Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

Remember that private citizens – whether rich or poor, whether businessmen or workers – have no power to start a war. That is the exclusive power of a government. Which type of government is more likely to plunge a country into war: a government of limited powers, bound by constitutional restrictions – or an unlimited government, open to the pressure of any group with warlike interests or ideologies?

Yet it is not a limited government that today’s peace-lovers are advocating.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

Capitalism wins and holds its markets by free competition, at home and abroad. A market conquered by war can be of value (temporarily) only to those advocates of a mixed economy who seek to close it to international competition, impose restrictive regulations and thus acquire special privileges by force.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

The essence of capitalism’s foreign policy is free trade – the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges – the opening of the world’s trade routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

Just as in domestic affairs, all the evils caused by statism and government controls were blamed on capitalism and the free market – so, in foreign affairs, all the evils of statist policies were blamed on and ascribed to capitalism. Such myths as “Capitalistic Imperialism�, “War Profiteering� or the notion that capitalism has to win markets by military conquest are examples of the superficiality or the unscrupulousness of statist commentators and historians.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

I think this one is quite self explanatory and does not need any paraphrasing. But feel free to have your hand at it.

Men who are free to produce have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to loose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his livelihood at the point of a gun.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

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Today’s paraphrase:

When people are free to make as much money via their livelihood as they want they have no reason to steal from a neighbor.

The degree of statism in a country’s political system, is the degree to which it breaks up the country into rival gangs and sets men against one another. When individual rights are abrogated, there is no way to determine who is entitled to what; there is no way to determine the justice of anyone’s claims, desires or interests. The criterion, therefore, reverts to the tribal concept of: one’s wishes are limited only by the power of one’s gang. In order to survive under such a system, men have no choice but to fear, hate and destroy one another; it is a system of underground plotting, of secret conspiracies, of deals, favors, betrayals and sudden, bloody coups.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

I’m having trouble paraphrasing this one.

Anyone and everyone, feel free to have at it. If you can’t get it into the comments, email it to me.

It is obvious that the ideological root of statism (or collectivism) in the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases to what ever it deems to be its own good.

AYN Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

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Today’s paraphrase:

People who believe in government above all else, also known as Marxists and/or Socialists, find it impossible that any good can come from leaving an individual to his own devices and therefore seek to control the individual and if they cannot do that, eliminate him.

Observe the nature of today’s alleged peace movements. Professing love and concern for the survival of mankind, they keep screaming that the nuclear weapons race should be stopped, that armed force should be abolished as a means of settling disputes among nations and that war should be outlawed in the name of humanity.

Yet these same peace movements do not oppose dictatorships; the political views of their members range through all shades of the statist spectrum, from welfare statism to socialism to fascism to communism. This means that they are opposed to the use of coercion by one nation against another, but not by the government of a nation against its own citizens; it means that they are opposed to the use of force against armed adversaries, but not against the disarmed.

Ayn Rand: The Roots of War – 1966

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Today’s paraphrase:

Leftists are a bunch of stinking hypocrites.

Their definition of peace is everyone being subservient to them at the point of a gun.

While altruism seeks to rob intelligence of its rewards by asserting that the moral duty of the competent is to serve the incompetent and sacrifice themselves to anyone’s need – the tribal premise goes a step further: it denies the existence of intelligence and of its role in the production of wealth.

Ayn Rand: What is Capitalism – 1965

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And here we go with today’s paraphrase:

Even though Democrats try to take more and more money from those smart enough to make a good life for themselves by saying that it is their responsibility to support lazy bastards simply because they have a heartbeat, socialists are even worse because they won’t admit that working to better yourself is smarter than just subsisting off the teat of the state.

And that is all for quotes from the essay “What is Capitalism�. Tomorrow we’ll lead off into the weekend with the first quote from the essay “The Roots of War�, which I think we’ll all enjoy.

Observe how seldom and how inadequately the issue of human intelligence is discussed in the writings of the tribal-statist-altruist theoreticians. Observe how carefully today’s advocates of a mixed economy avoid and evade any mention of intelligence or ability in their approach to politico-economic issues in their claim, demands and pressure group warfare over the looting of “The Total Social Product�.

Ayn Rand: What is Capitalism – 1965

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to “The Common Good�, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technology advance – and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

Do not, however, make the error of reversing cause and effect: the good of the country was made possible precisely by the fact that it was not forced on anyone as a moral goal or duty; it was merely an effect; the cause was a man’s right to pursue his own good. It is this right – not its consequences – that represents the moral justification of capitalism.

Ayn Rand: What is Capitalism – 1965

If a man believes that ‘The Common Good’ is intrinsic in certain actions, he will not hesitate to force others to perform them. If he believes that the human benefit of injury caused by such actions is of no significance, he will regard the sea of blood as of no significance. If he believes that the beneficiaries of such actions are irrelevant or interchangeable, he will regard wholesale slaughter as his moral duty in the service of a higher good.

Ayn Rand: What is Captialism – 1965

Every social system is based, explicitly or implicitly, on some theory of ethics. The tribal notion of ‘The Common Good’ has served as the moral justification of most social systems – and all of the tyrannies – in history. The degree of a society’s enslavement or freedom correspond to the degree to which that tribal slogan was invoked or ignored.

Ayn Rand: What is Capitalism – 1965

“The Common Good� is a meaningless concept, unless taken literally, in which case it’s only possible meaning is: the sum of the good of all the individual men involved. But in that case, the concept is meaningless as a moral criterion: it leaves open the question of what is the good of individual men and how does one determine it?

It is not, however, in its literal meaning that that concept is generally used. It is accepted precisely for its elastic, un-definable, mystical character which serves, not as a moral guide, but as an escape from morality. Since the good is not applicable to the disembodied, it becomes a moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it.

Ayn Rand: What is Capitalism – 1965

When “The Common Good� of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over those good of others, with these others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. It is tacitly assumed, in such cases, that “The Common Good� means “The Good of the Majority� as against the minority of the individual.

Observe the significant fact that that assumption is tacit: even the most collectivized mentalities seem to sense the impossibility of justifying it morally. But “The Good of the Majority�, too, is only a pretense and a delusion: since, in fact, the violation of an individual’s rights means the abrogation of all rights, it delivers the helpless majority into the power of a gang that proclaims itself to be “The Voice of Society� and proceeds to rule by means of brute force, until deposed by another gang employing the same means.

Ayn Rand: What is Capitalism – 1965