The New Intellectual will be the man who lives up to the exact meaning of his title: a man who is guided by his intellect—not a zombie guided by feelings, instincts, urges, wishes, whims or revelations. Ending the rule of Attila and the Witch Doctor, he will discard the basic premise that made them possible: the soul-body dichotomy. He will discard its irrational conflicts and contradictions, such as: mind versus heart, thought versus action, reality versus desire, the practical versus the moral. He will be an integrated man, that is: a thinker who is a man of action. He will know that ideas divorced from consequent action are fraudulent, and that action divorced from ideas is suicidal. He will know that the conceptual level of psycho-epistemology—the volitional level of reason and thought—is the basic necessity of man’s survival and his greatest moral virtue. He will know that men need philosophy for the purpose of living on earth.
The New Intellectual will be a reunion of the twins who should never have been separated: the intellectual and the businessman. He can come from among the best—that is: the most rational—men who may still exist in both camps. In place of an involuntary Witch Doctor and a reluctant Attila, the reunion will produce two new types: the practical thinker and the philosophical businessman.
The best among the present intellectuals should consider the tremendous power which they are holding, but have never fully exercised or understood. If any man among them feels that he is the helpless, ineffectual stepson of a “materialistic” culture that grants him neither wealth nor recognition, let him remember the meaning of his title: his power is his intellect not his feelings, emotions or intuitions. It is not the businessmen who have robbed him of efficacy, but those of his colleagues who have degraded his profession to the level of soothsayers, tea-leaf readers and jungle oracles. Let him break with the neo-mystics; let him realize that ideas are not an escape from reality, not a hobby for “disinterested” neurotics in ivory towers, but the most crucial and practical power in human existence. Then let him become an intellectual leader who assumes full responsibility for the practical consequences of his theories.
The best among the businessmen should consider the function of wealth, and realize that the power behind the incomprehensible evil now unleashed against them is their own. Wealth, as such, is only a tool; by renouncing his intellect, the businessman has placed his wealth in the service of his own destroyers. They do not deed to nationalize his property: they nationalized his mind long ago. Let him now realize that practical action without a theoretical base achieves the opposite of his goals, and that intellectual irresponsibility is not a way of escape from his enemies. Then let him discover the function of philosophy.
Instead of those ludicrous programs of “student exchanges” between America and Soviet Russia, for the alleged purpose of “gaining mutual understanding,” there ought to be a private, voluntary program of “student exchanges” between the intellectuals and the businessmen, the two groups that need each other most, yet know less and understand less about each other than about any alien society in any distant corner of the globe. The businessmen need to discover the intellect; the intellectuals need to discover reality. Let the intellectuals understand the nature and the function of a free market in order to offer the businessmen, as well as the public at large, the guidance of an intelligible theoretical framework for dealing with men, with society, with politics, with economics. Let the businessmen learn the basic issues and principles of philosophy in order to know how to judge ideas, then let them assume full responsibility for the kind of ideologies they choose to finance and support.
Let them both discover (he nature, the theory and the actual history of capitalism; both groups are equally ignorant of it No other subject is hidden by so many distortions, misconceptions, misrepresentations and falsifications. Let them study the historical facts and discover that all the evils popularly ascribed to capitalism were caused, necessitated and made possible only by government controls imposed on the economy. Whenever they hear capitalism being denounced, let them check the facts and discover which of the two opposite political principles—free trade or government controls—was responsible for the alleged iniquities. When they hear it said that capitalism has had its chance and has failed, let them remember that what ultimately failed was a “mixed” economy, that the controls were the cause of the failure, and that the way to save a country is not by making it swallow a full, “unmixed” glass of the poison which is killing it.
The Founding Fathers were America’s first intellectuals and, so far, her last. It is their basic political line that the New Intellectuals have to continue. Today, that line is lost under layer upon layer of evasions, equivocations and plain falsehood; today’s Witch Doctors claim that the basic premise of the Founding Fathers was faith and uncritical compliance with tradition; today’s Attila-ists claim that that basic premise was the subordination of the individual to the collective and his sacrifice to the public good. The New Intellectuals must remind the world that the basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness—which means: man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders, by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.
The moral premises implicit in the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers, in the social system they established and in the economics of capitalism, must now be recognized and accepted in the form of an explicit moral philosophy. That which is merely Implicit is not in men’s conscious control; they can lose it by means of other implications, without knowing what it is that they are losing or when or why. It was the morality of altruism that undercut America and is now destroying her. From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.
The world crisis of today is a moral crisis—and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution. Evasions, equivocations and guilty apologies will not work any longer. The disgraceful injustice which penalized virtue for being virtue, which forced businessmen to apologize for their ability, for their success, for their achievements, has now been projected onto a global scale and translated into the disgraceful spectacle of America apologizing for her virtues and greatness to that bloody slaughterhouse of embodied altruism which is Soviet Russia.
The New Intellectuals must fight for capitalism, not as a “practical” issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it
The New Intellectuals must assume the task of building a new culture on a new moral foundation, which, for once, will not be the culture of Attila and the Witch Doctor, but the culture of the Producer. They will have to be radicals in the literal and reputable sense of the word: “radical” means “fundamental.” The representatives of intellectual orthodoxy, conventionality and status quo, the Babbitts of today, are the collectivists. Let those who do care about the future, those willing to crusade for a perfect society, realize that the new radicals are the fighters for capitalism.
It is not an easy task and it cannot be achieved overnight But the New Intellectuals have an inestimable advantage: they have reality on their side. The difficulties they will encounter on their way are not stone barriers, but fog: the heavy fog of passive disintegration, through which it will be hard for them to find one another. They will encounter no opposition, since, in this context, an opposition would have to possess intellectual weapons. As to their enemies, they should comply with their enemies’ request—and leave them to heaven.
The process of identifying, judging, accepting and upholding a new philosophy of life is a long, complicated process, which requires thought, proof, full understanding and conviction. But there are two principles on which all men of intellectual integrity and good will can agree, as a “basic minimum,” as a precondition of any discussion, co-operation or movement toward an intellectual Renaissance. One principle is epistemological, the other is moral; they are not axioms, but until a man has proved them to himself and has accepted them, he is not fit for an intellectual discussion. These two principles are: a. that emotions are not tools of cognition; b. that no man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others.