It is in their own interests that the men of greater ability have to pay for the maintenance of armed forces, for the protection of their country against invasion; their expenses are not increased by the fact that a marginal part of the population is unable to contribute to these costs. Economically, that marginal group is nonexistent as far as the costs of war are concerned. The same is true of the costs of maintaining a police force: it is in their own interests that the abler men have to pay for the apprehension of criminals, regardless of whether the specific victim of a given crime is rich or poor.
It is important to note that this type of free protection for the noncontributors represents an indirect benefit and is merely a marginal consequence of the contributors' own interests and expenses. This type of bonus cannot be stretched to cover direct benefits, or to claimas the welfare statists are claiming-that direct handouts to the non-producers are in the producers' own interests.
The difference, briefly, is as follows: if a railroad were running a train and allowed the poor to ride without payment in the seats left empty, it would not be the same thing (nor the same principle) as providing the poor with first-class carriages and special trains.
Any type of nonsacrificial assistance, of social bonus, gratuitous benefit or gift value possible among men, is possible only in a free society, and is proper so long as it is nonsacrificial. But, in a free society, under a system of voluntary government financing, there would be no legal loophole, no legal possibility, for any "redistribution of wealth"-for the unearned support of some men by the forced labor and extorted income of others-for the draining, exploitation and destruction of those who are able to pay the costs of maintaining a civilized society, in favor of those who are unable or unwilling to pay the cost of maintaining their own existence.
(February 1964)
16. The Divine Right of Stagnation
by Nathaniel Branden
For every living species, growth is a necessity of survival. Life is motion, a process of self-sustaining action that an organism must carry on in order to remain in existence. This principle is equally evident in the simple energy-conversions of a plant and in the long-range, complex activities of man. Biologically, inactivity is death.
The nature and range of possible motion and development varies from species to species. The range of a plant's action and development is far less than an animal's; an animal's is far less than man's. An animal's capacity for development ends at physical maturity and thereafter its growth consists of the action necessary to maintain itself at a fixed level; after reaching maturity, it does not, to any significant extent, continue to grow in efficacy-that is, it does not significantly increase its ability to cope with the environment. But man's capacity for development does not end at physical maturity; his capacity is virtually limitless. His power to reason is man's distinguishing characteristic, his mind is man's basic means of survival-and his ability to think, to learn, to discover new and better ways of dealing with reality, to expand the range of his efficacy, to grow intellectually, is an open door to a road that has no end.
Man survives, not by adjusting himself to his physical environment in the manner of an animal, but by transforming his environment through productive work. "If a drought strikes them, animals perish-man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish-man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish-man writes the Constitution of the United States." (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual.) If life is a process of self-sustaining action, then this is the distinctly human mode of action and survival: to think-to produce-to meet the challenges of existence by a never-ending effort and inventiveness.
When man discovered how to make fire to keep himself warm, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to fashion a bow and arrow, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to build a shelter out of stone, then out of brick, then out of glass and steel, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he moved his life expectancy from nineteen to thirty to forty to sixty to seventy, his need of thought and effort was not ended; so long as he lives, his need of thought and effort is never ended.
Every achievement of man is a value in itself, but it is also a stepping-stone to greater achievements and values. Life is growth; not to move forward, is to fall backward; life remains life, only so long as it advances. Every step upward opens to man a wider range of action and achievement-and creates the need for that action and achievement. There is no final, permanent "plateau." The problem of survival is never "solved," once and for all, with no further thought or motion required. More precisely, the problem of survival is solved, by recognizing that survival demands constant growth and creativeness.
Constant growth is, further, a psychological need of man. It is a condition of his mental well-being. His mental well-being requires that he possess a firm sense of control over reality, of control over his existence-the conviction that he is competent to live. And this requires, not omniscience or omnipotence, but the knowledge that one's methods of dealing with reality-the principles by which one functions-are right. Passivity is incompatible with this state. Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one's efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate-in the mental realm no less than in the physical.
Observe, in this connection, the widespread phenomenon of men who are old by the time they are thirty. These are men who, having in effect concluded that they have "thought enough," drift on the diminishing momentum of their past effort-and wonder what happened to their fire and energy, and why they are dimly anxious, and why their existence seems so desolately impoverished, and why they feel themselves sinking into some nameless abyss-and never identify the fact that, in abandoning the will to think, one abandons the will to live.
Man's need to grow-and his need, therefore, of the social or existential conditions that make growth possible-are facts of crucial importance to be considered in judging or evaluating any politico-economic system. One should be concerned to ask: Is a given politico-economic system prolife or anti-life, conducive or inimical to the requirements of man's survival?
The great merit of capitalism is its unique appropriateness to the requirements of human survival and to man's need to grow. Leaving men free to think, to act, to produce, to attempt the untried and the new, its principles operate in a way that rewards effort and achievement, and penalizes passivity.
This is one of the chief reasons for which it is denounced.
In Who Is Ayn Rand?, discussing the nineteenth-century attacks on capitalism, I wrote: "In the writings of both medievalists and socialists, one can observe the unmistakable longing for a society in which man's existence will be automatically guaranteed to him-that is, in which man will not have to bear responsibility for his own survival. Both camps project their ideal society as one characterized by that which they call 'harmony,' by freedom from rapid change or challenge or the exacting demands of competition; a society in which each must do his prescribed part to contribute to the well-being of the whole, but in which no one will face the necessity of making choices and decisions that will crucially affect his life and future; in which the question of what one has or has not earned, and does or does not deserve, will not come up; in which rewards will not be tied to achievement and in which someone's benevolence will guarantee that one need never bear the consequences of one's errors. The failure of capitalism to conform to what may be termed this pastoral view of existence, is essential to the medievalists' and socialists' indictment of a free society. It is not a Garden of Eden that capitalism offers men."
Among the arguments used by t
hose who long for a "pastoral" existence, is a doctrine which, translated into explicit statement, consists of: the divine right of stagnation.
This doctrine is illustrated in the following incident. Once, on a plane trip, I became engaged in conversation with an executive of a labor union. He began to decry the "disaster" of automation, asserting that increasing thousands of workers would be permanently unemployed as a result of new machines and that "something ought to be done about it." I answered that this was a myth that had been exploded many times; that the introduction of new machines invariably resulted in increasing the demand for labor as well as in raising the general standard of living; that this was demonstrable theoretically and observable historically. I remarked that automation increased the demand for skilled labor relative to unskilled labor, and that doubtless many workers would need to learn new skills. "But," he asked indignantly, "what about the workers who don't want to learn new skills? Why should they have troubles?"
This means that the ambition, the farsightedness, the drive to do better and still better, the living energy of creative men are to be throttled and suppressed-for the sake of men who have "thought enough" and "learned enough" and do not wish to be concerned with the future nor with the bothersome question of what their jobs depend on.
Alone on a desert island, bearing sole responsibility for his own survival, no man could permit himself the delusion that tomorrow is not his concern, that he can safely rest on yesterday's knowledge and skills, and that nature owes him "security." It is only in society-where the burden of a man's default can be passed to the shoulders of a man who did not default-that such a delusion can be indulged in. (And it is here that the morality of altruism becomes indispensable, to provide a sanction for such parasitism.) The claim that men doing the same type of job should all be paid the same wages, regardless of differences in their performance or output, thus penalizing the superior worker in favor of the inferior—this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
The claim that men should keep their jobs or be promoted on grounds, not of merit, but of seniority, so that the mediocrity who is "in" is favored above the talented newcomer, thus blocking the newcomer's future and that of his potential employer—this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
The claim that an employer should be compelled to deal with a specific union which has an arbitrary power to exclude applicants for membership, so that the chance to work at a certain craft is handed down from father to son and no newcomer can enter to threaten the established vested interests, thus blocking progress in the entire field, like the guild system of the Middle Ages—this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
The claim that men should be retained in jobs that have become unnecessary, doing work that is wasteful or superfluous, to spare them the difficulties of retraining for new jobs-thus contributing, as in the case of railroads, to the virtual destruction of an entire industry—this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
The denunciation of capitalism for such "iniquities" as allowing an old corner grocer to be driven out of business by a big chain store, the denunciation implying that the economic well-being and progress of the old grocer's customers and of the chain store owners should be throttled to protect the limitations of the old grocer's initiative or skill—this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
The court's decree, under the antitrust laws, that a successful business establishment does not have a right to its patents, but must give them, royalty-free, to a would-be competitor who cannot afford to pay for them (General Electric case, 1948)-this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
The court's edict convicting and blocking a business concern for the crime of farsightedness, the crime of anticipating future demand and expanding plant capacity to meet it, and of thereby possibly "discouraging" future competitors (ALCOA case, 1945)-this is the legal penalizing of growth, this is the penalizing of ability for being ability-and this is the naked essence and goal of the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.
Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress. It creates the optimum social conditions for man to respond to the challenges of nature in such a way as best to further his life. It operates to the benefit of all those who choose to be active in the productive process, whatever their level of ability. But it is not geared to the demands of stagnation. Neither is reality.
When one considers the spectacular success, the unprecedented prosperity, that capitalism has achieved in practice (even with hampering controls)-and when one considers the dismal failure of every variety of collectivism-it should be clear that the enemies of capitalism are not motivated, at root, by economic considerations. They are motivated by metaphysical considerations-by a rebellion against the human mode of survival, a rebellion against the fact that life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action-and by the dream that, if only they can harness the men who do not resent the nature of life, they will make existence tolerable for those who do resent it.
(August 1963)
17. Racism
by Ayn Rand
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage-the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas-or of inherited knowledge-which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.
The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to "protect the family name" (as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)-the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at Carnegie Hall (as if the achievements of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)-the parents who search genealogical trees in order to evaluate their prospective sons-in-law-the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history-all these are samples of racism, the atavistic manifestations of a doctrine whose full expression is the tribal warfare of prehistorical savages, the wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany, the atrocities of today's so-called "newly emerging nations."
The theory that holds "good blood" or "bad blood" as a moral-intellectual criterion, can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice. Brute force is the only avenue of action open to men who regard themselves as mindless aggregates of chemicals.
Modern racists attempt to prove the superiority or inferiority of a given race by the historical achievements of some of its members. The frequent historical spectacle of a great innovator who, in his lifetime, is jeered, denounced, obstructed, persecuted by his countrymen, and then, a few years after his death, is enshrined in a national monument and hailed as a proof of the greatness of the German (or French or Italian or Cambodian) race-is as revolting a spectacle of collectivist expropriation, perpetrated by racists, as any expropriation of material wealth perpetrated by communists.
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Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements-and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
Even if it were proved-which it is not-that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one's judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race-and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an inferior because his race has "produced" some brutes-or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has "produced" Goethe, Schiller and Brahms.
These are not two different claims, of course, but two applications of the same basic premise. The question of whether one alleges the superiority or the inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own inferiority.
Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned. It is a quest for automatic knowledge-for an automatic evaluation of men's characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgment-and, above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).