Monthly Archives: May 2022

Ayn Rand and the pandemic

Like many young people, I was a fan of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. I even attend several Objectivist conferences in college. Though I ended any formal association with her movement decades ago, and Ive come to disagree with her about many things, I still consider her influence a net positive on my thinking.

First and foremost, I credit her with introducing me to the ideal of independent, critical thinking. Rand posits that there is an objective reality we can learn about through science and reason. She was a staunch atheist who rejected all forms of mysticism and groupthink. As she put it,

A is A. Facts are facts, independent of any consciousness. No amount of passionate wishing, desperate longing or hopeful pleading can alter the facts. Nor will ignoring or evading the facts erase them: the facts remain, immutable.

I agree, and this ethos clearly influenced my previous defense of skepticism. Things arent true just because we want them to be true, and Ive written previously about the dangers of hopium and confirmation bias. Most of our pandemic woes are due to deniers who refuse to accept that A is A about an unthinking virus. The dangerous belief that its harms can wished away has been a core theme of my writing here.

Rand also believed that people have the absolute right to protection from physical aggression from any source. She vigorously defended abortion as a moral right and believed that people could do whatever they wanted with their bodies as long as their actions dont directly impact anyone else. As the saying goes, your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins.

To this end, she had some interesting thoughts about vaccines and contagious diseases. Theres no question she would favor allowing private entities to establish whatever rules they wanted regarding vaccines. Indeed a recent Objectivist conference wisely required either proof of vaccination or a negative test prior to attendance. However, Rand was against the government forcibly vaccinating people, at least for a vaccine that perfectly prevented the disease. In this hypothetical scenario, no ones choice would impact anyone else. She said,

Now, requiring inoculation against disease: should this be a job for the government? Most definitely not and there is a very simple answer for it. If it is medically proved that a certain inoculation is in fact practical and desirable, those who want it will take that inoculation. Now if some people do not see it that waydo not agree or dont want to take it, only they will be in danger since all the other people will be inoculated. Those who do not go along, if they are wrong in this case, will merely catch the disease. They will not be a danger to anyone else and nobody has the right to force them to do anything for their own good against their own judgement. They will merely be ill then, but they could not infect others.

Of course, no vaccine is perfect, and the idea that the unvaccinated pose no risk to the vaccinated is one of the oldest anti-vaccine tropes out there. In the real world, this issue is more complicated.

However, in another sense, this issue is actually quite simple. No one was required to get a vaccine this pandemic. Some people had to make some tough choices, but no one was strapped down and vaccinated by government goons. This only happens in the fevered imaginations of delusional anti-vaxxers, desperate to portray themselves as oppressed victims.

As far as I know, the government used force to vaccinate people only once in my lifetime, when several children were vaccinated against measles over 30 years ago. Im confident Rand would have supported this action, as nine unvaccinated children had already died. She would have recognized that children arent property, and the government can intervene when their caretakers seriously jeopardize their health. As she put it, a child is an individual, and has the rights inherent in the nature of a human individual. Amen.

Rand also had interesting thoughts on non-pharmaceutical interventions. She said,

The next question in regard to quarantine is somewhat different, because in the state of, sense of a quarantine, if someone has a contagious disease, against which there is no inoculation, then the government will have the right to require quarantine. What is the principle here? Its to protect those people who are not ill, to protect the people who, to prevent the people who are ill from passing on their illness to others. Here you are dealing with a demonstrable physical damage.

Remember that in all issues of protecting someone from physical damage, before a government can properly act, there has to be a scientific, objective demonstration of an actual physical danger. If it is demonstrated, then the government can act to protect those who are not yet ill from contacting the disease, in other words to quarantine the people who are ill is not an interference with their rights, it is merely preventing them from doing physical damage to others.

Again, this seems eminently reasonable. The locked TB ward outside my office never bothered me, and Ive never heard any Objectivist complain about it either, though of course this drastic measure would be unenforceable for a disease like COVID.

Beyond this, her novels championed creators who were often loathed not because they were incompetent or dishonest, but because they were brilliant, dedicated, and independent. Rands heros were people of action who created and discovered things that improved all of our lives. The Wikipedia entry on The Fountainhead describes its protagonist as an intransigent young architect, who battles against conventional standards and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. I think my distaste for doctors who spread dangerous medical myths and refuse to correct basic errors in their writing can be traced back to this intransigent young architect.

Its hard to think of a better Randian hero this pandemic than Dr. Katalin Karik, a scientist who toiled anonymously for years because she loved her job. You are not going to work you are going to have fun, her husband would say to her. Though her work was ignored for years, she knew its value, and now the entire world knows as well. Her research led to the mRNA vaccines, and she has saved countless lives. One news report described her thusly.

By all accounts intense and single-minded, Dr. Karik lives for the bench the spot in the lab where she works. She cares little for fame. The bench is there, the science is good, she shrugged in a recent interview. Who cares?

This is exactly what a Randian hero would say and do, and heroic women were central to Rands novels.

In contrast, Rands villains created nothing and sought to destroy those with a spark of independence and greatness. One such villain stated his mission was to

Kill his capacity to recognise greatness or to achieve it. Great men cant be ruled. We dont want any great men. Dont deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.

Its harder to think of a better Randian villain this pandemic than someone who spreads disinformation about vaccines, knowing they will never have to deal with the consequences. These people cant create or do anything themselves. Instead, they seek to undermine the work of scientists like Dr. Karik in order to promote their own political and social agenda.

A Rand villain, jealous that his perceived genius is unappreciated by the masses, would seek to take down a widely-admired scientist by calling him the number one anti-vaxxer, for example. He would promote himself relentlessly in the media and have a preternatural sense of victimhood. He would be mocked for claiming he carried papers giving him permission to go to work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The removal of a YouTube video would enrage a Randian villain, and being called fringe would send him running to a TV camera to bemoan his sad fate.

In contrast, these insults would be a speck of dust to Dr. Karik. Who cares? shed say. Shed never consider herself a victim in a pandemic where one million Americans died. People like are her are too busy trying to stop the virus and save lives.

Given Rands devotion to rationality, her belief the government can take steps to prevent the people who are ill from passing on their illness to others, and her admiration for scientists, one might expect Objectivitists to express reasonable positions on the pandemic. I never expected them to be cheerleaders for lockdowns, though of course the lockdowns had no cheerleaders. However, I expected them to have a nuanced view of the subject during a time when nearly 1,000 New Yorkers were dying every day. At a bare minimum, I expected them to strongly encourage vaccination, including for children. After all, over 1,500 children have died of COVID, and the vaccine has proven to be very effective in preventing these dire outcomes. Vaccinating children is the rational thing to do. Its not even a close call.

A is A, right?

Indeed some Objectivists have written very reasonable essays this pandemic, with one writer noting that no one has the right to infect other people with a dangerous disease and warning against fake news, conspiracy theories, and the like. He asked to give gratitude,

First and foremost, the doctors, nurses, and others in health care who are working overtime and at risk to deal with the rise in Covid-19 patients.

I knew the author of that essay and I admired him a lot. This wise and compassionate essay aged incredibly well I think, which is very rare for early pandemic thoughts.

This aside, it sadly seems whenever a Rand acolyte discusses COVID, its mostly fake news, conspiracy theories, and the like. For example, consider the relationship between Objectivists and the Brownstone Institute, the successor to the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD). There is a strong alliance between Objectivists and those sheltered doctors who fetishize natural immunity, encourage unvaccinated young people to catch the virus, and both spread and legitimize rank anti-vaccine disinformation. These are the people who surveyed scenes of forklifts dumping dead bodies into refrigerated trucks in NYC and concluded that too many people were trying to avoid the virus.

Really.

Even as the virus shutters schools (including private ones), restaurants, flights, and performances, they continue to oppose any and all measures to control it. While Rand would have found it problematic that the virus disrupted businesses this way, they refuse to even acknowledge this sad reality. For some people, unwanted facts are unmentionable facts. They prefer a Fantasyland where its still 2020, and they can be heroes, demanding we end the lockdowns right now!

Unsurprisingly, the Brownstone Institute has also been a main driver of anti-vaccine disinformation this pandemic (here, here, here, here). There are doctors who treat facts as completely mutable by pretending the virus poses no real threat to young people, and you can find them at the Brownstone Institute. They are already spewing predictable garbageabout vaccines, Bill Gates, Dr. Fauci, and monkeypox. Its no surprise their work is positively received on the website run by anti-vaccine supercrank RFK Jr. Theyre not really that different.

A is not A at the Brownstone Institute. The people who work there arent Howard Roarks.

Despite this, the founder of the Brownstone Institute has been welcome at The Atlas Society, an organization that purports to advance the ideas of Ayn Rand. The Atlas Society also published propaganda praising the pro-virus, anti-vaccine, fabulists behind the GBD and calling their critics alarmist. This article warned of the political hysteria about the virus. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died since its publication, and COVID is aleading medical cause of death in young adults.

Like I said, A is not A.

Unlike Rand, the founder of the Brownstone Institute does not feel the government can act to protect those who are not yet ill from contacting the disease. In fact, he pays doctors who convinced politiciansto purposefully infect unvaccinated children and young people, with devastating consequences for many of them. In one of his articles at the Atlas Society, he spread pure anti-vaccine balderdash while boldly anointing himself as a spokesman for healthcare workers- like me- who actually worked on COVID units. Fantasizing that he could speak on our behalf, he said,

They know that nothing beats acquired immunity via exposure. Especially with a coronavirus with a changing profile, a vaccine cannot compare. That is precisely what 100% of the studies have shown since that time. And yet here we have governments imposing the shot on people who took the risk, gained the immunities, and now refuse to take another and potentially more deadly risk from the vaccine that operates not like vaccines of old.

Had he actually spent any time with us, he would have known we did all we could to avoid acquired immunity via exposure. Too many healthcare workers suffered and died because they were unable to do so, including friends of mine. Of course, there is now evidence that viral-induced immunity is far from perfect and that vaccines can lower the reinfection rate in previously infected people.

Doctors saw what the virus could do, we read the studies on the vaccines, and most of us ran to get vaccinated as soon as we could. Nearly 100% of doctors are vaccinated against COVID, and one typical news headline from December 2020 captured our emotions by saying, Healthcare Workers Cry Tears of Joy as Coronavirus Vaccinations Ramp Up: It Feels Great'. No healthcare worker cried tears of joy for acquired immunity via exposure, and only a complete ignoramus or liar would imply otherwise. Either way, A isnt A.

Weve spent the past year pleading with our patients to get vaccinated and caring for those who were misled into thinking that nothing beats acquired immunity via exposure. Some of these people begged for the vaccine after it was too late. Iwonder what concrete steps the founder of the Brownstone Institute took to reap the benefits of acquired immunity via exposure before he was vaccinated. Whatever the answer, its clear were not exactly dealing with a Dr. Karik here.

So why is it that many Objectivists- though not all simultaneously embraced disinformation and undermined heroic scientists whose brilliance saved lives? Im not entirely sure. However, I suspect many of them arent motivated by ideas and values as much as a desire to be contrarian. For some people, like my teenage son, nothing matters more than feeling different and special. Being a free-thinker means nothing more than doing the opposite of whatever they suggest.

If desperate public health officials use restrictions as a last resort, they will reflexively oppose those measures, even though Rand justified them, the morgues were literally overflowing with bodies down the street from where she lived, and theres solid evidence they saved lives. If doctors tell young people to get vaccinated, they will reflexively oppose vaccination, even though many unvaccinated children have died of COVID. And on it goes.

Its possible that Rand would have been a crank this pandemic. Many people I admired surprised me by rejecting the notion that A is A. Its just the flu and its all going away, they said since day #1. So what follows may be wishful thinking.

But Id like to believe that if Rand were here today, shed recognize A is A. Her first mission would be to write a lengthy tribute to Dr. Karik. Since they no longer seem to admire women like Dr. Karik, no Objectivist has done this as far as I know. In fact, many have worked to undermine the fruits of her research. Rand would of course be horrified to learn that a virus killed a million Americans, many thousands of them after a vaccine was available. The worst thing she imagined was a power outage in NYC.

She would have deplored the abuse of healthcare workers at the hands of people who were tricked by articles on the Atlas Society- into thinking that the virus was only dangerous for old, sick people in nursing homes. An expert on violence against healthcare workers recognized that violence is one of the repercussions. of those who downplayed the seriousness of the virus.

Rand would also understand that this COVID denialism is a major reason why so many healthcare workers are leaving the field right now. As one nurse said,

We want to be rooting for our patients. But anyone I know whos working in COVID has zero compassion remaining, especially for people who chose not to get the vaccine.

Rand would have agreed with Dr. Sheetal Rao when she said Physicians are some of the most resilient people out there. When this group of people starts leaving en masse, something is very wrong. After all, resilient people leaving their jobs after being attacked for their virtues is the central theme of Atlas Shrugged, the novel she considered her masterpiece. Though hes not a major character, a doctor was one of the heroes in that book. Rand clearly had a great respect the profession.

Today, healthcare workers are shrugging due to the consequences of disinformation spread by Objectivists. Thats ironic.

Im confident that Rand would be mortified to learn her name was associated with prevaricators who spread fake numbers to minimize a deadly virus and discourage parents from vaccinating their children. She would have abhorred anyone who trashed the genius of Dr. Karik in favor of a virus by saying nothing beats acquired immunity via exposure. You see, theres no consistency with these Objectivists. Its just malignant contrarianism and groupthink from a collective of talkers whove spent the past two years safe behind laptops and in front of cameras. Their disinformation ensured that doctors, who actually worked this pandemic, had a steady supply of gravely ill patients, many of whom who rewarded their knowledge and skill with hate and violence.

Ayn Rand would have seen right through these people.

And though she helped me do the same, Im glad I left that hive mind a long time ago.

Dr. Jonathan Howard is a neurologist and psychiatrist based in New York City who has been interested in vaccines since long before COVID-19.

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Ayn Rand, Objectivists, and COVID - Science Based Medicine

Ayn Rands case for capitalism stands in marked contrast to what might be termed the classical defense of capitalism. Throughout the past 250 years, proponents of capitalism predominantly have sought to justify it on purely politico-economic groundsor by arguing that free, unregulated markets result in the greatest good for the greatest number. Ayn Rand regarded both as losing strategies.

The classical economists attempted a tribal justification of capitalism on the ground that it provides the best allocation of a communitys resources, Rand wrote.1 On her view, this approach is not only insufficient to defend capitalism, it ultimately undermines the quest for liberty.

The crucial problem with the classical economists defense, Rand argued, is that they either ignored moral questions altogether or attempted to defend capitalism on the same moral basis as collectivist social systems: altruism. The basic principle of altruism, she wrote, is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.2 Although she agreed that laissez-faire capitalism is the most efficient politico-economic systemeffectively ensuring the greatest good for the greatest numberRand held that effective advocates of capitalism must emphasize that capitalism is not merely the practical, but the only moral system in history.3

One example of the classical defense of capitalism is the work of Ludwig von Mises. Throughout the 1920s, von Mises resisted the advance of socialism by challenging its adherents, such as Oskar R. Lange and Abba P. Lerner, on politico-economic grounds. Even before publishing some of his most important works, such as Socialism, Liberalism, and Interventionism, von Mises powerfully critiqued key economic premises of statist systems in his 1920 article Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.

In this paper, von Mises convincingly demonstrated that central planning is incompatible with rational economic calculation: The absence of price signals renders rational economic activity impossible and leads to the misallocation of resources. In a free-market economy, prices are determined by the law of supply and demand, and they fulfill two essential functions. First, prices convey information. If a certain material or good becomes scarcer, whether due to decreased supply or increased demand, its price rises, thereby providing entrepreneurs with information vital to making rational economic calculations and running their businesses successfully. Second, prices serve as incentives. Guided by the profit motive, rational entrepreneurs are incentivized to look continuously for investments that yield the highest returns.4

In a planned economy, price signals cannot fulfill either of these crucial functions because government planning replaces market coordination. Prices cannot convey information to businessmen because the central authority, having arbitrarily determined the just price of a given product or material, essentially prevents the law of supply and demand from impacting prices.5 And prices cant serve as incentives because, being dictated by a central authority, they dont reflect the value of products and services as determined by voluntary trade.6

Von Mises pointed out that solving either the information or the incentive problem will not suffice to make socialism work. In the first case, even if the bureaucrats were able to collect the countless pieces of information that price signals convey, a socialist businessman would nonetheless lack the incentive to produce. As von Mises put it:

When a successful business man is appointed the manager of a public enterprise, he may still bring with him certain experiences from his previous occupation, and be able to turn them to good account in a routine fashion for some time. Still, with his entry into communal activity he ceases to be a merchant and becomes as much a bureaucrat as any other placeman in the public employ.7

And in the second case, even if socialists could change human nature and incentivize people to produce with no desire for profit, the entrepreneurs would nonetheless lack the information necessary to engage in rational economic calculation. In von Misess words:

[E]ven if we for the moment grant that these Utopian expectations can actually be realized, that each individual in a socialist society will exert himself with the same zeal as he does today in a society where he is subjected to the pressure of free competition, there still remains the problem of measuring the result of economic activity in a socialist commonwealth which does not permit of any economic calculation. We cannot act economically if we are not in a position to understand economizing.8

Despite these crucial insights, von Mises took pains to emphasize that his politico-economic observations should be considered amoral. For instance, in the conclusion of Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, he stated:

The knowledge of the fact that rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth cannot, of course, be used as an argument either for or against socialism. Whoever is prepared himself to enter upon socialism on ethical grounds on the supposition that the provision of goods of a lower order for human beings under a system of common ownership of the means of production is diminished, or whoever is guided by ascetic ideals in his desire for socialism, will not allow himself to be influenced in his endeavors by what we have said.9

On Rands view, such a defense of capitalism is inadequate for precisely this reason: It makes no moral arguments against socialism and thus leaves those prepared to enter upon socialism on ethical grounds free to claim the moral high ground without opposition. In a 1946 letter to Leonard Read, Rand criticized von Misess professedly value free method, which focuses solely on practical considerations of whether a given aim can be reached by certain means. She addressed his methodology in her response to his book, Omnipotent Government:

The great mistake . . . is in assuming that economics is a science which can be isolated from moral, philosophical and political principles, and considered as a subject in itself, without relation to them. It cant be done.

The best example of that is Von Mises Omnipotent Government. That is precisely what he attempted to do, in a very objective, conscientious, scholarly way. And he failed dismally, even though his economic facts and conclusions were for the most part unimpeachable. He failed to present a convincing case because at the crucial points, where his economics came to touch upon moral issues (as all economics must), he went into thin air, into contradictions, into nonsense. He did prove, all right, that collectivist economics dont work. And he failed to convert a single collectivist.10

In a letter to Rose Wilder Lane, also written in 1946, Rand likewise criticized Henry Hazlitt. This time, though, she added an important qualification. She held not only that the classical economists approach is methodologically flawed; their separation of ethics from economics actually strengthens their opponents case for socialism. If proponents of capitalism do not defend it on ethical grounds, attentive readers might reasonably conclude that socialism is morally superior to capitalism. In Rands words:

I think that [Hazlitts Economics in One Lesson] is another case such as that of Ludwig von Mises. Hazlitt tried to divorce economics from ethics. He presented a strictly economic argument, telling how things work out, and carefully omitting to state why the way they work out is properthat is, what principles should properly guide mens actions in the economic field. . . .

This is an example of why I maintain that no book on economics can have real value or importance if economics are divorced from morality. When one attempts to do it, one merely spreads the implications and premises of the collectivist morality and defeats ones case for the more thoughtful readers.11

Rand emphasizes this in her anthology Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, stating, With very few exceptions, [capitalisms classical defenders and modern apologists] are responsibleby defaultfor capitalisms destruction. The default consisted of their inability or unwillingness to fight the battle where it had to be fought: on moral-philosophical grounds.12

Yet, as Rand realized, the damage to the reputation of capitalism that value free economists caused was almost negligible when juxtaposed with the damage caused by those thinkers who attempted to defend capitalism on traditional, altruistic moral grounds. One exemplar of this latter group is Claude-Frdric Bastiat. Bastiat took pains to stress the detrimental consequences of the supposed moral/practical dichotomy. Toward the end of his article That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, he laments, [F]alse reasoning . . . causes nations to consider their moral and their material interests as contradictory to each other. What can be more discouraging or more dismal?13

A fervent Christian, Bastiat based his ethical conclusions on a mystical worldview. There is no religion which does not thunder against pomp and luxury, he wrote. This is as it should be, and things have been so admirably arranged by the Divine inventor of social order that . . . political economy and morality, far from clashing, agree.14 Like many American conservatives today, Bastiat argued that capitalism must be defended on altruistic grounds. According to Bastiat, the moral man is supposed to spend his money not to selfishly acquire luxuries but to selflessly help the poor. A moral man, Bastiat contends,

is touched by the miseries which oppress the poorer classes; he thinks he is bound in conscience to afford them some relief, and therefore he devotes [his money] to acts of benevolence. Amongst the merchants, the manufacturers, and the agriculturists, he has friends who are suffering under temporary difficulties; he makes himself acquainted with their situation, that he may assist them with prudence and efficiency, and to this work he devotes [his money].15

On Rands view, such a justification of capitalism is worse than amoral economic defenses.16 Whereas economists such as von Mises and Hazlitt avoid moral conclusions and so fail to defend capitalism convincingly, altruist/Christian economists such as Bastiat undermine capitalism by leaving their readers with a mess of contradictory premises. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible, Rand points out in For the New Intellectualthey are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.17

A passage from Hazlitts Economics in One Lesson vividly illustrates the detrimental effects of trying to justify capitalism on altruistic grounds. Inspired by Bastiat, Hazlitt analyzes the question of frugality versus luxury, one of the few passages in which Hazlitt touches upon moral issues.18 Taking up the classic example that Bastiat used, Hazlitt reaches the same conclusion as his predecessor, asserting that it is better to give to charitable causes, including help to friends in need, than it is to spend on luxuries for oneself.19 The families who are helped by these funds, Hazlitt contends,

in turn spend them on groceries or clothing or living quarters. So the funds create as much employment as if [he] had spent them directly on himself. The difference is that more people are made happy as consumers, and that production is going more into essential goods and less into luxuries and superfluities.20

Rand dismisses the Bastiat/Hazlitt argument on both moral and politico-economic grounds. In her 1946 letter to Rose Wilder Lane, she wrote:

Hazlitt states that a virtuous, responsible man of wealth should donate to charity and should refrain from buying luxuries, because these take productive resources away from the manufacture of necessities for the poor. . . . That was really a crucial betrayal of our case. It is not true as economics, and it is wrong as morality. It is pure, explicit collectivism.21

On Rands view, either we uphold that man has a moral right to exist for his own sake and to spend his money according to his own preferences, or we accept that man has a moral duty to serve his fellow men and to use or relinquish his money according to their needs. In order to defend capitalism convincingly, Rand held, its advocates must both proudly assert mans inalienable rights and vociferously reject unchosen obligations. As she put it in her Textbook of Americanism:

If you are an Individualist and wish to preserve the American way of life, the greatest contribution you can make is to discard, once and for all, from your thinking, from your speeches, and from your sympathy, the empty slogan of the greatest good for the greatest number. Reject any argument, oppose any proposal that has nothing but this slogan to justify it. It is a booby-trap. It is a precept of pure Collectivism. You cannot accept it and call yourself an Individualist. Make your choice. It is one or the other.22

What many defenders of capitalism have in common is their focus on (the welfare of) the group. Their arguments ultimately rest on what Rand referred to as the tribal premise. The result of irrational and evil philosophical ideas, the tribal premise holds that man

is . . . the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases, that may dictate his convictions, prescribe the course of his life, control his work and expropriate his products [and that he] is born in bondage, as an indentured servant who must keep buying his life by serving the tribe but can never acquire it free and clear.23

That premise, Rand emphasized, is shared by . . . the champions of capitalism, and it disarms [them] by a subtle, yet devastating aura of moral hypocrisyas witness, their attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the common good or service to the consumer or the best allocation of resources.24 In order to defend capitalism coherently, its advocates must recognize that it is this tribal premise that has to be checkedand challenged.25

Rand held that the starting point for the justification of capitalism is not the group but the individual, not men but man. In her words, Mankind is not an entity, an organism, or a coral bush. The entity involved in production and trade is man. It is with the study of mannot of the loose aggregate known as a communitythat any science of the humanities has to begin.26 The essential difference between Rand and other would-be defenders of capitalism lies in their views of the value of the individual. In contrast to the collectivist approach, which holds that the group is the unit of moral concern, Rand emphasized the importance and primacy of the individual.

She did so on the basis of her conclusions in the more fundamental branches of philosophy. In order to understand what social system is best for man, Rand pointed out, we must understand mans nature and the nature of the world in which we live.

Like other animals, in order to survive, man must attain certain values: food, water, shelter, and so on. Without these values, he dies. Mans nature thereby sets his standard of value: The good is that which promotes his life, and the evil is that which hinders it.

Unlike other animals, though, man is endowed with reason, which enables him to solve the problems of survival and increase his standard of living, whether by taming and using fire, building aqueducts, fashioning clothing, constructing shelter, inventing language, or using concepts to retain and communicate his ever-expanding knowledge. But reason is a faculty of the individual. As Rand wrote:

There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary actthe process of reasonmust be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another.27

So, to live, man must use his mind to create the values on which his life depends. He must consider the whole of his life and act to secure his own long-term, rational self-interest. Rand held that this fact had been obscured by the ethics of altruism, which leads people to a corrupted view of what selfishness means. Most people wrongly equate a selfish person with a cruel narcissist who manipulates and exploits others. In Rands words:

The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word selfishness is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual package-deal, which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

In popular usage, the word selfishness is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.28

But the exact meaning . . . of the word selfishness, Rand emphasized, is: concern with ones own interests.29 And, in fact, its not in anyones interest to become a murderous brute. That leads only to pain and misery.

Likewise, Rand highlighted that altruism had wrongly been elevated to a moral ideal. In marked contrast with selfishness, altruism demands that man must selflessly concern himself with the interests of others. As Rand put it, Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for ones own benefit is evil.30 Rand argued that most people, lured by the idea that altruism is tantamount to benevolence toward others, wrongly equate a selfless altruist with a kind benefactor who compassionately supports his fellow man. What altruism means, though, is that man has a duty to sacrifice himself and his personal interests for the sake of others. Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others, she wrote. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrificewhich means: self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destructionwhich means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.31

By perverting the notion of selfishness and extolling the idea of self-sacrifice, the altruist philosophers effectively set up a false binary. As Howard Roark, the hero of Rands novel The Fountainhead, put it, they forced [man] to accept masochism as his idealunder the threat that sadism was his only alternative.32

To redeem both man and morality, Rand stated, it is the concept of selfishness that one has to redeem.33 In contrast to the altruist philosophers who allege that a selfish man is guided by his emotions and unscrupulously exploits others, Rands ideal man is the rational egoist who strives to realize his highest potential by projecting personal aims into the future and giving form to his ideas. [N]either sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself, Rands virtuous egoist is an independent individualist who respects the rights of others.34

Which brings us to politics: The crucial concept that bridges ethics and politics is rights. On a desert island, the question of rights would not come up. Only when an individual deals with other men does the issue of rights become important. Rights are a moral concept, Rand emphasizes,

the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individuals action to the principles guiding his relationship with othersthe concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social contextthe link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics.35

The crucial political question, according to Rand, is whether a government ensures that a man may live according to his nature. The social recognition of mans rational natureof the connection between his survival and his use of reason, Rand wrote, is the concept of individual rights.36 For a society to be moral, Rand held, it must protect individual rights. Because capitalism is the only system that does, it is the only moral politico-economic system.37

Further, protecting individual rights is the only legitimate purpose of government, which it does by barring . . . physical force from social relationships.38 Men, Rand emphasized, have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.39 By always safeguarding and never infringing mans rights, a proper government recognizes and protects mans ability to act on his nature as a rational beingto act on his own judgment, free from coercion, so long as he does not violate the equal rights of others. To recognize individual rights, Rand highlights, means to recognize and accept the conditions required by mans nature for his proper survival.40

Because man needs to keep and use the fruits of his labor to survive, one of the most important functions of government is the protection of property rights. In Rands words:

The right to life is the source of all rightsand the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.41

Taking all these considerations into account, Rand defined capitalism as a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.42

She pointed out that altruism ultimately undermines the case for individual rights. In her words, Americas inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.43 If one takes the greatest good for the greatest number or the common good as ones standardas utilititarians doone may violate individual rights and commit any atrocity, including theft and murder, as long as one can make the collective believe that such an approach is in the publics interest. Rand unpacked this point in her Textbook of Americanism, writing:

If you consider [the slogan of the greatest good for the greatest number] moral, you would have to approve of the following examples, which are exact applications of this slogan in practice: fifty-one percent of humanity enslaving the other forty-nine; nine hungry cannibals eating the tenth one; a lynching mob murdering a man whom they consider dangerous to the community.

There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the Nazi government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory.44

This is why Rand concluded that [a]ny group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate mans rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.45

In sum, Rand agreed with the classical economists that capitalism does result in the greatest good for the greatest number, writing, If concern with poverty and human suffering were the collectivists motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago; they would have discovered that it is the only political system capable of producing abundance.46

Yet despite her agreement with the classical economists on this point, Rand held that their defense of capitalism is inadequate and ultimately dangerous because of its implicit acceptance of the tribal premise. In contrast to both the utilitarian and the Christian economists who focus on the welfare of the group, Rand focused on the needs of the individual, on the facts of reality and human nature, proving that capitalism is not merely the practical, but the only moral system in history.47

Bastiat was right in arguing that political economy and morality, far from clashing, agree.48 But this is true only when one adopts a proper morality, one derived from the facts of mans nature and the requirements of his life. Defending capitalism on altruistic groundsor skirting the issue of morality altogether and implying support for altruismseriously undermines the case for capitalism, infecting men with the belief that the moral and the practical are opposites.49 To harmonize morality and political philosophy, nothing less than Ayn Rands ethics of rational self-interest will do.

Martin Hooss is the educational content associate for Students For Libertys New Frontiers of Objectivism program. He holds a masters degree in English literature and classical philology from Trier University, and another in philosophy, politics, and economics from CEVRO Institute.

1. Ayn Rand, What Is Capitalism?, in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 2nd ed. (New York: Signet, [1966] 1967), 26.

2. Ayn Rand, Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, [1982] 1984), 83.

3. Rand, Introduction, in Capitalism, ix [emphasis in the original].

4. Cf. Ludwig von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, in Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, trans. S. Adler (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, [1920] 2012), 823.

5. Cf. von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 2430.

6. Cf. von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 3137.

7. von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 3536.

8. von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 35.

9. von Mises, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, 48.

10. Ayn Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand, ed. Michael S. Berliner (New York: Plume, [1995] 1997), 260 [emphasis in the original]. Rand repeats this conclusion in another letter written the same year, stressing, As an example of the kind of almost I would tolerate, Id name Ludwig von Mises. His book, Omnipotent Government, had some bad flaws, in that he attempted to divorce economics from morality, which is impossible; but with the exception of his last chapter, which simply didnt make sense, his book was good, and did not betray our cause. The flaws in his argument merely weakened his own effectiveness, but did not help the other side (308).

11. Rand, Letters, 331 [emphasis added].

12. Rand, Introduction, in Capitalism, viii.

13. Cf. Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1946), ix; Claude F. Bastiat, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, The Bastiat Collection, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, [1850] 2011), 41.

14. Bastiat, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, 41, 43.

15. Bastiat, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, 4344.

16. I do not mean to suggest that economists such as von Mises and Hazlitt were not concerned with ethical questions. Von Misess 1956 treatise The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality and Hazlitts 1964 monograph The Foundations of Morality prove that both of these economists held clearly defined moral convictions. Yet, both clearly separated their economic ideas from their ethical views.

17. Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, in For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Signet, [1961] 1963), 54.

18. Cf. Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 19094.

19. Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 190, 192.

20. Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, 192.

21. Rand, Letters, 331 [emphasis added].

22. Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism, in The Ayn Rand Column, 2nd ed., ed. Peter Schwartz (Irvine, CA: Ayn Rand Institute Press, [1991] 1998), 91.

23. Rand, What Is Capitalism?, 10.

24. Rand, What Is Capitalism?, 5.

25. Rand, What Is Capitalism?, 5 [emphasis in the original].

26. Rand, What Is Capitalism?, 5 [emphasis in the original].

27. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (London: Penguin, [1943] 2007), 711.

28. Ayn Rand, Introduction, in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet, [1964] 2014), vii.

29. Rand, Introduction, in Virtue of Selfishness, vii [emphasis in the original].

30. Rand, Introduction, in Virtue of Selfishness, viii [emphasis in the original].

31. Rand, Faith and Force, 8384 [emphasis in the original].

32. Rand, The Fountainhead, 713.

33. Rand, Introduction, in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, x [emphasis in the original].

34. Ayn Rand, Introducing Objectivism, in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, ed. Leonard Peikoff (New York: Meridian, 1990), 4.

35. Rand, Mans Rights, in The Virtue of Selfishness, 108.

36. Rand, What Is Capitalism?, 9 [emphasis in the original].

37. Rand, What Is Capitalism?, 10.

38. Rand, The Nature of Government, in The Virtue of Selfishness, 126.

39. Rand, The Objectivist Ethics, in The Virtue of Selfishness, 36 [emphasis in the original].

40. Rand, The Nature of Government, 126.

41. Rand, Mans Rights, 110.

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