"The Nature of Rights" by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand defines a right as a moral, social concept: the conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper (long-term) survival. From this metaphysical standard she derives individual rights to life, freedom, and property (the right to act rationally, choose values, and keep the product of one’s labor). She rejects supernatural or societal sources of rights, argues government has no independent rights but only delegated authority to protect against initiated force, and contends welfare/minimum-sustenance guarantees are contradictory because they require enslaving others and tend toward collectivism; she also attributes the Great Depression and relief expansion to prior government interference and advocates decontrol and private charity/production instead.
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Let me ask you this question first, about human rights. You have spoken favorably in these lectures about the right to freedom of speech and other human rights. But I take it you would not assent to the usual list of rights so much publicized these days, such as the right to a minimum standard of living, the right to equality of opportunity, the right to a free education, and so on. Now, many listeners will surely want to ask, why? What's the basis of the distinction? That is the fundamental question that I'm really asking, that's at the bottom of this, is what is a right? Can you define the term right in such a way as to make a distinction like this clear?
Yes, certainly.
To begin with, a right is a.
Moral concept applicable only in a social context. On a desert island, the question of rights would not arise, even though the question of morality certainly would. On a desert island, a man would.
Need a moral code, a knowledge of.
What is right or wrong for him to do as much as he would need it in society. But as to rights, that is a concept which applies strictly to relationships among men. It is a social application of morality. I define a right as follows. Right are those conditions of existence which.
Are required by man's nature for his proper survival.
Now, I want to emphasize that I use words here with the strictest precision. Those who have heard our lectures know what I mean by man's proper survival. That is, the survival of man qua man. The survival in that form which his nature as a certain kind of living entity actually requires. And what conditions of existence are necessary for his survival is also a metaphysical question. It rests really on the nature of reality, the nature of this earth. And the nature of man who has to survive on earth in a certain kind of manner, since his survival is not an arbitrary issue, since he cannot properly survive by any random means, since there is only one proper way of survival for him. And here I will remind listeners about the metaphysical base of the Objectivist ethics. Since there is only one proper way for him to survive, his right, that is, that which he may or may not do in relation to other men, that which he may or may not do in society, has to be derived from the same standard, by the same standard, from the same definitions. What does man's nature require for his proper survival? First of all, that he use his reasoning. It requires that he make rationality, his perception of reality, the first concern and.
The basic virtue, and that he act.
On the rational judgment of his own mind. There is no way for him to survive, to provide even his simplest needs without some process of thought. Therefore, when he deals with others, those conditions which are required for the proper survival of man, which doesn't mean mankind, but means every individual man, every member of a particular living species, that which is required for his proper survival constitutes his rights, namely, by his nature. Man has to support his own life by his own effort. Since survival is not provided to him by inanimate matter automatically, nor is it granted to him as manna from heaven by some superior power. Man, in fact by his nature, has to work for his own survival. His life depends on his own action. In order to survive, he has to have the right to his own life. If man's survival, qua man is our standard, then it is right for men to support his own life. In order to do that, he has to be free to act on his own judgment. Therefore he has the right to freedom. In order to decide what goals to pursue, he has to be free to choose his own values and then pursue and achieve these values if he can. And that is the right to the pursuit of happiness, which really means a moral right, the right to choose your own values and to work for their achievement. And since man is not a ghost, but an integrated entity which has consciousness and matter, in order to survive, man needs material property. He has to support his life by means of the product of his own effort. Therefore he has the right of property, the right to work for his own values, for his own survival, and to keep the product, the result of his work. Now, this is the base of right as I define them. And you can observe that I reject both current fallacies on this issue. Both the idea that rights are the gift of some supernatural power, that man is endowed with this right by God. It is the supernatural base of right that has invalidated and undercut the concept of rights. And simultaneously, I reject the modern substitute for the mystical view of rights, namely, that the source of rights is social, that rights are privileges or gifts of society. In the second case, not only could one never defend, when logical prove the idea that right in here, in society, in fact, it would be a contradiction in terms. If an individual doesn't possess any right, there is no way for society to possess them, since society is only a number of other individuals. But more than that, if rights inherit in society, then an individual man exists not by right, but by permission. Since he has no right to life, then society permits him to exist. Or Mary walks at permission anytime it chooses. Therefore, the social source of right, the theory of the social source, is really total denial of rights. Because then man does not act on right. But on permission.
Would you say, Ms. Rand, that government has no rights?
Government as such? None. Because after all, government is an institution. Now, the member of government, the officials are men. And they cannot have any right different from those of every other individual. All rights necessarily have to be universal in the sense that if they are derived from the necessity in the facts of human nature, they would pertain to equally to all men. There is no other way to make the concept of rights tenable or even intelligible. Rights belong to an individual, and since they are derived from his nature, the same rights belong to all individuals. Now, a member of a government has no rights different from any other man. You might say, in his official capacity he has certain obligations or certain duties. So has every man. For instance, a businessman does not have a different life right to life than, let's say, an artist. Only the form in which they exercise or implement their right to live is different. In that same way, a government official does not acquire any new rights when he undertakes a certain job. The government as such as an institution has no right. But the government is the agent in a proper free society, is the agent of the citizens. It is the servant of the citizens, and it has the delegated right to act for the citizens only. In very specific issues, and you remembered our definition of the nature of government. I won't repeat here what are the proper functions of government, except to remind our listeners that the proper function in general terms of a government is to protect individual citizens from those who initiate physical violence. Therefore, the government has only a delegated right, but by itself it can have no right. Now, shall I answer the first part of your question about why I would not recognize the right to minimum sustenance?
The usual United nations list of rights. Yes.
Well, there you have a complete contradiction. This concept of rights demands as a right values which do not in fact belong to men in nature. In other words, the right to a minimum sustenance means that a man, without any effort on his part, is entitled to sustain his life. Well, since nature does not provide men automatically with this sustenance, the only way of maintaining or implementing such a right would be to breach, infringe and deny the rights of some other man. It means that some other man is charged with the unchosen responsibility to support the man who is guaranteed a minimum sustenance. It means that some men are to be enslaved to the minimum or maximum needs of others. Not only is it a vicious concept, but whichever you might wish to call it, it cannot possibly be called a right. Nobody could in fact maintain the right of some men to enslave others and to demand the unearned from them. Since nobody gets any production, any material values, any physical substance from nature itself. Nobody has the right to claim any minimum guarantee because it can come only from other men. And nobody can claim the right to enslave other men.
When you discuss in your Objectivist ethics the concept of survival, many readers and listeners, I think, misconstrue this in the following way. When you mention the term survival, they immediately think of sheer physical survival and just that. Nevertheless, it might be argued that physical survival is a precondition of other kinds of survival. And the argument that I've heard from some people goes something like this. At least everybody should be provided for with regard to a minimum standard of living, because if. Because you just can't let people starve. If people are permitted to starve, of course they die. And then no other or more worthwhile form of survival is possible to them.
Well, this argument is a blatant case of simple context dropping when we speak of survival. I have gone at great lengths, both in the Objectivist ethics and in Atlas Shrugged to demonstrate what is the meaning of survival and that the sense in which I use this term does not apply to the range of the immediate moment that it is survival across the whole span of a human life. That survival, the brute physical survival of the moment as a standard, usually ends with that moment. That it is one of the most.
Disastrous policies that a man can accept.
Therefore, first to reiterate once more this point. When I speak of survival, I speak of the long term lifespan survival of a man in every aspect that is open to his choice. And this would mean that at no time can man hold the immediate advantage or survival of any one issue or any one moment above his knowledge of.
The long range cost.
And that irrational being does not live like an animal on the range of the immediate moment. This is precisely what man's proper survival forbids. Now, when you say that if we do not support certain people they will die and therefore nothing else is possible, this is not first of all metaphysically an issue open to our choice. Such is man's nature and man's position on earth that if he does not provide for his survival, nature will not.
Take care of him.
Since this is so, the universal rational law of morality applicable here is that every man is responsible for his own survival and that he cannot become a mortgage on the life of another man.
That to have the right of life.
Does not mean that someone else has to lose his right and spend his existence supporting you. The confusion here is between the right itself. And the content or the consequence and result of that right. For instance, if you have the right to live, that means you have the right to work and produce the material goods of your survival. It doesn't mean that somebody else has to produce the result of your right. And provide you with food because you need it.
I'm thinking now not so much of the people who are able to engage in productive labor, but won't as of the people who are handicapped. And cannot by their own nature provide anything at all for themselves.
Well, in that case, and by their very definition, they can survive only by the assistance of those people who are able to help them. They cannot make their need a mortgage or a burden on the men without whom their own survival is not possible. It is, in effect, if anyone were sincerely concerned with the plight of the handicapped. Who, incidentally, are a small minority of mankind. But if one were sincerely concerned, then for their sake, if no better reason, one should leave the strong, the productive.
The able men free.
Because they're the only ones who can provide for the handicapped. But then such provision or such act can be nothing more than.
Than charity.
It can only come from the voluntary gift and in effect, the surplus of the productive man. When and if he wishes to help the handicapped. If he has reason to wish it. That may be a very fine act. But what I stress is that it is not a duty on his part. And is not a right of the handicapped. A right has to be based on nature. If the handicapped is handicapped, he can only count on the kindness of the non handicapped to help him. He cannot demand it as a right.
I wanted to emphasize strictly ethical questions today. But your last answer leads me to an economic question. Which I'm sure would be of interest to many listeners as well. And it's this one. What would happen if we had a system of complete laissez faire capitalism. Except for one detail, Namely that there would be a state subsidy in the form of relief for the poor. What then?
Well, what would happen is exactly what is happening today. The answer here does not need to be too theoretical. You can see it in practice. To answer briefly, however, the important theoretical point here is that if you established this kind of law institution. It amounts to establishing the principle of collectivism and altruism. By passing that law, you have, in effect, based that law on the idea that some men have the right to claim an unearned support from others who have to assume that responsibility, whether they choose it or not, this is the principle which makes a man's life, liberty and property subject to the will of society. There is no other base on which one could justify this law. And if one did so, one would not be able to stop the process until the whole of society collapsed into totalitarian collectivism. Now, you have seen a small example of it with very foreshortened, accelerated historical form. The idea of public relief and of supporting the needy at public expense was started in about 1932 or 3.33exactly by the Roosevelt administration. At that time, the claim of those who advocated was that we have to help temporarily in an emergency, just the one third of our own nation, which, according to Mr. Roosevelt, was ill fed, ill clothed and materially underprivileged, whichever he meant. Now, that was certainly a very evil, very improper altruist, collectivist premise. But let us assume that people accepted it. And people accept it mainly because they might think that here we are, one nation and another wealthy nation, and it's our own citizens. I think most people accepted that idea on precisely that kind of superficial reasoning. But kindness. Now, it hasn't taken a whole generation before we are made responsible not only for every emergency or famine anywhere on Earth. Not only are we asked to support everybody on Earth, but more than that.
We are told today that we have.
No right to our own standard of living until we industrialize or allow to catch up with us at our extent, every backward nation in the world today. By that same principle, we are no longer asked just to help the needy of our own country in an emergency. We are asked to assume as a permanent responsibility the welfare and the support of all of mankind. And as I always add in such discussions, remember, they're now talking about interplanetary travel. Fortunately, we would never get too much of it on the collectivist premise, but follows this argument. If you remained on this premise and you discovered Martians, who, instead of being more advanced, were more backward than we are by that premise, we would have to support them also. But by that time nothing much would be left of your free society. This is why a principle is an absolute that permits no exception. And you cannot, out of charity, sympathy or any other reason, introduce an evil principle into a society and put it over on people by governmental force, by law.
Very often people ask this kind of thing, well, what should we have done in 1933, let all these people starve? I take it a point you would wish to emphasize is that had there not been all the governmental meddling in the economy in the first place, no such crisis as that of 29 of 33 would have occurred in the first place.
Exactly. All depressions are the result of government interference in the economy. And the depression of 1929 in particular was due to the fiscal credit policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. It was caused by the government, and the thing to do was to decontrol as rapidly as one could. Only there weren't enough thinkers and statesmen at that time to propose such a plan.
So government is called upon to cure the disease that government itself has caused. Would that be Exactly.
Exactly. And you see it going on to this day.
Nevertheless, one might ask, since government has caused. Assume that government has caused the disease. The disease is there, doesn't it require government action to cure it? This I've been asked many times in connection with your view.
Well, this really simply means that if you have a deadly disease and you have germs in your system which are killing you, shouldn't you then take a stronger dose of the same poison, introduce more germs, more virulent germs into your system in order to cure it? Obviously not. It is not government action that is required, but the repeal of government powers. If you have social problems or economic troubles in a society, just as in medicine or any other field, you should first of all, before you attempt a cure, discover the cause. And if you discover that the cause is a long series of government controls and the only improvement possible is to start the. The only cure possible is to start decontrolling and removing one by one, the chains, the causes which led to this particular trouble or problem.
Do you think thousands of people in the United States might have starved during the process of decontrol, which would have lasted several years at any rate?
No, certainly not. To begin with, they were not starving. The United States has never yet known what starvation really is. If you talk in terms of comparison to Europe and the rest of the world, private charity is what would have taken care of any actual acute need, but above all, opportunities for employment. What was needed was more jobs. In order to have more job, you set free the men who are able to to create jobs. The businessmen, the industrialists, the financiers. You leave men free to create jobs. You do not change them at a time when you need them most. And in fact, morally, you never change them.
Let me ask you, at this point, a question and then answer it and see whether you'd agree with the answer. They're both brief. The question is this one. Do you believe, Ms. Rand, that all men should have bread before any men have caviar. And the answer would be? That I attribute to you. In order for all men to have bread, some men must have caviar. Do you agree with this?
Answer emphatically if you say. Is this what I would answer? Yes, if I could think of such a good remark so quickly. Yes, certainly. That sums up my views perfectly.
