Prompted by confusion, helplessness and fear of the entire subject of morality, most people hasten to answer guiltily: "No, of course, I don't," without any clear idea of the nature of the accusation. They do not pause to grasp that that accusation is saying, in effect: "Surely you are not so unfair as to discriminate between good and evil, are you?"-or: "Surely you are not so evil as to seek the good, are you?"-or: "Surely you are not so immoral as to believe in morality!"
Moral guilt, fear of moral judgment, and a plea for blanket forgiveness, are so obviously the motive of that catch phrase that a glance at reality would be sufficient to tell its proponents what an ugly confession they are uttering. But escape from reality is both the precondition and the goal of the cult of moral grayness.
Philosophically, that cult is a negation of morality-but, psychologically, this is not its adherents' goal. What they seek is not amorality, but something more profoundly irrational a nonabsolute, fluid, elastic, middle-of-the-road morality. They do not proclaim themselves "beyond good and evil"-they seek to preserve the "advantages" of both. They are not moral challengers, nor do they represent a medieval version of flamboyant evil worshipers. What gives them their peculiarly modern flavor is that they do not advocate selling one's soul to the Devil; they advocate selling it piecemeal, bit by bit, to any retail bidder.
They are not a philosophical school of thought; they are the typical product of philosophical default-of the intellectual bankruptcy that has produced irrationalism in epistemology, a moral vacuum in ethics, and a mixed economy in politics. A mixed economy is an amoral war of pressure groups, devoid of principles, values or any reference to justice, a war whose ultimate weapon is the power of brute force, but whose outward form is a game of compromise. The cult of moral grayness is the ersatz morality which made it possible and to which men now cling in a panicky attempt to justify it.
Observe that their dominant overtone is not a quest for the "white," but an obsessive terror of being branded "black" (and with good reason). Observe that they are pleading for a morality which would hold compromise as its standard of value and would thus make it possible to gauge virtue by the number of values one is willing to betray.
The consequences and the "vested interests" of their doctrine are visible all around us.
Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are "extreme" about, but that you are "extreme"-i.e., consistent). Observe the phenomenon of the so-called neutralists in the United Nations: the "neutralists" are worse than merely neutral in the conflict between the United States and Soviet Russia; they are committed, on principle, to see no difference between the two sides, never to consider the merits of an issue, and always to seek a compromise, any compromise in any conflict-as, for instance, between an aggressor and an invaded country.
Observe, in literature, the emergence of a thing called anti-hero, whose distinction is that he possesses no distinction-no virtues, no values, no goals, no character, no significance-yet who occupies, in plays and novels, the position formerly held by a hero, with the story centered on his actions, even though he does nothing and gets nowhere. Observe that the term "good guys and bad guys" is used as a sneer-and, particularly in television, observe the revolt against happy endings, the demands that the "bad guys" be given an equal chance and an equal number of victories.
Like a mixed economy, men of mixed premises may be called "gray"; but, in both cases, the mixture does not remain "gray" for long. "Gray," in this context, is merely a prelude to "black." There may be "gray" men, but there can be no "gray" moral principles. Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.
Such are the reasons why-when one is asked: "Surely you don't think in terms of black-and-white, do you?"-the proper answer (in essence, if not in form) should be: "You're damn right I do!"
(June 1964)
10. Collectivized Ethics
by Ayn Rand
Certain questions, which one frequently hears, are not philosophical queries, but psychological confessions. This is particularly true in the field of ethics. It is especially in discussions of ethics that one must check one's premises (or remember them), and more: one must learn to check the premises of one's adversaries.
For instance, Objectivists will often hear a question such as: "What will be done about the poor or the handicapped in a free society?"
The altruist-collectivist premise, implicit in that question, is that men are "their brothers' keepers" and that the misfortune of some is a mortgage on others. The questioner is ignoring or evading the basic premises of Objectivist ethics and is attempting to switch the discussion onto his own collectivist base. Observe that he does not ask: "Should anything be done?" but: "What will be done?"-as if the collectivist premise had been tacitly accepted and all that remains is a discussion of the means to implement it.
Once, when Barbara Branden was asked by a student: "What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?"-she answered: "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."
This is the essence of the whole issue and a perfect example of how one refuses to accept an adversary's premises as the basis of discussion.
Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others; society-as an organized political system-has no rights in the matter at all.
On the question of when and under what conditions it is morally proper for an individual to help others, I refer you to Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged. What concerns us here is the collectivist premise of regarding this issue as political, as the problem or duty of "society as a whole."
Since nature does not guarantee automatic security, success and survival to any human being, it is only the dictatorial presumptuousness and the moral cannibalism of the altruist-collectivist code that permits a man to suppose (or idly to daydream) that he can somehow guarantee such security to some men at the expense of others.
If a man speculates on what "society" should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men's lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them, to set their goals or to plan the "distribution" of their efforts.
This is the psychological confession implied in such questions and in many issues of the same kind.
At best, it reveals a man's psycho-epistemological chaos; it reveals a fallacy which may be termed "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction" and which consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs-in this case, substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of "ethics." Thus, a man may reject the theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a rational code-but, failing to integrate his ideas, he continues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism.
More often, however, that psychological confession reveals a deeper evil: it reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men's capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.
Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the space vacated by self-esteem in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two aspects of his psychology will act reciprocally to reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes "for the good of mankind" or of "society" or of "the public" or of "future generations"-or of anything except actual human beings.
Hence the appalling recklessness with which men propose, discuss and accept "humanitarian" projects which are to be imposed by political means, that is, by force, on an unlimited number of hum
an beings. If, according to collectivist caricatures, the greedy rich indulged in profligate material luxury, on the premise of "price no object"-then the social progress brought by today's collectivized mentalities consists of indulging in altruistic political planning, on the premise of "human lives no object."
The hallmark of such mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means. Out of context, such a goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not to be earned, but to be expropriated; and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means-because the means are to be human lives.
"Medicare" is an example of such a project. "Isn't it desirable that the aged should have medical care in times of illness?" its advocates clamor. Considered out of context, the answer would be: yes, it is desirable. Who would have a reason to say no? And it is at this point that the mental processes of a collectivized brain are cut off; the rest is fog. Only the desire remains in his sight-it's the good, isn't it?-it's not for myself, it's for others, it's for the public, for a helpless, ailing public ... The fog hides such facts as the enslavement and, therefore, the destruction of medical science, the regimentation and disintegration of all medical practice, and the sacrifice of the professional integrity, the freedom, the careers, the ambitions, the achievements, the happiness, the lives of the very men who are to provide that "desirable" goal-the doctors.
After centuries of civilization, most men-with the exception of criminals-have learned that the above mental attitude is neither practical nor moral in their private lives and may not be applied to the achievement of their private goals. There would be no controversy about the moral character of some young hoodlum who declared: "Isn't it desirable to have a yacht, to live in a penthouse and to drink champagne?"-and stubbornly refused to consider the fact that he had robbed a bank and killed two guards to achieve that "desirable" goal.
There is no moral difference between these two examples; the number of beneficiaries does not change the nature of the action, it merely increases the number of victims. In fact, the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral superiority: he has no power to devastate an entire nation and his victims are not legally disarmed.
It is men's views of their public or political existence that the collectivized ethics of altruism has protected from the march of civilization and has preserved as a reservoir, a wildlife sanctuary, ruled by the mores of prehistorical savagery. If men have grasped some faint glimmer of respect for individual rights in their private dealings with one another, that glimmer vanishes when they turn to public issues-and what leaps into the political arena is a caveman who can't conceive of any reason why the tribe may not bash in the skull of any individual if it so desires.
The distinguishing characteristic of such tribal mentality is: the axiomatic, the almost "instinctive" view of human life as the fodder, fuel or means for any public project.
The examples of such projects are innumerable: "Isn't it desirable to clean up the slums?" (dropping the context of what happens to those in the next income bracket)-"Isn't it desirable to have beautiful, planned cities, all of one harmonious style?" (dropping the context of whose choice of style is to be forced on the home builders)-"Isn't it desirable to have an educated public?" (dropping the context of who will do the educating, what will be taught, and what will happen to dissenters)-"Isn't it desirable to liberate the artists, the writers, the composers from the burden of financial problems and leave them free to create?" (dropping the context of such questions as: which artists, writers and composers?-chosen by whom?-at whose expense?-at the expense of the artists, writers and composers who have no political pull and whose miserably precarious incomes will be taxed to "liberate" that privileged elite?)-"Isn't science desirable? Isn't it desirable for man to conquer space?"
And here we come to the essence of the unreality-the savage, blind, ghastly, bloody unreality-that motivates a collectivized soul.
The unanswered and unanswerable question in all of their "desirable" goals is: To whom? Desires and goals presuppose beneficiaries. Is science desirable? To whom? Not to the Soviet serfs who die of epidemics, filth, starvation, terror and firing squads-while some bright young men wave to them from space capsules circling over their human pigsties. And not to the American father who died of heart failure brought on by overwork, struggling to send his son through college-or to the boy who could not afford college-or to the couple killed in an automobile wreck, because they could not afford a new car-or to the mother who lost her child because she could not afford to send him to the best hospital-not to any of those people whose taxes pay for the support of our subsidized science and public research projects.
Science is a value only because it expands, enriches and protects man's life. It is not a value outside that context. Nothing is a value outside that context. And "man's life" means the single, specific, irreplaceable lives of individual men.
The discovery of new knowledge is a value to men only when and if they are free to use and enjoy the benefits of the previously known. New discoveries are a potential value to all men, but not at the price of sacrificing all of their actual values. A "progress" extended into infinity, which brings no benefit to anyone, is a monstrous absurdity. And so is the "conquest of space" by some men, when and if it is accomplished by expropriating the labor of other men who are left without means to acquire a pair of shoes.
Progress can come only out of men's surplus, that is: from the work of those men whose ability produces more than their personal consumption requires, those who are intellectually and financially able to venture out in pursuit of the new. Capitalism is the only system where such men are free to function and where progress is accompanied, not by forced privations, but by a constant rise in the general level of prosperity, of consumption and of enjoyment of life.
It is only to the frozen unreality inside a collectivized brain that human lives are interchangeable-and only such a brain can contemplate as "moral" or "desirable" the sacrifice of generations of living men for the alleged benefits which public science or public industry or public concerts will bring to the unborn.
Soviet Russia is the clearest, but not the only, illustration of the achievements of collectivized mentalities. Two generations of Russians have lived, toiled and died in misery, waiting for the abundance promised by their rulers, who pleaded for patience and commanded austerity, while building public "industrialization" and killing public hope in five-year installments. At first, the people starved while waiting for electric generators and tractors; they are still starving, while waiting for atomic energy and interplanetary travel.
That waiting has no end-the unborn profiteers of that wholesale sacrificial slaughter will never be born-the sacrificial animals will merely breed new hordes of sacrificial animals-as the history of all tyrannies has demonstrated-while the unfocused eyes of a collectivized brain will stare on, undeterred, and speak of a vision of service to mankind, mixing interchangeably the corpses of the present with the ghosts of the future, but seeing no men.
Such is the status of reality in the soul of any Milquetoast who looks with envy at the achievements of industrialists and dreams of what beautiful public parks he could create if only everyone's lives, efforts and resources were turned over to him.
All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shape, but always in cost.
The next time you encounter one of those "public-spirited" dreamers who tells you rancorously that "some very desirable goals cannot be achieved without everybody's participation," tell him that if he cannot obtain everybody's voluntary participation, his goals had jolly well better remain unachieved-and that men's lives are not his to dispose of.
And, if you wish, give him the following example of the ideals he advocates. It is medically possible to take the corneas of a man's eyes immediately after his death and transplant them to the eyes of a living man who is blind, thus restoring his sight (in certain types of blindness). N
ow, according to collectivized ethics, this poses a social problem. Should we wait until a man's death to cut out his eyes, when other men need them? Should we regard everybody's eyes as public property and devise a "fair method of distribution"? Would you advocate cutting out a living man's eye and giving it to a blind man, so as to "equalize" them? No? Then don't struggle any further with questions about "public projects" in a free society. You know the answer. The principle is the same.
(January 1963)
11. The Monument Builders
by Ayn Rand
What had once been an alleged ideal is now a ragged skeleton rattling like a scarecrow in the wind over the whole world, but men lack the courage to glance up and to discover the grinning skull under the bloody rags. That skeleton is socialism.
Fifty years ago, there might have been some excuse (though not justification) for the widespread belief that socialism is a political theory motivated by benevolence and aimed at the achievement of men's well-being. Today, that belief can no longer be regarded as an innocent error. Socialism has been tried on every continent of the globe. In the light of its results, it is time to question the motives of socialism's advocates.
The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in "society as a whole," i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government.
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.