Nothing like a breath of old air Gruff.
On 31 Jan, 16:45, gruff <[email protected]> wrote:
> If I may .... INTRODUCTION to "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" by Ayn
> Rand 1966
>
> This book is not a treatise on economics. It is a collection of
> essays on the moral aspects of capitalism.
>
> Our approach can best be summarized by my statement in the first issue
> of The Objectivist Newsletter (January 1962): "Objectivism is a
> philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy,
> Objectivism advocates certain political principles -- specifically,
> those of laissez-faire capitalism -- as the consequence and the
> ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical
> principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary
> goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider
> ideological context.
>
> "Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines:
> metaphysics, epistemology and ethics -- on a theory of man's nature
> and of man's relationship, to existence. It is only on such a base
> that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in
> practice. . . . Objectivists are not 'conservatives.' We are
> radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base
> which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to
> perish."
>
> I want to stress that our primary interest is not politics or
> economics as such, but "man's nature and man's relationship to
> existence" -- and that we advocate capitalism because it is the only
> system geared to the life of a rational being.
>
> In this respect, there is a fundamental difference between our
> approach and that of capitalism's classical defenders and modern
> apologists. With very few exceptions, they are responsible -- by
> default -- for capitalism's destruction. The default consisted of
> their inability or unwillingness to fight the battle where it had to
> be fought: on moral-philosophical grounds.
>
> No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so
> eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism -- and
> none has ever been attacked so savagely, viciously, and blindly. The
> flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright
> falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have
> no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual
> nature. While archeologists are rummaging through the ruins of
> millennia for scraps of pottery and bits of bones, from which to
> reconstruct some information about prehistorical existence -- the
> events of less than a century ago are hidden under a mound more
> impenetrable than the geological debris of winds, floods, and
> earthquakes: a mound of silence.
>
> To obliterate the truth on such a large scale, to hide an open secret
> from the world, to hide -- without any power of censorship, yet
> without any significant sound of protest -- the fact that an ideal
> social system had once been almost within men's reach, cannot be done
> by any conspiracy of evildoers; it cannot be done except with the
> tacit compliance of those who know better.
>
> By their silence -- by their evasion of the clash between capitalism
> and altruism -- it is capitalism's alleged champions who are
> responsible for the fact that capitalism is being destroyed without a
> hearing, without a trial, without any public knowledge of its
> principles, its nature, its history, or its moral meaning. It is
> being destroyed in the manner of a nightmare lynching -- as if a
> blind, despair-crazed mob were burning a straw man, not knowing that
> the grotesquely deformed bundle of straw is hiding the living body of
> the ideal.
>
> The method of capitalism's destruction rests on never letting the
> world discover what it is that is being destroyed -- on never allowing
> it to be identified within the hearing of the young.
>
> The purpose of this book is to identify it.
>
> The guilt for the present state of the world rests on the shoulders of
> those who are over forty years old today (with a very few exceptions)
> -- those who, when they spoke, said less than they knew and said it
> less clearly than the subject demanded.
>
> This book is addressed to the young -- in years or in spirit -- who
> are not afraid to know and are not ready to give up.
>
> What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's
> enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism
> is not merely the "practical," but the only moral system in history.
> (See Atlas Shrugged.)
>
> The political aspects of Atlas Shrugged are not its theme. Its theme
> is primarily ethical-epistemological: the role of the mind in man's
> existence -- and politics, necessarily, is one of the theme's
> consequences. But the epistemological chaos of our age, fostered by
> modern philosophy, is such that many young readers find it difficult
> to translate abstractions into political principles and apply them to
> the evaluation of today's events. This present book may help them.
> It is a nonfiction footnote to Atlas Shrugged.
>
> Since every political system rests on some theory of ethics, I suggest
> to those readers who are actually interested in understanding the
> nature of capitalism, that they read first The Virtue of Selfishness,
> a collection of essays on the Objectivist ethics, which is a necessary
> foundation for this present book. Since no political discussion can
> be meaningful or intelligible without a clear understanding of two
> crucial concepts: "rights" and "government" -- yet these are the two
> most strenuously evaded in today's technique of obfuscation -- I
> suggest that you begin this book by reading (or rereading) two essays
> from that earlier collection, which you will find here reprinted in
> the appendix: "Man's Rights" and "The Nature of Government."
>
> Most of the essays in this book appeared originally in The Objectivist
> Newsletter (now, in magazine format, The Objectivist); others are
> based on lectures or papers, as indicated. Some of the essays cover,
> in brief summary, the answers to the most widely spread fallacies
> about the economics of capitalism. These essays appeared in the
> "Intellectual Ammunition Department" of The Objectivist Newsletter and
> were written in answer to questions from our readers. Those who are
> interested in studying political economy, will find, in the appendix,
> a recommended bibliography on that subject.
>
> Now a word about the contributors to this book. Robert Hessen is
> presently completing his doctorate in history at Columbia University,
> and is teaching in Columbia's Graduate School of Business. Alan
> Greenspan is president of Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc., economic
> consultants. Nathaniel Branden, psychological theorist and co-
> editor, with me, of The Objectivist, needs no introduction to my
> readers.
>
> -AYN RAND New York, July 1966
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