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How do you feel about the political trends in the United States?
The way everybody feels, except more consciously. I feel it is terrible, that you see destruction
all around you, and that you are moving toward disaster, until and unless all those things
welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected. It is precisely this trend which
is leading the world to disaster. A system in which everyone is enslaved to everybody.
But you say this, yet it came about democratically. The people voted for and wanted this type
of government and legislation.
I reject the idea that the people have the right to vote on everything. The American
system was based on the notion that majority will or majority rule only in public or political
affairs. And that it was limited by inalienable individual rights. Therefore, I do not believe
that a majority can vote a man's life, property or freedom away from him. For I do not believe
that if a majority votes on an issue this necessarily makes it right. It doesn't.
Ok then how do we arrive at action?
By voluntary consent of free men, unforced.
And how do out leaders arrive, how do we arrive at our leadership? Who elects? Who appoints?
The people elect, there is nothing wrong with the democratic process in politics. We arrive
at it the way we arrive by the American Constitution as it used to be; the Constitutional process
as we had it. People elect officials, but the powers of those officials and of government
are strictly limited. They will have no right to initiate force or compulsion against any
citizen except a criminal. Thiose who have initiated force will be punished by force.
And that is the only proper function of the government. What we will not permit is for
the government to initiate force against people who have hurt no one, have not forced anyone.
We will not give the government or any majority or any minority the right to take the life
or the property of others. That was the original American system.
When you say take the property of others, I imagine you are talking about taxes.
Yes I am.
And you believe that there should be no right by the government to tax. You believe that
there should be no such thing as welfare legislation, unemployment compensation, regulation during
times of stress, rent control.
That's right, I'm opposed to all forms of government control. I am for an absolute laisse
faire, free unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly: I am for the separation of state
and economics just was we had separation of the state and church, which lead to peaceful
coexistence among different religions after a period of religious wars, so the same applies
to economics. If you separate the government from economics, if you do not regulate production
and trade, you will have peaceful cooperation and harmony and justice among men.
You are enough of a student of history to know that certain social welfare legislation, this did not spring
full blow from someone's head, out of a vacuum. This was a reaction to certain abuses that
were going on, isn't that true Ayn?
Not always. actually, it sprung up from the same spruce as the abuses. If by abuses you
mean the legislation which originally had been established to help industries, which
was already a breach of complete free enterprise. If, the, in reaction, labor leaders get together
to initiate legislation to help labor, that is only acting on the same principle, namely,
all parties agreeing that it proper for the state to legislate in favor of one economic
group or another. What I'm saying is that nobody should have the right, neither employers
nor employees, to use state compulsion and force for their own interests.
But when you advocate a completely unregulated life, in which each man works for his own
profit, you are asking, in a sense, for a devil take the hindmost, dog eat dog society,
and one of the main reasons for the growth of government controls was to fight the robber
barons, to fight laissez faire, in which the very people whom you admire the most Ayn,
the hard headed industrialist, the successful men, perverted the use of their power. Is
that not true?
No, it isn't.
Oh.
This country wasn't made by robber barons. but by independent men based on sheer ability,
without political force, help or compulsion. But, at the same time, there were men--industrialists--who
did use government power as a club to help them against competitors. They were the original
collectivists. Today, the Liberals believe that same compulsion should be used against
the industrialists for the sake off workers. But the basic principle is hold there be any
compulsion, and the regulations are creating robber barons. Capitalism with government
help which is the worst of all economic phenomenon.
Ayn, I think you will agree with me that you do not have a great deal of respect for the
society in which you and I currently live. You think that we are going down hill fairly
fast. I would like you to think about this question, and you'll have a minute during
intermission to ponder and and answer it. Do you predict dictatorship and economic disaster
for the United States, if we continue on our present course? Do you? And we'll get Ayn
Rand's answer in just a moment.
And now back to our story. All right Ayn Rand, what I'd like to know, since you describe
it happening in your novel Atlas Shrugged, do you predict dictatorship and economic disaster
for the United States?
If the present collectivist trend continues, if the present anti- reason philosophy continues,
yes. That is the way the country is going. But I don't believe in historical determinism,
and I do not believe the people have to go that way. Men have the free will to choose
and to think. If they change their thinking we do not have to go into dictatorship.
Yes, but how can you expect to reverse this trend when, as we've said, the country is
run by majority rule through ballot and that majority seems to prefer to vote for this
modified welfare state.
Oh I don't believe that. You know as well as I do that the majority has no choice. The
majority has never been offered a choice between controls and freedom.
How do you account for the fact that the majority of our leading intellectuals and the industrialists,
the men you admire the most, the men with the money and the muscle, seem to favor this
modified capitalism that we have today.
Because it is an intellectual issue. Since they all believe in collectivism, they do
favor it. But the majority of the people have never been given a choice. You know that both
parties today are for Socialism, in effect--for controls, and there is no party, no voices,
to offer, an actual pro Capitalist, laissez faire economic freedom and individualism.
That is what the country needs today.