Ayn Rand/Objectivism Sightings
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The Logically Resulting Type of Society
If we close our eyes to the inevitably resulting contradiction, we can create any philosophic system within which each part can be correct in itself and among its component even if we take as a starting basis something imagined but not really existing. With just one exception, all so-called "philosophers" have done and continue to do just this, haughtily stating that any type of society resulting from it is adequate for the human being. At the same time, they attack anyone who points at them and states that what they say is a hogwash of never ending contradictions. They insist in calling the kind of fantasies that they invent "philosophy". Of course they have to proceed thus since recognizing their fault – the fact that they are starting in the "middle of nowhere" as might be said - would immediately leave them without the jobs they hold in the universities where they "teach" their false theories. They are pseudo-intellectuals of the worst possible kind since through their academic authority they have an enormous influence on the minds of thousands of unaware young people. Time and again in history such impostors have caused the killing of those who did not want to live by their system, the remaining part of humanity obeying by fear. However, scaring or killing a man only shows that the other man's arguments were not convincing enough to convert his enemy. As the old adage goes: "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still".
Still, as history also shows, they have most often got their way and even managed to convince the common person that their "system" involves such a haughty intellectual knowledge that what they say must be accepted as a mark of their superiority.
Religions in general and all quasi-secular philosophies start in mid-air and, thus, lack a solid and provable foundation. Their basis is always something not existing or not definable which they call "God", a “Great Architect”, a “Superior Being”, Leibniz' “Monads” or any of the corresponding quasi-secular expressions, such as "Society", "Mankind", etc. all this being, of course, purest balderdash.
Only a philosophic system based on reality (a metaphysically provable existent) and reason (the faculty that recognizes and combines the data of reality provided by the senses) can, thus, be called such. There is only one philosophic system that replies to these requirements and it exists only since quite recently. As we shall see, all others have no validity and cannot be called "philosophic systems".
Reality, being the mother of a correct philosophical system and all that goes with it, has both a trap and a touchstone ready to test the consistency of a given philosophical system. We can easily show the lie behind any philosophic system when those defending it cannot prove that they start from an axiom or axioms but from freely invented fantasies. Neither any theological nor any secular philosophy – here again with one exception – can stand up to this challenge. Some systems will try to evade the question – as, for example, Leibniz did when he used the same concept as others but by another name - and others will do their best to wriggle away from the problem by taking a stance of offended pride and declaring that philosophy does not need to take care of such "minimalia".
But they must face the problem and its consequences. Already by refusing to give a clear answer do they confess their inconsistencies. A philosophic system can only have validity if it consistently stands on reality and reason. Else, it is nothing but childish babbling. If it cannot prove its starting point it makes all other, following, statements invalid. Whenever religions, for example, state that they do not need to prove their dogmas they confess their bankruptcy.
For what is to follow, we have to define two terms:
An axiom is that which is proved by just pointing at it. This pointing is called ostensive or deictic demonstration. It can also refer to an evident and unquestionable declaration that does not need to be proved, such as the reciprocal character of equality.
The contrary of an axiom is a dogma, all that which cannot be proved. It is unreal and, thus, must be taken for granted on the base of faith, i.e. the childish way of claiming to have knowledge and being right without proving it.
Religions are the most obvious evidence of a mystic philosophical "system" trying to get away from the need of proof. Its secular followers declare that the existence of what they claim to use as a basis ("society" or "mankind") is so self-evident that it does not require any proof. This, of course, is a fallacy because both "society" and "mankind" are abstract concepts that do not exist as concretes in reality. Take away the concrete individuals who compose the abstract "society" or "mankind" and you will face an evident void. Earlier we have shown that "God" does not exist. Now we add to this list the concepts of "society" or "mankind" and any other of its corresponding synonyms, since none of them stands for really existing entities. As philosophy requires a concrete starting point, they are useless and will never yield a correct philosophy.
From what has been said we can proceed to deduce under what conditions a philosophical system has a right to be called such:
a) Metaphysically, it must accept objective reality as its basis.
b) Epistemologically, it must reject emotions as tools of cognition and use only the faculty of reason for its deductions and inductions.
These two points conform the touchstone that immediately clears if a philosophy is such or merely hot air. If it does not comply with these two conditions, we can reject it from the very beginning. Starting with an abstraction immediately confirms the invalidity of a given philosophic system, for an abstraction is a deduction traced from reality but not reality itself or, else, it is a fantasy taken as real.
Ayn Rand gives a very good example of this in her novel "We the Living". There is a deeply intellectual conversation between Kira Argounova, the heroine of the book, and the splendid personage of Andrei Tagarov, the communist. Kira says that if she were to ask people if they believed in live, they would never understand the question since it covers so many things that it means nothing. Hence, she asks people if they believe in “God” and if they say they do, it is equivalent to saying that they do not believe in life. The reason for this lays in the fact that “God” is the highest conception of the highest possible, but placing the highest possible conception above oneself means that whoever does so has a very small notion of himself and his life. She adds that feeling reverence for one’s own life and wanting the very best for it here and now is a rare gift.
Ayn Rand clearly shows with this dialog that the recipient of the correct philosophic system must be the concrete individual. Only both a concrete starting point (reality) and the touchstone represented by the connection of reality to the individual, for whom the philosophical system is meant, validates a given philosophy as such.
Any “philosophy” that declares that its supreme aim is "God", a "Higher Being", "The Welfare of Plants and Animals" as the environmentalist do or "Society" or "Mankind", etc. automatically rejects the only possible aim, i.e. the individual. Its goal is to sacrifice the individual to an abstraction or to a fantasy. This is immoral for, as Ayn Rand stated, "wherever there is sacrifice there is a victim". The payment of this victim, whether in money, work or his very life (be it slavedom or be it death, as happened among the Mayas, the Aztecs, the serfs of Baal and further religions, dictatorships etc.) has always as recipients those who declare themselves to be the representatives of the given abstraction or fantasy. Such a philosophy always states as an ethical code of behavior either the one inherent to nature for plants and all animals but excepting the human being or one created by a feverish mind and imposed by force.
Their "inventors" of such ethical codes and their followers, the intellectuals and politicians, continuously insist to maintain that while their system is perfect it is man that fails. This is like saying that air is perfect but fish are not since they asphyxiate when taken out of their natural element, water. In accordance, whoever is unwilling to contort himself to the deformities of such systems is declared either evil or insane and ostracized or even eliminated in death camps, etc. History is filled with Stalitlers acting as the henchmen of "philosophers" to obtain the surrender of the individual. The unwilling or unable to adapt are persecuted, tortured and killed. As long as humanity does not recognize this, holocausts of all kinds will continue to exist. This is a fact.
Reality is completely different. It is not man the unfit. The unfit are the various types of "philosophies", all of them operating against man, all favoring a "Higher Being" or any other impossible, all of them wanting to establish a utopian society for which the individual is to sacrifice himself against his own personal goals. Within such a system, man becomes distorted and filled with fear. The painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, "The Scream", also called "Angst", perfectly symbolizes the feelings man has under such a system, which inevitably ends in a dictatorship, for in it both persecutor and persecuted feel the same, the first for fear of being denounced for not being completely true to the demands of the system, the second because he is the target of a system whose main aim is to destroy whoever does not reply to its demands. Distortion becomes so great that those persecuted do not really present an opposition to the powers that be since they themselves, if asked what other system they would favor, merely would defend another variety of the same ruling system. This can be exemplified by the fact that socialist movements which consider themselves as "left" oppose others which they call "right-wingers" though these too are nothing else but a mere variety of the same stuff (for example Socialists against National-Socialists). The observer can identify this situation by visiting any of the many Nazi extermination camps. Mauthausen, in Austria, for example, is filled with monuments erected against Nazi dictatorship... by other socialist dictatorships. The members of "The White Rose", whose goal was to destroy the Nazi regime during the Second World War, wanted to establish “another" type of socialism, i.e. socialism by another name. Roosevelt held to the same principles to which Hitler and Stalin held, merely changing the names to favor what he did. There can be no clearer evidence why I have coined the term Stalitlers as representing the same dictatorship – theological and/or secular – in general. For an additional example see Charley Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" where, in the final sequence, he clearly proposes a fascist system... by another name.
The collectivist system that, in its various forms and degrees, rules society in every country is based on the premise that the philosophical system on which it rests – altruism, the obligation to live for "a higher realm" in the spiritual expression and "society" in its material expression – is correct while the subjects it rules are bad. But this belief, of course, is in itself totally wrong.
Collectivism, which embodies altruism, is a "natural" for irrational animals since among them there are rulers and their acolytes who command the herd. As evolution brought us from such beastly ancestors, we "naturally" inherited the system. However, as soon as the human mind had reached both a relative and absolute volume sufficiently large for the thinking process to set in, this was no longer applicable to our new position in the reign of living beings. Still, the rulers, by inertia, by fear established against their fellow men and by sheer custom, found it convenient to continue to apply the system as it benefited them in every possible way. Besides, at that time there was nobody who noticed the difference existing in relation to the animal strand from which we came.
From there on the system turned into being an imposition on mankind. By hook and crook, by threats and persecution, by torture and murder, even the possibility of thinking that something completely different would be proper to human beings was erased. In a way, the brain of the succeeding generations was continuously subjected to a process of brain washing. As "The Comprachicos" did in past times to obtain horribly distorted creatures for the satisfaction of emperors, kings and princes, the human brain was pressed into an intellectual mould which distorted it.
This complex situation, however, could not be maintained forever. As the process of reasoning sped on, knowledge accumulated and the combination of both finally brought out the truth in our age. It took several millennia to bloom into its perfect expression. Being something completely new, it had to come up in the hostile environment of those who were and are still living in accordance to the old rules. This makes it also inevitable that almost every human being now living will be unable to take up the philosophical system and its naturally resulting type of society, for having grown up within the bridle of the established. Only the bravest will rebel. But things will change with the coming generations as the new teachings reach them more and more from the very beginning. A true revolution develops in this way, gradually, step by step first, gaining ever-increasing speed later on.
We are living, thus, in a time of transition, a time where the known way of life has reached its bitter, unavoidable end, and the time when a new, correct, non-contradictory idea as the right basis for society comes up. In his book "Yestermorrow" C. W. Ceram, the author of "Gods, Graves and Scholars" noticed this change when he wrote, "In the twentieth century a period of human history ends which has lasted for 5,000 years. Against Oswald Spengler and his concept that the Western World is ending, our situation is not at all similar to Rome at the beginning of the Christian era, but to the one which man faced 3,000 years before Christ. Like prehistoric man we raise our eyes and look at a world completely new."
The fact that the correct philosophy has now appeared - a philosophy favoring man, not "God", "A Higher Realm", "Society", "Mankind" or those declaring to represent these abstracts and fantasies - is in itself a clear evidence of the revolutionizing process.
The new system is the only possible alternative for it is true, demonstrable and logically perfect. Parts of it came up here and there through history but its complete assemblage and the unexpected developments that it embodies were blocked by the existing system that managed to maintain its power through a multitude of names and forms that only served to hide their true purpose of maintaining synergic organizations of dominance.
We owe the deduction of the correct system, called Objectivism by its author, to the genius of a woman: Ayn Rand by pseudonym, Alice Rosenbaum by her true name. Unfortunately, this philosophy, which was presented to the public in 1957 through her book "Atlas Shrugged" is, in spite of nowadays fast moving communications, almost unknown everywhere for it is being silenced on purpose by the powers that are and practically the totality of the news media.
With all other philosophies it becomes evident either from the very beginning or, else, already very early in its development and evolution that they are filled with contradictions in each part and within the parts composing it. The authors leave everywhere loose strings, over which they prefer to keep silent or paying them no further considerations so as not to be disturbed from the goal they want to reach.
Anybody having ever read the works of some philosophers will have reached very early this sense of "there's something unexplained here" and "why doesn't he answer this or that?" It is particularly this what produces continuous disappointments, the feeling that something very serious is amiss. While this immediately opens up the area for critiques and enmity from those who are against the philosophy under consideration, the attempts made by the given philosopher's followers to supply the necessary corrections only help to evidence the errors more openly, and generally leads the carriage into an even deeper swamp.
This general record of philosophy's failures has moved W.T. Jones, a historian of philosophy, to ask if this is not a virtual confession of the bankruptcy of philosophy itself.
The Spanish thinker Jesús María, who did not know Objectivism, expressed already in 1983 "the melancholic sadness which grows in me when I look at the world's intellectual decadence". He named as its origin the use, in every sense, of old ideas which have no relation whatsoever with our modern world.
What was needed were new ideas, new concepts firmly rooted in reason and logic, not ideas based on fantasy, taken “from the air” or “out of nothing” even if this would be remotely possible which, of course, it is not, though philosophers attached to traditions since long superseded insist to prove that this is not so.
Ayn Rand called our attention to the present situation that the world, in spite of screaming for answers to its problems, holds to the belief that no solutions are available.
But once Ayn Rand established the absolute connection between metaphysics and epistemology, which are the first self-evident facts, namely the "is" part, all the additional, related facts follow immediately. The "is" part establishes the resulting practical "ought" parts: ethics –explained in the foregoing chapter – politics, the required environment for the ethical deductions reached and aesthetics. Since neither the parts can contradict the whole nor the whole any of the parts, the deductions reached lead us to the search for a social system which corresponds to the correctly deduced "is" and its resulting "ought" in favor of the final beneficiary of the philosophic system's: the individual's life. Only the full picture will show that all the parts are well connected to the social requirements of the individual.
A logically reached conclusion will, of course, convince every rational individual. But it will do something even more spectacular: it will show the break of character of those who reject the full logic of the resulting whole, it will evidence the evilness lurking in their consciousness and it will bring to light this evilness in every phrase they utter, in every evil idea to which they adhere, even where they themselves do not notice such evilness.
Since what will follow has been already deduced by Ayn Rand, we can present it without any roundabouts. For a more detailed consideration of the whole, I suggest the reader to read Ayn Rand's own words in the books she wrote. The freshness he will find there is doubly gratifying since, first, he will face the unavoidable conclusions she reached and, in addition, enjoy the quality of her writing style and the perfect mathematics implicit in her reasonings.
However, the opportunity is ripe to add a series of personal thoughts and considerations.
To start with, the philosophy of Objectivism is a true watershed separating reason from faith, good from evil, justice from injustice, productive purpose from loafing and delinquency, art from smears and a correct life from an idle one. All of its resulting conclusions are self-evident and consistent among themselves in every aspect that might be considered. It operates like a perfect set of theorems (I owe this comparison to a very precise defender of Objectivism, Mr. Miguel Fishman of Buenos Aires, Argentina). No questions are left open nor, as it always happen with other so-called philosophic systems, pieces are left lying around, unused. The whole edifice is complete. This also explains why critiques always end up with inconsistencies or appeals to faith, either in what the critic says or in his question begging for some "Higher Instance". More often than not do critiques attack what I call a leaf on a side branch. As a defender of Objectivism I can only smile at such kinds of critique since they cannot touch the edifice itself. There are a few details of very little importance, if any, with which I myself disagree, details which corresponded to Rand's personal tastes rather than to what she deduced from reality, such as using a cigarette as a symbol or her stand against women reaching the presidency of a nation. Such opposition can be anecdotal but do not go any further. This being said, we can now consider which is the correct type of society for the individual.
There are only two possible types of society. One of them collects the various types of altruism (Communism, Social Democracy, Fascism, etc.) into one of the ends of the range. The other end is occupied by capitalism. The so-called “moderate” type of altruism – also called Socialism or Social Democracy, which also like to call themselves “center-left” – aims at its final goal (total State domination) at a slower and less violent pace than Communism. In the final analysis Socialism must recognize, however, that it is a covered-up type of Communism. With this way of behavior, Socialism shows that it is much more unethical than Communism itself since it tries to hide from the public its real purpose of total exploitation. Still, this way of procedure allowed it able to prevail in the majority of the countries world over. Yet this places it into a self-destructive predicament that must be solved one way or another. It shuns taking the apparently (I stress this for what is to follow) hard decision to make a clear cut in the right direction. Its own contradiction in terms shoves it continuously into a blind alley of destruction. By insisting in taking the wrong decisions at every turn of the road, it condemns itself to its own inevitable destruction. Once a given socialist type of society its supporters return repeatedly to what has just destroyed itself, though it is known that a new name for the same old trap is nothing but a mirage. Some of those being part of the “moderate” socialism turn to Communism, thus recognizing the true character of their aim. Among them are the “Greens” which like to hide their true character of extreme leftists. The Socialism of “moderate” altruism carries many names, among them Democracy, Christian Democracy, Social Democracy, Christian Socialism, Syndicalism, Environmentalism and Fascism/Nazism, etc.
With each step, the circle becomes ever so tighter. Since Socialism pretends to be the "defender" of the distribution of the existing wealth while constantly impeding a free production, it finds itself in a spiral to poverty. The productive part of society has noticed this since long. The bankruptcy at the end of the road is, thus, already pre-planned.
This can be analyzed further. A republic and a democracy compose the extremes of the political range, albeit it is democracy that constantly swears that it tries to keep to the middle of the road. This is in itself an error with fatal consequences. Ayn Rand stated that any compromise between right and wrong is like a compromise between poison and health, where poison will always get the upper hand. This poison is represented by many names, as mentioned earlier, such as “Socialism”, “Communism”, "Christian Democracy", "Social Democracy", "Nazism or Fascism", etc. This may be very confusing for some people, but they would immediately recognize the truth were they to observe the common roots and aims held by democracy and communism. Democracy is, basically, nothing more than an elected dictatorship and as such, like Communism, subject to its own final destruction. The reason for this tendency towards self-destruction relates as well to the psychology of the human being as to his need for self-survival. An article at the end of this chapter considers this at a deeper level.
Communism, the most extreme form of a democracy, stands for a society where everything is in the hands of the State composed by a small group of hoodlums who, acting as the representatives of the people (called proletariat) own all means of production as well as the human beings themselves operating under their rule. Hence, "citizens" are not such but slaves in the truest meaning of the term. The so-called "middle-of-the-road" variation of democracy leaves the means of production in the hands of the private citizen, but determines both who and what is to be produced by using such "tools" as an ever more intricate bureaucracy, taxation and subsidies. Since all these measures operate against the survival requirements of the individual they constitute only a further means to social bankruptcy.
The "Middle-of-the-road" variation as it likes to call itself is called Nazism or, also, Fascism which either carry the word "Socialism" in its name or, else, clearly shows its socialist origin through the use of the fasces symbol (on the one hand it is the German National-Socialist Labor Party, for example; and on the Fascist side we must remember that Mussolini came from a party). We must remember that Hitler as well as Stalin recognized that socialism could only be kept through a total dictatorship. To clarify the concepts involved let us detail them below:
· Under communism people produce what the government thinks that people needs attending the means of production owned by the government.
· Under socialism, Nazism or Fascism people continue to own privately the means of production but producers as well as workers are only allowed to produce what government dictates.
In both cases, the individual is but a slave of the state just as he was a slave of the pharaohs or the kings of ages gone by. Nowadays, "civilized" socialism continues to use taxes and subsidies and, where this does not suffices, hidden threats or decisions taken "in the name of the people" for the political and economic aims sought for. Democracy is, thus, always a dictatorship where only that is allowed what the "representatives" of a majority determine. Economy is only the "means for distributing wealth". To produce better and more goods is no reason to reach a personal gain.
Democracy operates based on what is called the Roman positive law. The republican or negative form operates in accordance to a type of rules of behavior that was established for the first time in the United States, close to the end of the 18th century. This negative set of rulings states that everybody produces for his own benefit and keeps the results of his efforts. The State is not allowed to mingle in the private and productive efforts of the individual. Hence, the negative sense of behavior. In capitalism, which is the form of society proper to a republic, the government only takes care of the defense of the rights of the individual – even here and not in all cases on an exclusive basis – turning, thus, into an Administration of the Means of Defense of the Rights of the Individual (Justice, Police and Armed Forces).
Here too alternatives are possible since the administration itself could be privatized without much ado or difficulties. Through this, a large part of nowadays expenses could be avoided and all politicians and bureaucrats could be transferred to the private productive activities.
The private administration of the Means of Defense of the Individual (Justice, Police, Armed Forces and even the national diplomatic corps), would be transferred to the association of private insurance companies since they already dedicate their activities, since the time they were created, to the defense of the life and goods of the individual.
This would also transfer back to the people, the sum of individuals comprising society itself, all the principal general decisions. Each one would vote permanently without ever having to enter a voting booth since he signs his insurances a given insurance company. As soon as he would notice that the given company does not represent his interests and points of view as he wishes, he would change the company. Competence, the instrument that carefully controls the free market, would additionally hold all expenses under surveillance using price reductions, dividends, etc. The armed forces would, of course, consist of a professional army which, being private, would be much more accurate and efficient than any army existing up to now. Besides, the moral laws of an Objectivist society would be in charge and, thus, acts of violence would either be eliminated wholesome or, else, steeply reduced. Private ownership of weapons would continue to be a right of each individual.
While everybody within a democracy speaks of living in a republic (in fact, almost every country names itself a republic) this is not true in reality. The republic and the democratic form are, as said, at opposite ends. A democracy is the form of a society as an end in itself while a republic is a society that acts as a means for everybody's personal goals, as long as these are peaceful toward the other individuals. Ignorant of definitions the overwhelming majority of the world's population considers a democracy to be the very best type of society possible for man. Hence, they vote whoever promises them a democracy and vouch to establish and keep it since its essence seems to be filled both with glorious and high ideals. After all, „society as an end“ seems noble and worthwhile while a republic, being society as a means, appears to be of little value. It caters to each one's selfish goals.
This said it immediately becomes clear that a "democratic republic" is a contradiction in terms. There are some totally true to its essence democracies (like Communist China, Cuba and the like) while a republic is nowhere in sight.
The rule in a democracy is, as said already, the positive Roman right, where the individual is only allowed to do exactly what the law specifies. Whatever the law does not allow is automatically prohibited. Therefore, the majority of the individual's rights are neither recognized nor enacted. Most of the times and knowing that it cannot build a working economic system by its own, we find a mixture of Socialism with some capitalistic ways of procedure where this part, however small its percentage may be, offers the ground for the productivity of a country while the democratic (or so-called "socially" oriented) part dedicates itself to spending, i.e. filling the pockets of the coterie of those wielding power over the rest of the population purporting to take care of the underdog. The result is such a highly explosive mixture that always leads to disaster. Following Say's law, politicians use the money and power exacted by force from the population to present themselves as caretakers of society's "needs" and, thus, corrode away the personal liberty of the citizen. They proceed in a "soft" way, always stressing that the measures taken have in mind the goal of more personal security. By proceeding thus, the citizen does not almost notice the increasing limitations of his liberty and even supports them. It is the policy of small steps, a procedure that seems to be opposed to the communistic procedures but advances gradually to the same goal of establishing a communist society. Whenever possible, the productive part of the population emigrates, and the rest embarks into stagnation and bankruptcy and the resulting "way-outs" such as coup d'Etats, expansion wars against the neighboring countries (to rob the wealth these may have) or internal strives and guerilla warfare with an all-against-all fighting.
A republic, on the contrary, is a type of society where all laws – against the positive Roman right – are of the negative type. Here, all laws are reduced to the axiomatic essence that "Nobody has a right to initiate an act of violence against another person or persons". In a republic a law can only prescribe what somebody is not allowed to do (a negative, as you can see), such as initiating an act of violence against another person or persons. Everything that is not specifically prohibited, is allowed. This goes so far that the first ten Amendments of the glorious American Constitution clearly state in the 9th Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people". It is precisely this declaration which establishes the working basis for a republic since, while the Amendments themselves are based on the positive Roman law (they allow certain actions the citizen may take), this specific statement clearly goes counter the Roman law system and establishes them as only a very minor part of what the negative type of law stands for: that the gross majority of known and yet to be known rights are and remain in the hands of the individual. This means that the Constitution itself imposes a clear-cut restriction on the Government and not on the people, which is a way of life completely different from what the rules establish in a democracy. This also corresponds to the essence of a capitalistic society: where the private individual retains all rights, as long as he behaves peacefully and productively towards his fellow citizens. The result is a steadily increasing wellbeing of the population.
Even a positive law such as the amendment that allows the citizens to own weapons has a negative effect upon the government. The defensive armed force stays mainly in private hands, which provides a warrant against possible coup d’Etats. In fact, there has never been such an upheaval in the United States. The population is armed against the emergence of possible tyrants and this is the reason why so minded people want to prohibit the population to own weapons. Hitler commented this expressly during his talks with Rauschning when he said that the population would never be allowed to bear arms since this would mean the immediate demise of the domination of his party.
However, people generally ignore the difference between a republic and a democracy since neither the schools nor the means of communication and the politicians have any interest to explain this difference.
The beginning of a republic-true-to-its-essence was laid only 200 years ago, during the American Revolution ("A Republic, if you can keep it", said Benjamin Franklin when he was asked by a lady what type of society the revolutionaries were at that time creating).
It is precisely the definition of what a republic is what places the original American Republic exactly at opposition to the rest of the world. It is also, what set the basis for the United States amazing success. For many, many decades, the democrats (the American socialists or communists as you may also call them and their direct partners in ideas, the Republicans - shame for the name they have given themselves) have been eroding away this main difference. However, beyond all foreseeable expectations, the republican form of society seems to be a fundament of such amazing strength that it cannot be destroyed. In fact, since Ayn Rand's ideas appeared on the scene of human history, it has become clear that the concepts represented by a republic are slowly, almost unnoticeably, creeping through the world, like a hidden fountain sprouting in the most unexpected places and ways, as Ayn Rand herself said in relation with her philosophy.
The appearance of the idea of a republic in the modern sense has taken so long because, during the process of evolution, the human species was loaded with all kinds of patterns of behavior that are intrinsically proper to the long line of irrational species from which we evolved.
Humans, by the time they evolved as such, resigned themselves – by inertia, by routine, because it was so "self-evident" – to live within a social system that the hominids had inherited from their irrational ancestors and which they bequeathed to their offsprings whose rational faculty, however, steadily increased until it became our defining characteristic.
Yet, by the time this had happened, the way of life proper to pre-prehistorical times had petrified around society, encircling it with a rigid frame of duties and obedience to different social levels, groups and vested interests. These elites used their power - as well as any other types of coercion and restraints which they decided to legalize - to both establish their own haughty positions and privileges and retain knowledge and power, all this as helping tools to more easily dominate the general population and subject it to their own immoral purposes. The priestly-royal Egyptian caste and the whole stretch of the Middle Ages are sufficient proofs of a long line of dictatorial behavior that the reader can follow in any book of history.
Every knowledge, such as the prediction of an eclipse, was used to subject the population to their powerful but unjust rule and to keep their privileges and dominance. But this entailed a great danger. Fortunately, by the time Gutenberg invented the printing press the coming revolution was ripe.
Even today this type of social structure, proper to termites, prevails in the majority of countries, with an all powerful ruling coterie and an obedient population, where the most desperate escape or emigrate, when they can, to those regions of the planet where the situation is a little bit less cruel. However, in general, the majority has always accepted this state of affairs as if it were unavoidable: a ruling group directing subjects accustomed to obey. It is common to hear phrases such as, "Things must be under someone's control. There must be laws to control everything..." Inertia, fear or sheer stupidity has helped, up to now, a group of self-declared rulers to hold power over their fellow men.
The common man has come to accept this situation up to the point where he doesn't even question its validity, basically identifying himself with such a society of termites as if society itself where an end to hold up while everything else is just a means to this end. Individuals have only a right to live for the benefit of society, that is, each has to live for the others, having no right for his own. What results out of this, logically and inevitably, is that the individual lives for the ruling society where the rulers throw a few crumbs back here and there to subdue any possible rebellion.
Every society as an end in itself is a society of beneficiaries and sacrificers, a way of life of masters and slaves. Ayn Rand brought to light the conclusion that sacrifice is immoral, as it cannot give to man neither values nor virtues. The term itself indicates that it obliges to surrender a higher value for a lower one; else, it would be a gain and not a sacrifice.
Thus, we see that as soon as we start to think about a fact which apparently is high and noble – and a "society as an end" seems to be this when first looked at – we find that it is not so, we find that it is filled with errors and contradictions, filled with deceits and evilness, filled with poverty and bitterness. This turns it into being totally opposed to human nature and to man's inalienable right to fulfill himself as an individual and to reach happiness. In such a society, rights do not exist, and existence itself is only allowed if the individual submits to the credo of having to live for others, not for himself.
However, throughout the ages, almost unnoticeably, some men recognized this monstrous situation, this fogginess hiding reality from view. As our mental capacity increased, questions and arguments came up that opposed what had been established through time and inertia.
It is not by chance that mankind has called the period following the Middle Ages "Renaissance". Not even the established powers were able to prohibit this labeling. Between the years 1100 and 1400 the first buds of the coming spring started to sprout. An economical revolution took place, followed by a scientific revolution that, in the 18th century, would be turned into the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. Men such as Thomas Aquinas (in spite of his suggestion to kill those who did not accept "God" as their spiritual ruler) and Francis Bacon prepared the road, slowly re-establishing the activity of the sciences, which is the application of the faculty of reason to the study of Nature. Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus amplified the West's horizon towards new regions, medicine started to be looked at with respect, universities were established and from a flat vision of the world men turned to a perspective vision. It might sound like a platitude to say that precisely at that time artists discovered the laws of perspective but here is a direct relation between this discovery and the new view at facts.
All this brought with it a change of mentality that reached its momentary peak at the end of the 18th century when a new type of society was established in the United States of America. It is this new way of looking at society that produces the shock waves that are now triggering the great final confrontation with traditional society – society as an end – taking place during the present period.
When Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and the further thinkers, created what was to be known as the American Revolution for the Establishment of the Rights of the Individual, they operated in opposition to everything established by throwing overboard the "society as an end" as this interfered with the establishment of what they had deduced to be the correct form of society for individuals: the apparently less noble and less dignified "society as a means". Its nobility rests on the fact that it respects the rights of each individual living within it, that it upholds the dignity of each single man raising himself from the status of subject to the level of citizen, sole owner of his live and the fruit of his labor.
The idea of individual liberty destroys the tribal-collectivist fence by establishing the rule of equal rights for everybody, which means that neither birth nor title determine the rights of the individual but the tremendous reason that each has inalienable rights for his being a human being, that is, a rational being. Submission to others was terminated and the notion that the life of a man is only valid if he lives for the benefit of his fellow men was declared invalid.
Surely, these were only the first steps of a long road but it is, nevertheless, a revolution going down to the very root of the matter. Society itself looses its sense as an insatiable monster and becomes a means for the ends of each man. "Society" as a foggy myth, is replaced by each concrete individual; society becomes, just like a forest, a mere abstract concept for a reunion of many individuals living together. As from there on society is a medium, a tool, a marketplace where each individual has the right to accomplish his own purposes through productive efforts. There is only one ruling prohibition in this society: criminal ends are forbidden, this being the precise point where the axiom that nobody has a right to initiate an act of violence against another man or other men comes into force. It is only in a "society as a means" where this rule can be applied.
Now "society as a means" reveals itself as the really noble, the really great, the really brilliant way of life proper to man. It does so in every relation, be it intellectual or material.
While in a "society as an end" everything is structured as a justification for its own permanence, a "society as a means" is exactly the opposite. It evolves, grows and prospers with man himself, as it is the fitting, practical way for each individual to reach his own goals. Ayn Rand indicated in her writings that a social existence provides man with two great values: knowledge and trade. No man can obtain in his life all the potentially available knowledge, but he can benefit from all the knowledge that has been accumulated and transmitted through all the past generations and, in addition, what is being discovered and invented by others and even by himself during his own lifespan. The second great value, trade, allows every man to dedicate his own efforts to what he knows best and exchange it for the products he requires that were made by the efforts of others. The result of this free cooperation allows every man who participates in it to obtain a bigger knowledge, greater skill and a higher productive return than what he could achieve if he had to make everything by himself.
While society as an end carries many different names (democracy, dictatorship, tyranny, despotism, collectivism, monarchy, socialism, Fascism, Nazism, communism, oligarchy, synarchy, etc. with its various levels of slavery and liberty), "society as a means" is known by one name only: Full Laissez Faire Capitalism, a system based on the recognition of the rights of the individual where every right, including the right to property, is private property, free from governmental interference, and where governments are not what they have been known to be up to now but executors of a very specific duty, that is to act as an Administration of the Means of Defense of the Rights of the Individual (Police, Armed Forces and the Administration of Justice).
A perfect "society as a means" has not existed up to now in its pure form for it lacked the required philosophical basis. It is this what places such a system into the future. Even in the United States where, at the time of the American Revolution, it was established as a general outline, it was limited by many unjustified governmental interferences. However, its establishment does not correspond to the distant future but must be nearby since it is in our times that Ayn Rand deduced and established the required philosophy for such a new type of society. That is, as Ayn Rand herself said, if mankind wishes to have a future...
The foregoing, which might, almost for sure, annoy those educated in accordance with the rules of the established, clarifies also if society is more important than the individual or the other way around. Evidently, society as such is not of consequence since, in the last analysis and when it comes to the point of what is to be rescued – the individual or society – the individual stands in first line because he is both the main entity and the pillar of society itself. Many societies, like the Nazi one, have crumbled but individual man has survived in the end. Without the individual, no human society is possible. Hence, to defend anything contrary to this new type of society is also to lack the most elementary knowledge of logic.
The "society as a means" is a self-evident natural environment for the human being, for it exists and develops with mankind itself. This brings to mind the words of the British thinker Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) when he said: "Human progress is a consequence of the individual's progress". In other words, where the individual does not progress society itself cannot progress. Or, as Ayn Rand correctly pointed out in her work "The Fountainhead": "Civilization is the process toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of the tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
As stated earlier, there is only one possible type of society, which is in itself a "society as a means" for the productive purposes of every honest individual: Capitalism. This is the only place where man can live to the full expression of his productive purposes and where the right to one's happiness can be realized. It will have to come into existence very soon since the evolution of mankind itself demands it.
How does capitalism operate in its barest essentials? Here I refer the reader to the giants who deduced its social-economic structure, principally Adam Smith (leaving aside his religious considerations), the "Austrians" (Carl Menger, Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, George Reisman and, to a lesser degree, Friedrich A. Hayek since he didn't perceive the correct necessary philosophical basis required for a capitalistic system), etc. It would mean a useless involvement with economics for the length and purpose of this writing, taking into consideration that authors that are far more knowledgeable have extended themselves over thousands of pages to describe the workings of the capitalist system.
Its operation resides on the full recognition of the private property, the term "full" standing for the fact that it does not suffice that private individuals own the means of production as this happens also within a series of socialistic societies, including the Fascist-Nazist one. "Full recognition" means in this context that private man decides what to do with the means of production he owns and to keep the results of what he produces with the means of production he owns. He is not subject to decisions taken by the government, for any government decision that limits the liberty of the individual is automatically rendered unlawful by the essence itself of what the capitalistic system stands for: each individual's liberty from authoritarian compulsion. It is the only rationally possible system for a human society.
Therefore, it is also the only system standing for an abolition of ignorance and poverty and the establishment of the promotion of general culture and wellbeing as long as these are in the hands of private endeavor. Marx himself recognized this in his “Communist Manifesto” as he wrote there:
“The bourgeoisie (as fledgling capitalism was called in his time), by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most backward nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the underdeveloped nations’ intensively obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.
“(Capitalism) has created enormous cities... and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarcely one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
“In the same proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed.”
After stating this, he presented a system which was a secularized version of the religious teachings of altruism and whose declared purpose was the destruction of the capitalist system, a system whose direct purpose was the eradication of ignorance and poverty. By doing so, he showed his malignant character. He wanted people to continue to be ignorant and poor for this allowed a small elite to dictate its power over the subjected population. It is not possible to think of a more malicious nature. He was able, due to the still prevailing unawareness of the masses, to misguide them away from a position where intellectuals, politicians and religious people would have no longer been able to wield supremacy over them.
The aforementioned shows also that there is, borrowing an expression from physics, a time dilation between reality and the existing structure of society since same is still following the mental framework originally created by science in the sense that everything could be prognosticated once all the laws of nature were understood. The discoveries of Newton and, later, Einstein, did nothing to change this impression.
However, as reality taught us, on the road to investigate the behavior of the elementary particles, the fact came up that the universe does not allow any determinism. Newton and Einstein, however enormous their discoveries were to better understand the universe, covered only what could be called the "gross laws". It is the finer, minimal structure that lays at the basis of the whole.
In the context of philosophy, Ayn Rand mentions this when she holds that industrial civilization is expected to be run "by the guidance of philosophical doctrines created by and for savages who lived in mud holes, scratched the soil for a handful of grains and gave thanks to the statues of distorted animals whom they worshipped as superior to man".
Now I will explain what I have said above with greater detail.
It was always believed that some "supreme power" had organized everything that happens for all of eternity. The machinations of religions and the ignorance and naivety of the general population made it possible that this continues to be a sacrosanct truth. As time went by, out of this resulted the notion that a fallacious so-called "Plan of 'God'" could be read and, besides, that everything on a social level could be ruled. This notion expanded manifold in our time though modern knowledge defeated it.
The Copernican ideas, heavily borrowed from the Greeks, destroyed what at that time was the most untouchable of Christian beliefs, i.e. the notion that the Sun moved around the Earth and that same was the center of the universe. The Copernican teachings convinced many thinkers that what was to happen in the future could be established if the laws of nature were discovered and properly read and applied to human business once all data related was known. Newton confirmed this conviction still further and the dam he broke down apparently brought more and more evidence to sustain it. With Einstein extending this knowledge to the rest of the universe it became firmly established that, in due course, everything could not only be explained but also consequently foreseen... and planned. A scientifically based society was thought to be possible. Since most of the intellectuals, scientists and politicians adhered and still adhere to the socialist ideas, it was blindly accepted that this would be achievable. Marx and Engels were to be the prophets of the belief that the wisdom of science would allow mankind to "organize" the activities of human society. Thus, to the pre-ordained orderliness of "God" a new religion was added: intellectuals, scientists and politicians could tidily command human society.
This idea is also contained in Einstein's autobiography, in Roosevelt's New Deal, in Hitler's belief that a "selected" group of people was predestined to guide mankind, in all further Communist, Socialist, Democratic, Conservative, theocratic and monarchical political platforms and purposes. A long intellectual line paved the way for this, starting with Plato’s Guardians and following with the "teachings" of thinkers like Jesus Christ, Campanella, Sir Thomas More, Henri de Saint Simon, Hegel, Kant, etc. Al religions adhere to this hope.
That it was possible to foresee all of mankind's needs and supply all its requirements was an unshakable belief. It was thought to be possible to "plan" and build human happiness. Today, with the upcoming civilization of computer-based technology, this belief is overwhelmingly defended by, most of all, those deeply enamored with computer technology. Now, finally, it is thought that "Perfect Communism" can be realized in its total, final perfection. What is more: humanity itself will create its own follower, the intelligent robots who, in due course, will replace mankind itself.
I am not at all opposed to computer technology (this writing is prepared on such a marvelous tool) but reality does not allow me to adhere to this belief which Newton and Einstein and every other scientist helped to spread, some of them perhaps even unwittingly. None of them was aware of the resulting consequences.
The belief of a centrally controlled planning has revealed itself as unsustainable as all other beliefs. Everything centrally planned either does not develop as expected or, else, ends up being quite different from the established aim. The expectations which were triggered by Marx' "scientific" communism ended all in a total chaos and they will continue to do so wherever they are applied again, since Marx did not consider human requirements and behavior. If he would have done so, he would not have described communism but capitalism and he would have met success.
A free society has an endless amount of possibilities for its future but the direction will be given by the decisions of each separate individual. We may compare this, in a general sense, with an enormously large and complex chess play where each individual move reduces or increases the further possibilities toward success more and more. What is more, it is a game where each separate piece, that is each separate individual, has the possibility of reaching his own success. If he behaves erratically, i.e. without having a personal goal, he will meet his own defeat.
Along the history of mankind's evolution, it is more and more each individual who directs how the future will be. Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" is decided more and more by mankind while chance as well as the natural processes of nature become, in due course, increasingly less decisive. This means that the construction of the future is not in the hands of one individual but of each separate individual, always in relation with the importance of each one’s unique decisions.
Thousands of millions of people continually take decisions which cannot be foreseen but which shape the future of mankind, decisions that can, among many other things and as an example, raise or destroy an enterprise of any kind within a matter of seconds, decisions that can result in peaceful existence or a war close at hand, and so forth.
This matter can be additionally explained thus: In the universe things act on a quantum jump basis between stable or static situations. For example, take a stone: it remains in a stable position, say at the top of a mountain, until conditions become uncertain. Wind, erosion, an earthquake, etc. can affect what happens next. Perhaps the stone remains where it is, in which case its next stable position is the same as the earlier one was or, else, it falls into a new stable position. The time of transition between both stable situations is the time of uncertainty. It is the Heisenberg situation. This is the simplest of all possible examples.
This also happens, of course, to human beings, for example between jobs. “I’ve been with this company since an eternity already”, can often be heard. Then something happens, the subject seeks a new job, finds it and starts the new job (or, else, does not find it and remains at his old job).
However, the line of procedure is always the same: stable situation to change to new stable situation.
All this is again sufficient proof that the only social system that can handle such a general state of things is capitalism, a social system which doesn't "handle" anything but merely provides the basis on which the free decisions of each individual can act unhampered, the only limit in the pursuit of his goals being the prohibition to initiate an act of violence against another person or persons, the axiom which ensures a peaceful and productive life in common, as deduced by philosopher Ayn Rand from the facts of reality.
MURDERERS ARE NOT HUMANS
“I don't think that after about the age of 25 you can carry on blaming either your parents or your DNA for anything that you do.” (Ken Follett, the author of “The Third Twin” commenting his book on his personal webpage, http://www.ken-follett.com/bibliography/thirdtwin.html)
„When the mind of man becomes perverted and cruel
(Master sleuth Philo Vance in S.S. van Dine’s „The Dragon Murder Case“)
The title of this article may shock the reader but, as will be shown, it is true. In spite of the fact that human history is filled with them, in wars as well as in civilian life, murderers are not humans. They have, of course, a human appearance, but this is all that relates them to the rest of humanity.
What characterizes them is their hate against human beings, which is in itself sufficient proof that they are not humans; for feelings, as philosopher Ayn Rand taught us, are not tools to obtain knowledge. The foundation and the means to obtain the human condition, is the faculty of reason. Hence, to state that murderers are not human beings in the proper sense of the term is the logical consequence of Ayn Rand’s teachings. Their brain may have developed up to the level where the faculty of reason starts to operate, but they rejected it before it reached its full extent or, else, they alienated the minimum of reason that their brain was able to retain from its original function of providing the correct sustenance for a life proper to a human being. Even in this last case, they exist at a level that is even below what Ayn Rand described in her article “The Missing Link”. Their level is above that of an irrational animal but below that of a human being with an arrested mentality. They exist at a level that combines the instinct of a higher-level animal, such as a lion, which is able to stalk his next prey but fully unable to reason the consequences of the rifle pointing at it. This, as we shall see, presents a very interesting fact that will be considered under paragraph 4), when I come to speak of the corresponding punishment.
The term of murderer is not limited to the physical act of the murder itself, i.e. the actual execution of a maliciously premeditated killing, but refers also to hate mongers, religious, political and military propagandists who seek to promote hatred and prejudice against another group or those who do not follow their same beliefs, wishes and aims.
Ken Follett’s words leading this article clearly determine that an adult can blame nobody but himself for having malevolent feelings and intentions.
Even considering that both common murderers as well as hate mongers probably have a certain part within their genetic DNA structure that may move their brain towards a murderous activity, this would be just a basic deterministic tendency. Against any murderous commitment stands the barrier of reason, the personal action of logical and coherent thoughts, and the personal decision taking that allows every single, individual human being to act against a DNA tendency. This, the capacity to act rationally, is precisely what separates human beings from their evolutionary animal origin.
Though this will be taken up again later on in this writing, I hasten to precisely point out that anybody killing in self-defense is NOT a murderer since precisely the aggressor initiated the act of violence.
It was the genius of Ayn Rand who, in relation with the theme of this article, murder, deduced from the reality of what we are the need for a rational, objective, non-contradictory nor contrary to human nature, moral code to guide our acts without any absurd threats, i.e. not based on fears from eternal punishments but on man’s basic right, reaching the happiness obtained through a life in peace and harmony with his fellow men. The “moral codes” that were designed earlier, such as those mentioned in the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran or any other similar civilian or religious writings, cover the purpose of an ethical guidance only in appearance for, as a matter of fact, they are nothing but an instrument designed by the powerful to subdue and control the lower rungs of the population. On top of this they are either wrong or even evidently malevolent, the disguised product of murderous minds. Ayn Rand presented the only possible correct human moral code. It is a universal code.
As said, moral codes come in various ways in which they are articulated and can be generalized, thus, as being a) too general, b) definitively imperfect, c) truly malevolent, or, finally, d) faultless. Let us inspect what they say and what implications they carry.
1. Though it has never been proposed, the rule “No killings within the species” looks quite acceptable when first looked at, but clearly contains a full series of errors. Quite besides prohibiting those in power to start any bloody fights and wars, for to do so they would have to openly break the rule; it is worded in too general a way, thus prohibiting also any killing in self-defense as well as any death penalty as punishment for murderers. It is so general a rule that, due to it, it becomes useless.
2. The biblical command “You shall not kill” lowers the absoluteness of the rule just mentioned above but turns it into so flexible, so plastic a mass, that it renders itself either useless or, else, directly malevolent. Of course it is flexible enough to yield its command in the presence of the requirement of self-defense, when the attacker (same could be applied to a mass of people or a whole invading army) has to be killed, but it includes also the malevolent possibility that any hate- or power monger can start an aggressive war or that a murderer could use killing as a means to achieve his goal (whatever same may be). After all, the rule does not rule out the killing, it merely recommends not killing. This includes self-defense, of course, but also, as said, the possibility of finding a good excuse to start an aggressive war if sufficient battle power or general hate is available. It is, thus, a totally impractical rule. Moreover, it is also theoretically wrong, since, due to the spirit ruling its wording, it cannot establish a strict obedience. It is also too lax, resembling a far too weak mother that reprimands its naughty offspring for any misdeed carried out (“You know you shouldn’t have done that but, well, what can I do since you did it already…”).
3. The third command is the worst of the line. It is criminal for it promotes total intolerance. It indiscriminately condemns other human beings or groups and is, thus, responsible for the majority of the violence that has burdened the human race during the whole of mankind’s existence. It lays at the basis of all religious persecution, Inquisitions, wars and all related harms imaginable. It represents what the law calls “malice aforethought”, a deliberate intention and plan to murder. While it is already implicit in the Old Testament part of the Bible, where “God” continuously threatens or directly orders to kill those who do not follow him, it appears in clear and unmistakable words in Christianity, having been taken over from there by the Moslems. It says, “Whoever isn’t with me is against me” (Math. 12, Luke 11). Within the Moslemic cult, this turns into “Death to the Infidels” and lays, of course, also at the root of communism and its brother-in-kind: Nazism.
So none of the aforementioned “moral” rules is valid for any human being characterized by the faculty of reason. None of these commands, that pretend to be “moral”, can really be considered to be so.
It took thousands of years for the right law to be designed. It took the mind of a genius – Ayn Rand – to deduce the correct command from reality. It reads, “Nobody – and this means NOBODY – has a right to INITIATE an act of violence against another person or persons.” Observe the preciseness of this law.
Since most of all “philosophers” prior to Ayn Rand were either religiously minded or, in the case of Marx and others, replaced religion by another abstract term (“The Proletariat”), their moral dictums were all in error. Aristotle, one of mankind’s clearest minds, considered that a moral law could never be achieved with precision since, as he contended, it is based on opinion and not on principles. Ayn Rand proved him wrong.
Democritus considered that a set of rules could be established that would allow mankind to live well but he only disclosed darkly and imprecisely what these rules were, thus setting up an early attempt that finally led to Kant’s “Proceed in a way so that others can proceed likewise”, though Kant, strangely for a man who was considered to know much, left open and unanswered the immediate question of what should be done if a Stalin, Hitler, Mao or any other such Stalitler came up. Are we then to live in accordance to the evilness these criminals and other suchlike promoted or promote?
As soon as the Christian religion reached political power (about 4th century after Christ) it started to persecute and murder systematically all those it considered to be heretics. Firmitius Maternus, for example, inspired Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius to persecute and murder all non-Christians and steal their possessions. These persecutions were also directed against other Christians who did not follow Firmitius Maternus “beliefs” and served, thus, to increase the wealth of the new rulers. Here we can aptly apply Mark Twain’s words when he said, “Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself… and who cuts his throat if his religion doesn’t coincide with his own.” I think that the examples given suffice to make my point clear.
Now let us turn again to Ayn Rand and to the implications contained in the law that establishes that every human being has a right to his personal defense. In “The Objectivist Ethics”, she provides the firm ground for this pronouncement: “No man – or group or society or government – has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A hold-up man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a hold-up man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.”
The physical possibility exists that the attacker kills his victim(s) and escapes his just punishment unscathed because he is never found. After all, this happened countless times. Jack the Ripper is such a case in point and, in fact, the search for the assassin is the main theme of every “Who-dun-it” that was and will ever be written by any author. However, the law in itself continues to be fully valid. So what if the culprit that broke the law is finally captured? Here there are two possibilities and, quite definitively, the second one is the best: a) lifelong imprisonment or b) death penalty.
Many who fear that the mechanism of justice may produce the non-amendable mistake of condemning an innocent favor life-long imprisonment. History informs of such a possibility. In Europe, for example, death penalty has been abolished and, thus, the maximum punishment is life imprisonment. However, this involves a series of difficulties.
First of all, we deal with a being that is human in appearance but not in character, since it either never reached or, else, abandoned the level of the faculty of reason. I mentioned this fact at the beginning of this article. It must, thus, be kept permanently separated from the rest of the population, that is, it must be kept and fed in a place that can avoid its eventual escape, surrounded by a very expensive warden organization that should, ideally, be maintained, with all its expenses involved, by the imprisoned assassins, for it would be – and in fact is - utterly unjust if the general population has to pay unwillingly for the life sustenance of a non-human being that hasn’t even the advantage of the innocence of irrational animals.
Several problems appear in this relation. Due to an apparent or intentional good behavior of the prisoner, a psychological decision stating that he has been “cured”, overcrowding of the prisons or even pressure applied by so-called “pro-human-life” organizations, the culprit may be pardoned and released. History is filled with examples of what most of the time happens then. We can read it every day in the news: sooner or later, the culprit commits another murder. The abduction, rape and killing of minors by the offender immediately after his release is a well known point of frustration and disappointment to the anguished parents, whose sorrow doesn’t seem to make any impact, in most countries, on “life-protectors”, judges or the political organizations in general.
Moreover, a life imprisonment of murderers should be carried out only in a special prison for assassins but in these special places they must be treated as what they are, i.e. dangerous non-humans that have been condemned as mentally evil beings. However, they must not be treated psychologically, for they are not human beings that suffer from an eventually curable dementia but who are otherwise peaceful and non-violent. From the foregoing must be deduced that to keep such creatures in jail only produces enormous expenses for the rest of the general population, besides being an absurd procedure since it means that large tax amounts taken from the work and efforts of honest citizens will be permanently wasted. A clear distinction must be made, though, in relation to those poor creatures that must be kept in asylums due to being mentally demented even in the case where they might have committed a blameless act of violence.
The only truly human procedure with murderers is, thus, the death penalty. As deduced from Rand’s moral code, the death penalty is the time delayed procedure of self-defense as carried out by the representatives of the victim(s) who, at the time of the incident and due to the then existing circumstances, was/were unable to defend itself/themselves from the willful murderous attack.
The execution of the death penalty by the very humane procedure of putting the condemned to sleep, followed by a lethal injection of poison, corresponds to the Objectivist consideration that it is the attacker and not the victim who breaks the law that nobody has a right to initiate an act of violence against another person or persons (“The Objectivist Ethics”). Putting the culprit to death is not an act of vengeance but a procedure of social hygiene.
Further on, as per Objectivism’s indication, it corresponds to the penal authorities in an Objectivist society, to take charge of the execution, since the defense of the right to life of the individual attacked is the main and sole duty of government or its equivalent (See “The Nature of Government” by Ayn Rand). The death penalty does not constitute a vengeance nor is it to be considered as a deterrent to further willful murders, the accent falling on “willful”. Hence, neither an accidental killing nor a killing in the heat of passion can be considered murder. The efficiency and scrupulosity of judicial proceedings, the steadily more efficient and the certainty of the analysis of the evidences and circumstances preceding a sentence, as well as the lengthy procedures following the verdict of the death penalty and preceding the execution, which characterize the juridical system of the United States of America, provide sufficient opportunities to substantiate the correspondence between the murderer and the victim, to evaluate eventually extenuating circumstances, to consider the mental capacities of the accused, etc. so as to avoid a judicial error, thus reducing such a possibility to the absolute minimum. Normally, years go by between the sentence and the execution of the death penalty, sufficient time for those that consider the accused to be innocent to supply the required evidence to sustain their point of view. Beyond this, the possibility that only one innocent person may be murdered is sufficient reason for establishing the death penalty. The objectivist law clearly backs the victim.
In nowadays twisted view of things criminals are generally considered to be themselves victims of sorts but Objectivism cannot share this view, since each human being is responsible for what he (or she) does and, as such, is responsible for his deeds. Here Ken Follett’s words at the beginning of this article aptly apply.
No criminal was never obliged to take the road of crime and human biographies are filled with the stories of people who were born within the worst conditions and subject to the worst treatment by their surroundings and still made their own way behaving with the correctness proper to a human being. Hence, a willful murder does not deserve any consideration under any circumstances for he has taken, through the feeling of hate, the willful decision to kill innocent people.
What must be excluded by all means from the slightest chance of applying the death penalty are killings made in the heat of passion (also called crime passionel), committed as a result of the fact that one of the partners decides to leave the other, which cannot be accepted by the companion, who confronts the unbearable situation of having to live without the loved person. This may cause a moment of such emotional unbalance that the abandoned person looses its control and kills the other.
A killing committed in the heat of a brawl or a violent argument that reaches a point where one of the participants looses every restraint and, in a state resembling madness, kills his opponent, is also part of the category of incidents that cannot be considered as willful murders.
These incidents do not involve a deliberate purpose and must be considered, thus, as a special case. Emotions momentarily surpass the capacity of reason, so that the killing person looses any notion of what he is doing. Immediately after committing the killing, he repents what he has done.
This leaves willful murder, also called “planned killing” as the only item falling into the realm of the death penalty. Planned killing involves an evident purpose in relation with the murder. The killer has the declared intention of killing the selected target for a given reason. Often the assassin “studies” the victim’s habits or, during a burglary, decides to kill the victims to hide his own identity (the “In Cold Blood” case, described by Truman Capote in his homonymous book). Stalkers must be included in this category.
Though remote, the possibility exists that the murderer, reconsidering his crime, understands the evilness of his action and gives himself up voluntarily to the law enforcers. In such cases, the death penalty must be replaced by a very long, eventually even permanent, prison period, the final decision depending on the gravity of the crime committed.
The execution of innocent individuals is evidently the most heinous wrong any juridical system can possibly commit, though such cases can be practically completely avoided given the possibilities now available to criminology through general fingerprinting, DNA curriculum, chemical detection of invisible evidence, and all further ways of identification which science continuously incorporates to criminology. Surely in the near future, it will also be possible to produce a character and tendency profile based on the knowledge obtained through DNA technology.
Juridical mistakes can still appear occasionally. Here the law of possibilities comes to apply but such possibilities are reduced to an absolute minimum by the presently available methods of investigation to prove the guiltiness of the murderer. Here too, however, the fact continues to retain its validity that the victims of a willful murder deserve justice to be applied through capital punishment. This principle would be a firm part of the punitive code of an Objectivist society.
To repeat, far too little consideration is taken for the victims and far too much for the criminals. Murderers released after having committed a murder can, and generally do, commit their next one. A perfect example of what happens when we come to consider that a criminal is “a victim of sorts” is the famous Jack Henry Abbott case, who, after committing a murder, was released due to the personal efforts of author Norman Mailer… to then stab a waiter to death. Abbott was sentenced again. He hung himself in 2002 while still being in prison.
A few words must be added to clarify every possible misunderstanding: DNA is the ground structure of what we are. We cannot avoid being made of DNA since it contains, in the form of chemical instructions, all that we are. It is a determinating fact and we just cannot avoid it being so. But, as Ayn Rand properly deduced, while all other living beings have to obey what DNA “commands”, we have the power – and, believe me, this really is power – to say “NO!, No, I will NOT do this” or “No, I will NOT do that” even if DNA had programmed us to do as it says. For we are the only living substance (at least on this planet, but I sure hope this to be a very common fact out there in the rest of the universe) that is NOT subject to determinism. We cannot avoid being what we are but we have the power to say “NO” and it is precisely this what obliges us to have a code of conduct for our activities. Only if we renounce that power, only if we keep being bodily humans but in everything else, we decide to behave like lower animals (as unfortunately too many people roaming in the world are) we will be subjected to determinism. Hence, murderers are doubly guilty: they are guilty against themselves for not taking the right decision of obeying the Objectivist law that allows a peaceful social life and then, of course, they are guilty because they broke this law and committed the criminal act of murder.
As Ayn Rand clearly established, it is our capacity to decide what allowed us to cross the barrier that separates us from determinism. Nature brought us to this point to then place the further control of evolution into our hands.
Since then we decide to be human or to stop being human beings. We will not return to our former state of mere animals if we decide for ourselves to obey the Objectivist law and become peaceful, productive individuals. Knowing what we are can precisely lead us towards the correct decision. Surely, if we submit to criminals like Marx, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Khans or other such Stalitlers for that matter, we will stop being humans, but let me repeat it, not if we decide for ourselves to take the correct path. This same reasoning corresponds, of course, also to religious beliefs, wrong ideas and philosophies, political ideologies, etc.
Such a decision, which should be learned by all rational human beings and taught by all parents to their offsprings, would produce amazing results. To know what each of us is, is useful for it allows us to know our potential capacities and how to apply them to plan our way through life in a peaceful, productive manner. You can never know where a Nobel Prize may be waiting for you but knowing our capacities may lead us to it. One example will suffice. During the 19th century, the owner of a plantation sent a black youngster, the child of slaves, to the university, turning him into the first colored university student in the United States. The youngster was Washington Carver, who developed new procedures of land cultivation and produced out of new breeds of potatoes and peanuts some 300 types of synthetic products that included inks and soaps and even substitutes for milk and cheese! Therefore, the next time you eat a handful of American salted peanuts, think that these calories are the product of the intellectual work of a black scientist.
Knowing our DNA profile allows us, as said before, to choose the right way and reject the eventual possibility of committing a crime against our fellow men. We have free will, the freedom to decide and knowing our DNA profile can fundamentally help us in the difficult task of determining our future. Ayn Rand gave us a full understanding of the tool of reason that belongs to our brain and the correct guide of behavior. This is, in itself, an enormous contribution of Objectivism to the treasure of human knowledge.
Beings like those who nowadays blast themselves and others into smithereens should start to think about it, though I greatly doubt them to be capable to do so since, as this article holds, they are murderers and as such haven’t the faculty that makes a being of human appearance human.
The way in which political assassinations and the ruling of dictators must be handled involves deductions and procedures similar to those just described, though their application entails a treatment more difficult to be carried out. An Objectivist society will apply the capital punishment to political murders committed on its territory. In addition to this, it will cut every contact or relation with every dictatorial regime. However, reprisal actions will be justified only where such a regime were to attack the Objectivist territory. Should it be necessary for Objectivist troops to enter the attacker’s region, such a momentary stay will only be justified by insuring the establishment of an Objectivist social system (which, necessarily, includes instituting the capitalist economic system) that will allow implementing an adequate peace treaty and warranting for the population personal freedom and the possibility of peaceful and productive work.
WHICH IS THE STRENGTH AND, AT THE SAME TIME, TOTAL WEAKNESS OF SOCIALISM OR WHY DOES CAPITALISM FAIL IN ITS ENDEAVOR TO CONVINCE, WHILE GIVING SUCH GOOD BENEFITS TO THE GENERAL POPULATION IN THE RARELY ATTAINED OPPORTUNITIES WHEN IT IS EFFECTIVELY APPLIED?
“Greedy capitalists obtain their money from the market. Good socialists steal it.”
Socialism, in all its different manifestations, has an almost magical attraction for the majority of mankind, since it claims to be based on a moral ground as well as to offer security while it promotes the belief that it can eliminate envy. Even the wealthy, attached to the same moral basis as socialism, defend it since they consider it to be a "just" system, while they are themselves ashamed of the wealth they own. Even most of those who defend capitalism recognize that Socialism is the more honorable and, thus, better system since it is based on a moral standpoint.
These three points (Morality, Security and the elimination of envy) are the apparently strong columns which support the development of Socialism. Whether it reaches its position of power by violent or peaceful means has no significance in this context, however damaging this can be for the general population.
Even where it opposes religions, which Marx termed "the people's opium", do the fundamental ideas and aims of Socialism originate from the religious scriptures of all kind, specifically from what the Jewish-Christian tradition and their derivates, for example the Koran, preach as their particular morality. The religions themselves have recognized this since long, of course, which allowed them to create their own political parties, such as the Christian Democrats, the Christian Socialists, etc. while, at the same time, they provided to the remaining political parties, including the so-called pro-capitalistic ones, the required “moral” support.
"God's" command to love your neighbor as yourself is the "moral" origin of the order to live for your next of kin, which, thus, becomes the only justification for one's own existence. This is Socialism’s starting point. Of course does this standpoint contain a dualism since everybody considers himself to be the "next of kin" of everyone else which, since all the others are numerically many more than oneself, instigates the belief that "all those others" are there to support oneself, whereby Socialism is the mechanism which guides all this help to one's own doorstep. In the process, the other side of the coin is forgotten, that it is also oneself who must support everybody else. Socialism "organizes" this by constantly increasing all taxes in accordance with the money required or, as it happens with communism, by replacing all money with rationing cards.
Also the following is totally forgotten: the fact that socialism requires, for all these distribution organisms and institutions an enormous quantity of bureaucrats who only consume without supplying anything productive themselves. Moreover, since Socialism has no mechanism to insure productive renewals and inventions, which originate from individuals who expect to gain from their inventive efforts a benefit which is in itself anathema for Socialism – Marx calls it added value –, the point of the system's crash appears at the very beginning of its implementation. Most of the times, the same system will be established again after the resulting bankruptcy, though by another name. The losses resulting from not produced goods as well as the misery and deaths "produced" are not taken into consideration. People are consumable material for socialism (remember the mega murders of history) and the not produced goods cannot be taken into any consideration precisely because they have never been produced. This shows that the "human friendliness", about which socialism brags so much about, is totally inexistent.
The second column, closely related to the first one, is the personal desire for protection and security. This demand cannot be fulfilled under any circumstance but socialism says that it has the required formula to reach the wanted goal, which consists of a "just" distribution of what is available – called "Social Justice" – through the organization of care for the population. The already mentioned bureaucracy as well as the dictatorship required to apply this "just" distribution are the mechanisms applied to reach this goal. For this the individual must renounce to his independence and liberty (of course, socialism does not mention this) and submit himself o the State as a slave. Everything is dictated and controlled, wages and salaries are regulated by law or replaced by rationing cards and production is subject to what the bureaucrats consider must be promoted or restrained, all this under the pretense of defending and sheltering the interests of the "general population". Expenses rise against incomes and this, just as what has already been indicated for the first column, determines the collapse of the system, a collapse that is only delayed by the generosity of those countries where a certain amount of a capitalistic form of society already exists. The Soviet Union and other such countries are examples of this, since they were and still are supported by the loans and gifts provided by the "capitalist" countries that they despise so much. This is also an excellent opportunity for the rulers to enrich themselves, a fact that hey carefully hide from the population.
Since both nature and circumstances inhibit a total security, each individual can obtain a relative security by saving part of his income or through careful investments that also help to increase production. This, however, can only be attained within a capitalistic type of society, where everybody has to care for his own and, through personal decision and engagement, his loved one’s wellbeing.
The third column is based on human psychology but must be considered as a weakness. However, this column, envy, is at the same time the main pillar of socialism. Envy is the feeling of malicious discontent and jealousy against another one's success and/or accomplishments. Since socialism seduces all those who cannot personally produce anything positive and hate all those who have reached success, does envy govern everything socialism does. Its goal is the destruction of all who are successful by equalizing everybody downwards. The envious desire of taking from the successful their well earned wellbeing results, finally, in the poverty of all, since progress is forbidden.
As many people prefer to own less as long as the others are also kept in this same position, does socialism have a strong appeal to every envious person which, however, does not allow to climb the ladder to wellbeing but leads to the abyss. Thus does this column also decide the constant defeat of socialism as soon as it reaches power, for the promotion of the incapable or unwilling blocks the very requirements for its own furtherance. It is only by allowing the operation of certain capitalistic undertakings that the unavoidable outcome of failure can be delayed. Therefore it should be the direct and permanent commitment of capitalism not to help its natural foe nor to come to its assistance as this would then allow the general population to notice that socialism and everything that relates to it, to notice that what they defend has, both philosophically and psychologically, only the defeat of mankind as its goal.
We could add here many more arguments and even go much deeper into this subject to show in detail the existing and ongoing deterioration of the human society but the foregoing provides sufficient arguments to show that the wrong moral starting point (Altruism, that is living for others), the desire for shelter and security and the feeling of envy are not the correct basis to obtain the general wellbeing of the human population.
Could it then be that this goal can be accomplished by applying exactly the opposite of these false values? Could the goal be reached through rational egoism, risk taking and the rejection of envy, all of which directly result in the endorsement of one's own life? This is really the correct road, but to reach this conclusion thousands of years had to pass by. All the guiding lines constructed by philosophies and religions had to be abdicated. In the course of reasoning from reality the correct sequence of thoughts, the existing dichotomy of matter and spirit was eliminated and both parts were united. This achievement required the intellectual capacities of philosopher Ayn Rand. Her arguments have been presented already in the course of this writing.
What must be added is the fact that the existing situation can only be changed once the moral code, as deduced by Ayn Rand and which correctly corresponds to a society where poverty is no virtue but work and the productive and peaceful effort is, has been established. This, however, will require that even those defenders of personal liberty who still adhere to religious beliefs, leave this position, for it is contradictory in itself and, thus, false. Religions sustain poverty as a virtue while liberalism condemns it as a flaw. Religions despise wealth as well as the personal productive effort while the promoters of capitalism defend it as virtues. This contradiction results from the premise of trying to defend simultaneously opposing terms and purposes, for while preaching personal freedom they adhere to submission to a “superior being”. Correcting this anachronism requires a personal decision based on recognizing truth. While the contradiction is sustained, these types of defenders of private liberty will do a bad service to the promotion of liberalism and generally will only reap defeat in every effort to conquer new adherents to the cause of liberty.
Only the Objectivists, as atheists and liberals, hold the correct attitude. They are the only ones who embrace integrity and who will reach success in the still scantly available opportunities to sow the social and economic guiding lines that characterize the benefits and the cornucopia of capitalism.
 As long as there is no physical damage present and that the functioning of the neurons lacks any errors, is it considered that the threshold of intelligence starts at a relation o 1 gram of brain for every 50 grams of body. A gorilla has only a relation of 1:500. While the nightingale has a better relation than the human being, he lacks the absolute brain weight of at least 1,500 grams (somewhat less for women, though in this case the lower body weight compensates the difference). While there are animals having an absolute brain weight far superior to the human being (e.g. Elephants have absolute brain weights of 6 kg.) there is no correspondence when it comes to the relative relation. To the foregoing must be added the complexity of the wrinkles of the brain (Data obtained from Isaac Asimov’s “The Intelligent Men’s New Guide to Science”).
 At the end of this chapter the reader will find the article “Murderers are not human” where a detailed analysis of the implications and consequences of this axiom are presented.
 If we correctly interpret the deductions of Einstein we can hold that each of us (as reference point, i.e. as observer) is the center of the universe.
 Before continuing, a word of warning becomes necessary here. The constitution of the substance of matter is permanent and perfectly defined in its characteristics. Matter follows the clearly defined rules or laws of Nature, which result from what it is. This is the Law of Identity. But the Law of Causality which, as Ayn Rand stated, is the Law of Identity in action, is ample and extremely varied, because the effects of the different aspects of matter interact in an extremely complicated manner of interrelated behavior that makes it impossible to foresee which of these infinite possibilities will dominate above all others. Infinity of hierarchies, immediacies and possibilities interact in a way that goes far beyond any possible calculation. A few examples will clarify this: the theory of Chaos constantly acts against every weather forecaster. Even where we can know all the factors involved, the results can at all times be a surprise. Weather forecasters are always victims of the common joke of forecasting clear and sunny weather and having then at hand the blockbuster of a tornado. Or throw a burning match on a stretch of ground. Perhaps it extinguishes before it falls on it, perhaps it falls on a small, empty space, perhaps onto moist grass or, this effect being the essence from which news people live, onto a blade of dry grass. Now you have all the fire departments running to put out a fire sweeping across many acres of land.
If it were not for man, the future would be most unpredictable. Certain events can be avoided or its worst consequences confined. We are not condemned to passively accept certain catastrophes happening in Nature. We can learn at all times from experience and devise means to protect us from certain disasters. We can even devise political measures to avoid dictatorships. Just set up the correct rules of protection, like the right to bear arms, which the Founding Fathers adopted in America. This in itself suffices to bar the possibility of a "coup d'Etat" or a dictatorship. Hitler, for instance, knew this and prohibited private citizens to own weapons since, in his words; this would have allowed them to get rid of his tyranny. Man can control many events to shape his environment so as to insure his survival and to adapt it to his convenience as a rational being. For this, however, he needs a moral guide deduced from reality. Ayn Rand did this masterly job. Without it, man would be less than a leaf in the wind.
Taking into consideration what has just been said, it will surely sound as ironic to state that certain goals which some types of Socialism want to attain, cannot be reached in such a dictatorial type of society while the capitalist free market allows reaching them through personal, individually made decisions. Under capitalism, nobody needs to be obliged to obtain good health, a good job, good clothing, a car or a home and to apply the required efforts to reach these desires. Fashion and comfort allows that nowadays everybody uses the same type of clothing in the way of, for example, "blue jeans". The free decisions of each individual in the free society of capitalism allows, ironically, to reach much of what Socialists so much desire yet will never obtain.
 When the killers of the Clutter’s family were apprehended, the population was surprised to see that they even had a human appearance. (From “In cold Blood”, by Truman Capote, End of Part 3)
 In a letter sent to her brother, one of the murderers of the Clutter family, Barbara Smith wrote that no man has a right to blame others for the faults committed by oneself and added that it is well known that, by the time they are seven years old, most people reach the age of reason, which means that they are by then well aware of the difference between Right and Wrong. (From „In Cold Blood“, by Truman Capote, 2nd. Part)
 The term “philosophy” is here written between quotation marks since, by definition, only a rational philosophy can be called thus, which corresponds precisely to Objectivism, while all others have no right to the term since they rely either on mysticism or other forms of irrationality, religious beliefs or non-existing abstractions such as “The People”, as even a religious enemy of Objectivism – John W. Robbins – recognized.
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