"Capitalism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ayn)

It is from the work and the inviolate integrity of sue minds from the intransigent innovators that all of mai kind's knowledge and achievements have come. (See Th Fountainhead.) It is to such minds that mankind owes it survival. (See Atlas Shrugged.)

The same principle applies to all men, on every level c ability and ambition. To the extent that a man is guided b his rational judgment, he acts in accordance with the require ments of his nature and, to that extent succeeds in achievin, a human form of survival and well-being; to the extent tha he acts irrationally, he acts as his own destroyer.

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The social recognition of man's rational nature of the connection between his survival and his use of reason is the concept of individual rights.

I shall remind you that "rights" are a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context, that they are derived from man's nature as a rational being and represent a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival. I shall remind you also that the right to life is the source of all rights, including the right to property.8

In regard to political economy, this last requires special emphasis: man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced.

Now, bearing these facts in mind, consider the question of what social system is appropriate to man.

A social system is a set of moral-political-economic principles embodied in a society's laws, institutions, and government, which determine the relationships, the terms of association, among the men living in a given geographical area. It is obvious that these terms and relationships depend on an identification of man's nature, that they would be different if they pertain to a society of rational beings or to a colony of ants. It is obvious that they will be radically different if men deal with one another as free, independent individuals, on the premise that every man is an end in himself or as members of a pack, each regarding the others as the means to his ends and to the ends of "the pack as a whole."

There are only two fundamental questions (or two aspects of the same question) that determine the nature of any social system: Does a social system recognize individual rights? and: Does a social system ban physical force from human relationships? The answer to the second question is the practical implementation of the answer to the first.

Is man a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and its products or is he 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 lif e, control his work and expropriate his products? Does man have the right to

* For a fuller discussion of rights, I refer you to my articles "Man's Rights" in the appendix, and "Collectivized 'Rights'" in The Virtue of

Selfishness.

exist for his own sake or is he born in bondage, as i indentured servant who must keep buying his life by servii the tribe but can never acquire it free and clear?

This is the first question to answer. The rest is consiquences and practical implementations. The basic issue only: Is man free?

In mankind's history, capitalism is the only system th; answers: Yes.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition < individual rights, including property rights, in which all pro\ erty is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishmei of physical force from human relationships: basically, righ can be violated only by means of force. In a capital! society, no man or group may initiate the use of physic force against others. The only function of the government, i such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e., tl task of protecting him from physical force; the governmei acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may us force only in retaliation and only against those who initial its use; thus the government is the means of placing tl retaliatory use of force under objective control.*

It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature tr connection between his survival and his use of reason th; capitalism recognizes and protects.

In a capitalist society, all human relationships are vohu tary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with or another or not, as their own individual judgments, convii tions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one anoth< only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means i discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement, by volui tary choice to mutual benefit The right to agree with othe is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree thi is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protec and implements the right to disagree and thus keeps tl road open to man's most valuable attribute (valuable persona ly, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

This is the cardinal difference between capitalism an collectivism.

The power that determines the establishment, the change the evolution, and the destruction of social systems is philosi phy. The role of chance, accident, or tradition, in this coi text, is the same as their role in the life of an individua their power stands in inverse ratio to the power of a culture

'For a fuller discussion of this subject, see my article "The Nature i Government" in the appendix.

(or an individual's) philosophical equipment, and grows as philosophy collapses. It is, therefore, by reference to philosophy that the character of a social system has to be defined and evaluated. Corresponding to the four branches of philosophy, the four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirements of man's nature and survival epistemolog-ically, reason ethically, individual rights politically, freedom.

This, in substance, is the base of the proper approach to political economy and to an understanding of capitalism not the tribal premise inherited from prehistorical traditions.

The "practical" justification of capitalism does not lie in the collectivist claim that it effects "the best allocation of national resources." Man is not a "national resource" and neither is his mind and without the creative power of man's intelligence, raw materials remain just so many useless raw materials.