The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 15

["The Fascist New Frontier," pamphlet, 5.]

Look at Europe.... Can't you see past the guff and recognize the essence? One country is dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the collective is all. The individual held as evil, the ma.s.s-as G.o.d. No motive and no virtue permitted-except that of service to the proletariat. That's one version [communism]. Here's another. A country dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the State is all. The individual held as evil, the race-as G.o.d. No motive and no virtue permitted-except that of service to the race [fascism]. Am I raving or is this the cold reality of two continents already? Watch the pincer movement. If you're sick of one version, we push you into the other. We get you coming and going. We've closed the doors. We've fixed the coin. Heads-colectivism, and tails-collectivism. Fight the doctrine which slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give up your soul to a council-or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. My technique.... Offer poison as food and poison as antidote.

["The Soul of a Collectivist," FNI, 88; pb 76.]

[Adolf Hitler on n.a.z.ism and socialism:] "Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free s.p.a.ce, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Sociatism-not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper....

"[T]he people about us are unaware of what is really happening to them. They gaze fascinated at one or two familiar superficialities, such as possessions and income and rank and other outworn conceptions. As long as these are kept intact, they are quite satisfied. But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful social force has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are owners.h.i.+p and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories ? We socialize human beings."

[Adolf Hitler to Hermann Rauschning, quoted in Leonard Peikoff, OP, 248; pb 231.]

Through the agency of three new guilds (the Food Estate, the Estate of Trade and Industry, and the Labor Front), the government a.s.sumed control of every group of producers and consumers in the country. In accordance with the method of "German socialism," the facade of a market economy was retained. All prices, wages, and interest rates, however, were "fixed by the central authority. They [were] prices, wages, and interest rates in appearance only; in reality they [were] merely determinations of quant.i.ty relations in the government's orders.... This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism."

The nation's businessmen retained the responsibility to produce and suffered the losses attendant on failure. The state determined the purpose and conditions of their production, and reaped the benefits; directly or indirectly, it expropriated all profits. "The time is past," explained the n.a.z.i Minister of Economics, "when the notion of economic self-seeking and unrestricted use of profits made can be allowed to dominate.... The economic system must serve the nation."

"What a dummkopf I was!" cried steel baron Fritz Thyssen, an early n.a.z.i supporter, who fled the country....

As to Hitler's pledges to the poorer groups: the Republic's social insurance budgets were greatly increased, and a variety of welfare funds, programs, agencies, and policies were introduced or expanded, including special provisions for such items as unemployment relief, workmen's compensation, health insurance, pensions, Winter Help campaigns for the dest.i.tute, the Reich Mothers' Service for indigent mothers and children, and the National Socialist People's Welfare organization.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 246; pb 230.]

During the Hitler years-in order to finance the party's programs, including the war expenditures-every social group in Germany was mercilessly exploited and drained. White-collar salaries and the earnings of small businessmen were deliberately held down by government controls, freezes, taxes. Big business was bled by taxes and "special contributions" of every kind, and strangled by the bureaucracy.... At the same time the income of the farmers was held down, and there was a desperate flight to the cities-where the middle cla.s.s, especially the small tradesmen, were soon in desperate straits, and where the workers were forced to labor at low wages for increasingly longer hours (up to 60 or more per week).

But the n.a.z.is defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the n.a.z.i argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the n.a.z.is said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, socialism. In its n.a.z.i usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. "Socialism" for the n.a.z.is denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism-in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.

"To be a socialist," says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."

By this definition, the n.a.z.is practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.

[Ibid., 9; pb 19.]

See also ALTRUISM; CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; COMMUNISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FASCISM/n.a.z.iSM; MYSTICS OF SPIRIT and of MUSCLE; POLYLOGISM; RIGHTISTS vs. LEFTISTS; SOCIALISM; SOVIET RUSSIA; STATISM.

Femininity. For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-wors.h.i.+p-the desire to look up to man. "To look up" does not mean dependence, obedience or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgments. A "clinging vine" type of woman is not an admirer, but an exploiter of men. Hero-wors.h.i.+p is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and of the hero she wors.h.i.+ps. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her wors.h.i.+p is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack.

This does not mean that a feminine woman feels or projects hero-wors.h.i.+p for any and every individual man; as human beings, many of them may, in fact, he her inferiors. Her wors.h.i.+p is an abstract emotion for the metaphysical concept of masculinity as such-which she experiences fully and concretely only for the man she loves, but which colors her att.i.tude toward all men. This does not mean that there is a romantic or s.e.xual intention in her att.i.tude toward all men; quite the contrary: the higher her view of masculinity, the more severely demanding her standards. It means that she never loses the awareness of her own s.e.xual ident.i.ty and theirs. It means that a properly feminine woman does not treat men as if she were their pal, sister, mother-or leader.

["An Answer to Readers (About a Woman President)," TO, Dec. 1968, 1.]

See also CAREER; INDEPENDENCE; LOVE; s.e.x; VIRTUE.

Final Causation. In order to make the choices required to achieve his goals, a man needs the constant, automatized awareness of the principle which the anti-concept "duty" has all but obliterated in his mind: the principle of causality-specincaity, of Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being), i.e., the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it.

In a rational ethics, it is causality-not "duty"-that serves as the guiding principle in considering, evaluating and choosing one's actions, particularly those necessary to achieve a long-range goal. Following this principle, a man does not act without knowing the purpose of his action. In choosing a goal, he considers the means required to achieve it, he weighs the value of the goal against the difficulties of the means and against the full, hierarchical context of all his other values and goals. He does not demand the impossible of himself, and he does not decide too easily which things are impossible. He never drops the context of the knowledge available to him, and never evades reality, realizing fully that his goal will not be granted to him by any power other than his own action, and, should he evade, it is not some Kantian authority that he would be cheating, but himself.

["Causality Versus Duty," PWNI, 119; pb 99.]

Only a process of final causation-i.e., the process of choosing a goal, then taking the steps to achieve it-can give logical continuity, coherence and meaning to a man's actions.

["Basic Principles of Literature," RM, 60; pb 82.]

See also "ANTI-CONCEPTS"; CONTEXT-DROPPlNG; "DUTY"; GOAL-DIRECTED ACTION; KANT, IMMANUEL; PURPOSE; STANDARD of VALUE; TELEOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT.

Focus. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality-or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, a.s.sociational connections it might happen to make.

When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man-in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being-an unfocused mind is not conscious.

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

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 13; pb 20.]

"Focus" designates a quality of one's mental state, a quality of active alertness. "Focus" means the state of a goal-directed mind committed to attaining full awareness of reality. It's the state of a mind committed to seeing, to grasping, to understanding, to knowing.

"Full awareness" does not mean omniscience. It means: commitment to grasp all the facts relevant to one's concern and activity at any given time ... as against a splintered grasp, a grasp of some facts while others which you know to be relevant are left in fog. By "full" I include also the commitment to grasp the relevant facts clearly, with the fullest clarity and precision one is capable of.

"Focus" is not synonymous with "thinking," in the sense of step-by-step problem-solving or the drawing of new conclusions. You may be walking down the street, merely contemplating the sights, but you can do it in focus or out of focus. "In focus" would mean you have some purpose directing your mental activity-in this case, a simple one: to observe the sights. But this is still a purpose, and it implies that you know what you are doing mentally, that you have set yourself a goal and are carrying it out, that you have a.s.sumed the responsibility of taking control of your consciousness and directing it....

The process of focus is not the same as the process of thought; it is the precondition of thought.... Just as you must first focus your eyes, and then, if you choose, you can turn your gaze systematically to the objects on the table in front of you and inventory them, so first you must focus your mind, and then, when you choose, you can direct that focus to the step-by-step resolution of a specific problem-which latter is thinking.

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 3.]

[In answer to the question "What is the difference between concentration and focus?"]

Briefly: concentration means undivided attention on some particular task or object.... It is an attention, an activity, devoted to a particular subject. Now, focus is more fundamental than that. You need to be in focus in order to concentrate, but focus is the particular "set" of your consciousness which is not delimited by the particular task, object, or action that you are concentrating on. You do have to focus on something, but focus is not [limited to] the continuing task that you are performing. The concept "focus" isn't tied to the concrete ... it remains the same no matter what you are focused on. It is the "set" of your mind.

[Ayn Rand, question period following Lecture 6 of Leonard Peikoff's series "The Philosophy of Objectivism" (1976).]

See also CONSCIOUSNESS; EVASION; FREE WILL; MORALITY; RATIONALITY; THOUGHT/THINKING.

Foreign Policy. We do need a policy based on long-range principles, i.e., an ideology. But a revision of our foreign policy, from its basic premises on up, is what today's anti-ideologists dare not contemplate. The worse its results, the louder our public leaders proclaim that our foreign policy is bipartisan.

A proper solution would be to elect statesmen-if such appeared-with a radically different foreign policy, a policy explicitly and proudly dedicated to the defense of America's rights and national self-interests, repudiating foreign aid and all forms of international self-immolation.

["The Wreckage of the Consensus," CUI, 226.]

The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade-i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges-the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and compet.i.tion among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another. During the nineteenth century, it was free trade that liberated the world, undercutting and wrecking the remnants of feudalism and the statist tyranny of absolute monarchies.

["The Roots of War," CUI, 39.]

PLAYBOY: What about force in foreign policy? You have said that any free nation had the right to invade n.a.z.i Germany during World WarII...

RAND: Certainly.

PLAYBOY: ... And that any free nation today has the moral right-though not the duty-to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other "slave pen." Correct?

RAND: Correct. A dictators.h.i.+p-a country that violates the rights of its own citizens-is an outlaw and can claim no rights.

PLAYBOY: Would you actively advocate that the United States invade Cuba or the Soviet Union?

RAND: Not at present. I don't think it's necessary. I would advocate that which the Soviet Union fears above all else: economic boycott, I would advocate a blockade of Cuba and an economic boycott of Soviet Russia; and you would see both of those regimes collapse without the loss of a single American life.

PLAYBOY: Would you favor U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations?

RAND: Yes. I do not sanction the grotesque pretense of an organization allegedly devoted to world peace and human rights, which includes Soviet Russia, the worst aggressor and bloodiest butcher in history, as one of its members. The notion of protecting rights, with Soviet Russia among the protectors, is an insult to the concept of rights and to the intelligence of any man who is asked to endorse or sanction such an organization. I do not believe that an individual should cooperate with criminals, and, for all the same reasons, I do not believe that free countries should cooperate with dictators.h.i.+ps.

PLAYBOY: Would you advocate severing diplomatic relations with Russia ?

RAND: Yes.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 11.]

Russia, like n.a.z.i Germany, like any bully, feeds on appeas.e.m.e.nt and will retreat placatingly at the first sound of firm opposition.

["U.S. Position on Cuba Endangered by U.N.," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 11, 1962.]

When certain statist groups, counting, apparently, on a total collapse of American self-esteem, dare go so far as to urge America's surrender into slavery without a fight, under the slogan "Better Red Than Dead"- the "conservatives" rush to proclaim that they prefer to be dead, thus helping to spread the idea that our only alternative is communism or destruction, forgetting that the only proper answer to an ultimatum of that kind is: "Better See The Reds Dead."

["Choose Your Issues," TON,jan. 1962, 1.]

See also "COLLECTIVE RIGHTS"; COMMUNISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; DRAFT; FREEDOM; GOVERNMENT; IDEOLOGY; "ISOLATIONISM"; NATIONAL RIGHTS; PACIFISM; PEACE MOVEMENTS; SELF-DEFENSE; SELF-DETERMINATION of NATIONS; SOVIET RUSSlA; UNITED NATIONS; WAR.

Founding Fathers. The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness-which means: man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders, by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 62; pb 53.]

The Founding Fathers were neither pa.s.sive, death-wors.h.i.+pping mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group, they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action. They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries: the impotence of man's mind and the d.a.m.nation of this earth; they had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man's metaphysical fate, they proclaimed man's right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man's proper existence, by the "unaided" power of their intellect.

[Ibid., 23; pb 25.]

In the modern world, under the influence of the pervasive new climate, a succession of thinkers developed a new conception of the nature of government. The most important of these men and the one with the greatest influence on America was John Locke. The political philosophy Locke bequeathed to the Founding Fathers is what gave rise to the new nation's distinctive inst.i.tutions. That political philosophy is the social implementation of the Aristotelian spirit.

Throughout history the state had been regarded, implicitly or explicitly, as the ruler of the individual-as a sovereign authority (with or without supernatural mandate), an authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit. The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual. The individual, they held, logically precedes the group or the inst.i.tution of government. Whether or not any social organization exists, each man possesses certain indinidual rights. And "among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"-or, in the words of a New Hamps.h.i.+re state doc.u.ment, "among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness."

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, III; pb 109.]

The genius of the Founding Fathers was their ability not only to grasp the revolutionary ideas of the period, but to devise a means of implementing those ideas in practice, a means of translating them from the realm of philosophic abstraction into that of sociopolitical reality. By defining in detail the division of powers within the government and the ruling procedures, including the brilliant mechanism of checks and balances, they established a system whose operation and integrity were independent, so far as possible, of the moral character of any of its temporary officials-a system impervious, so far as possible, to subversion by an aspiring dictator or by the public mood of the moment.

The heroism of the Founding Fathers was that they recognized an unprecedented opportunity, the chance to create a country of individual liberty for the first time in history-and that they staked everything on their judgment: the new nation and their own "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor."

[Ibid., 114; pb 112.]

"I have sworn upon the altar of G.o.d, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Jefferson-and the other Founding Fathers-meant it. They did not confine their efforts to the battle against theocracy and monarchy; they fought, on the same grounds, invoking the same principle of individual rights-against democracy, i.e., the system of unlimited majority rule. They recognized that the cause of freedom is not advanced by the multiplication of despots, and they did not propose to subst.i.tute the tyranny of a mob for that of a handful of autocrats....

When the framers of the American republic spoke of "the people," they did not mean a collectivist organism one part of which was authorized to consume the rest. They meant a sum of individuals, each of whom-whether strong or weak, rich or poor-retains his inviolate guarantee of individual rights.

[Ibid., 113; pb III.) The political philosophy of America's Founding Fathers is so thoroughly buried under decades of statist misrepresentations on one side and empty lip-service on the other, that it has to be re-discovered, not ritualistically repeated. It has to be rescued from the shameful barnacles of plat.i.tudes now hiding it. It has to be expanded-because it was only a magnificent beginning, not a completed job, it was only a pulitical philosophy without a full philosophical and moral foundation, which the "conservatives" cannot provide.

["It Is Earlier Than You Think," TON, Dec. 1964, 52.]

See also AMERICA; ARISTOTLE; CONSt.i.tUTION; ENLIGHTENMENT, AGE of; FREEDOM; INDIVIDUALISM; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LIFE, RIGHT to; PURSUIT of HAPPINESS, RIGHT to; RELIGION; REPUBLIC; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY.

Fraud. A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right -i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without then owner's consent, under false pretenses or false promises.

["The Nature of Government." VOS, 150; ph III.]

See also CONTRACTS: PHYSICAL FORCE.

Free Market. In a free economy, where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone, economic power can be achieved only by voluntarymeans: by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who partic.i.p.ate in the process of production and trade. In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined-not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone's "greed" or by anyone's need-but by the law of supply and demand. The mechanism of a free market reflects and sums up all the economic choices and decisions made by all the partic.i.p.ants. Men trade their goods or services by mutual consent to mutual advantage, according to their own independent, uncoerced judgment. A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values-better products or services, at a lower price - than others are able to offer.

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

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 47.]

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

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 23; pb 25.]

The free market represents the social application of an objective theory of values. Since values are to be discovered by man's mind, men must be free to discover them-to think, to study, to translate their knowledge into physical form, to offer their products for trade, to judge them, and to choose, be it material goods or ideas, a loaf of bread or a philosophical treatise. Since values are established contextually, every man must judge for himself, in the context of his own knowledge, goals, and interests. Since values are determined by the nature of reality, it is reality that serves as men's ultimate arbiter: if a man's judgment is right, the rewards are his; if it is wrong, he is his only victim.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 24.]

Now observe that a free market does not level men down to some common denominator-that the intellectual criteria of the majority do not rule a free market or a free society-and that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.

A free market is a rontinuous process that cannot be held still, an upward process that demands the best (the most rational) of every man and rewards him accordingly. While the majority have barely a.s.similated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority is free to demonstrate. The "philosophically objective" value of a new product serves as the teacher for those who are willing to exercise their rational faculty, each to the extent of his ability. those who are unwilling remain unrewarded-as well as those who aspire to more than their ability produces. The stagnant, the irrational, the subjectivist have no power to stop their betters....

The mental parasites-the imitators who attempt to cater to what they think is the public's known taste-are constantly being beaten by the innovators whose products raise the public's knowledge and taste to ever higher levels. It is in this sense that the free market is ruled, not by the consumers, but by the producers. The most successful ones are those who discover new fields of production, fields which had not been known to exist.

A given product may not be appreciated at once, particularly if it is too radical an innovation; but, barring irrelevant accidents, it wins in the long run. It is in this sense that the free market is not ruled by the intellectual criteria of the majority, which prevail only at and for any given moment; the free market is ruled by those who are able to see and plan tong-range-and the better the mind, the longer the range.

[Ibid., 25.]

All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.

["America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CUI, 48.]

See also CAPITALISM; INTERVENTIONISM (ECONOMIC); MARKET VALUE.

Free Speech. Freedom of speech means freedom from interference, suppression or punitive action by the government-and nothing else. It does not mean the right to demand the financial support or the material means to express your views at the expense of other men who may not wish to support you. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree, not to listen and not to support one's own antagonists. A "right" does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort. Private citizens cannot use physical force or coercion; they cannot censor or suppress anyone's views or publications. Only the government can do so. And censors.h.i.+p is a concept that pertains only to governmental action.

["The Fascist New Frontier," pamphlet, 10.]

While people are clamoring about "economic rights," the concept of political rights is vanis.h.i.+ng. It is forgotten that the right of free speech means the freedom to advocate one's views and to bear the possible consequences, including disagreement with others, opposition, unpopularity and lack of support. The political function of "the right of free speech" is to protect dissenters and unpopular minorities from forcible suppression-not to guarantee them the support, advantages and rewards of a popularity they have not gained.

The Bill of Rights reads: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ..." It does not demand that private citizens provide a microphone for the man who advocates their destruction, or a pa.s.skey for the burglar who seeks to rob them, or a knife for the murderer who wants to cut their throats.

["Man's Rights," VOS, 133; pb 99.]