The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand

Like a mixed economy, men of mixed premises may be called “gray”; but, in both cases, the mixture does not re­main “gray” for long. “Gray,” in this context, is merely a prelude to “black.” There may be “gray” men, but there can be no “gray” moral principles. Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.

Such are the reasons why—when one is asked: “Surely you don’t think in terms of black-and-white, do you?”—the proper answer (in essence, if not in form) should be: “You’re damn right I do!”

(June 1964)

10. Collectivized Ethics

by Ayn Rand

Certain questions, which one frequently hears, are not phil­osophical queries, but psychological confessions. This is par­ticularly true in the field of ethics. It is especially in discussions of ethics that one must check one’s premises (or remember them), and more: one must learn to check the premises of one’s adversaries.

For instance, Objectivists will often hear a question such as: “What will be done about the poor or the handicapped in a free society?”

The altruist-collectivist premise, implicit in that question, is that men are “their brothers’ keepers” and that the mis­fortune of some is a mortgage on others. The questioner is ignoring or evading the basic premises of Objectivist ethics and is attempting to switch the discussion onto his own collectivist base. Observe that he does not ask: “Should any­thing be done?” but: “What will be done?”—as if the collectivist premise had been tacitly accepted and all that remains is a discussion of the means to implement it.

Once, when Barbara Branden was asked by a student: “What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?”—she answered: “If you want to help them, you will not be stopped.”

This is the essence of the whole issue and a perfect exam­ple of how one refuses to accept an adversary’s premises as the basis of discussion.

Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others; society—as an organized political system—has no rights in the matter at all.

On the question of when and under what conditions it is morally proper for an individual to help others, I refer you to Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. What concerns us here is the collectivist premise of regarding this issue as political, as the problem or duty of “society as a whole.”

Since nature does not guarantee automatic security, suc­cess and survival to any human being, it is only the dictato­rial presumptuousness and the moral cannibalism of the altruist-collectivist code that permits a man to suppose (or idly to daydream) that he can somehow guarantee such se­curity to some men at the expense of others.

If a man speculates on what “society” should do for the poor, he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men’s lives belong to society and that he, as a member of society, has the right to dispose of them, to set their goals or to plan the “distribution” of their efforts.

This is the psychological confession implied in such ques­tions and in many issues of the same kind.

At best, it reveals a man’s psycho-epistemological chaos; it reveals a fallacy which may be termed “the fallacy of the frozen abstraction” and which consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs—in this case, substituting a specific ethics (altru­ism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.” Thus, a man may reject the theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a rational code—but, failing to integrate his ideas, he con­tinues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism.

More often, however, that psychological confession re­veals a deeper evil: it reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men’s capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out.

Humility and presumptuousness are always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the space vacated by self-esteem in a collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two aspects of his psy­chology will act reciprocally to reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes “for the good of mankind” or of “society” or of “the public” or of “future gener­ations”—or of anything except actual human beings.

Hence the appalling recklessness with which men pro­pose, discuss and accept “humanitarian” projects which are to be imposed by political means, that is, by force, on an unlimited number of human beings. If, according to collectivist caricatures, the greedy rich indulged in profligate ma­terial luxury, on the premise of “price no object”—then the social progress brought by today’s collectivized mentalities consists of indulging in altruistic political planning, on the premise of “human lives no object.”

The hallmark of such mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means. Out of context, such a goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not to be earned, but to be expropriated; and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means—because the means are to be human lives.

“Medicare” is an example of such a project. “Isn’t it de­sirable that the aged should have medical care in times of illness?” its advocates clamor. Considered out of context, the answer would be: yes, it is desirable. Who would have a reason to say no? And it is at this point that the mental processes of a collectivized brain are cut off; the rest is fog. Only the desire remains in his sight—it’s the good, isn’t it?—it’s not for myself, it’s for others, it’s for the public, for a helpless, ailing public … The fog hides such facts as the enslavement and, therefore, the destruction of medical sci­ence, the regimentation and disintegration of all medical practice, and the sacrifice of the professional integrity, the freedom, the careers, the ambitions, the achievements, the happiness, the lives of the very men who are to provide that “desirable” goal—the doctors.

After centuries of civilization, most men—with the excep­tion of criminals—have learned that the above mental atti­tude is neither practical nor moral in their private lives and may not be applied to the achievement of their private goals. There would be no controversy about the moral char­acter of some young hoodlum who declared: “Isn’t it desir­able to have a yacht, to live in a penthouse and to drink champagne?”—and stubbornly refused to consider the fact that he had robbed a bank and killed two guards to achieve that “desirable” goal.

There is no moral difference between these two examples; the number of beneficiaries does not change the nature of the action, it merely increases the number of victims. In fact, the private hoodlum has a slight edge of moral superi­ority: he has no power to devastate an entire nation and his victims are not legally disarmed.

It is men’s views of their public or political existence that the collectivized ethics of altruism has protected from the march of civilization and has preserved as a reservoir, a wildlife sanctuary, ruled by the mores of prehistorical sav­agery. If men have grasped some faint glimmer of respect for individual rights in their private dealings with one an­other, that glimmer vanishes when they turn to public is­sues—and what leaps into the political arena is a caveman who can’t conceive of any reason why the tribe may not bash in the skull of any individual if it so desires.

The distinguishing characteristic of such tribal mentality is: the axiomatic, the almost “instinctive” view of human life as the fodder, fuel or means for any public project.

The examples of such projects are innumerable: “Isn’t it desirable to clean up the slums?” (dropping the context of what happens to those in the next income bracket)—”Isn’t it desirable to have beautiful, planned cities, all of one har­monious style?” (dropping the context of whose choice of style is to be forced on the home builders)—”Isn’t it desir­able to have an educated public?” (dropping the context of who will do the educating, what will be taught, and what will happen to dissenters)—”Isn’t it desirable to liberate the artists, the writers, the composers from the burden of finan­cial problems and leave them free to create?” (dropping the context of such questions as: which artists, writers and composers?—chosen by whom?—at whose expense?—at the expense of the artists, writers and composers who have no political pull and whose miserably precarious incomes will be taxed to “liberate” that privileged elite?)—”Isn’t science desirable? Isn’t it desirable for man to conquer space?”

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