It is important to note that this type of free protection for the noncontributors represents an indirect benefit and is merely a marginal consequence of the contributors’ own interests and expenses. This type of bonus cannot be stretched to cover direct benefits, or to claim—as the welfare statists are claiming—that direct handouts to the non-producers are in the producers’ own interests.
The difference, briefly, is as follows: if a railroad were running a train and allowed the poor to ride without payment in the seats left empty, it would not be the same thing (nor the same principle) as providing the poor with first-class carriages and special trains.
Any type of nonsacrificial assistance, of social bonus, gratuitous benefit or gift value possible among men, is possible only in a free society, and is proper so long as it is nonsacrificial. But, in a free society, under a system of voluntary government financing, there would be no legal loophole, no legal possibility, for any “redistribution of wealth”—for the unearned support of some men by the forced labor and extorted income of others—for the draining, exploitation and destruction of those who are able to pay the costs of maintaining a civilized society, in favor of those who are unable or unwilling to pay the cost of maintaining their own existence.
(February 1964)
16. The Divine Right of Stagnation
by Nathaniel Branden
For every living species, growth is a necessity of survival. Life is motion, a process of self-sustaining action that an organism must carry on in order to remain in existence. This principle is equally evident in the simple energy-conversions of a plant and in the long-range, complex activities of man. Biologically, inactivity is death.
The nature and range of possible motion and development varies from species to species. The range of a plant’s action and development is far less than an animal’s; an animal’s is far less than man’s. An animal’s capacity for development ends at physical maturity and thereafter its growth consists of the action necessary to maintain itself at a fixed level; after reaching maturity, it does not, to any significant extent, continue to grow in efficacy—that is, it does not significantly increase its ability to cope with the environment. But man’s capacity for development does not end at physical maturity; his capacity is virtually limitless. His power to reason is man’s distinguishing characteristic, his mind is man’s basic means of survival—and his ability to think, to learn, to discover new and better ways of dealing with reality, to expand the range of his efficacy, to grow intellectually, is an open door to a road that has no end.
Man survives, not by adjusting himself to his physical environment in the manner of an animal, but by transforming his environment through productive work. “If a drought strikes them, animals perish—man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish—man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish—man writes the Constitution of the United States.” (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual.)
If life is a process of self-sustaining action, then this is the distinctly human mode of action and survival: to think—to produce—to meet the challenges of existence by a never-ending effort and inventiveness.
When man discovered how to make fire to keep himself warm, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to fashion a bow and arrow, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to build a shelter out of stone, then out of brick, then out of glass and steel, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he moved his life expectancy from nineteen to thirty to forty to sixty to seventy, his need of thought and effort was not ended; so long as he lives, his need of thought and effort is never ended.
Every achievement of man is a value in itself, but it is also a stepping-stone to greater achievements and values. Life is growth; not to move forward, is to fall backward; life remains life, only so long as it advances. Every step upward opens to man a wider range of action and achievement—and creates the need for that action and achievement. There is no final, permanent “plateau.” The problem of survival is never “solved,” once and for all, with no further thought or motion required. More precisely, the problem of survival is solved, by recognizing that survival demands constant growth and creativeness.
Constant growth is, further, a psychological need of man. It is a condition of his mental well-being. His mental well-being requires that he possess a firm sense of control over reality, of control over his existence—the conviction that he is competent to live. And this requires, not omniscience or omnipotence, but the knowledge that one’s methods of dealing with reality—the principles by which one functions—are right. Passivity is incompatible with this state. Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one’s efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate—in the mental realm no less than in the physical.
Observe, in this connection, the widespread phenomenon of men who are old by the time they are thirty. These are men who, having in effect concluded that they have “thought enough,” drift on the diminishing momentum of their past effort—and wonder what happened to their fire and energy, and why they are dimly anxious, and why their existence seems so desolately impoverished, and why they feel themselves sinking into some nameless abyss—and never identify the fact that, in abandoning the will to think, one abandons the will to live.
Man’s need to grow—and his need, therefore, of the social or existential conditions that make growth possible—are facts of crucial importance to be considered in judging or evaluating any politico-economic system. One should be concerned to ask: Is a given politico-economic system pro-life or anti-life, conducive or inimical to the requirements of man’s survival?
The great merit of capitalism is its unique appropriateness to the requirements of human survival and to man’s need to grow. Leaving men free to think, to act, to produce, to attempt the untried and the new, its principles operate in a way that rewards effort and achievement, and penalizes passivity.
This is one of the chief reasons for which it is denounced.
In Who Is Ayn Rand?, discussing the nineteenth-century attacks on capitalism, I wrote: “In the writings of both medievalists and socialists, one can observe the unmistakable longing for a society in which man’s existence will be automatically guaranteed to him—that is, in which man will not have to bear responsibility for his own survival. Both camps project their ideal society as one characterized by that which they call ‘harmony,’ by freedom from rapid change or challenge or the exacting demands of competition; a society in which each must do his prescribed part to contribute to the well-being of the whole, but in which no one will face the necessity of making choices and decisions that will crucially affect his life and future; in which the question of what one has or has not earned, and does or does not deserve, will not come up; in which rewards will not be tied to achievement and in which someone’s benevolence will guarantee that one need never bear the consequences of one’s errors. The failure of capitalism to conform to what may be termed this pastoral view of existence, is essential to the medievalists’ and socialists’ indictment of a free society. It is not a Garden of Eden that capitalism offers men.”
Among the arguments used by those who long for a “pastoral” existence, is a doctrine which, translated into explicit statement, consists of: the divine right of stagnation.
This doctrine is illustrated in the following incident. Once, on a plane trip, I became engaged in conversation with an executive of a labor union. He began to decry the “disaster” of automation, asserting that increasing thousands of workers would be permanently unemployed as a result of new machines and that “something ought to be done about it.” I answered that this was a myth that had been exploded many times; that the introduction of new machines invariably resulted in increasing the demand for labor as well as in raising the general standard of living; that this was demonstrable theoretically and observable historically. I remarked that automation increased the demand for skilled labor relative to unskilled labor, and that doubtless many workers would need to learn new skills. “But,” he asked indignantly, “what about the workers who don’t want to learn new skills? Why should they have troubles?”