life is the standard of value, then to work for one's bread and shelter is a morally worthy act. To strive for joy is morally admirable. To be as effective, as productive, and as brilliant as one can be is truly, undeniably morally admirable.

But this ethic of achievement is not a morality of devil-take-the-hindmost. Everyone is capable of a life of achievement based on the standard of his or her own skills, background, and abilities. Neither is it an ethic of live-for-the-moment. To live a full life as a human being means, as Aristotle taught, to live a life of virtue. Objectivism honors moral integrity and the development of moral character as great achievements in themselves. It advocates a proud approach to life that seeks to have and to be all that one can. The moral standard of man's life implies commitments to virtues such as honesty, productivity, and independence of mind. It implies a commitment to dealing with others justly, neither giving nor receiving the undeserved. Proud, independent, and exalted: that is the Objectivist vision of man.

Enemies of capitalism attack the inequality of results that comes from freedom. Freedom, after all, is freedom to succeed—and freedom to fail. It is freedom to employ one's talents and skills—and freedom to misuse them. Under capitalism, some will be richer than others, some will be wiser than others, some will be more talented than others, and some will have more fun than others. This is nothing for which capitalism need apologize. Anyone who truly prizes achievement should want to see great new businesses, wonderful buildings, flourishing art, and expanding science. Anyone who truly appreciates the moral equality of each human life should see that each life deserves to flourish in its own different way and by its own different means.

Without profound reverence for human achievement, what becomes of a commitment to freedom? Today in American politics, the Right promotes tax cuts for rich and poor on the basis of fairness: It is rarely mentioned that the rich have a moral right to their profits. So the egalitarian Left decries "giveaways to the rich." Where in our culture are the voices who see the heroism required for business success and who do not equate poverty, suffering, and failure with virtue?

Objectivists value the achievement of wealth as much as we value artistic or scientific brilliance, because we know that wealth, like art and science, is created by human effort and fulfills vital human needs. Ayn Rand declared that productive work is the "central value" of man's life, and productivity in pursuit of a career is a cardinal virtue of her system, because through our work we support our lives and remake the world in the image of our values. People have a moral right to their earnings and deserve to be lauded for their successes, in whatever endeavor they make them and at whatever level of excellence they can reach.

Individualism

The work and virtue that Objectivism admires is not the product of any group. It is not the product of nations, as such, nor of tribes, nor of races, nor of sexes. It is the product of individuals. As Ayn Rand said, "There is no such thing as a collective brain." Human beings are individual organisms, each with his own mind to guide his actions, his own senses with which to know the world, his own body to sustain and enjoy, and his own values to achieve. We live in social networks: families, companies, countries. But those are networks of individuals: What is a family without members? A company without staff? A country without citizens?

Objectivism is therefore an individualist philosophy, root and branch. In politics, it holds that there is no political principle higher than individual rights. In morality, there is no standard that trumps the value of an individual's own precious life and happiness. Indeed, no other thinker has stood up for individualism with the consistency of Ayn Rand.

It was a theme she celebrated over and over in her novels. In The Fountainhead, her great homage to the individual, she contrasted three archetypes of the ambitious man. Her Peter Keating wants social success but doesn't know what he wants for himself. Her Gail Wynand equates success with gaining power over others. But her Howard Roark is the true individualist: He lives on his own terms, for his own sake, and at root has interest neither in being what others might want nor in forcing others to do what he might want. This attitude of fundamental independence is at the heart of Rand's social vision of benevolent individuals who can stand, both mentally and physically, on their own two feet.

In today's culture, there is great respect for the individual. But there is even greater admiration for altruism, the anti-individualist moral standard that measures a person's worth by the degree to which he serves others. Witness the Republican Party's embrace of "compassion" as the theme of their governance, trumping non-altruistic political values such as probity, honor, integrity, or responsibility. Witness Illinois senator Barack Obama's much-lauded speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. There, Obama claimed the moral high ground by proclaiming that, far more than the mere right to pursue happiness, what his party stood for was the altruist principle that we are "our brothers' keepers."

Objectivism rejects the sacrifice of the individual to the demands of others. It rejects the moral standard that defines a person's worth by his social service. As Ayn Rand brilliantly illustrated in Atlas Shrugged, when men truly attempt to live as "their brothers' keepers," the result is the kind of cannibal society achieved by Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and today's "Democratic Republic" of North Korea.

Because of its principled commitment to individualism, Objectivism rejects any social theory that places the group over the person. It rejects all attempts to define people fundamentally by their race, their tribe, their sexual identities, their nation, or their class. It doesn't claim that there are no racial characteristics; of course there are: Northern Europeans tend to sunburn easily; Africans tend to have curly hair. It doesn't claim that there are no sexual characteristics: Romantic love would not be possible without sexuality. But under these generalizations, what each normal human being has in common is the possession of an independent, reasoning mind.

Thus, Objectivism's commitment to freedom, its more fundamental commitment to achievement, and its yet more fundamental commitment to individualism all come down to the bedrock of its commitment to reason.

Reason

Ayn Rand defined reason as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses" (The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 20). It is, in other words, your thinking mind. Reason is the distinguishing feature of mankind, not because we always think straight, but because we can do so if we choose.

It is reason that enables us to know. Through our sight, hearing, body awareness, smell, taste, and touch we are in contact with the absolute facts of reality: what is, what is out there. We use our faculty of reason to integrate that awareness of reality, to draw experiences of particular things together into concepts: cup, rather than just my glass or your mug; tree, rather than any particular pine or oak. And we use our concepts to create language, form theories, tell stories, and write books—we use them to know.

Our faculty of reason underlies everything that makes us stand apart from the other animals. It is reason, for instance, that makes us need the arts, to represent profound ideas about what is and what might be in a form we can see and hear.

Reason is critical to emotion, paradoxical as that may seem. Emotions are direct feelings about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable, threatening or encouraging. Animals feel pleasure and pain. They experience basic passions—everyone has seen an angry dog defending its territory. But human beings do much more. Our emotions are based in conceptual judgment: We don't merely lust, we love. We don't just hunger, we crave cuisine. We don't just fear physical attack, we fear injustice or the disapproval of someone we respect. We need this experience of value judgments. So, living by reason implies harmonizing our thinking minds and our feelings so that our emotions reflect our rational judgments.

Living by reason means, fundamentally, seeking objective knowledge and, conversely, never accepting the irrational. It means reaching judgments with the rigor of a scientist and the probity of a judge. Scientists use logic and mathematics to strictly confirm their theories on the basis of hard facts. Judges admit all, and only, the relevant evidence. To live by reason one should never deny a fact, and one should always strive to integrate together the facts one is aware of—however uncomfortable, untraditional, or unintuitive they may be. In this way, we find truth, not mere speculation, and we come to know reality, not simply our own fantasies.

Nothing less than consistent rationality will do, if we want to be sure of our judgments. Objectivism thus rejects any form of belief that is not logically based in fact. It opposes any religious mysticism that demands that we accept dogma on the basis of faith, wish, or hope. It likewise opposes any secular thought that elevates ideology over proof.

This thorough-going commitment to reason informs every aspect of the Objectivist ethics. Ayn Rand preached "the virtue of selfishness," but her distinctive concept is not the short-sighted, narrow, destructive selfishness of a bully or a dictator. Virtuous selfishness is rational: It is a commitment to living in a manner that will really allow one to flourish, using all one's talents and faculties—and reason is the foremost among them. A commitment to reason underlies the Objectivist commitment to moral integrity: A rational person makes choices for the long term, taking account of the full context, and acts consistently on the basis of objectively proven principles. And rational selfishness is gregarious: It recognizes that other people are worth knowing, respecting, and dealing with because of the astounding range of benefits they offer.

Reason is essential to the Objectivist politics, too. It is our reason that makes it possible for us to plan long-term and to envision alternatives to what exists. Reason makes possible production and all forms of truly human work. It makes industrial and agricultural advances possible. It makes possible the knowledge economy, powered by the mind. It is because of reason that we can resolve disputes in a court of law and not, as the animals do, by fang and claw. It makes a society based on contract and trade possible; it makes capitalism possible. To achieve our values in society, we need the freedom to act by the judgment of our individual, rational minds. That is why we have individual rights and why we need them protected by government.

We need freedom in order to live. Given freedom, our reason lets us thrive. This is why the enemies of freedom are so often enemies of reason, as Ayn Rand pointed out in Atlas Shrugged and her cultural commentary. It is why the enemies of reason are also, whether they know it or not, in fact enemies of life.

A Benevolent Universe

This is the choice Objectivism presents us with. Do we choose life, and all that it involves and entails? If so, then we accept what it means to be human: We accept our need for reason; we accept our individuality; we accept our need to achieve values; and we accept our need to be free to do so. Do we choose to think and to base our life's code on the facts, integrating the present with the long-term, the nearby with the faraway? If so, Objectivism is where thought leads, because Objectivism is the philosophy of reason.

When we live by objective principles, we live in what Ayn Rand called a "benevolent universe." Our world is propitious to our efforts because it can be comprehended and mastered by reason. Success is to be expected, and failure is just a challenge to overcome. In the wide vistas open to human talent, great things await us.