But now we come to a composition that beats anything presented in Atlas Shrugged. I concede that I would have been unable to invent it and that no matter how low my estimate of the altruist-collectivist mentalities—and it is very low—I would not have believed this possible. It is not fiction. It is a news story, which appeared, on March 23, 1964, on the front page of The New York Times.
Every American should be guaranteed an adequate income as a matter of right whether he works or not, a 32-member group calling itself the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution urged today. …
The three revolutions listed in their statement, which they sent to President Johnson, were “the cybernation revolution,” “the weaponry revolution” and “the human rights revolution.”
“The fundamental problem posed by the cybernation revolution in the United States is that it invalidates the general mechanism so far employed to undergird people’s rights as consumers,” the committee said.
“Up to this time,” it continued, “economic resources have been distributed on the basis of contributions to production, with machines and men competing for employment on somewhat equal terms. In the developing cybernated system, potentially unlimited output can be achieved by systems of machines which will require little cooperation from human beings.
“The continuance of the income-through-jobs link as the only major mechanism for distributing effective demand—for granting the right to consume—now acts as the main brake on the almost unlimited capacity of a cybernated productive system.”
The Committee urged that the link be broken by “an unqualified commitment” by society to provide, through its appropriate legal and governmental institutions, “every individual and every family with an adequate income as a matter of right.” [All italics mine.]
To be provided—by whom? Blank out.
One would expect a proclamation of this kind to be issued by a group of small-town crackpots dissociated from reality and from any knowledge of economics. Or one would expect it to be issued by a group of rabble-rousers, for the purpose of inciting the lowest elements of the population to violence against any business office that owns an electronic computer and thus deprives them of their “right to consume.”
But such was not the case.
This proclamation was issued by a group of professors, economists, educators, writers, and other “intellectuals.” What is frightening—as a symptom of the present state of our culture—is that it received front-page attention, and that apparently-civilized people are willing to regard it as within the bounds of civilized discussion.
What is the cultural atmosphere of our day? See whether the following description fits it. I quote from Atlas Shrugged —from a passage referring to a series of accelerating disasters and catastrophes:
The newspapers did not mention it. The editorials went on speaking of self-denial as the road to future progress, of self-sacrifice as the moral imperative, of greed as the enemy, of love as the solution—their threadbare phrases as sickeningly sweet as the odor of ether in a hospital.
Rumors went spreading through the country in whispers of cynical terror—yet people read the newspapers and acted as if they believed what they read, each competing with the others on who would keep most blindly silent, each pretending that he did not know what he knew, each striving to believe that the unnamed was the unreal. It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to acknowledge the reality of these signs.
The purpose of my discussing this today was, not to boast nor to leave you with the impression that I possess some mystical gift of prophecy, but to demonstrate the exact opposite: that that gift is not mystical. Contrary to the prevalent views of today’s alleged scholars, history is not an unintelligible chaos ruled by chance and whim—historical trends can be predicted, and changed—men are not helpless, blind, doomed creatures carried to destruction by incomprehensible forces beyond their control.
There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man’s rational faculty—the power of ideas. If you know a man’s convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course. But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man’s choice.
There is no fatalistic, predetermined historical necessity. Atlas Shrugged is not a prophecy of our unavoidable destruction, but a manifesto of our power to avoid it, if we choose to change our course.
It is the philosophy of the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis that has brought us to our present state and is carrying us toward a finale such as that of the society presented in Atlas Shrugged. It is only the philosophy of the reason-individualism-capitalism axis that can save us and carry us, instead, toward the Atlantis projected in the last two pages of my novel.
Since men have free will, no one can predict with certainty the outcome of an ideological conflict nor how long such a conflict will last. It is too early to tell which choice this country will make. I can say only that if part of the purpose of Atlas Shrugged was to prevent itself from becoming prophetic, there are many, many signs to indicate that it is succeeding in that purpose.
{Postscript. Over a year after this article was written, there occurred an event worth noting here.
In the last chapter of Atlas Shrugged, which describes the collapse of the collectivists’ rule, there is the following paragraph:
The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly, with the abruptness of a shudder, as if the ground had parted to engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power stations— and that the lights of New York had gone out.
On November 9, 1965, the lights of New York and of the entire Eastern seaboard went out. The situation was not exactly parallel to that in my story, but a great many readers recognized the symbolic meaning of the event. I quote some of the letters and wires I received in the next few days:
A wire from Austin, Texas, signed by a number of names: “We thought you said the novel was not prophetic.”
A wire from Marion, Wisconsin: “There is a John Gait.”
From a letter from Indianapolis: “But it didn’t even take a panic, did it, Miss Rand? Just that same old irresponsibility and incompetence. The train wrecks [etc.] have made us chuckle, but this fulfilled prophecy also brings a shudder.”
A note from Dundee, Scotland: “I could not help but think of your book Atlas Shrugged when we saw on television New York without its lights—there on the screen the black canyons of the buildings and the low lights of the cars trying to find a way out.”
From Memphis, Tennessee (a postcard sent by his mother to a reader who sent it to me): “I just had to pass this on: Last night in the blackout in the Northeast [a friend] called and asked if you were there. I said no, and she said ‘Well, I’m sorry, I wanted to ask him if Atlas had shrugged!'”
A note from Chicago: “We waited expectantly for the one rational explanation for the ‘blackout’ of 11/9/65. This is John Gait Speaking.'”)
16. THE PULL PEDDLERS
BY AYN RAND
America’s foreign policy is so grotesquely irrational that most people believe there must be some sensible purpose behind it. The extent of the irrationality acts as its own protection: like the technique of the “Big Lie,” it makes people assume that so blatant an evil could not possibly be as evil as it appears to them and, therefore, that somebody must understand its meaning, even though they themselves do not.
The sickening generalities and contradictions cited in justification of the foreign aid program fall roughly into two categories which are offered to us simultaneously: the “idealistic” and the “practical,” or mush and fear.
The “idealistic” arguments consist of appeals to altruism and swim out of focus in a fog of floating abstractions about our duty to support the “under-developed” nations of the entire globe, who are starving and will perish without our selfless help.
The “practical” arguments consist of appeals to fear and emit a different sort of fog, to the effect that our own selfish interest requires that we go bankrupt buying the favor of the “under-developed” nations, who, otherwise, will become a dangerous threat to us.
It is useless to point out to the advocates of our foreign policy that it’s either-or: either the “under-developed” nations are so weak that they are doomed without our help, in which case they cannot become a threat to us—or they are so strong that with some other assistance they can develop to the point of endangering us, in which case we should not drain our economic power to help the growth of potential enemies who are that powerful.