The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism From A To Z Part 41

. ["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 18.]

A social system is a code of laws which men observe in order to live together. Such a code must have a basic principle, a starting point, or it cannot be devised. The starting point is the question: Is the power of society limited or unlimited?

Individualism answers: The power of society is limited by the inalienable, individual rights of man. Society may make only such laws as do not violate these rights.

Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 3.]

See also CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; GOVERNMENT; IDEOLOGY; INDIVIDUALISM; MORALITY; POLITICS; SOCIETY.

Social Theory of Ethics. The social theory of ethics subst.i.tutes "society" for G.o.d-and although it claims that its chief concern is life on earth, it is not the life of man, not the life of an individual, but the life of a disembodied ent.i.ty, the collective, which, in relation to every individual, consists of everybody except himself. As far as the individual is concerned, his ethical duty is to be the selfless, voiceless, rightless slave of any need, claim or demand a.s.serted by others. The motto "dog eat dog"-which is not applicable to capitalism nor to dogs-is applicable to the social theory of ethics. The existential monuments to this theory are n.a.z.i Germany and Soviet Russia.

["The Objectivist Ethics," VOS, 33; pb 34.]

The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable "will of G.o.d" as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with "the good of society," thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as "the standard of the good is that which is good for society." This meant, in logic-and, today, in worldwide practice-that "society" stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since "the good" is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to a.s.sert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that "society" may do anything it pleases, since "the good" is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And-since there is no such ent.i.ty as "society," since society is only a number of individual men-this meant that some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically ent.i.tled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang's desires.

[Ibid., 3; pb 14.]

See also G.o.d; GOOD, the; INDIVIDUALISM; INTRINSIC THEORY of VALUES: MORALITY; MYSTICAL ETHICS; OBJECTIVE THEORY of VALUES; SOCIETY; STANDARD of VALUE; STATISM; VALUES.

Socialism. Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 48; pb 43.]

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 n.a.z.i (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.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure-terrifying, that is, if one's motive is men's welfare.

Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/ or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly.

["The Monument Builders," VOS, 112; pb 86.]

There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism-and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy-that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all comers, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.

When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as "human rights" versus "property rights." No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the "right" to "redistribute" the wealth produced by others is claiming the "right" to treat human beings as chattel.

[Ibid.. 120;pb91.]

When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape from the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed-wire fences, under machine-gun fire-one can no longer believe that socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and by the desire to achieve men's welfare.

No man of authentic benevolence could evade or ignore so great a horror on so vast a scale.

Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those b.l.o.o.d.y fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.

[Ihid.. 115; pb 87.]

The socialists had a certain kind of logic on their side: if the collective sacrifice of all to all is the moral ideal, then they wanted to establish this ideal in practice, here and on this earth. The arguments that socialism would not and could not work, did not stop them: neither has altruism ever worked, but this has not caused men to stop and question it. Only reason can ask such questions-and reason, they were told on all sides, has nothing to do with morality, morality lies outside the realm of reason, no rational morality can ever be defined.

The fallacies and contradictions in the economic theories of socialism were exposed and refuted time and time again, in the Nineteenth Century as well as today. This did not and does not stop anyone: it is not an issue of economics, but of morality. The intellectuals and the so-called idealists were determined to make socialism work. How? By that magic means of all irrationalists: somehow.

["Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," PWNI, 82: pb 68.]

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism-by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

["Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 9. 1962 G2.]

Both "socialism" and "fascism" involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates "the vesting of owners.h.i.+P and control" in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves owners.h.i.+p in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.

Owners.h.i.+p without control is a contradiction in terms: it means "property," without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.

In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I sav "more honest," not "better"-because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government-and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.

["The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus," CUI, 202.]

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.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 10; pb 19.]

See also ALTRUISM; CAPITALISM; COLLECTIVISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; EGALITARIANISM; FASCISM and COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM; GUILD SOCIALISM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; "LIBERALS"; NEW LEFT; POVERTY; PROPERTY RIGHTS; "PUBLIC PROPERTY"; "REDISTRIBUTION" of WEALTH; SOCIETY; SOVIET RUSSIA; STATISM; TRIBALISM; TYRANNY.

Society. Society is a large number of men who live together in the same country, and who deal with one another.

["Textbook of Americanism," pamphlet, 9.]

Modern collectivists ... see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural ent.i.ty apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

["Collectivized 'Rights,' " VOS, 138; pb 103.]

A great deal may be learned about society by studying man; but this process cannot be reversed: nothing can be learned about man by studying society-by studying the inter-relations.h.i.+ps of ent.i.ties one has never identified or defined.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 15.]

See also COLLECTIVISM; INDIVIDUALISM.

Soul-Body Dichotomy. They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth-and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.

They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost-yet such is their image of man's nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists.

Do you observe what human faculty that doctrine was designed to ignore? It was man's mind that had to be negated in order to make him fall apart. Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of two monsters whom he could not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelations-he was left as the pa.s.sively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.

[GS, FNI, 170; pb 138.]

You are an indivisible ent.i.ty of matter and consciousness. Renounce your consciousness and you become a brute. Renounce your body and you become a fake. Renounce the material world and you surrender it to evil.

[Ibid., 175; pb 142. ]

As products of the split between man's soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both demand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims: in matter-the enslavement of man's body, in spirit-the destruction of his mind.

[Ibid., 171; pb 138.]

The New Intellectual ... will discard ... the soul-body dichotomy. He will discard its irrational conflicts and contradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versus desire, the practical versus the moral. He will be an integrated man, that is: a thinker who is a man of action. He will know that ideas divorced from consequent action are fraudulent, and that action divorced from ideas is suicidal. He will know that the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology-the volitional level of reason and thought-is the basic necessity of man's survival and his greatest moral virtue. He will know that men need philosophy for the purpose of living on earth.

["For the New Intellectual," FNI, 59; pb 51.]

See also a.n.a.lYTIC-SYNTHETIC DICHOTOMY; CONSCIOUSNESS; EMOTIONS; EXISTENCE; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; LIFE; MAN; MORAL-PRACTICAL DICHOTOMY; MYSTICS of SPIRIT and of MUSCLE; RATIONALISM vs. EMPIRICISM; RELIGION; REASON; THEORY-PRACTICE DICHOTOMY.

Soviet Russia. 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 Repubtics-or by vote, as in n.a.z.i (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.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. The results have been a terrifying failure-terrifying, that is, if one's motive is men's welfare.

Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/ or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. the consequences have varied accordingly.

In more fully socialized countries, famine was the start, the insignia announcing socialist rule-as in Soviet Russia, as in Red China, as in Cuba. In those countries, socialism reduced the people to the unspeakable poverty of the pre-industrial ages, to literal starvation, and has kept them on a stagnant level of misery.

No, it is not "just temporary," as socialism's apologists have been saying-for half a century. After forty-five years of government planning, Russia is still unable to solve the problem of feeding her population.

As far as superior productivity and speed of economic progress are concerned, the question of any comparisons between capitalism and socialism has been answered once and for all-for any honest person-by the present difference between West and East Berlin.

Instead of peace, socialism has introduced a new kind of gruesome lunacy into international relations-the "cold war," which is a state of chronic war with undeclared periods of peace between wantonly sudden invasions-with Russia seizing one-third of the globe, with socialist tribes and nations at one another's throats, with socialist India invading Goa, and communist China invading socialist India.

An eloquent sign of the moral corruption of our age is the callous complacency with which most of the socialists and their sympathizers, the "liberals," regard the atrocities perpetrated in socialistic countries and accept rule by terror as a way of life-while posturing as advocates of "human brotherhood." ...

In the name of "humanity," they condone and accept the following: the abolition of all freedom and all rights, the expropriation of all property, executions without trial, torture chambers, slave-labor camps, the ma.s.s slaughter of countless millions in Soviet Russia-and the b.l.o.o.d.y horror of East Berlin, including the bullet-riddled bodies of fleeing children.

When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape from the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed-wire fences, under machine-gun fire-one can no longer believe that socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and by the desire to achieve men's welfare.

No man of authentic benevolence could evade or ignore so great a horror on so vast a scale.

["The Monument Builders," VOS, 112; pb 86.]

The collectivization of Soviet agriculture was achieved by means of a government-planned famine-planned and carried out deliberately to force peasants into collective farms; Soviet Russia's enemies claim that fifteen million peasants died in that famine; the Soviet government admits the death of seven million.

At the end of World War II, Soviet Russia's enemies claimed that thirty million people were doing forced labor in Soviet concentration camps (and were dying of planned malnutrition, human lives being cheaper than food); Soviet Russia's apologists admit to the figure of twelve million people.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 34.]

When you hear the liberals mumble that Russia is not really socialistic, or that it was all Stalin's fault, or that socialism never had a real chance in England, or that what they advocate is something that's different somehow-you know that you are hearing the voices of men who haven't a leg to stand on, men who are reduced to some vague hope that "somehow, my gang would have done it better."

The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a n.o.ble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. If service and self-sacrifice are a moral ideal, and if the "selfishness" of human nature prevents men from leaping into sacrificial furnaces, there is no reason-no reason that a mystic moralist could name-why a dictator should not push them in at the point of bayonets-for their own good, or the good of humanity, or the good of posterity, or the good of the latest bureaucrat's latest five-year plan. There is no reason that they can name to oppose any atrocity. The value of a man's life? His right to exist? His right to pursue his own happiness? These are concepts that belong to individualism and capitatism-to the ant.i.thesis of the altruist morality.

["Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," PWNI, 84; pb 69.]

Half a century ago, the Soviet rulers commanded their subjects to be patient, bear privations, and make sacrifices for the sake of "industrializing" the country, promising that this was only temporary, that industrialization would bring them abundance, and Soviet progress would surpa.s.s the capitalistic West.

Today, Soviet Russia is still unable to feed her people-while the rulers scramble to copy, borrow, or steal the technological achievements of the West. Industrialization is not a static goal; it is a dynamic process with a rapid rate of obsolescence. So the wretched serfs of a planned tribal economy, who starved while waiting for electric generators and tractors, are now starving while waiting for atomic power and interplanetary travel. Thus, in a "people's state," the progress of science is a threat to the people, and every advance is taken out of the people's shrinking hides.

["What Is Capitalism?" CUI, 29.]

Under the inept government of the Czars and with the most primitive methods of agriculture, Russia was a major grain exporter. The unusually fertile soil of the Ukraine alone was (and is) capable of feeding the entire world. Whatever natural conditions are required for growing wheat, Russia had (and has) them in overabundance. That Russia should now be on a list of hungry, wheat-begging importers, is the most d.a.m.ning indictment of a collectivist economy that reality can offer us.

["Hunger and Freedom," ARL, III, 22, 4.]

Early in 1960, Anatoly Marchenko, a twenty-two-year-old laborer in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, happened to be present when a brawl erupted among some workers in a hostel. Every person found on the scene-innocent or guilty-was arrested and sent to a Siberian prison camp. Marchenko was one of them. He escaped from the camp and fled toward the Iranian border. Fifty yards from it, he was captured. While Western "humanitarians" were loudly applauding the "new liberalism" of the Khrushchev regime, Anatoly Marchenko was convicted of high treason and sentenced to six years in Russia's concentration camps.

My Testimony is Marchenko's report on those years. "When I was locked up in Vladimir Prison I was often seized by despair," he writes in his preface. "Hunger, illness, and above all helplessness, the sheer impossibility of struggling against evil, provoked me to the point where I was ready to hurl myself upon my jailers with the sole aim of being killed. Or to put an end to myself in some other way. Or to maim myself as I had seen others do.

"One thing alone prevented me, one thing alone gave me the strength to live through that nightmare: the hope that I would eventually come out and tell the whole world what I had seen and experienced. I promised myself that for the sake of this aim I would suffer and endure everything. And I gave my word on this to my comrades who were doomed to spend many more years behind bars and barbed wire." ...

Marchenko's account of his life in Vladimir [prison] is so horrifying that it becomes, at times, almost impossible to continue reading. Anyone who doubts the nature of the Soviet system should read every word....

For more than fifty years, the West's liberal intellectuals have proclaimed their love for mankind, while being bored by the rivers of blood pouring out of the Soviet Union. Professing their compa.s.sion for human suffering, they have none for the victims in Russia. Unable or unwilling to give up their faith in collectivism, they evade the existence of Soviet atrocities, of terror, secret police and concentration camps-and publish glowing tributes to Soviet technology, production and art. Posturing as hurnanitarians, they man the barricades to fight the "injustice," "exploitation," "repression," and "persecution" they claim to find in America: as to the full reality of such things in Russia, they keep silent.

If anyone has any doubts about the moral meaning of the liberals' position, let him read-and reread-every detail of Marchenko's experiences. Let him remember that these horrors are not accidental in the Soviet Union and are not a matter of a particular dictator's character. They are inherent in the system. They are the inevitable products of a fully collectivist society.

If anyone has any doubts about the evil of establis.h.i.+ng cultural exchange programs or of building "trade-bridges" to the Soviet Union or of buying the products of slave labor, let him remember how Marchenko felt when he stood in front of a shop window in Moscow, after his release. "That television set has cost my friends our sweat, our health, roasting in the cooler and long hours during roll-call in the rain and snow. Look closely at that polished surface: can you not see reflected in it the close-shaven head, the yellow, emaciated face, and the black cotton tunic of a convict? Maybe it's a former friend of yours?"

[Susan Ludel, review of Anatoly Marchenko's My Testimony, TO, July 1970, 10.]

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 those regimes collapse without the loss of a single American life.

["Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, 13. ]

It is immoral for the U.S. (and for all free or semi-free countries) to engage in any undertaking with Soviet Russia as a partner. It is particularly immoral if the undertaking is intellectual or cultural. Such a partners.h.i.+p necessarily implies and proclaims the acceptance of Soviet Russia as a peaceful, well-meaning, civilized country.

["Comments on the Moscow Olympics," The Intellectual Activist, Feb. 1, 1980, p. 1.]

There is only one form of protest open to the men of goodwill in the semi-free world: do not sanction the Soviet jailers of [the dissidents]-do not help them to pretend that they are the morally acceptable leaders of a civilized country. Do not patronize or support the evil pretense of the so-called "cultural exchanges"-any Soviet-government-sponsored scientists, professors, writers, artists, musicians, dancers (who are either vicious bootlickers or doomed, tortured victims). Do not patronize, support or deal with any Soviet supporters and apologists in this country: they are the guiltiest men of all.

["The 'Inexplicable Personal Alchemy,' " NL, 125.]

See also ALTRUISM; AMERICA; COLLECTIVISM; COMMUNISM; COMPROMISE; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; FASCISM and COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM; FOREIGN POLICY; INDIVIDUALISM; "LIBERALS"; PROPERTY RIGHTS; SACRIFICE; SANCTION; SOCIALLSM; STATISM: TYRANNY; UNITED NATIONS.

s.p.a.ce. "s.p.a.ce," like "time," is a relational concept. It does not designate an ent.i.ty, but a relations.h.i.+p, which exists only within the universe. The universe is not in s.p.a.ce any more than it is in time. To be "in a position" means to have a certain relations.h.i.+p to the boundary of some container. E.g.. you are in New York: there is a point of the earth's surface on which you stand-that's your spatial position: your relation to this point. All it means to say "There is s.p.a.ce between two objects" is that they occupy different positions. In this case, you are focusing on two relations.h.i.+ps-the relations.h.i.+p of one ent.i.ty to its container and of another to its container-simultaneously.

The universe, therefore, cannot be anywhere. Can the universe be in Boston? Can it be in the Milky Way? Places are in the universe, not the other way around.

Is the universe then unlimited in size? No. Everything which exists is finite, including the universe. What then, you ask, is outside the universe, if it is finite? This question is invalid. The phrase "outside the universe" has no referent. The universe is everything. "Outside the universe" stands for "that which is where everything isn't." There is no such place. There isn't even nothing "out there"; there is no "out there."

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976). Lecture 2.]