Future Projects:
“Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal” (2005)

The collection “Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal” (1967) contains 24 essays printed in the “Bulletin of Objectivism” published during the Sixties. With the exception of three essays of Alan Greenspan, two of Nathaniel Brandon and one of the historian Robert Hessen, the rest of the essays present, in a synthetic manner, Rand’s conceptual grasp of capitalism. As she, herself, declares in the preface: “…This is not a treatise on economics, but a collection of essays on the moral aspect of capitalism. Our main interest is not in politics as such, but in the nature of man and his relation with existence…”.

Rand’s perspective on capitalism is unique: neither liberal nor conservative, or libertarian. In her view people belonging to such groups are accused as defenders of capitalism and because of their attempts to avoid clashes with altruism, capitalism has been attacked without being able to defend itself, leaving society unacquainted with its principles, nature, history and morality.

All essays in the book are of high intellectual merit, yet three of them stand out particularly. “What is Capitalism?”; “The Roots of War”; “Conservatism: an Obituary”.

“What is Capitalism?” is a moral justification of capitalism which has nothing to do with altruism. At the foundations of capitalism’s existence is rationality, and its guiding principle is fairness. Advancing arguments on her own theory of values, Ayn Rand accuses both Christian thinkers ( excepting Thomas Aquinas) and the post-Kantian epistemology for not having supported capitalism which could not have been able to exist in a culture dominated by mysticism and altruism, with an accepted antagonism between the body and the soul. Real capitalism has never existed affirms Rand, because it cannot survive without a moral foundation while on the basis of altruistic morality capitalism is condemned to ruin. Guilty, however, are not the collectivist parties, but the theorists of capitalism ( Rand does not mention names ) who have not had the need to reject the “bad” philosophy.

“The Roots of War”. The messages of this essay, written in 1966 can be summarized in 10 points:

1) The adherents of tribal thinking and champions of the “big state” maintain that man can achieve his goals making use of force against other people in the name of some social “good”.
2) According to Rand the “big state” is a system of institutionalized violence and eternal civil war.

3) The“big state” is not a system that helps to achieve security and peace.

1) According to Rand “The big state needs war; the free state – does not. The big state survives by plunder; the free state – by producing”.
2) The period from the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) to the beginning of the First World War – a period hated by the Left, because of the unbridled (which does not mean “authentic”) capitalism, was a period of relative peace.
3) In Rand’s opinion there had been free trade during the 19th Century and that has freed the world from the remnants of feudalism and absolute monarchies.
4) The military profiteers of the mixed economies make use of the favorable disposition of the supporters of the “big state”; in the free markets profit from death is impossible.
5) Theodore and Franklin D.Roosevelt, as well as Woodrow Wilson believed that the “sinking in darkness” parts of the world need unequal doses of freedom.
6) According to Rand the “big state’ opposes those who are against the war.
7) In order to declare war unlawful we must stop applying the right of power.

“Conservatism: an Obituary”. As expected both liberals and conservatives accept altruistic morality. Rand forgives the liberals or, at least, understands them, because they are “soft communists”. But the conservatives are something else.

With alarming clear-sightedness (Rand gives this speech at Princeton in 1960) she sums up: “There are three interconnected arguments used by today’s conservatives to prove the rightness of capitalism. They are best described as: the argument for faith – the argument for tradition – the argument for corruption”.

“Conservatives maintain – writes Rand – that there are no rational arguments for supporting the American system with its liberty, fairness, property, individual rights, and that…it can be accepted only on faith.” Rand is particularly caustic concerning this argument: to offer faith as an antidote to communism means to accept that even the enemies of freedom have their own right.

Traditionalists, on the other hand, maintain that the American system is obviously good because it was chosen by our forbearers. It may not be all that good, capitalism may not be all that good, the Declaration of Independence may not be all that precise, but they are unique, and they are ours. Rand writes: “’The argument to respect tradition most of all because it is tradition, and that we have to accept the values chosen by other people by assumption means: who are we to change them? The public insult to human self-respect and the deep disdain towards human nature is obvious here”.

Rand defeats the third argument - concerning the sinful nature of man – with steely logic: “This argument sounds like this: while people are weak, inclined to sin, corrupt by birth and ignorant of many things, the responsibility of being a dictator and govern others cannot be entrusted to nobody: consequently, the free society is the correct manner of life for imperfect beings. Please grasp fully the suggestion of this argument: while people are corrupt, they are not worthy of dictatorship; liberty is all that they deserve; had they been perfect, they would have deserved to live in a totalitarian state”.

According to Rand the value system of objectivism is the single well-founded way to defend capitalism.