Welcome to the philosophy page. As is probably obvious, we are Objectivists. This page of our site may give the reader some idea of whence our political ideas originate. Politics does not occur in a vacuum. Neither does a system of ethics. Both of these are actually outcomes of the science of thought called philosophy. It is philosophy that fathers a civilization, a culture, an art form, the sciences, politics, even - and especially - economics. What kind of philosophy one embraces will determine how one lives. Even the belief that philosophy itself is irrelevant, too highbrow, too impractical, too abstract --these particular ideas are a product of a particular kind of philosophy -- a bad one. Man is the rational animal. By nature, man is also a philosophical animal. It is impossible for any man to escape the consequences of the science of ideas in his life. We think it's important, then, to examine the ideas of the most rational, consistent, practical and ethical philosopher mankind has ever known: Ayn Rand. This page will introduce you directly to the ideas of the late Miss Rand and her philosophical heir, Dr. Leonard Peikoff. Most of the original sources of the following quotes and excerpts are cited. Many of these passages are requoted in The Ayn Rand Lexicon, edited by Harry Binswanger, c. 1986 by Harry Binswanger. Meridian publishes most of the Objectivist library of books. We have culled the excerpts we believe are most applicable to the proper assertion and defense of Individual Rights in general. They are arranged in order of likely general interest, and listed under topical headings. These will give you just a taste of Objectivism. Perhaps you will find your own ideas well expressed in some of the passages below. Enjoy the reading. Jeanne E. Faulkner |
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CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: EVIL: The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics--the standard by which one judges what is good or evil--is man's life, or: that which is required for man's survival qua man. Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil. From: The Objectivist Ethics, from The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think--not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment--on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict 'It is.' From: Galt's Speech as reprinted in For the New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand, C. 1961
As a being of volitional consciousness, [man] knows that he must know his own value in order to maintain his own life. He knows that he has to be right; to be wrong in action means danger to his life; to be wrong in person, to be evil, means to be unfit for existence…. No man can survive the moment of pronouncing himself irredeemably evil; should he do it, his next moment is insanity or suicide. From: Ibid., 221; pb 176
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. From: The Anatomy of Compromise, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. Excerpt from: Galt's Speech, from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, C. 1957
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action--which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a ration being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) The concept of a 'right' pertains only to action--specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive--of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights. From: Man's Rights, Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
Man holds these rights, not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective--as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross;…these rights are man's protection against all other men. From: Textbook of Americanism, pamphlet, by Ayn Rand, 5.
The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A--and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man's rights is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life. Excerpt from: Galt's Speech, by Ayn Rand, as quoted in For the New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand, C. 1961
The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that Man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man's existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness. From: Textbook of Americanism, by Ayn Rand, pamphlet, 5.
Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another. For instance, a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another. He has the right to be free, but no right to enslave another. He has the right to choose his own happiness, but no right to decide that his happiness lies in the misery (or murder or robbery or enslavement) of another. The very right upon which he acts defines the same right of another man, and serves as a guide to tell him what he may or may not do. From: Ibid., 6.
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: INDIVIDUALISM: Individualism regards man--every man--as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights--and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. From: Racism, The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. From: Collectivized 'Rights',The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: 'I'll do as I please at everybody else's expense.' An individualist is man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man--his own and those of others. An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life--nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone--nor sacrifice anyone to myself.' From: Textbook of Americanism, pamphlet, by Ayn Rand, 6.
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: SELFISHNESS: The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness--which means: the values required for man's survival qua man…. The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash--that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value. From: The Objectivist Ethics, from The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: REPUBLIC: The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights. Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom…. The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights. From: Dr. Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism Lecture 9 (1976)
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: CAPITALISM:: Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against the others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. From: What is Capitalism?, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism--with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. From: The Objectivist Ethics, The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve the common good. It is true that capitalism does--if that catch-phrase has any meaning--but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. From: What Is Capitalism?, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war. From: The Roots of War, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is)--yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes. Capitalism has been called a system of greed--yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of. Capitalism has been called nationalistic--yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace. Capitalism has been called cruel--yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe. As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem--these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism. From: Global Balkanization, by Ayn Rand, Copyright, pamphlet
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: PROPERTY RIGHTS: The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave. From: Man's Rights, The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality--to think, to work and to keep the results--which means: the right of property. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of human rights versus property rights, as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that human rights are superior to property rights simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of 'human.' From: part of Galt's Speech, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, 1957
If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. Any alleged right of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave. From: Man's Rights, The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree--and thus keeps the road open to man's most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind. From: What Is Capitalism?, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
The institution of private property, in the full, legal meaning of the term, was brought into existence only by capitalism. In the pre-capitalist eras, private property existed de facto, but not de jure, i.e., by custom and sufferance, not by right or by law. In law and in principle, all property belonged to the head of the tribe, the king, and was held only by his permission, which could be revoked at any time, at his pleasure. (The king could and did expropriate the estates of recalcitrant noblemen throughout the course of Europe's history.) From: Ibid., p 13
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: FALSE ALTERNATIVES: For many decades, the leftists have been propagating the false dichotomy that the choice confronting the world is only: communism or fascism--a dictatorship of the left or of an alleged right--with the possibility of a free society, of capitalism, dismissed and obliterated, as if it had never existed. From: The Presidential Candidates 1968, by Ayn Rand, in The Objectivist, June 1968, 5.
[Some 'moderates' are trying to revive that old saw of pre-World War II vintage, the notion that the two political opposites confronting us, the two extremes are: fascism versus communism. The political origin of that notion is more shameful than the 'moderates' would care publicly to admit. Mussolini came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Italy. Hitler came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Germany. It is a matter of record that in the German election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis--with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government. It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of 'Freedom or dictatorship?' into 'Which kind of dictatorship?' --thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice--according to the proponents of that fraud--is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory--that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state--that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders--that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique--that fascism is not the product of the political 'right,' but of the 'left'--that the basic issue is not 'rich versus poor,' but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government--which means: capitalism versus socialism. From: 'Extremism,' or The Art of Smearing, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand C. 1966
The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal…. From: The Fascist New Frontier, pamphlet, 5, by Ayn Rand
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: ALTRUISM: What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice--which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction--which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good. Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: 'No.' Altruism says: 'Yes.' Excerpted From: Ch.: Faith and Force: the Destroyers of the Modern World, Philosophy, Who Needs It, 74, by Ayn Rand, C. 1982
Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake those who are evil? The answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them. It is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not obtain it by right. Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others--it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the products of others--it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch--it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself--it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit by sacrifice--it is evil to create your own happiness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others…. If you succeed, any man who fails is your master; if you fail, any man who succeeds is your serf. Whether your failure is just or not, whether your wishes are rational or not, whether your misfortune is undeserved or the result of your vices, it is misfortune that gives you a right to rewards. It is pain, regardless of its nature or cause, pain as a primary absolute, that gives you a mortgage on all of existence… A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness--non-existence--as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw--the zero. Excerpts from: Galt's speech, from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, C. 1957
Altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value. From: The Objectivist Ethics, from The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: COLLECTIVISM: Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective--society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc.--is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it--or its representative, the state--deems this desirable. From: The Ominous Parallels, by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, C. 1982
Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group--whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called the common good. From: The Only Path to Tomorrow, by Ayn Rand, as an article for Reader's Digest, Jan. 1944, p. 8
Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory--both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state. From: 'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
The political philosophy of collectivism is based on a view of man as a congenital incompetent, a helpless, mindless creature who must be fooled and ruled by a special elite with some unspecified claim to superior wisdom and a lust for power. From: Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors? C. Ayn Rand, The Objectivist Newsletter, May, 1962
Collectivism does not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable end. Sacrifice is its end--sacrifice as a way of life. It is man's independence, success, prosperity, and happiness that collectivists wish to destroy. Observe the snarling, hysterical hatred with which they greet any suggestion that sacrifice is not necessary, that a non-sacrificial society is possible to men, that it is only society able to achieve man's well-being. From: Theory and Practice, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
If we view the West's philosophic development in terms of essentials, three fateful turning points stand out, three major philosophers who, above all others, are responsible for generating the disease of collectivism and transmitting it to the dictators of our century. The three are: Plato--Kant--Hegel. (The antidote to them is: Aristotle.) From: The Ominous Parallels, by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, C. 1982 , 17; pb 26
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: DEMOCRACY: 'Democratic' in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule…a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose. From: How to Read (and Not to Write), article from The Ayn Rand Letter, by Ayn Rand, I, 26, 4. 1971-'76
If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it's done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)--how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered. From: Textbook of Americanism, by Ayn Rand, pamphlet, 9
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: COMMUNISM: Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and results are the same. From: Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World, Philosophy, Who Needs It? by Ayn Rand, C. 1982
The Communists' chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence--independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or and independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state. From: Screen Guide for Americans, quoting Ayn Rand in Plain Talk, Nov. 1947, p. 41
When men share the same basic premise, it is the most consistent ones who win. So long as men accept the altruist morality, they will not be able to stop the advance of communism. The altruist morality is Soviet Russia's best and only weapon. From: Conservatism, An Obituary, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: 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. From: For the New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand, C. 1961
The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in 'society as a whole,' i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government. Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia--or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same. 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. From: The Monument Builders, from The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, C. 1964
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. From: Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon, by Ayn Rand, pub. in Los Angeles Times, 9/9/62 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 ownership and control' in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government. Ownership 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. From: The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus, from Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand, C. 1966
The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Quoting Ayn Rand from: The Fascist New Frontier, pamphlet, p. 5
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: FASCISM-NAZISM:
Adolf Hitler on Nazism 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 space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism--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. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings. Adolf Hitler to Hermann Rauschning, quoted in The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff C. 1982 Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal. The dictionary definition of fascism is: a governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.), emphasizing an aggressive nationalism[The American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957.] Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it--at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens. Needless to say, under either system, the inequalities of income and standard of living are greater than anything possible under a free economy--and a man's position is determined, not by his productive ability and achievement, but by political pull and force. Quoting Ayn Rand from: The Fascist New Frontier, pamphlet, p. 5
Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property--so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. If ownership means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed, a contentless deed, which conferred no rights on its holder. Under communism, there is collective ownership of property de jure. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership de facto. From: The Ominous Parallels, ch. 9, pb.18, by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, C. 1982
If the term statism designates concentration of power in the state at the expense of individual liberty, then Nazism in politics was a form of statism. In principle, it did not represent a new approach to government; it was a continuation of the political absolutism--the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies-- which has characterized most of human history. In degree, however, the total state does differ from its predecessors: it represent statism pressed to its limits, in theory and in practice, devouring the last remnants of the individual. Although previous dictators (and many today, e.g., in Latin America) often preached the unlimited power of the state, they were on the whole unable to enforce such power. As a rule, citizens of such countries had a kind of partial freedom, not a freedom-on-principle, but at least a freedom-by-default. Even the latter was effectively absent in Nazi Germany. The efficiency of the government in dominating its subjects, the all-encompassing character of its coercion, the complete mass regimentation on a scale involving millions of men--and, one might add, the enormity of the slaughter, the planned, systematic mass slaughter, in peacetime, initiated by a government against its own citizens--these are the insignia of twentieth-century totalitarianism (Nazi and communist), which are without parallel in recorded history. In the totalitarian regimes, as the Germans found out after only a few months of Hitler's rule, every detail of life is prescribed, or proscribed. There is no longer any distinction between private matters and public matters. 'There are to be no more private Germans,' said Friedrich Sieburg, a Nazi writer; 'each is to attain significance only by his service to the state, and to find complete self-fulfillment in this service.' 'The only person who is still a private individual in Germany,' boasted Robert Ley, a member of the Nazi hierarchy, after several years of Nazi rule, 'is somebody who is asleep.' In place of the despised 'private individuals,' the Germans heard daily or hourly about a different kind of entity, a supreme entity, whose will, it was said, is what determines the course and actions of the state: the nation, the whole, the group. Over and over, the Germans heard the idea that underlies the advocacy of omnipotent government, the idea that totalitarians of every kind stress as the justification of their total states: collectivism. From: Ibid., 6; pb16
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: An excerpt from the chapter Racism from the book THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS by Ayn Rand, copyright 1964 by Ayn Rand for New American Library: RACISM: 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. 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). To ascribe one's virtues to one's racial origin, is to confess that one has no knowledge of the process by which virtues are acquired and, most often, that one has failed to acquire them. The overwhelming majority of racists are men who have earned no sense of personal identity, who can claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who seek the illusion of a 'tribal self-esteem' by alleging the inferiority of some other tribe. Observe the hysterical intensity of the Southern racists; observe also that racism is much more prevalent among the poor white trash than among their intellectual betters. Historically, racism has always risen or fallen with the rise or fall of collectivism. Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to 'society,' to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force--and STATISM has always been the political corollary of collectivism. The absolute state is merely an institutionalized form of gang-rule, regardless of which particular gang seizes power. And--since there is no rational justification for such rule, since none has ever been or can ever be offered--the mystique of racism is a crucial element in every variant of the absolute state. The relationship is reciprocal: statism rises out of prehistorical tribal warfare, out of the notion that the men of one tribe are the natural prey for the men of another--and establishes its own internal subcategories of racism, a system of castes determined by a man's birth, such a inherited titles of nobility or inherited serfdom. The racism of Nazi Germany--where men had to fill questionnaires about their ancestry for generations back, in order to prove their ARYAN descent--has its counterpart in Soviet Russia, where men had to fill similar questionnaires to show that their ancestors had owned no property and thus to prove their PROLETARIAN descent. The Soviet ideology rests on the notion that men can be conditioned to communism GENETICALLY--that is, that a few generations conditioned by dictatorship will transmit communist ideology to their descendants, who will be communists AT BIRTH. The persecution of racial minorities in Soviet Russia, according to the racial descent and whim of any given commissar, is a matter of record; anti-Semitism is particularly prevalent--only the official pogroms are now called 'political purges'. There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez faire capitalism. Individualism regards man--every man--as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights--and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. It is not a man's ancestors or genes or body chemistry that count in a free market, but only one human attribute: productive ability. It is by his own individual ability and ambition that capitalism judges a man and rewards him accordingly. No political system can establish universal rationality by law (or by force). But capitalism is the only system that functions in a way which rewards rationality and penalizes all forms of irrationality, including racism. A fully free, capitalist system has not yet existed anywhere. But what is enormously significant is the correlation of racism and political controls in the semi-free economies of the nineteenth century. Racial and/or religious persecutions of minorities stood in inverse ratio to the degree of a country's freedom. Racism was strongest in the more controlled economies such as Russia and Germany--and weakest in England, the then freest country of Europe. It is capitalism that gave mankind its first steps toward freedom and a rational way of life. It is capitalism that broke through national and racial barriers, by means of free trade. It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. It is the capitalist North that destroyed the slavery of the agrarian-feudal South in the United States. Such was the trend of mankind for the brief span of some hundred and fifty years. The spectacular results and achievements of that trend need no restatement here. The rise of collectivism reversed that trend. When men began to be indoctrinated once more with the notion that the individual possesses no rights, that supremacy, moral authority and unlimited power belong to the group--the inevitable consequence was that men began to gravitate toward some group or another, in self-protection, in bewilderment and in subconscious terror. The simplest collective to join, the easiest one to identify--particularly for people of limited intelligence--the least demanding form of 'belonging' and of 'togetherness' is: RACE............ Today, [the] problem is growing worse--and so is every other form of racism. America has become race-conscious in a manner reminiscent of the worst days in the most backward countries of nineteenth-century Europe. The cause is the same: the growth of collectivism and statism. In spite of the clamor for racial equality, propagated by the 'liberals' in the past few decades, the Census Bureau reported recently that '[the Negro's] economic status relative to whites has not improved for nearly 20 years.' It had been improving in the freer years of our 'mixed economy'; it deteriorated with the progressive enlargement of the 'liberals' Welfare State. The growth of racism in a 'mixed economy' keeps step with the growth of government controls. A 'mixed economy' disintegrates a country into an institutionalized civil war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and special privileges at the expense of one another........... So long as the Negro leaders were fighting against government-enforced discrimination--right, justice and morality were on their side. But that is not what they are fighting any longer. The confusions and contradictions surrounding the issue of racism have now reached an incredible climax. It is time to clarify the principles involved. The policy of the Southern states toward Negroes was and is a shameful contradiction of this country's basic principles. Racial discrimination, imposed and enforced by law, is so blatantly inexcusable an infringement of individual rights that the racist statutes of the South should have been declared unconstitutional long ago. The Southern racists' claim of 'states' rights' is a contradiction in terms: there can be no such thing as the 'right' of some men to violate the rights of others. The constitutional concept of 'states' rights' pertains to the division of power between local and national authorities, and serves to protect the states from the Federal government; it does not grant to a state government an unlimited, arbitrary power over its citizens or the privilege of abrogating the citizens' individual rights. It is true that the Federal government has used the racial issue to enlarge its own power and to set a precedent of encroachment upon the legitimate rights of the states, in an unnecessary and unconstitutional manner. But this merely means that both governments are wrong; it does not excuse the policy of the Southern racists. One of the worst contradictions, in this context, is the stand of many so-called 'conservatives' (not confined exclusively to the South) who claim to be defenders of freedom, of capitalism, of property rights, of the Constitution, yet who advocate racism at the same time. They do not seem to possess enough concern with principles to realize that they are cutting the ground from under their own feet. Men who deny individual rights cannot claim, defend or uphold any rights whatsoever. It is such alleged champions of capitalism who are helping to discredit and destroy it. The 'liberals' are guilty of the same contradiction, but in a different form. They advocate the sacrifice of all individual rights to unlimited majority rule--yet posture as defenders of the rights of minorities. But the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities......... Instead of fighting against racial discrimination, they [minority 'leaders'] are demanding that racial discrimination be legalized and enforced. Instead of fighting against racism, they are demanding the establishment of racial quotas. Instead of fighting for 'color-blindness' in social and economic issues, they are proclaiming that 'color-blindness' is evil and that 'color' should be made a primary consideration. Instead of fighting for equal rights, they are demanding special race privileges............. That absurdly evil policy is destroying the moral base of the Negroes' fight. Their case rested on the principle of individual rights. If they demand the violation of the rights of others, they negate and forfeit their own. Then the same answer applies to them as to the Southern racists: there can be no such thing as the 'right' of some men to violate the rights of others............... It is proper to forbid all discrimination in government-owned facilities and establishments: the government has no right to discriminate against any citizens. And by the very same principle, the government has no right to discriminate FOR some citizens at the expense of others. It has no right to violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned establishments. No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of another man. A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him. Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine--but doctrines cannot be forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect a communist's freedom of speech, even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist's right to the use and disposal of his own property. Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue--and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.............. In conclusion, I shall quote from an astonishing editorial in 'The N.Y. Times' of August 4--astonishing because ideas of this nature are not typical of our age: 'But the question must be not whether a group recognizable in color, features or culture has its rights as a group. No, the question is whether any American individual, regardless of color, features or culture, is deprived of his rights as an American. If the individual has all the rights and privileges due him under the laws and the Constitution, we need not worry about groups and masses--those do not, in fact, exist, except as figures of speech.' Sept. 1963
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: WHY PHILOSOPHY? The American people may oppose the nation's present course, but by themselves the people cannot change it. They may oppose the taxes and the bureaucrats, but these are merely consequences, which cannot be significantly cut back so long as their source is untouched. The people may curse big government in general--but to no avail if the pressure groups among them, following the logic of a mixed economy, continue to be fruitful and to multiply. The people may swing to the right, but it is futile, if the leaders of the right are swinging to their own (religious) brand of statism. The country may throw the rascals out, but it means nothing if the next administration if made of neo-rascals from the other party. To change a nation's basic course requires more than a mood of popular discontent. It requires the definition of a new direction for the country to take……Moral considerations alone might not be sufficient to move men, if they believe the course being urged is impractical; practical considerations alone will not move men, if they believe the course is immoral. The union of the two, however, is irresistible. By its nature, changing the course of a nation is a task that can be achieved only by men who deal with the field of ideas. In the long run the people of a country have no alternative; they end up following the lead of the intellectuals. If there is no new philosophy to guide and rally the better men among them, the intellectuals will follow one that is old and bankrupt. If there are no living ideas, they will follow dying ones and take the country with them. From: Convulsion and Paralysis, The Ominous Parallels, by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, C. 1982
[E]vils do have a connection, an attribute in common. There is a human discipline that can explain all of them. There is a reason why all those Hitler-inviting concretes occurred in the same country at the same time; it is the same reason why none was present in the United States during the Enlightenment. The reason lies in the discipline concerned with fundamentals, because these subsume all derivatives an all social concretes. Philosophy is the factor that moves a nation, shaping every realm and aspect of men's existence, including their values, their psychology, and, in the end, the headlines of their daily newspapers. Most people regard the social system under which they live as a given not open to question or challenge. Then, unwittingly, step by step, they carry the system to its logical conclusion--which they regard as a product not of abstract theory, but of practical necessity. The men moved by 'practicality' as against 'theory' are still moved by theory, but it is theory they have not learned to acknowledge, theory in the form of the social facts, problems, crises, trends, to which that theory has given birth and reality. The direct source of a nation's economic trends is its political trends. The source of its political trends is its cultural trends. The source of its political trends is its cultural trends. The source of the source of all the sources and all the trends is: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Philosophy is that which ultimately creates the creators among men, with their shining, life-giving achievements, or which unleashes the destroyers who wreck it all. Philosophy is that which explains why one society adopts a weak constitution and another a strong one; why one reaches bankruptcy and another abundance; why one is aroused by Moeller van den Bruck and another by Thomas Jefferson; why one embraces paranoia or concentration camps, and another the rights of man. The complexity of a human society does not make it unintelligible, not even when it is a society torn by contradictions and in process of collapse--unless one views the collapse without benefit of philosophy. Such a procedure means: viewing the symptoms of a disease without knowing that they have a unifying cause. No doctor would ascribe a case of bubonic plague to the accidental onset at the same time of fever, chills, prostration, swellings in the groin, etc. None would say that, given 'such a barrage of evidence from so many different sides,' no 'one line interpretation' can be adequate. If any doctor did say it, he would not be entrusted for long with the care of men's bodies. In the humanities and social science departments of our universities, the counterparts of such a doctor are being paid to shape men's minds. The intellectuals are ignorant of philosophy's role in history--because of philosophy. Having been taught by philosphers by generations that reason is impotent to guide action, they regard the mind and its conclusions as irrelevant to life. Having been taught that philosophy is a game, with no answers to offer, they do not look to it for answers. Having been taught that there is no system to connect ideas and no causality to connect events, they do not look for system or causality, but treat social developments as random, unrelated occurrences. Having been taught that abstractions have no basis in reality, they brush them aside and focus on concretes, whether of the moment or of the century. Men who hold such ideas are unable to take ideas seriously. They cannot believe that ideas are the motor of history. They do ascribe some influence to political ideas, such as racist preachments; but they do not understand the nature or source of this influence, because they treat politics as a self-contained subject, without reference to the rest of philosophy. What they do not grasp is the power of wider abstractions in man's life, such as men's view of reality, of knowledge, of values. Thus the omission…..of the philosopher most responsible for the condition of modern Germany and of the modern world. Those who do not grasp the essence of historical events cannot discover their relationship to similar but superficially varied events in other nations or eras. If a man sees only disconnected concretes in pre-Hitler Germany, he can see no more than that in America today. A dictator is not a self-confident person. He preys on weakness, uncertainty, fear. He has no chance among men of self-esteem. But in an age of self-doubt, he rises to the top: men who do not know their own course or value have no means to resist his promises and demands. Men cannot know their course or value without the guidance of principles. A nation does not learn from disaster--only from discovering its cause. The solution is the rebirth of the great science discovered by the Greeks. What it would lead to is the rebirth of the great country founded on that science. A country with a philosophic base, freed of fundamental uncertainty and guilt, would not tolerate leaders who evade every choice, crawl down the middle of every road, and wait for the deluge. It would not tolerate any deluge by the waves of self-righteous, man-hating evil, foreign or domestic. It would not apologize for its greatness to the worshipers of weakness. It would not watch in despair while its youth turned in despair to cults, communes, and cocaine. A country with a philosophic base would know its ideas and its direction: conviction would replace paralysis. It would know its values: moral judgment would replace appeasement, and the passion for justice would stamp out the haters. It would know what to say to its youth: it would tell them the source of human joy, and the meaning of their nation in history, and the standard to which the wise and honest can always repair, the human standard, reason. From: A Republic--If You Can Keep It, The Ominous Parallels, by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, C. 1982
CLICK FOR DIRECT LINK TO TOPICS: WHY OBJECTIVISM? What fundamental truths did the Nazis and the American collectivists and all their sources in the history of philosophy struggle to evade and annihilate? The answer is contained in two concepts, with everything they include, lead to, and presuppose: reason and egoism. These two, properly understood and accepted, are the immovable barrier to any attempt to establish totalitarian rule. Obedience is the precondition of totalitarianism. The pre-conditions of obedience are fear and guilt; not merely the existential fear created by terroristic policies, but the deeper, metaphysical fear created by inner helplessness, the fear of a living creature deprived of any means to deal with reality; not merely the guilt of committing some specific crime, but the deeper, metaphysical guilt of feeling that one is innately unworthy and immoral. Reason destroys fear; egoism destroys guilt. More precisely: reason does not permit man to feel metaphysically helpless; egoism does not permit him to accept unearned guilt or to regard himself as a sacrificial animal. But a man indoctrinated with the notion that reason is impotent and self-sacrifice is his moral duty, will obey anyone and anything. If sacrifice is equated with virtue, there is no stopping the advance of the totalitarian state. 'It goes on and will go on,' said Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead, 'so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it.' 'The world,' said Roark, 'is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.' It was true in 1943, when The Fountainhead was published. It is just as true and much more obvious today. A full system of philosophy advocating reason and egoism has been defined in our time by Ayn Rand. It is the philosophy of Objectivism, presented in detail in Atlas Shrugged, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and The Virtue of Selfishness. It is the antidote to the present state of the world……… Most philosophers have left their starting points to unnamed implication. The base of Objectivism is explicit: 'Existence exists--and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.' [Ayn Rand] Existence and consciousness are facts implicit in every perception. They are the base of all knowledge (and the precondition of proof): knowledge presupposes something to know and someone to know it. They are absolutes which cannot be questioned or escaped: every human utterance, including the denial of these axioms, implies their use and acceptance. The third axiom at the base of knowledge--an axiom true, in Aristotle's words, of 'being qua being' --is the Law of Identity. This law defines the essence of existence: to be is to be something, a thing is what it is; and leads to the fundamental principle of all action, the law of causality. The law of causality states that a thing's actions are determined not by chance, but by its nature, i.e., by what it is. It is important to observe the interrelation of these three axioms. Existence is the first axiom. The universe exists independent of consciousness. Man is able to adapt his background to his own requirements, but 'Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed' (Francis Bacon). There is no mental process that can change the laws of nature or erase facts. The function of consciousness is not to create reality, but to apprehend it. 'Existence is identity, Consciousness is Identification.' [Ayn Rand] The philosophic source of this viewpoint and its major advocate in the history of philosophy is Aristotle. Its opponents are all the other major traditions, including Platonism, Christianity and German idealism. Directly or indirectly, these traditions uphold the notion that consciousness is the creator of reality. The essence of this notion is the denial of the axiom that existence exists. In the religious version, the deniers advocate a consciousness 'above' nature, i.e., superior, and contradictory, to existence; in the social version, they melt nature into an indeterminate blur given transient semi-shape by human desire. The first school denies reality by upholding two of them. The second school dispenses with the concept of reality as such. The first rejects science, law, causality, identity, claiming that anything is possible to the omnipotent, miracle-working will of the Lord. The second states the religionists' rejection in secular terms, claiming that anything is possible to the will of 'the people.' Neither school can claim a basis in objective evidence. There is no way to reason from nature to its negation, or from facts to their subversion, or from any premise to the obliteration of argument as such, i.e., of its foundation: the axioms of existence and identity. Metaphysics and epistemology are closely interrelated; together they forma philosophy's foundation. In the history of philosophy, the rejection of reality and the rejection of reason have been corollaries. Similarly, as Aristotle's example indicates, a pro-reality metaphysics implies and requires a pro-reason epistemology. Reason is defined by Ayn Rand as 'the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses.' Ayn Rand challenges and sweeps aside the main bulwark of the anti-mind [philosophical] axis. Her historic feat is to tie man's distinctive form of cognition to reality, i.e., to validate man's reason. According to Objectivism, concepts are derived from and do refer to the facts of reality. The mind at birth (as Aristotle first stated) is tabula rasa
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