"The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age" by Ayn Rand

Ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking on the assumption that I am addressing an audience that consists predominantly of liberals, that is of my antagonists. Therefore, I must begin by explaining why I chose to do it. The briefest explanation is to tell you that in the 1930s I envied the liberals for the fact that their leaders entered political campaigns armed not with worn out bromides, but with intellectual arguments. I disagreed with everything they said, but I would have fought to the death for the method by which they said it, for an intellectual approach to political problems. Today I have no cause to envy the liberals any longer. For many decades, the liberals had been the representatives of the intellect in America, if not in the content of their ideas, then at least informed method and professed epistemology. They claimed that their views were based on reason, logic, science, and even though they were glorifying collectivism, they projected a manner of confident, distinguished intellectuality. While most of the so called conservatives allegedly devoted to the defense of individualism and capitalism went about apologetically projecting such cracker barrel sort of foxiness that Lil Abner would have found it embarrassing. The monument to which may still be seen in the corridors of the New York Stock Exchange in a costly display of statistical charts and models proudly entitled the People's Capitalism. Today, the two camps are moving closer and merging. Just as the Republican and Democratic parties are becoming indistinguishable, so are their respective intellectual spokesmen. And while the conservatives are lumbering toward the Middle Ages in quest of a philosophical base for their views, the liberals, always the avant garde, have outdistanced them and are now galloping on the same quest toward India of the 5th century BC the original source of Zen Buddhism. What social or political group today is the home of those who are and still wish to be the men of the intellectual?

None.

The intellectuals, in the strict literal sense of the word, as distinguished from the mystics and the neo mystics, are now homeless refugees left behind by a silent collapse they have not had the courage to identify. They are the displaced persons of our culture who are afraid to discover that they have been displaced by their own Frankenstein monster, by the primordial proponents of brute force. As an advocate of reason, freedom, individualism and capitalism, I seek to address myself to the men of the intellect, wherever such may still be found. And I believe that more of them may be found among the former liberals than among the present conservatives. I may be wrong. I am willing to find out. The terms liberal and conservative are two of the emptiest sounds in today's political vocabulary. They have become rubber words that can be stretched to fit any meaning anyone cares to give them, words that can be used safely by any speaker who wants to be misunderstood in the greatest number of ways by the greatest number of people. Yet at the same time everyone seems to understand these two words in some foggy, subverbal manner, as if they were the code signals of a dark secret guild hiding an issue no one cares to face. When an entire culture is guilty of evasion on so enormous a scale, the first thing to do, if one does not choose to be an evader, is to identify the issues that people are afraid to see. What is it that the terms liberal and conservative have now come to hide? Well, observe a curious sequence in our intellectual trends. In the popular political usage of today, the term liberal is generally understood to mean an advocate of greater government control over over the country's economy, or loosely, an advocate of socialism, while the term conservative is generally understood to mean an opponent of government controls or an advocate of capitalism. But this was not the original historical meaning of the two terms, nor their use in the 19th century. Originally, the term liberal meant an advocate of individual rights, of political freedom, of laissez faire capitalism, and an opponent of the authoritarian state, while the term conservative meant an advocate of the state's authority of the established political order, which was semi absolute monarchy at the time, an advocate of tradition, of the status quo and an opponent of individual rights. It has been observed many times that the term liberal today means the opposite of its 19th century meaning. This would not have been too disastrous intellectually if the two terms had been merely reversed and had exchanged their original meanings. But what is significant, ominously significant, is the fact that certain groups are now attempting to switch the term conservative by back to its 19th century meaning, to palm it off on the public by imperceptible degrees, never bringing the issue fully into the open, hoping that people will gradually come to believe that a conservative is an advocate of authority, but of traditional authority. If semantic corruption becomes accepted on that wide a scale, if the political switch pulled on us becomes a choice between 20th century statist liberals and 19th century statist conservatives, what political system will be silently obliterated by that switch? What political system is being destroyed by stealth without letting people discover that it is being destroyed? Capitalism. It is the very scale and virulence of the evasion that should make every rational person pose and consider the issue. Those who do will discover that the historical, political, economic and philosophical case for capitalism has never been refuted, and that the only way the statists can hope to win is is by never allowing it to be discussed. This is the issue hidden under the foggy sloppiness of today's political terms. Most people are not consciously aware of it. What they do sense, however, is that they haven't a leg to stand on as far as their political views are concerned, whether they're liberals or conservatives. That they have no philosophical base, no moral justification, no principles to uphold, no policy to offer. Observe the intellectual disintegration of today's political discussions. The shrinking of issues and debates to the level of single, isolated, superficial concretes with no context, with no reference to any fundamental principles, no mention of basic issues, no proofs, no arguments, nothing but arbitrary assertions of, for or against. As an example, observe the level on which the last presidential campaign was fought. Did the candidates discuss foreign policy? No, just the fate of Quemoy and Matsu. Did they discuss socialized medicine? No, just the cost and the procedure of medical aid to the aged. Did they discuss government control of education? No, just who should pay the teachers salaries, the federal government or the states? What most people are evading today is the realization that under the lip service they are paying to an anti totalitarian crusade, they have accepted all the basic premises of a totalitarian philosophy and the rest is is only a matter of time and degree. They do not know how they came to accept it and most of them do not want to accept it. But they see no alternative and they are too frightened, too bitterly discouraged to seek it. Whose job is it to offer an alternative? Who provides a country with ideas, with knowledge, with political theories? The intellectuals. But it is the intellectuals who have brought us to this state and are now deserting under fire, that is giving up the task of intellectual leadership at a time when they are needed most, when intellectual disintegration reaches such absurd extremes as on one side, the claim of some conservatives that the United States of America was the product of tradition, worship, and on the other side, the use of a political designation such as a totalitarian liberal. Isn't it time to stop and to realize that there are no intellectual sides any longer, no philosophical camps and no political theories, nothing but an undifferentiated mob of trembling states, statists who haggle only over how fast or how slowly we are to collapse into a totalitarian dictatorship, whose gang will do the dictating and who will be sacrificed to whom? It is the non totalitarian liberals and the non traditional conservatives that I seek to address. Both are homeless refugees today, because neither had a firm philosophical foundation under his Political home. Those homes where Jerry built astride a deadly fissure. The fissure has opened wide and has swallowed all the cheap little platform planks. Let them go and let us start rebuilding the foundations. The Fisher had many philosophical soul versus body, mind versus heart, liberty versus equality, the practical versus the moral. But all of these are merely derivatives of one basic issue. Reason versus mysticism, or in political terms, reason and freedom versus faith and force. Let me define my terms. Reason is the faculty which perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by men's senses. Mysticism is the claim to some non sensory, non rational, non definable supernatural means of knowledge. Only three brief periods of history were culturally dominated by a philosophy of reason. Ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the 19th century. These three periods were the source of mankind's greatest progress in all fields of intellectual achievement and the eras of greatest political freedom. The rest of human history was dominated by mysticism of one kind or another, that is, by the belief that man's mind is impotent, that reason is futile or evil or both, and that man must be guided by some irrational instinct or feeling or intuition or revelation, by some form of blind, unreasoning faith. All the centuries dominated by mysticisms were the eras of political tyranny and slavery, of rule by brute force. From the primitive barbarism of the jungle to the pharaohs of Egypt, to the emperors of Rome, to the feudalism of the Dark and Middle Ages, to the absolute monarchies of Europe to the modern dictatorships of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and all their lesser carbon copies. The Industrial Revolution, the United States of America and the political economic system of capitalism were the product and result of the intellectual liberation achieved by the Renaissance and of a predominantly Aristotelian philosophical influence which lasted in spite of a Platonist counter revolution through the centuries known as the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. With so illustrious a start, how did the United States descend to its present level of intellectual bankruptcy? I want to recommend to your attention a very interesting book which provides the material, the historical evidence for the answer to that question. I hasten to state that the conclusions I have drawn are my own, not the authors. That I disagree with the author's viewpoint, and I believe that he would probably disagree with mine. But the book is a remarkable, scholarly, well documented record of the history of America's intellectual life. One may disagree with a writer's interpretation of the fact, but first one must know the facts. And in this respect the book is of enormous value. It is called the Decline of American Liberalism by Professor Arthur A. Ekirg Jr. Professor Ekirg himself is a liberal, though not of the totalitarian variety. He offers no solution for the present state of liberalism and no explanation of its decline. His thesis is only that liberalism is declining and that our culture is moving toward an increasingly illiberal future. Close quote Let me give you Professor E. Kirch's definition of liberalism. Quote Perhaps it is best if we think of liberalism not as a well defined political or economic system, but but as a collection of ideas or principles which go to make up an attitude or habit of mind. But within this liberal climate of opinion, however broadly or narrowly it may be defined, it is necessary to include the concept of limited representative government and the widest possible freedom of the individual, both intellectually and economically. Close quote Professor Ikirch is an historian and has given an accurate description. But what a philosopher would observe is that that description holds a clue to the disaster which has wrecked Western civilization and its intellectuals. Observe that the Liberals in the 19th century as well as today held a collection of ideas or principles which had never been translated into a well defined political or economic system. This means that they held certain values and goals with no knowledge of how to implement them in reality, with no understanding of what practical actions would achieve or defeat their goals. With so vulnerable an intellectual equipment, could they be a match for the primordial forces of totalitarian mysticism? They could not and were not. It is they, the intellectuals, who betrayed their own liberal ideals, defeated their own goals, paved the way for their own destroyers, and did not know it until it was too late. They did not know that the political and economic system they had never defined the only system that could achieve a limited representative government as well as the intellectual and economic freedom of the individual. The ideal system was laissez faire capitalism. The guilt of the intellectuals in the 19th century was that they never discovered capitalism, and they have not discovered it to this day. If you want to know the philosophical and psychological causes of the intellectual's treason against capitalism, I will refer you to the title essay of my book. For the new intellectual in the brief space of today's discussion, I have to confine myself to a mere indication of the nature and the consequences of that treason. The fundamental principle of capitalism is the separation of state and economics, that is the liberation of men's economic activities of production and trade from any form of intervention, coercion, compulsion, regulation or control by the government. This is the essence of capitalism which is implicit in its theory and in the operation of a free market. But this is not the way most of its advocates saw or presented it, and it is not the way it was translated into practice. The term laissez faire capitalism, which one has to use today in order to be understood, is actually a redundancy. Only an economy of total laissez faire is capitalism. Anything else is a mixed economy that is a mixture in varying degrees of freedom and controls, a voluntary choice and government compulsion of individualism and collectivism. A full perfect system of capitalism has never yet existed in history. Various degrees of government interference and control remained in all the mixed semi free economies of the 19th century. Undercutting, hampering, distorting, and ultimately destroying the operations of a free market. But during the 19th century, mankind came close to economic freedom for the first and only time in history. Observe the results. Observe also that the degree of a country's freedom from government control was the degree of its progress. America was the freest and achieved the most. When two opposite people principles are operating in any issue, the rational scientific approach to their evaluation is to study their respective performance, trace their consequences in full, precise detail, and then pronounce judgment on their respective value. In the case of a mixed economy, the first duty of any thinker or scholar is to study the historical record and to discover what developments were caused by the free enterprise of private individuals, by free production and trade in a free market, and what developments were caused by government intervention into the economy. It might shock you to hear that no such study has ever been made. To my knowledge, no book dealing with this issue is available. If one wants to study this question, one has to gather information from random passages and references in books on other subjects, or from the unstated implications of known but unanalyzed facts. Those who undertake such a study will discover that all the economic evils popularly ascribed to capitalism were caused, necessitated and made possible not by private enterprise, not by free trade on a free market, but by government interference into the economy, by government controls, favors, subsidies, franchises and special privileges. The villains were not the private businessmen who made fortunes by productive ability and free trade, but the bureaucrats and their friends, the men who made fortunes by political pull and government favorite. Yet it is the private businessmen, the victims, who took the blame, while the bureaucrats and their intellectual spokesmen use their own guilt as an argument for the extension of their power. Those of you who have read Atlas Shrugged will recognize the difference between a businessman such as Hank Reardon, the representative of capitalism, and a businessman such as the typical product of a mixed economy. If you want the historical example, consider the career of James Jerome Hill, who built the Great Northern Railroad without a penny of federal help, who was responsible practically single handed for the development of the entire American Northwest, and who was persecuted by the government all his life under the Sherman act for allegedly being a monopolist. Consider it, then. Compare it to the career of the famous California businessman known as the Big Four, who built the Central Pacific Railroad on federal subsidies causing disastrous consequences and dislocations in the country's economy, then held a 30 year monopoly on railroad transportation in California by means of special privileges granted by the state legislature, which made it legally impossible for any competing railroad to exist in the state. The difference between these two types of business career has never been identified in a generally accepted view of capitalism. By imperceptible degrees. First through the default of capitalism's alleged defenders, then through the deliberate misrepresentations and falsifications of its enemies. The gradual rewriting of our economic history has brought us to the stage where people believe that all the economic evils of the last two centuries were caused by the free enterprise element, the so called private sector of our mixed economy. While the economic progress of these two centuries was the result of the government's actions and interventions, people are now told that America's spectacular industrial achievements, unmatched in any period of history or in any part of the globe, were due not to the productive genius of free men, but to the special privileges handed to them by a paternalistic government. The fact that much more autocratic governments with much wider privilege dispensing powers and policies did not achieve the same results anywhere else on earth is blanked out by the proponents of this theory. The only counterpart of this theory is grotesque inversion and monstrous injustice. The only similar method of judgment I can think of is the mystic's doctrine that man must give credit to God for all his virtues, but must place the blame for all his sins upon himself. Incidentally, the philosophical motive and purpose in both these instances is the same. If you want a contemporary demonstration of the respective value and performance of a free economy and of a controlled economy, a demonstration that comes as close to a historical laboratory experiment as one could hope to see, take a look at the condition of West Germany and of East Germany. No political economic system in history had proved its value so eloquently or had benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism. And none has ever been attacked so savagely and blindly. Why did the majority of the intellectuals turn against capitalism from the start? Why did their victims, the businessmen, bear their attacks in silence? The cause of it is that unchallenged primordial evil, which to this day, men are afraid to challenge. The morality of altruism Altruism has been man's ruling moral code through most of mankind's history. It has had many forms and variations, but its essence has always remained the same. Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. The philosophical conflict which since the Renaissance has been tearing Western civilization and which has reached its ultimate climax in our age, is the conflict between capitalism and the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are philosophical opposites. They cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society. The moral code which is implicit in capitalism had never been formulated explicitly. The basic premise of that code is that man, every man, is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. That man must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself, and that men must deal with one another as traders by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. This, in essence, is the moral premise on which the United States of America was based. The principle of man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness. This is what the philosophers and the intellectuals of the 19th century did not and and could not choose to identify so long as they remained committed to the mystic's morality of altruism. If the good, the virtues, the moral ideal is suffering and self sacrifice, then by that standard, capitalism had to be damned as evil. Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, but to pursue enjoyment and achievement here on earth. Capitalism does not tell men to serve and sacrifice, but to produce and profit. Capitalism does not preach passivity, 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 relationships, 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 opposite of altruism, the principle of justice. Let me stress this. The principle of justice. So long as the intellectuals of the 19th century held altruism as their moral code, they had to evade the actual nature and meaning of capitalism and thus come gradually to lose and to betray all of their initial goals and ideals. There were two crucial errors or evasions in the liberals view of capitalism, from which all the rest of their debacle proceeded. One was their attitude Toward the businessmen, the other, their attitude toward the use of physical force. Since wealth, throughout all the centuries of stagnation preceding the birth of capitalism, had been gained by conquest, by physical force, by political power. The intellectuals took it as their axiom that wealth can be acquired only by force, and refused to break up their mental package deal to differentiate between a businessman and a feudal baron. I quote from my book for the new intellectual. Evading the difference between production and looting, they called the businessman a robber. Evading the difference between freedom and compulsion, they called him a slave driver. Evading the difference between reward and terror, they called him an exploiter. Evading the difference between paychecks and guns, they called him an autocrat. Evading the difference between trade and force, they called him a tyrant. The most crucial issues I had to evade was the difference between the earned and the unearned. Close quote. The intellectuals refused to identify the fact that the source of industrial wealth is man's mind, that the fortunes made in a free economy are the product of intelligence, of ability. This led them to the modern version of the ancient soul body dichotomy, to the contradiction of upholding the freedom of the mind while denying it to the most active exponents of creative intelligence, the businessman. The contradiction of promising to liberate man's mind by enslaving his body. It led them to regard the businessman as a vulgar materialist or a brute or a Babbitt, as some sort of inferior species born to serve them and to regard themselves as some sort of elite born to rule him, to control his life and dispose of his product. The shabby monument to this premise was the idea of divorcing production from distribution, of assuming the right to distribute that which one has not produced. The only way to implement an idea of that kind. The next step in their moral descent was the intellectual's alliance with the thug, with the advocate of rule by brute force, the totalitarian collectivist, the intellectual second error. Their attitude toward the use of force is a corollary of the first. So long as they refuse to identify the nature of free trade and of a social system based on voluntary, uncoerced, unforced, non sacrificial relationships among men. So long as the moral cannibalism of the altruist code permitted them to believe that it is virtuous and right to sacrifice some men for the sake of others, the intellectuals had to embrace the political creed of collectivism, the dream of establishing a perfect altruist society at the point of a gun. They projected a society where all would be sacrificed to that conveniently undefinable idol, the public good, with themselves in the role of judges of what that good might be and of who would be the public at any given moment. An ideal society to be achieved by means of physical force, that is, by means of the political power of the state, by means of a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest is history. The shameful, sordid, ugly history of the intellectual development of the last hundred and fifty years. In the realm of political theory. The switch from the liberalism of the 19th century to the collectivism of the 20s was accomplished when people began to accept the Marxist view of the nature of government. The view that a government is and has to be the agent of the economic interests of some class or another, and that the sole political issue is which class will seize control of the government to force its own interests on all other groups or classes. Thus, capitalism came to be regarded as an economic system in which government coercion is used for the benefit of the businessmen, the employers or the rich in general. This serves as a justification for the liberals, the socialists or any other collectivists when they propose to use government coercion for the benefit of the workers, the employees or the poor in general. And thus the existence, the possibility, the historical record and even the theory of a non coercive society are wiped out of people's minds and out of public discussion. In the early years of American capitalism, the government's intervention into the country's economy was minimal. The government's role was predominantly confined to its proper function, that of a policeman and arbiter charged with the task of protecting the individual citizen's rights and property. The most notorious exception to that rule is existed only in the agrarian, non industrial, non capitalist states of the south, where the state governments upheld the institution of slavery. The attempts to obtain special economic privileges from the government were begun by businessmen, not by workers, but by businessmen who shared the intellectual's view of the state as an instrument of of positive power serving the public good, and who invoked it to claim that the public good demanded canals or railroads or subsidies or protective tariffs. It is not the great industrialists of America, not men like J.J. hill who ran to government for special favors, but random adventurers with political pull, or later, those pretentious types indoctrinated by the intellectuals who dreamed of statism as a quote, Manifest Destiny. It was not the businessmen or the industrialists or the workers or the labor unions that began the revolt against freedom. The demand for greater and greater government power, and ultimately for the return to an absolute totalitarian state. State it was the intellectuals. For a detailed history of the steps by which the intellectuals of Germany led it toward totalitarianism culminating in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, I will refer you to a brilliant book entitled Omnipotent Government by Professor Ludwig von Mises. For a detailed history of the intellectual's role in America, I will refer you to the Decline of American Liberalism by Professor Arthur A. Ekirg Jr. Which I mentioned earlier. Professor Ekirch shares many of the liberals errors. He seems to regard and to denounce capitalism as a system of government coercion for the benefit of the rich. He seems to ascribe America's pride progress to government intervention into the economy. He does not question the government's right to initiate the use of physical force and to control the lives of the citizens for an alleged good purpose. He certainly does not challenge the morality of altruism. But he is too honest and conscientious an observer not to be disturbed by certain symptoms of the totalitarian spirit spirit in the liberal's history. And he offers the evidence without identifying its full philosophical implications. For example, he offers the following quotation from the Promise of American Life by Herbert Crowley, a book published in 1909 which attacked the theory of laissez faire and had an enormous influence on the so called progressives of the time. On Theodore Roosevelt among others. Quote the promise of American life is to be fulfilled not merely by a maximum amount of economic freedom, but by a certain measure of discipline, not merely by the abundant satisfaction of individual desires, but by a large measure of individual subordination and self denial. The automatic fulfillment of the American national promise is to be abandoned, if at all, precisely because the traditional American confidence in individual freedom has resulted in a morally and socially un undesirable distribution of wealth. If you doubt the role of altruism in the destruction of capitalism you may observe it in that quotation. And if you doubt the hatred of collectivists for the men of ability, observe it in the following passage from the same book by Crowley. Quote the national government must step in and discriminate, but it must discriminate not on behalf of liberty and the special individual, but on behalf of equality and the average man. Close quote if you have been ascribing the policy of imperialism to the selfish individualistic ideology of capitalism and to its greed for conquest, here is a quotation from Ideals and Self Interest in America's Foreign Relations by R.E. osgood. The spirit of imperialism was an exaltation of duty above rights of collective welfare above individual self interest, the heroic values as opposed to materialism, action instead of logic, the natural impulse rather than the pallid intellect. Close Quote if you have accepted the Marxist doctrine that capitalism leads to wars, read Professor Icarch's account of how Woodrow Wilson, the liberal reformer, pushed the United States into World War I. He seemed to feel that the United States had a mission to spread its institutions, which he conceived as liberal and democratic, to the more benighted areas of the world. It was not the selfish capitalists, nor the tycoons of big business, nor the greedy munition makers who helped Wilson to whip up a reluctant peace loving nation into the hysteria of a military crusade. It was the altruistic liberals of the magazine the New Republic, edited by that same Herbert Crowley. What sort of arguments did they use? Here is a sample from Crowley. Quote the American nation needs the tonic of a serious moral adventure. If you still wonder about the singular recklessness with which alleged humanitarians treat such issues as force, violence, expropriation, enslavement, bloodshed, perhaps the following quote from professor iCarge's book book will give you some clue to their motives. Quote Stuart Chase rushed into print late in 1932 with a popular work on economics entitled A New Deal. Why, Chase asked with real envy at the close of his book, should Russia have all the fun of remaking a world? Close quote apparently Mr. Stuart Chase objects to this tyranny of words, but not to the tyranny of men. The record speaks for itself. Starting out as advocates of limited representative government, the the liberals end as champions of unlimited totalitarian rule. Starting out as defenders of individual rights, they end as apologists for the bloody slaughterhouse of Soviet Russia. Starting out as apostles of human welfare who beg for a few temporary controls to relieve the emergency of people's need. They end with John Kenneth Galbraith, who demands controls for the sake of controls and a permanent cut of everybody's income, not because people are too poor, but because they are too affluent. Starting out as brave champions of freedom, they end crawling on their stomachs to Moscow with Bertrand Russell, pleading give me slavery, but please don't give me death. Starting out as advocates of reason, confident of man's power to achieve well being and fulfillment on earth, they end hunched in the darkest corners of the oldest cellar, muttering that reason is impotent and fumbling through musty pages for the occult guidance of Zen Buddhism. Such is the ultimate achievement of the altruist morality. Now I will ask you to consider the following the intellectual trend that has brought us to this state, the mysticism, collectivism or altruism axis has been gaining momentum since the 19th century, has been winning victory after victory, and is at present our dominant cultural power. If truth and reality were on its side, if it represented the right philosophy for men to live by, one would expect to see a gradual improvement in the state of the world. With every successive victory, one would expect an atmosphere of growing confidence, liberation, energy, vitality and joy of living. Is this what we have seen in the past decades? Is this what we see around us today? Today, in the moment of their almost total triumph, the voices of the mystic, collectivist, altruist axis arising in a single veil of despair, proclaiming that existence on earth is evil, that futility is the essence of life, that disaster is man's metaphysical destiny, that man is a miserable failure, depraved by nature and unfit to exist. This was not the way that the reason, individualism, capitalism axis greeted its triumphs in the 19th century. And this was not the view of man, nor the sense of life that it brought to mankind. I quote from my book for the new intellectual. The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together as brothers born of the industrial Revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism, and if they perish, they will perish together. The tragic irony will be that they will have destroyed each other, and the major share of the guilt will belong to the intellectual. Close quote. Those of you who may still be liberals in the original sense of that word, and who may have abandoned everything except loyalty to reason, now is the time to check your premises. If you do, you will find that the ideal society had once been almost within man's reach. It was the intellectuals who destroyed it and who committed suicide in the process. But the future belongs to a new type of intellectual, a new radical, the fighter for capitalism. Questions and Answers with Ayn Rand on the intellectual bankruptcy of our age.

Let me begin with a question that came in the mail. If, under a system of capitalism, a person is free to spend his earned money as he pleased pleases, and if he chooses to spend it, or a part of it, charitably, altruistically, in gifts to persons whom he thinks deserving, though they've done nothing to earn the gifts, or if he chooses to bestow his services voluntarily, to aid those whom he thinks deserving, simply because they are in need or unable to do anything to help themselves, how can it be said that capitalism enjoins or requires the abnegation of altruism? Wouldn't it be more accurate to state that capitalism leaves this decision to the individual who is free to grant or withhold his services or his earnings on whatever principle he thinks fit. While it may be possible to demonstrate in some instance that granting a person some unearned benefit may tend to enslave or corrupt or weaken him, can it really be established as a general principle that every act of altruism, defined as the free and voluntary giving of goods or services to one who hasn't earned them, is morally wrong?

Well, the last part of this question gives us a clue to the error, or more likely, the evasion of the questioner. To begin with, what he is talking about is not altruism. Observe that in practically every lecture so far, I have very carefully stated what is altruism Specifically. To repeat once more, altruism is a term originated by the philosopher August Kant, and it has been used ever since in the exact meaning of that he intended. The word altruism comes from the word altar, meaning others, and it implies and needs, and is even given as a dictionary definition the following. The placing of the interests of others above your own. It means existing for the sake of others. Others are placed above yourself and their interest above your own. That is the meaning of altruism. More specifically, altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self sacrifice is his highest virtue. Now, what this questioner substitutes for the definition is every act of altruism defined as the free and voluntary giving of goods or services to one who has not earned them. This is not my definition of altruism. This is not the dictionary definition. This is not the philosophical definition. Therefore, what this gentleman here is talking about is acts of kindness or courtesy. Under his definition, a Christmas present or a birthday present would be an act of altruism, which would be silly and foolish. It is precisely this kind of package deal that altruists use in order to get away with the evil they are perpetrating, namely, the package deal of Atem. Attempting to equate every act of kindness, courtesy, or generosity as an act of altruism. Now, the essence of altruism is self sacrifice. If you do something for another person at the price of harm or injury to yourself, that is an act of altruism merely voluntarily. Necessarily giving something to another person who has not earned is not an act of altruism. It is morally a neutral act. You may have good reason for doing it. You may have bad reason. As a principle, nobody would think of forbidding any voluntary giving as such, not only would the giving here here to be judged have to depend on the full context of the situation and on the relationship of the two persons involved. But more than that, the act of giving is the least important act in life. This is not where one begins a discussion of a moral or political system. Now remembering that altruism is self sacrifice. Now let us come to the first part of this gentleman's question. He asked, why do I claim that capitalism forbids altruism? Wouldn't it be more exact to say that capitalism leaves the decision to the individual, I quote, who is free to grant or withhold his services or his earnings on whatever principle he thinks fit? Here the questioner is ignoring or evading the difference between a legal principle and a moral principle. Legally, it is true, under capitalism a man's property is his own and a man may do anything he pleases with it. He may waste it, he may give it away, he may enjoy it. Rationally, it is up to him. The law or the government have nothing to say and do not forbid him to give away his money if he cares to. But the issue here is a moral issue. Now what do we mean by a moral issue? What is the right principle to guide a man's action and therefore to guide the laws of society? Therefore, one can come to the question which is stated here. That is, what does a man do with his property? One has to answer the question what are a man's rights? Does a man live for himself or does he live for others? If under capitalism, the state, the law, do not interfere into a man's disposal of his property, it is precisely because capitalism is based on on the principle that man's life and the results of his work, of his effort, that is his property, belong to him. That man exists for his own sake. And this is why the state cannot interfere into what disposal he makes of his own property. If, however, you do not start with the morality of proper objectivist rational self interest, then there is no justification for the state leaving a man's property alone. If a man does not have the right to exist for his own sake, then other men may make claims on him. Under the morality of altruism they do. Under altruism. Other men will say that since the right, the moral, the proper way for men to exist is in service to others, we should have a society based on this moral principle and that society will dispose of every man's life, effort and property. Therefore, if man does exist to serve others, the state as the representative of others, or of the prevalent Morality has the right to tell him what to do with his property. The result, the fully consistent result of that morality, is a totalitarian dictatorship, communist, fascist, or any other variety. Now, this gentleman, this questioning with the usual modern superficiality, does not start at the beginning, but starts with the end. In other words, he ignores or evades causes and discusses only effects or consequences. When he talks about a man's right to dispose of his property, he is not talking about the right of distribution. He is not concerned about the right of production. He is not concerned where does property come from. He is interested only in how we distribute it. And he is very anxious, apparently, to make sure that somebody will give him a handout. I say this because no other motive could make a man approach a question from this particular aspect. Before one can talk about distribution, however, or the right to distribute, one must talk about the right to produce. And it is here again that the clash between altruism and capitalism enters. What does men need in order to produce? He needs the moral certainty that he exists for his own sake and acts for his own sake. First of all, a proper producer has to hold the judgment of his mind against everybody else's. The better the mind, the more likely he is to be an innovator or originator. And therefore, by this mere fact, regardless of the state of knowledge in a particular society, the better mind will be at odds with the rest of society at first, merely because he's an innovator. Now, in a free society, nobody will stop him, but he, the producer, the innovator, has to have the absolute assurance that he will place the judgment of his mind above the judgment of. Of other people's minds, regardless of how many people disagree with him, that he would fight to produce what he thinks is good or correct or right, that he will act on his knowledge, on his judgment, on his principles, and he believe to everybody else the same right, that is the right to agree with him or disagree. But nobody will come to him in a free society, in an objectivist capitalist society, and tell him, since the majority disagree with you, who are you to hold your judgment above theirs? As a good altruist or collectivist, you should give in. You should agree with and conform with the decision of others. Therefore, rational selfishness necessary for production begins on this level. The moral right to hold the judgment of your mind above the judgment of everyone else without ever forcing it on others, but not allowing them to force their judgment on you. That's the first step of selfishness in producing. Second, the producer has to decide for what purpose he wants to produce. Before a man has any wealth to distribute, he has to decide why does he want to work at all and what does he incorporate to do with his wealth. Here again, he has to have the absolute assurance that he has the right to produce what he wants and to do what he wants with the results. In other words, he has to have the absolute primacy of the choice and execution of his own goal, regardless of the ideas, wishes or needs of others. Always, of course, granting them the same right, not forcing anybody, not allowing anybody to force him. It is on those two questions the right to use your judgment and the right to choose your goals and then achieve them, that altruism and capitalism clash. Altruism would not permit a man to choose his own goal with his own happiness as its only justification. Altruism would not permit any a man to work for his own profit or his own happiness. That is the clash that is the root of a moral system and a political system. This is where you begin your political thinking, not at the last end result like a parasite who is only caring about who is going to do the giving away. Before you come to the giving away, there has to be some something to give. And before there can be something to give, you have to have independent, rationally selfish minds able to function. Now, that type of mind isn't going to give away his money to the undeserving. It is quite proper under the proper circumstances to help others. It is proper to help your friends, but it is not your moral duty. And capitalism cannot function on any other morality, only on a morality where it is not your duty to serve others. The moment you introduce that element of duty, you are on the road to communism. And the rest is only a matter of time, speed and degree. It is not with the giving away of thought things or the hoarding and keeping, in fact, that one has to be concerned that with the right of men to live and to produce, and again repeat to stress it, a rational man will not give his wealth away without reason. And he will not get it to those who did not. He will not give it to those who did not earn it. Affection, incidentally, or value of another person is a sufficient reason. And in that case marginally, when it is not a sacrifice, a rational man may give presents or help to others only marginally, only as a non sacrificial issue, never at the price of his own sacrifice, which means never at the price rise of values or issues more important to him.

Many listeners have expressed the view as the result of your last lecture, that you have more in common with former liberals than you do with the present conservatives. I wonder if you could amplify briefly on this point.

Yes, was. Please pleasure. I think the letter I have just answered, which I think comes from a conservative, is a very good illustration of why, as I stated in my lecture, the liberals have predominantly been the intellectuals, particularly in America. What do we mean by an intellectual? A man who understands the importance and the power of ideas and of broad fundamental principles. A man who does not approach life on the range of the moment. A man who sees beyond the immediate moment, who is able to identify broader principles, who thinks, plans and leave his life long range. That would be, in brief, my definition of an intellectual. In other words, a man who faces life philosophically by the guidance of broad principles in who is able to integrate the immediate moment or the immediate action into a long range fundamental principle of action or fundamental goal. Now, the liberals were predominantly intellectuals. They held a certain philosophy. Their basic premise in the 19th century was that men is capable of planning his life, is capable of establishing a rational society and living a good life, a rational life, happy life here on earth. The liberal started with the belief in the power of man's mind and in man's power to achieve the kind of life and the kind of social system that would be rationally right, rationally defensible. But as I stated in my speech, the enormous error they committed is that they assume that socialism, or some form or another of collectivism was a rational way to organize a society. They have now become enormously disillusioned. At least the majority of the liberals are disappointed. They see now that collectivism is a failure. They have not yet discovered capitalism. The best of them, those who hold to the basic premise that men must have a philosophy and must face life by means of reason. They are the ones whom I consider the best audience for objectives because what they bring to it is still the one and most important fundamental attitude. The idea that man's reason is capable of solving problems of life and the idea that society should be organized on the ground of philosophical principles. Today they will discover that the right rational society will is not socialism, but the ideal which they had never learned to identify and which objectivism will help them to identify, namely, capitalism.

Ms. Rand, you've said that the predominant trend of the intellectuals in the 19th century was collectivism and statism. But there were certain philosophers who advocated individualism of one kind or another. Such as, for instance, Nietzsche. What's your estimate of him?

It's a very low estimate philosophically. I will start by saying that he's one of the philosophers with whom I disagree very emphatically on all fundamentals, yet one whom we're often questioned about a philosopher that is usually package dealt with us or other people ask us, don't we agree with Nietzsche? So that I would have to say, first of all, we emphatically disagree, and we disagree incidentally for the very same reason which has made Nietzsche ineffectual historically. So to answer first the first part of your question, yes, there were philosophers such as Nietzsche, there were others who would call themselves individualists and from certain aspects could have been classified as individualists. They remained totally ineffectual and they not only did not stem the growth of collectivism, but in fact helped it to grow. Now, Nietzsche is a very good example of this fact. To begin with, when you judge a philosopher, you must always judge him by the fundamentals of his philosophy, namely by metaphysics and epistemology. Nietzsche was a subjectivist. Nietzsche was actually an anti rationalist or an advocate of the irrational. Today it is the modern school of existentialism that claims him as one of its ancestors with a great deal of justice. Because Nietzsche believed that although reason is a valuable tool, it is only a secondary tool, man's basic tool of guidance. That which man should be guided by and live by is his instinct, his so called blood or body, or some undefined something which he is born with, which is above reason and which should guide him. Nietzsche is a subjectivist. Now, there could be no greater contradiction than a subjectivist who calls himself an individualist. It is in fact a contradiction in terms. Because the only way in which a man, a man can in fact be an individualist. The only meaning of the term is a man who exercises his independent judgment, a man who thinks independently. That is the essence of what makes an individualist or an independent man. Now a subjectivist, a man who does not care to think. A man who wants to be guided by his feelings, his emotions, his alleged instinct. That kind of man, in order to survive, necessarily has to then be a parasite on the thinking of others. Since he does not choose to be rational, he would have to ride on those who do choose to be rational. He therefore, in fact will be a parasite. Now, parasite who is an individual is certainly a contradiction in terms. For fuller detail of this subject or this issue, I would strongly recommend to those interested that they read the lead article by Mr. Brandon in our publication, the Objectivist Newsletter. The April issue deals with precisely this subject and the article is entitled Counterfeit Individualism. It will tell you in greater detail why thinkers such as Nietzsche, and let's take it wider, all subjectivists are not in fact individualists and are the exact opposite philosophically of what the objectivist philosophy advocates. And because they were subjectivists, incidentally, is why they were not not able to stem the tide of collectivism. And why certain collectivist school, like Fascism or Nazism, particularly even claimed Nietzsche as their philosophical justification. Well, that was somewhat unfair to him, but there certainly were passages in his works which could have justified a totalitarian state, though there were also passages contradicting them. A subjectivist will always be in that kind of trouble. When a man drops reason, then anyone and anything may interpret him as they wish. Then they too are subjectivist. And in that sense, Nietzsche politically was perhaps the most ineffectual of all thinkers.

Ms. Rand, you have what's often been described as a minimal view of the function of government. And what about functions like this? Regulations for highways, for air travel, railroads, interstate commerce of all kinds? It would seem that only the state could require such regulations and make them stick. And it would seem in the minds of many people that the state must. Let me take a specific case. Smoke exudes from factories in a city. All the smoke from the various factories together creates a hazard to the health of everybody. If one factory owner conscientiously put a smoke screening device on his own factory, he would be setting himself back financially and he also wouldn't be doing very much good as long as all the other factory owners continue to have smoke pouring forth into the city. Don't you have to have been a regulation by the state? What else could make it stick?

That is somewhat a question of preventive law, and I think we discussed something similar earlier on our former session. The issue here is not an issue of regulation. When and if the actions of one individual or one factor can be scientifically proved beyond any doubt to be damaged to other people, then it is the suit, the claim of the victims, that the government would enforce. In other words, if in your example, it has been scientifically proved that the smoke is damaging the health of the people in the community and known smoke control preventatives are available and are possible to be installed. It isn't the government's job nor its right to declare that this smoke has to be controlled. It would be any one citizen of the community that would care to sue the factory owners and would win his suit if it could be demonstrated that a the smoke is hurting him and B that there are possible prevention or precautions to take which the factory owners do not take. Therefore, one case of that kind would determine the fact that all factory owners then should put these preventers or these smoke controls into effect. This is assuming that your example is true. However, in reality I would raise many objections to this kind of example. For instance, it may be possible to control smoke only at such an expense that the factory owner would in fact go broke. Then I would say let that community consider what do they prefer? Dirty curtains in their houses or to go broke and starve? As an example. Pittsburgh was probably the dirtiest community in America originally in the sense of soot in the early days of the steel industry. Yet it was probably one of the greatest industries that made this country and the kind of people who would have died of starvation without the existence of the steel industry and of those who made it have no right to complain about the factory smoke. Even today, I am not at all sure that any of this air pollution business is not merely leftist propaganda. I do not know the extent of the danger. I do know that the people in America, which is the most industrialized and therefore, I would assume the most air polluted nation on earth, have the longest life expectancy and are the healthiest. Therefore, if we talk about social problems of that kind, I would require an enormous amount of specific proof before I would even grant the reality of such a problem as factories polluting air. But I am taking your example as an issue of principle. If this were true, meaning that I don't grant that it's necessarily true that they do pollute the air. But if this were true, then the issue would be only can that be proved? And is there remedy within the means of the factory owner? Because let us assume that maybe the air is somewhat dangerous to the population and that in a period of years it might be bad for their lungs. Only the remedy would cost $10 billion. Then either the people move out of there and don't work for that factory.

Or they stay and work.

But you do not ask the factory owner to assume impossible expenses, which incidentally would put him out of business anyway very shortly in the community along with him. Therefore, even in an extreme case of this kind, there is no reason for the government to step in and no moral right to. So now, in the earlier part of your question, you asked about railroads and highways.

Television station.

Oh, you didn't mention television before.

Fine. Well, now, on railroads, highways, transportation, there isn't any reason for any kind of control. There's no control necessary. Who would control that? The owners and I include here highways, which in an Ideal capitalist society would also be privately owned. And atonement roles would be charged by the private owner, not by the government. And it is the private owner that would establish the rules under which the.

Road or the railroad or the airline.

Is to be used. Now, as to television, that too should be private property. The claim that there are only limited number of channels is no more valid than the same claim which could be made about real estate. There is only so many acres of land. But that does not serve as a justification for a communist state in which the government would own the land in television or radio channels. What the government should have properly done it was the same thing as the government did in distributed public land in the land rush, namely, first become preserved that the government acts merely as a trustee who will register, who is the first man that applied for a certain frequency, after which that frequency becomes his. That is the way it should have been handled. It wasn't. And observes that today you are in enormous danger of losing all freedom of speech because of the precedent established in television. For the third details, I suggest read the March issue of the Objectivist newsletter where I write the lead article under the title have Gun Will Nudge. It deals with Mr. Mino and the present policy of the Federal Communications Commission. My details will be found there. You have been listening to Ayn Rand.

Author of Atlas Shrugged, in a discussion of the intellectual bankruptcy of our age.