PREAMBLE:
Down through history various political and philosophical
movements have sprung up, but most of them have died. Some,
however, like Democracy or Communism, take hold and affect
the entire world. Here in the United States perhaps the
most challenging and unusual new philosophy has been forged
by a novelist, Ayn Rand, whose two major works, The
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, have been
best sellers. Miss Rand’s point of view is still comparatively
unknown in America, but if it ever did take hold it would
revolutionize our lives.
MIKE
WALLACE: Ayn, to begin with, I wonder if I can ask you to
capsulize your philosophy? What is Randism?
AYN
RAND: First of all, I do not call it Randism, and I don’t
like that name. I call it Objectivism, meaning a philosophy
based on objective reality. Now let me explain it as briefly
as I can.
First,
my philosophy is based on the concept that reality exists
as an objective absolute. That man’s mind, reason, is
his means of perceiving it. And that men need a rational morality.
I am primarily the creator of a new code of morality which
has so far been believed impossible. Namely, a morality not
based on faith, not on arbitrary whim, not on emotion, not
on arbitrary edict, mystical or social, but on reason. A morality
which can be proved by means of logic. Which can be demonstrated
to be true and necessary. Now may I define what my morality
is, because this is merely an introduction?
My
morality is based on man’s life as a standard of value.
And since man’s mind is his basic means of survival,
I hold that if man wants to live on earth, and to live as
a human being, he has to hold reason as an absolute. By which
I mean that he has to hold reason as his only guide to action.
And that he must live by the independent judgment of his own
mind. That his highest moral purpose is the achievement of
his own happiness. And that he must not force other people
nor accept their right to force him. That each man must live
as an end in himself and follow his own, rational, self-interest.
MIKE
WALLACE: Because you put this philosophy to work in your novel,
Atlas Shrugged. You demonstrate it, in human terms,
in your novel Atlas Shrugged. And let me start by
quoting from a review of this novel, Atlas Shrugged, that
appeared in Newsweek. It said that, “You are out to
destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American
way of life. Our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified, government-regulated
capitalism, our rule by the majority will.” Other reviews
have said that, “You scorn churches, and the concept
of God.” Are these accurate criticisms?
AYN
RAND: Ah . . . Yes. I agree with the facts, but not the estimate
of this criticism. Namely, if I am challenging the base of
all these institutions, I’m challenging the moral code
of altruism. The precept that man’s moral duty is to
live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others.
Which is the present day morality.
MIKE
WALLACE: What do you mean by “sacrifice himself for
others”? Now were getting to the point.
AYN
RAND: Since I’m challenging the base, I necessarily
will challenge the institutions you name, which are a result
of that morality. And now what is self-sacrifice?
MIKE
WALLACE: Yes. What is self-sacrifice? You say that you do
not like the altruism by which we live. You like a certain
kind of Ayn Randist selfishness.
AYN
RAND: I would say that “I don’t like” is
too weak a word. I consider [it] evil. And self-sacrifice
is the precept that man needs to serve others in order to
justify his existence. That his moral duty is to serve others.
That is what most people believe today.
MIKE
WALLACE: Yes, we’re taught to feel concern for our fellow
man. To feel responsible for his welfare. To feel that we
are, as religious people might put it, children under God,
and responsible one for the other. Now why do you rebel? What’s
wrong with this philosophy?
AYN
RAND: But that is in fact what makes man a sacrificial animal.
That man must work for others, concern himself with others,
or be responsible for them. That is the role of a sacrificial
object. I say that man is entitled to his own happiness. And
that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand
that others give up their lives to make him happy. And nor
should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others.
I hold that man should have self-esteem.
MIKE
WALLACE: And cannot man have self-esteem if he loves his fellow
man? What’s wrong with loving your fellow man? Christ,
every important moral leader in man’s history, has taught
us that we should love one another. Why then is this kind
of love in your mind immoral?
AYN
RAND: It is immoral if it is a love placed above oneself.
It is more than immoral, it’s impossible. Because when
you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately. That is
to love people without any standard. To love them regardless
of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to
love nobody.
MIKE
WALLACE: But in a sense, in your book you talk about love
as if it were a business deal of some kind. Isn’t the
essence of love, that it is above self-interest?
AYN
RAND: Well, let me make it concrete for you. What would it
mean to have a love above self-interest? It would mean, for
instance, that a husband would tell his wife, if he were moral
according to the conventional morality, that I am marring
you just for your own sake, I have no personal interest in
it, but I’m so unselfish, that I am marrying you only
for your own good. Would any woman like that?
MIKE
WALLACE: Should husbands and wives, Ayn, tally up at the end
of the day and say, “Well now wait a minute, I love
her if she’s done enough for me today, or she loves
me if I have properly performed my functions?”
AYN
RAND: No, you misunderstood me. That is not how love should
be treated. I agree with you that it should be treated like
a business deal. But every business has to have its own terms
and its own kind of currency. And in love the currency is
virtue. You love people not for what you do for them, or what
they do for you. You love them for their values, their virtues,
which they have achieved in their own character. You don’t
love causes. You don’t love everybody indiscriminately.
You love only those who deserve it.
MIKE
WALLACE: And then if a man is weak, or a woman is weak, then
she is beyond, he is beyond love?
AYN
RAND: He certainly does not deserve it, he certainly is beyond.
He can always correct it. Man has free will. If a man wants
love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he
may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, neither
in love, nor in money, neither in matter, nor spirit.
MIKE
WALLACE: You have lived in our world, and you realize…recognize…the
fallibility of human beings. There are very few of us, then,
in this world, by your standards, who are worthy of love.
AYN
RAND: Unfortunately . . . ye . . . very few. But it is open
to everybody, to make themselves worthy of it, and that is
all that my morality offers them. A way to make themselves
worthy of love, although that’s not the primary motive.
MIKE
WALLACE: Let’s move ahead. How does your philosophy
translate itself into the world of politics? Now one of the
principle achievements of this country in the past 20 years,
particularly, I think most people agree, is the gradual growth
of social and protective legislation based on the principle
that we are our brother’s keepers. How do you feel about
the political trends of the United States, the Western world?
AYN
RAND: The way everybody feels, except more consciously. I
feel that it is terrible, that you see destruction all around
you, and that you are moving toward disaster until, and unless,
all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and
rejected. It is precisely these trends which are bringing
the world to disaster, because we are now moving towards complete
collectivism, or socialism. A system under which everybody
is enslaved to everybody, and we are moving that way only
because of our altruist morality.
MIKE
WALLACE: Ah . . . Yes, but you say everybody is enslaved to
everybody, yet this came about democratically, Ayn. A free
people in a free country voted for this kind of government,
wanted this kind of legislation. Do you object to the democratic
process?
AYN
RAND: I object to the idea that the people have the right
to vote on everything. The traditional American system was
a system based on the idea that majority will prevailed only
in public or political affairs. And that it was limited by
inalienable individual rights, therefore I do not believe
that a majority can vote a man’s life, or property,
or freedom away from him. Therefore, I do not believe that
if a majority votes on any issue, that this makes the issue
right; it doesn’t.
MIKE
WALLACE: All right, then how do we arrive at action? How should
we arrive at action?
AYN
RAND: By voluntary consent, voluntary cooperation of free
men, unforced.
Mike
Wallace: And how do we arrive at our leadership? Who elects,
who appoints?
AYN
RAND: The whole people elects. There is nothing wrong with
the democratic process in politics. We arrive at it the way
we arrived by the American Constitution as it used to be.
By the constitutional powers, as we had it, people elect officials,
but the powers of those officials, the powers of government
are strictly limited. They will have no right to initiate
force or compulsion against any citizen, except a criminal.
Those who have initiated force will be punished by force,
and that is the only proper function of government. What we
would not permit is the government to initiate force against
people who have hurt no one, who have not forced anyone. We
would not give the government, or the majority, or any minority,
the right to take the life or the property of others. That
was the original American system.
Mike
Wallace: When you say, “take the property of others,”
I imagine that you are talking now about taxes.
AYN
RAND: Yes I am.
Mike
Wallace: And you believe there should be no right by the government
to tax. You believe that there should be no such thing as
welfare legislation, unemployment compensation, regulation
during times of stress, certain kinds of rent controls, and
things like that.
AYN
RAND: That’s right. I’m opposed to all forms of
control. I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated
economy. Let me put it briefly. I’m for the separation
of state and economics. Just as we had separation of state
and church, which led to peaceful co-existence among different
religions, after a period of religious wars, so the same applies
to economics. If you separate the government from economics,
if you do not regulate production and trade, you will have
peaceful cooperation, and harmony, and justice among men.
MIKE
WALLACE: You are certainly enough of a political scientist
to know that certain movements spring up in reaction to other
movements. The labor movement for instance, certain social
welfare legislation. This did not spring full blown from somebody’s
head. I mean, out of a vacuum. This was a reaction to certain
abuses that were going on, isn’t that true, Ayn?
AYN
RAND: Not always. It actually sprang up from the same source
as the abuses. If by abuses you mean the legislation which,
originally, had been established to help industrialists, which
was already a breach of complete free enterprise. If then,
in reaction, labor leaders get together to initiate legislation
to help labor, that is only acting on the same principle.
Namely, all parties agreeing that it is proper for the state
to legislate in favor of one economic group or another. What
I’m saying is that nobody should have the right, neither
employers nor employees, to use state compulsion and force
for their own interests.
MIKE
WALLACE: When you advocate completely unregulated economic
life in which every man works for his own profit, you are
asking in a sense for a devil-take-the-hindmost, dog-eat-dog
society, and one of the main reasons for the growth of government
controls was to fight the robber barons, to fight laissez-faire,
in which the very people whom you admire the most, Ayn, the
hard-headed industrialists, the successful men, perverted
the use of their power. Is that not true?
AYN
RAND: No, it isn’t. This country was made not by robber
barons, but by independent men, by industrialists, who succeeded
on sheer ability. By ability, I mean without political force,
help, or compulsion. But at the same time there were men,
industrialists, who did use government power as a club to
help them against competitors. They were the original collectivists.
Today, the liberals believe that the same compulsion should
be used against the industrialists for the sake of workers,
but the basic principle there is, “Should there be any
compulsion?” And the regulations are creating robber
barons, they are creating capitalists with government help,
which is the worst of all economic phenomenon.
MIKE
WALLACE: Ayn, I think that you will agree with me when I say
that you do not have a good deal of respect for the society
in which you and I currently live. You think that we’re
going downhill fairly fast. Now I would like you to think
about this question, and you’ll have a minute intermission
to ponder it and then come back and answer it, “Do you
predict dictatorship and economic disaster for the United
States if we continue on our present course? Do you?”
And we’ll get Ayn Rand’s answer in just a moment.
MIKE
WALLACE: And now back to our story. All right, Ayn Rand, what
I’d like to know is this, since you describe it as happening
in your novel Atlas Shrugged, do you actually predict dictatorship
and economic disaster for the United States?
AYN
RAND: If the present collectivist trend continues, if the
present anti-reason philosophy continues, yes, that is the
way the country is going. But, I do not believe in historical
determinism, and I do not believe that people have to go that
way. Men have the free will to choose and to think. If they
change their thinking we do not have to go into dictatorship.
MIKE
WALLACE: Yes, but how can you expect to reverse this trend,
when, as we’ve said, the country is run by majority
rule, through ballot, and that majority seems to prefer to
vote for this modified welfare state?
AYN
RAND: Oh, I don’t believe that. You know as well as
I do that the majority today has no choice. The majority has
never been offered a choice between controls and freedom.
MIKE
WALLACE: How do you account for the fact that an almost overwhelming
majority of the people, who are regarded as our leading intellectuals,
and our leading industrialists, the men whom you seem to admire
the most, the men with the muscle and the money, favor the
modified capitalism that we have today?
AYN
RAND: Ah . . . because it is an intellectual issue. Since
they all believe in collectivism, they do favor it, but the
majority of the people has never been given a choice. You
know that both parties today are for socialism, in effect,
for controls, and there is no party, there are no voices,
to offer an actual, pro-capitalist, laissez-faire, economic
freedom, and individualism. That is what this country needs
today.
MIKE
WALLACE: Isn’t it possible that they all, we all, believe
in it because we are all basically lonely people, and we all
understand that we are basically our brother’s keepers?
AYN
RAND: You couldn’t say that you really understand it,
because there is no way in which you could justify it. Nobody
has ever given a reason why men should be their brother’s
keepers, and you’ve had every example, and you see the
examples around you, of men perishing by the attempt to be
their brother’s keepers.
MIKE
WALLACE: You have no faith in anything.
AYN
RAND: Faith . . . no.
MIKE
WALLACE: Only in your mind.
AYN
RAND: That is not faith. That is a conviction. Yes . . . I
have no faith at all. I only hold convictions.
MIKE
WALLACE: Who are you, Ayn Rand? When I say that, I would like
to know just a little bit of your vital statistics. You have
an accent, which is?
AYN
RAND: Russian.
MIKE
WALLACE: You were born in Russia?
AYN
RAND: Yes.
MIKE
WALLACE: Came here?
AYN
RAND: Oh, about 30 years ago.
MIKE
WALLACE: And whence did this philosophy of yours come?
AYN
RAND: Out of my own mind, with the sole acknowledgement of
a debt to Aristotle, who is the only philosopher that ever
influenced me. I devised the rest of my philosophy myself.
MIKE
WALLACE: Your parents; did they die in Russia, or did they
come here to the United States?
AYN
RAND: No, I came here alone, and I don’t know, I have
no way of finding out, whether they died or not.
MIKE
WALLACE: You are married?
AYN
RAND: Yes.
MIKE
WALLACE: Your husband, is he an industrialist?
AYN
RAND: No. He’s an artist. His name is Frank O’Conner.
He paints. No, he’s not a writer.
MIKE
WALLACE: Does he live from his painting?
AYN
RAND: He’s just beginning to study painting. He was
a designer before.
MIKE
WALLACE: Is he supported in his efforts by the state?
AYN
RAND: Most certainly not.
MIKE
WALLACE: He’s supported by you for the time being?
AYN
RAND: No, by his own work, actually, in the past. By me if
necessary, but that isn’t quite necessary.
MIKE
WALLACE: There is no contradiction here, in that you help
him?
AYN
RAND: No, because you see I am in love with him selfishly.
It is to my own interest to help him if he ever needed it.
I would not call that a sacrifice, because I take selfish
pleasure in it.
MIKE
WALLACE: Let me put one specific case to you. Suppose under
your system of self-sufficiency, one single corporation were
to get a stranglehold on a vital product, or a raw material,
uranium for instance, which might be vital to the national
defense, and then would refuse to sell it to the government.
Then what?
AYN
RAND: Under a free system no one could acquire a monopoly
on anything. If you look at economics, and economic history,
you will discover that all monopolies have been established
with government help, with the help of franchises, subsidies,
or any kind of government privileges. In free competition
no one could corner the market on a needed product. History
will support me.
MIKE
WALLACE: There is a deposit of uranium in Nevada, it’s
the only one in the United States, and it’s our only
access to that, and for self-defense we need this. Whereas,
let’s say in the Soviet Union, the state is able to
command that. And if kind of a strange man, of strange beliefs,
got a hold of this uranium, and said, “I will not sell
this uranium to my government.” He should not be able
to be forced by the government (according to your philosophy)
to sell that uranium?
AYN
RAND: But you realize that you are setting up an impossible
fantasy. That is, if you are talking of any natural resource,
that is vitally needed, it could not become vitally needed
if it were that scarce. Not scarce to the point where one
man could control all of it. So long as (I’m using your
example) if a natural resource exists in more than one place
in the world, no one man is going to control it.
MIKE
WALLACE: All right, let’s take another. How do we build
roads, sanitation facilities, hospitals, schools? If you are
not…If the government is not permitted to force, if
you will, by vote, taxation, I’ll use your word, we
have to depend upon the trickle down theory, upon the noblesse
oblige, the largess.
AYN
RAND: I will answer you by asking you a question. Who pays
for all those things?
MIKE
WALLACE: All of us pay for these things.
AYN
RAND: When you admit that you want to take money, by force,
from someone and ask me how are we going to build hospitals,
or roads, you admit that someone is producing the money, the
wealth, that will make those roads possible. Now, you have
no right to tell the man who produced the wealth, in what
way you want him to spend it. If you need his money, you can
obtain it only by his voluntary consent.
MIKE
WALLACE: And you believe in the eventual goodwill of all human
beings, or at least that top echelon of human beings, whom
you believe will give willingly…
AYN
RAND: No goodwill is necessary, only self-interest. I believe
in private roads, private post offices, private schools.
MIKE
WALLACE: When industry breaks down momentarily, and there
is unemployment, mass unemployment, we should not be permitted
to get unemployment insurance, social security we do not need.
We’ll depend upon the self-interest of these enlightened
industrialists whom you so admire, to take care of things
when the economy needs a little lubrication and there are
millions of people out of work.
AYN
RAND: Study economics; a free economy will not break down.
All depressions are caused by government interference, and
the cure is always offered, so far, to take more of the poisons
that caused the disaster. Depressions are not a result of
a free economy.
MIKE
WALLACE: Ayn, one last question, we only have about a half
a minute. How many Randists, you don’t like the word,
I beg your pardon.
AYN
RAND: Objectivists.
MIKE
WALLACE: How many objectivists would you say they are in the
United States?
AYN
RAND: It’s hard to estimate, but I can tell you some
figures. My best intellectual heir, Nathaniel Brandon, a young
psychologist, is giving a series of lectures on my philosophy
in New York. He has received 600 letters of inquiry within
the month of January. He is giving these lectures and attendance
is growing in geometrical proportion.
MIKE
WALLACE: Ayn, I’m sure that you have stimulated a good
many people, more people than [you] already have, to read
your book Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead,
and I’m equally sure they will be stimulated for the
reading, indeed, if they do not agree.
AYN
RAND: Thank you.
MIKE
WALLACE: Thank you very much. As we said at the outset, “If
Ayn Rand’s ideas were ever to take hold, they would
revolutionize the world.” And to those who would reject
her philosophy, Miss Rand hurls this challenge. She has said,
“For the past 2000 years the world has been dominated
by other philosophies. Look around you, consider the results.”
We thank Ayn Rand for adding her portrait to our gallery.
One of the people other people are interested in. Mike Wallace…Good
Bye.
Phronesis
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