“Requiem for Man” was originally published in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal in 1967.

In advocating capitalism, I have said and stressed for years that capitalism is incompatible with altruism and mysticism. Those who chose to doubt that the issue is “either-or,” have now heard it from the highest authority of the opposite side: Pope Paul VI.

The encyclical “Populorum Progressio” (“On the Development of Peoples”) is an unusual document: it reads as if a long-repressed emotion broke out into the open, past the barrier of carefully measured, cautiously calculated sentences, with the hissing pressure of centuries of silence. The sentences are full of contradictions; the emotion is consistent.

The encyclical is the manifesto of an impassioned hatred for capitalism; but its evil is much more profound and its target is more than mere politics. It is written in terms of a mystic-altruist “sense of life.” A sense of life is the subconscious equivalent of metaphysics: a pre-conceptual, emotionally integrated appraisal of man’s nature and of his relationship to existence. To a mystic-altruist sense of life, words are mere approximations; hence the encyclical’s tone of evasion. But what is eloquently revealing is the nature of that which is being evaded.

On the question of capitalism, the encyclical’s position is explicit and unequivocal. Referring to the industrial revolution, the encyclical declares: “But it is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation .… But if it is true that a type of capitalism has been the source of excessive suffering, injustices and fratricidal conflicts whose effects still persist, it would also be wrong to attribute to industrialization itself evils that belong to the woeful system which accompanied it.” (Paragraph 26)

The Vatican is not the city room of a third-rate Marxist tabloid. It is an institution geared to a perspective of centuries, to scholarship and timeless philosophical deliberation. Ignorance, therefore, cannot be the explanation of the above. Even the leftists know that the advent of capitalism and industrialization was not an “unfortunate” coincidence, and that the first made the second possible.

What are the “excessive suffering, injustices and fratricidal conflicts” caused by capitalism? The encyclical gives no answer. What social system, past or present, has a better record in respect to any social evil that anyone might choose to ascribe to capitalism? Has the feudalism of the Middle Ages? Has absolute monarchy? Has socialism or fascism? No answer. If one is to consider “excessive suffering, injustices and fratricidal conflicts,” what aspect of capitalism can be placed in the same category with the terror and wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia? No answer, If there is no causal connection between capitalism and the people’s progress, welfare, and standard of living, why are these highest in the countries whose systems have the largest element of capitalistic economic freedom? No answer.

Since the encyclical is concerned with history and with fundamental political principles, yet does not discuss or condemn any social system other than capitalism, one must conclude that all other systems are compatible with the encyclical’s political philosophy. This is supported by the fact that capitalism is condemned, not for some lesser characteristics, but for its essentials, which are not the base of any other system: the profit motive, competition, and private ownership of the means of production.

By what moral standard does the encyclical judge a social system? Its most specific accusation directed at capitalism reads as follows: “The desire for necessities is legitimate, and work undertaken to obtain them is a duty: ‘If any man will not work, neither let him eat.’ But the acquiring of temporal goods can lead to greed, to the insatiable desire for more, and can make increased power a tempting objective. Individuals, families and nations can be overcome by avarice, be they poor or rich, and all can fall victim to a stifling materialism.” (18)

Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, “greed” has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it. But the above was not written by an illiterate.

Terms such as “greed” and “avarice” connote the caricature image of two individuals, one fat, the other lean, one indulging in mindless gluttony, the other starving over chests of hoarded gold — both symbols of the acquisition of riches for the sake of riches. Is that the motive-power of capitalism?

If all the wealth spent on personal consumption by all the rich of the United States were expropriated and distributed among our population, it would amount to less than a dollar per person. (Try to figure out the amount, if distributed to the entire population of the globe.) The rest of American wealth is invested in production — and it is this constantly growing investment that raises America’s standard of living by raising the productivity of its labor. This is primer economics which Pope Paul VI cannot fail to know.

To observe the technique of epistemological manipulation, read that quoted paragraph again — and look past the images invoked by the window-dressing of “greed” and “avarice.” You will observe that the evil being denounced is: “the insatiable desire for more.” Of what? Of “increased power.” What sort of power? No direct answer is given in that paragraph, but the entire encyclical provides the answer by means of a significant omission: no distinction is drawn between economic power and political power (between production and force), they are used interchangeably in some passages and equated explicitly in others. If you look at the facts of reality, you will observe that the “increased power” which men of wealth seek under capitalism is the power of independent production, the power of an “insatiable” ambition to expand their productive capacity — and that this is what the encyclical damns. The evil is not work, but ambitious work.

These implications are supported and gently stressed in a subsequent paragraph, which lists the encyclical’s view of “less human” conditions of social existence: “The lack of material necessities for those who are without the minimum essential for life, the moral deficiencies of those who are mutilated by selfishness.… Oppressive social structures, whether due to the abuses of ownership or to the abuses of power …” And, as “more human” conditions: “the passage from misery toward the possession of necessities….” (21)

What “necessities” are the “minimum essential for life”? For what kind of life? Is it for mere physical survival? If so, for how long a survival? No answer is given. But the encyclical’s principle is clear: only those who rise no higher than the barest minimum of subsistence have the right to material possessions — and this right supersedes all the rights of all other men, including their right to life. This is stated explicitly:

The Bible, from the first page on, teaches us that the whole of creation is for man, that it is his responsibility to develop it by intelligent effort and by means of his labor to perfect it, so to speak, for his use. If the world is made to furnish each individual with the means of livelihood and the instruments for his growth and progress, each man has therefore the right to find in the world what is necessary for himself. The recent Council reminded us of this: ‘God intended the earth and all that it contains for the use of every human being and people. Thus, as all men follow justice and charity, created goods should abound for them on a reasonable basis.’ All other rights whatsoever, including those of property and of free commerce, are to be subordinated to this principle. (22)

Observe what element is missing from this view of the world, what human faculty is regarded as inessential or non-existent. I shall discuss this aspect later in more detail. For the moment, I shall merely call your attention to the use of the word “man” in the above paragraph (which man?) — and to the term “created goods.” Created — by whom? Blank out.

That missing element becomes blatant in the encyclical’s next paragraph:

It is well known bow strong were the words used by the fathers of the church to describe the proper attitude of persons who possess anything toward persons in need. To quote St. Ambrose: ‘You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, and not only to the rich.’ That is, private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute and unconditional right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities. (23)

St. Ambrose lived in the fourth century, when such views of property could conceivably have been explicable, if not justifiable. From the nineteenth century on, they can be neither.

What solution does the encyclical offer to the problems of today’s world?

Individual initiative alone and the mere free play of competition could never assure successful development. One must avoid the risk of increasing still more the wealth of the rich and the dominion of the strong, while leaving the poor in their misery and adding to the servitude of the oppressed. Hence programs are necessary in order ‘to encourage, stimulate, coordinate, supplement and integrate’ the activity of individuals and of intermediary bodies. It pertains to the public authorities to choose, even to lay down, the objectives to be pursued, the ends to be achieved, and the means for attaining these, and it is for them to stimulate all the forces engaged in this common activity. (33)

A society in which the government (“the public authorities’’) chooses and lays down the objectives to be pursued, the ends to be achieved, and the means for achieving them, is a totalitarian state. It is, therefore, morally shocking to read the very next sentence: “But let them take care to associate private initiative and intermediary bodies with this work. They will thus avoid the danger of complete collectivization or of arbitrary planning, which, by denying liberty, would prevent the exercise of the fundamental rights of the human person.” (33)

What are “the fundamental rights of the human person” (which are never defined in the encyclical) in a state where “all other rights whatsoever … are to be subordinated to this principle [the “right” to minimum sustenance]”? (22) What is “liberty” or “private initiative” in a state where the government lays down the ends and commandeers the means? What is incomplete collectivization?

It is difficult to believe that modern compromisers, to whom that paragraph is addressed, could stretch their capacity for evasion far enough to take it to mean the advocacy of a mixed economy. A mixed economy is a mixture of capitalism and statism; when the principles and practices of capitalism are damned and annihilated at the root, what is to prevent the statist collectivization from becoming complete?

(The moral shock comes from the realization that the encyclical regards some men’s capacity for evasion as infinitely elastic. Judging by the reactions it received, the encyclical did not miscalculate.)

I have always maintained that every political theory is based on some code of ethics. Here again, the encyclical confirms my statement, though from the viewpoint of a moral code which is the opposite of mine. “The same duty of solidarity that rests on individuals exists also for nations: ‘Advanced nations have a very heavy obligation to help the developing peoples.’ It is necessary to put this teaching of the council into effect. Although it is normal that a nation should be the first to benefit from the gifts that Providence has bestowed on it as the fruit of the labors of its people, still no country can claim on that account to keep its wealth for itself alone.” (48)

This seems clear enough, but the encyclical takes pains not to be misunderstood. “In other words, the rule of free trade, taken by itself, is no longer able to govern international relations…. One must recognize that it is the fundamental principle of liberalism, as the rule for commercial exchange, which is questioned here.” (58)

“We must repeat once more that the superfluous wealth of rich countries should be placed at the service of poor nations, the rule which up to now held good for the benefit of those nearest to us, must today be applied to all the needy of this world.” (49)

If need — global need — is the criterion of morality, if minimum subsistence (the standard of living of the least developed savages) is the criterion of property rights, then every new shirt or dress, every ice cream cone, every automobile, refrigerator, or television set becomes “superfluous wealth.”

Remember that “rich” is a relative concept and that the share-croppers of the United States are fabulously rich compared to the laborers of Asia or Africa. Yet the encyclical denounces, as “unjust,” free trade among unequally developed countries, on the grounds that “highly industrialized nations export for the most part manufactured goods, while countries with less developed economies have only food, fibers, and other raw materials to sell.” (57) Alleging that this perpetuates the poverty of the undeveloped countries, the encyclical demands that international trade be ruled, not by the laws of the free market, but by the need of its neediest participants.

How this would work in practice is made explicitly clear:

This demands great generosity, much sacrifice and unceasing effort on the part of the rich man. Let each one examine his conscience, a conscience that conveys a new message for our times.… Is he ready to pay higher taxes so that the public authorities can intensify their efforts in favor of development? Is he ready to pay a higher price for imported goods so that the producer may be more justly rewarded? (47)

It is not only the rich who pay taxes; the major share of the tax burden in the United States is carried by the middle and lower income classes. It is not for the exclusive personal consumption of the rich that foreign goods or raw materials are imported. The price of food is not a major concern to the rich; it is a crucial concern to the poor. And since food is listed as one of the chief products of the undeveloped countries, project what the encyclical’s proposal would mean: it would mean that an American housewife would have to buy food produced by men who scratch the soil with bare hands or hand-plows, and would pay prices which, if paid to America’s mechanized farmers, would have given her a hundred or a thousand times more. Which items of her family budget would she have to sacrifice so that those undeveloped producers “may be more justly rewarded”? Would she sacrifice some purchases of clothing? But her clothing budget would have shrunk in the same manner and proportion — since she would have to provide the “just rewards” of the producers of “fibers and other raw materials.” And so on. What, then, would happen to her standard of living? And what would happen to the American farmers and producers of raw materials? Forced to compete, not in terms of productive competence, but of need, they would have to arrest their “development” and revert to the methods of the hand-plow. What, then, would happen to the standard of living of the whole world?

No, it is not possible that Pope Paul VI was so ignorant of economics and so lacking in the capacity to concretize his theories that he offered such proposals in the name of “humanism” without realizing the unspeakably inhuman cruelty they entail.

It seems inexplicable. But there is a certain basic premise that would explain it. It would integrate the encyclical’s clashing elements — the contradictions, the equivocations, the omissions, the unanswered questions — into a consistent pattern. To discover it, one must ask: What is the encyclical’s view of man’s nature?

That particular view is seldom admitted or fully identified by those who hold it. It is less a matter of conscious philosophy than of a feeling dictated by a sense of life. The conscious philosophy of those who hold it, consists predominantly of attempts to rationalize it.

To identify that view, let us go to its roots, to the kind of phenomena which give rise to it, in sense-of-life terms.

I will ask you to project the look on a child’s face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world — inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you know that if there is such a concept as “sacred” — meaning: the best, the highest possible to man — this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone.

This look is not confined to children. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light-bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol: an idea is a light turned on in a man’s soul

It is the steady, confident reflection of that light that you look for in the faces of adults — particularly of those to whom you entrust your most precious values. You look for it in the eyes of a surgeon performing an operation on the body of a loved one; you look for it in the face of a pilot at the controls of the plane in which you are flying; and, if you are consistent, you look for it in the person of the man or woman you marry.

That light-bulb look is the flash of a human intelligence in action; it is the outward manifestation of man’s rational faculty; it is the signal and symbol of man’s mind. And, to the extent of your humanity, it is involved in everything you seek, enjoy, value, or love.

But suppose that admiration is not your response to that look on the face of a child or adult? Suppose that your response is a nameless fear? Then you will spend your life and your philosophical capacity on the struggle never to let that fear be named. You will find rationalizations to hide it, and you will call that child’s look a look of “selfishness” or “arrogance” or “intransigence” or “pride” — all of which will be true, but not in the way you will struggle to suggest. You will feel that that look in man’s eyes is your greatest, most dangerous enemy — and the desire to vanquish that look will become your only absolute, taking precedence over reason, logic, consistency, existence, reality. The desire to vanquish that look is the desire to break man’s spirit.

Thus you will acquire the kind of sense of life that produced the encyclical “Populorum Progressio.” It was not produced by the sense of life of any one person, but by the sense of life of an institution.

The dominant chord of the encyclical’s sense of life is hatred for man’s mind — hence hatred for man — hence hatred for life and for this earth — hence hatred for man’s enjoyment of his life on earth — and hence, as a last and least consequence, hatred for the only social system that makes all these values possible in practice: capitalism.

I could maintain this on the grounds of a single example. Consider the proposal to condemn Americans to a lifetime of unrewarded drudgery at forced labor, making them work as hard as they do or harder, with nothing to gain but the barest subsistence — while savages collect the products of their effort. When you hear a proposal of this sort, what image leaps into your mind? What I see is the young people who start out in life with self-confident eagerness, who work their way through school, their eyes fixed on their future with a joyous, uncomplaining dedication — and what meaning a new coat, a new rug, an old car bought second-hand, or a ticket to the movies has in their lives, as the fuel of their courage. Anyone who evades that image while he plans to dispose of “the fruit of the labors of people” and declares that human effort is not a sufficient reason for a man to keep his own product — may claim any motive but love of humanity.

I could rest my case on this alone, but I shan’t. The encyclical offers more than a sense of life: it contains specific, conscious, philosophical corroboration.

Observe that it is not aimed at destroying man’s mind, but at a slower, more agonizing equivalent: at enslaving it.

The key to understanding the encyclical’s social theories is contained in a statement of John Galt: “I am the man whose existence your blank-outs were intended to permit you to ignore. I am the man whom you did not want either to live or to die. You did not want me to live, because you were afraid of knowing that I carried the responsibility you dropped and that your lives depended upon me; you did not want me to die, because you knew it.” (Atlas Shrugged)

The encyclical neither denies nor acknowledges the existence of human intelligence: it merely treats it as an inconsequential human attribute requiring no consideration. The main, and virtually only, reference to the role of intelligence in man’s existence reads as follows:

The introduction of industry is a necessity for economic growth and human progress; it is also a sign of development and contributes to it. By persistent work and use of his intelligence, man gradually wrests nature’s secrets from her and finds a better application for her riches. As his self-mastery increases, be develops a taste for research and discovery, an ability to take a calculated risk, boldness in enterprises, generosity in what he does and a sense of responsibility. (25)

Observe that the creative power of man’s mind (of his basic means of survival, of the faculty that distinguishes him from animals) is described as an acquired “taste” — like a taste for olives or for ladies’ fashions. Observe that even this paltry acknowledgment is not allowed to stand by itself: lest“research and discovery” be taken as a value, they are enmeshed in such irrelevancies as“generosity.”

The same pattern is repeated in discussing the subject of work. The encyclical warns that “it [work] can sometimes be given exaggerated significance,” but admits that work is a creative process, then adds that “when work is done in common, when hope, hardship, ambition and joy are shared … men find themselves to be brothers.” (27) And then: “Work, of course, can have contrary effects, for it promises money, pleasure and power, invites some to selfishness, others to revolt…” (28)

This means that pleasure (the kind of pleasure which is earned by productive work) is evil — power (economic power, the kind earned by productive work) is evil — and money (the thing which the entire encyclical begs for passionately) is evil if kept in the hands of those who earned it.

Do you see John Galt doing work “in common,” sharing “hope, hardship, ambition and joy” with James Taggart, Wesley Mouch, and Dr. Floyd Ferris? But these are only fiction characters, you say? Okay. Do you see Pasteur? Do you see Columbus? Do you see Galileo — and what happened to him when he tried to share his “hope, hardship, ambition and joy” with the Catholic Church?

No, the encyclical does not deny the existence of men of genius; if it did, it would not have to plead so hard for global sharing. If all men were interchangeable, if degrees of ability were of no consequence, everyone would produce the same amount and there would be no benefits for anyone to derive from sharing. The encyclical assumes that the unnamed, unrecognized, unacknowledged fountainheads of wealth would somehow continue to function — and proceeds to set up conditions of existence which would make their functioning impossible.

Remember that intelligence is not an exclusive monopoly of genius; it is an attribute of all men, and the differences are only a matter of degree. If conditions of existence are destructive to genius, they are destructive to every man, each in proportion to his intelligence. If genius is penalized, so is the faculty of intelligence in every other man. There is only this difference: the average man does not possess the genius’s power of self-confident resistance, and will break much faster; he will give up his mind, in hopeless bewilderment, under the first touch of pressure.

There is no place for the mind in the world proposed by the encyclical, and no place for man. The entities populating it are insentient robots geared to perform prescribed tasks in a gigantic tribal machine, robots deprived of choice, judgment, values, convictions and self-esteem — above all, of self-esteem.

“You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his.” (23) Does the wealth created by Thomas A. Edison belong to the bushmen who did not create it? Does the paycheck you earned this week belong to the hippies next door who did not earn it? A man would not accept that notion; a robot would. A man would take pride in his achievement; it is the pride of achievement that has to be burned out of the robots of the future.

“For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself.” (23) “God intended the earth and all that it contains for the use of every human being and people.” (22) You are one of the things that the earth contains; are you, therefore, intended “for the use of every human being and people”? The encyclical’s answer is apparently “Yes” — since the world it proposes is based on that premise in every essential respect.

A man would not accept that premise. A man, such as John Galt, would say:

You have never discovered the industrial age — and you cling to the morality of the barbarian eras when a miserable form of human subsistence was produced by the muscular labor of slaves. Every mystic had always longed for slaves, to protect him from the material reality he dreaded. But you, you grotesque little atavists, stare blindly at the skyscrapers and smokestacks around you and dream of enslaving the material providers who are scientists, inventors, industrialists. When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind. (Atlas Shrugged)

But a robot would not say it. A robot would be programmed not to question the source of wealth — and would never discover that the source of wealth is man’s mind.

On hearing such notions as “The whole of creation is for man” (22) and “The world is given to all” (23), a man would grasp that these are equivocations which evade the question of what is necessary to make use of natural resources. He would know that nothing is given to him, that the transformation of raw materials into human goods requires a process of thought and labor, which some men will perform and others will not — and that, in justice, no man can have a primary right to the goods created by the thought and labor of others. A robot would not protest; it would see no difference between itself and raw materials; it would take its own motions as the given.

A man who loves his work and knows what enormous virtue — what discipline of thought, of energy, of purpose, of devotion — it requires, would rebel at the prospect of letting it serve those who scorn it. And scorn for material production is splattered all over the encyclical. “Less well off peoples can never be sufficiently on their guard against this temptation, which comes to them from wealthy nations.” This temptation is “a way of acting that is principally aimed at the conquest of material prosperity.” (41) Advocating a “dialogue” between different civilizations for the purpose of founding “world solidarity,” the encyclical stresses that it must be: “A dialogue based on man and not on commodities or technical skills.…”(73) Which means that technical skills are a negligible characteristic, that no virtue was needed to acquire them, that the ability to produce commodities deserves no acknowledgment and is not part of the concept “man.”

Thus, while the entire encyclical is a plea for the products of industrial wealth, it is scornfully indifferent to their source; it asserts a right to the effects, but ignores the cause; it purports to speak on a lofty moral plane, but leaves the process of material production outside the realm of morality — as if that process were an activity of a low order that neither involved nor required any moral principles.

I quote from Atlas Shrugged: “An industrialist — blank-out — there is no such person. A factory is a ‘natural resource,’ like a tree, a rock or a mud puddle.… Who solved the problem of production? Humanity, they answer. What was the solution? The goods are here. How did they get here? Somehow. What caused it? Nothing has causes.” (The last sentence is inapplicable; the encyclical’s answer would be: “Providence.”)

The process of production is directed by man’s mind. Man’s mind is not an indeterminate faculty; it requires certain conditions in order to function. — and the cardinal one among them is freedom. The encyclical is singularly, eloquently devoid of any consideration of the mind’s requirements, as if it expected human thought to keep on gushing forth anywhere, under any conditions, from under any pressures — or as if it intended that gusher to stop.

If concern for human poverty and suffering were one’s primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask: Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in subhuman misery? History and, specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the nineteenth century, would give an immediate answer: capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance — and the key to capitalism is individual freedom.

It is obvious that a political system affects a society’s economics, by protecting or impeding men’s productive activities. But this is what the encyclical will neither admit nor permit. The relationship of politics and economics is the thing it most emphatically ignores or evades and denies. It declares that no such relationship exists.

In projecting its world of the future, where the civilized countries are to assume the burden of helping and developing the uncivilized ones, the encyclical states: “And the receiving countries could demand that there be no interference in their political life or subversion of their social structures. As sovereign states they have the right to conduct their own affairs, to decide on their policies and to move freely toward the kind of society they choose.” (54)

What if the kind of society they choose makes production, development, and progress impossible? What if it practices communism, like Soviet Russia? — or exterminates minorities, like Nazi Germany? — or establishes a religious caste system, like India? — or clings to a nomadic, anti-industrial form of existence, like the Arab countries? — or simply consists of tribal gangs ruled by brute force, like some of the new countries of Africa? The encyclical’s tacit answer is that these are the prerogatives of sovereign states — that we must respect different “cultures” — and that the civilized nations of the world must make up for these deficits, somehow.

Some of the answer is not tacit. “Given the increasing needs of the underdeveloped countries, it should be considered quite normal for an advanced country to devote a part of its production to meet their needs, and to train teachers, engineers, technicians and scholars prepared to put their knowledge and their skill at the disposal of less fortunate peoples.” (48)

The encyclical gives severely explicit instructions to such emissaries. “They ought not to conduct themselves in a lordly fashion, but as helpers and co-workers. A people quickly perceives whether those who come to help them do so with or without affection … Their message is in danger of being rejected if it is not presented in the context of brotherly love.” (71) They should be free of “all nationalistic pride”; they should “realize that their competence does not confer on them a superiority in every field.” They should realize that theirs “is not the only civilization, nor does it enjoy a monopoly of valuable elements.” They should “be intent on discovering, along with its history, the component elements of the cultural riches of the country receiving them. Mutual understanding will be established which will enrich both cultures.” (72)

This is said to civilized men who are to venture into countries where sacred cows are fed, while children are left to starve — where female infants are killed or abandoned by the roadside — where men go blind, medical help being forbidden by their religion — where women are mutilated, to insure their fidelity — where unspeakable tortures are ceremonially inflicted on prisoners — where cannibalism is practiced. Are these the “cultural riches” which a Western man is to greet with “brotherly love”? Are these the “valuable elements” which he is to admire and adopt? Are these the “fields” in which he is not to regard himself as superior? And when he discovers entire populations rotting alive in such conditions, is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride — of pride and gratitude — the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?

The encyclical’s implicit answer is “No.” He is not to judge, not to question, not to condemn — only to love; to love without cause, indiscriminately, unconditionally, in violation of any values, standards, or convictions of his own.

(The only valuable assistance that Western men could, in fact, offer to undeveloped countries is to enlighten them on the nature of capitalism and help them to establish it. But this would clash with the natives’ “cultural traditions”; industrialization cannot be grafted onto superstitious irrationality; the choice is either-or. Besides, it is a knowledge which the West itself has lost; and it is the specific element which the encyclical damns.)

While the encyclical demands a kind of unfastidious relativism in regard to cultural values and stressedly urges respect for the right of primitive cultures to hold any values whatever, it does not extend this tolerance to Western civilization. Speaking of Western businessmen who deal with countries “recently opened to industrialization,” the encyclical states: “Why, then, do they return to the inhuman principles of individualism when they operate in less developed countries?” (70)

Observe that the horrors of tribal existence in those underdeveloped countries evoke no condemnation from the encyclical; only individualism — the principle that raised mankind out of the primordial swamps — is branded as “inhuman.”

In the light of that statement, observe the encyclical’s contempt for conceptual integrity, when it advocates “the construction of a better world, one which shows deeper respect for the rights and the vocation of the individual.” (65) What are the rights of the individual in a world that regards individualism as “inhuman”? No answer.

There is another remark pertaining to Western nations, which is worth noting. The encyclical states: “We are pleased to learn that in certain nations, ‘military service’ can be partially accomplished by doing ‘social service,’ a ‘service pure and simple.’” (74)

It is interesting to discover the probable source of the notion of substituting social work for military service, of the claim that American youths owe their country some years of servitude pure and simple — a vicious notion, more evil than the draft, a singularly un-American notion in that it contradicts every fundamental principle of the United States.

The philosophy that created the United States is the encyclical’s target, the enemy it seeks to obliterate. A casual reference that seems aimed at Latin America is a bit of window-dressing, a booby-trap for compromisers, upon which they did pounce eagerly. That reference states: “If certain landed estates impede the general prosperity because they are extensive, unused or poorly used … the common good sometimes demands their expropriation.” (24)

But whatever the sins of Latin America, capitalism is not one of them. Capitalism — a system based on the recognition and protection of individual rights — has never existed in Latin America. In the past and at present, Latin America was and is ruled by a primitive form of fascism: an unorganized, unstructured rule by coup d’etat, by militaristic gangs, i.e., by physical force, which tolerates a nominal pretense at private property subject to expropriation by any gang in power (which is the cause of Latin America’s economic stagnation).

The encyclical is concerned with help to the undeveloped nations of the world. Latin America is high on the list of the undeveloped; it is unable to feed its own people. Can anyone imagine Latin America in the role of global provider, supplying the needs of the entire world? It is only the United States — the country created by the principles of individualism, the freest example of capitalism in history, the first and last exponent of the Rights of Man — that could attempt such a role and would thereby be induced to commit suicide.

Now observe that the encyclical is not concerned with man, with the individual; the “unit” of its thinking is the tribe: nations, countries, peoples — and it discusses them as if they had a totalitarian power to dispose of their citizens, as if such entities as individuals were of no significance any longer. This is, indicative of the encyclical’s strategy: the United States is the highest achievement of the millennia of Western civilization’s struggle toward individualism, and its last, precarious remnant. With the obliteration of the United States — i.e., of capitalism — there will be nothing left to deal with on the face of the globe but collectivized tribes. To hasten that day, the encyclical treats it as a fait accompli and addresses itself to the relationships among tribes.

Observe that the same morality — altruism, the morality of self-immolation — which, for centuries, has been preached against the individual, is now preached against the civilized nations. The creed of self-sacrifice — the primordial weapon used to penalize man’s success on earth, to undercut his self-confidence, to cripple his independence, to poison his enjoyment of life, to emasculate his pride, to stunt his self-esteem and paralyze his mind — is now counted upon to wreak the same destruction on civilized nations and on civilization as such.

I quote John Galt:

You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Once, you believed it was ‘only a compromise’: you conceded it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake of your children. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now, you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum from any comer of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe. A man who has no right to life, has no right to values and will not keep them. (Atlas Shrugged)

Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival qua man — i.e., qua rational being. They are not compatible with altruism.

Man’s soul or spirit is his consciousness; the motor of his consciousness is reason; deprive him of freedom, i.e., of the right to use his mind — and what is left of him is only a physical body, ready to be manipulated by the strings of any tribe.

Ask yourself whether you have ever read a document as body-oriented as that encyclical. The inhabitants of the world it proposes to establish are robots tuned to respond to a single stimulus: need — the lowest, grossest, physical, physicalistic need of any other robots anywhere: the minimum necessities, the barely sufficient to keep all robots in working order, eating, sleeping, eliminating, and procreating, to produce more robots to work, eat, sleep, eliminate, and procreate. The most dehumanizing level of poverty is the level on which bare animal necessities become one’s only concern and goal; this is the level which the encyclical proposes to institutionalize and on which it proposes to immobilize all of mankind forever, with the animal needs of all as the only motivation of all (“all other rights whatsoever … are to be subordinated to this principle”).

If the encyclical charges that in a capitalist society men fall victim to “a stiffing materialism,” what is the atmosphere of that proposed world?

The survivor of one such plan described it as follows:

We had no way of knowing their ability [the ability of others], we had no way of controlling their needs — all we knew was that we were beasts of burden struggling blindly in some sort of place that was half-hospital, half-stockyards — a place geared to nothing but disability, disaster, disease — beasts put there for the relief of whatever whoever chose to say was whichever’s need … To work — with no chance for an extra ration, till the Cambodians have been fed and the Patagonians have been sent through college. To work — on a blank check held by every creature born, by men whom you’ll never see, whose needs you’ll never know, whose ability or laziness or sloppiness or fraud you have no way to learn and no right to question — just to work and work and work — and leave it up to the Ivys and the Geralds of the world to decide whose stomach will consume the effort, the dreams and the days of your life. (Atlas Shrugged)

Do you think that I was exaggerating and that no one preaches ideals of that kind?

But, you say, the encyclical’s ideal will not work? It is not intended to work.

It is not intended to relieve suffering or to abolish poverty; it is intended to induce guilt. It is not intended to be accepted and practiced; it is intended to be accepted and broken — broken by man’s “selfish” desire to live, which will thus be turned into a shameful weakness. Men who accept as an ideal an irrational goal which they cannot achieve, never lift their heads thereafter — and never discover that their bowed heads were the only goal to be achieved.

The relief of suffering is not altruism’s motive, it is only its rationalization. Self-sacrifice is not altruism’s means to a happier end, it is its end — self-sacrifice as man’s permanent state, as a way of life and joyless toil in the muck of a desolate earth where no “Why?” is ever to flash on in the veiled, extinguished eyes of children.

The encyclical comes close to admitting this prospect, and does not attempt to offer any earthly justification for altruistic martyrdom. It declares: “Far from being the ultimate measure of all things, man can only realize himself by reaching beyond himself.” (42) (Beyond the grave?) And: “This road toward a greater humanity requires effort and sacrifice, but suffering itself, accepted for the love of our brethren, favors the progress of the entire human family.” (79) And: “We are all united in this progress toward God.” (80)

As to the attitude toward man’s mind, the clearest admission is to be found outside the encyclical. In a speech to a national conference of Italian bishops, on April 7, 1967, Pope Paul VI denounced the questioning of “any dogma that does not please and that demands the humble homage of the mind to be received.” And he urged the bishops to combat the “cult of one’s own person.” (The New York Times, April 8, 1967.)

On the question of what political system it advocates, the encyclical is scornfully indifferent: it would, apparently, find any political system acceptable provided it is a version of statism. The vague allusions to some nominal form of private property make it probable that the encyclical favors fascism. On the other hand, the tone, style, and vulgarity of argumentation suggest a shopworn Marxism. But this very vulgarity seems to indicate a profound indifference to intellectual discourse — as if, contemptuous of its audience, the encyclical picked whatever cliches were deemed to be safely fashionable today.

The encyclical insists emphatically on only two political demands: that the nations of the future embrace statism, with a totalitarian control of their citizens’ economic activities — and that these nations unite into a global state, with a totalitarian power over global planning. “This international collaboration on a worldwide scale requires institutions that will prepare, coordinate and direct it . . . Who does not see the necessity of thus establishing progressively a world authority, capable of acting effectively in the juridical and political sectors?” (78)

Is there any difference between the encyclical’s philosophy and communism? I am perfectly willing, on this matter, to take the word of an eminent Catholic authority. Under the headline: “Encyclical Termed Rebuff to Marxism,” The New York Times of March 31, 1967, reports: “The Rev. John Courtney Murray, the prominent Jesuit theologian, described Pope Paul’s newest encyclical yesterday as ‘the church’s definitive answer to Marxism.’ . . . ‘The Marxists have proposed one way, and in pursuing their program they rely on man alone,’ Father Murray said. ‘Now Pope Paul VI has issued a detailed plan to accomplish the same goal on the basis of true humanism — humanism that recognizes man’s religious nature.’”

Amen.

So much for those American “conservatives” who claim that religion is the base of capitalism — and who believe that they can have capitalism and eat it, too, as the moral cannibalism of the altruist ethics demands.

And so much for those modern “liberals” who pride themselves on being the champions of reason, science, and progress — and who smear the advocates of capitalism as superstitious, reactionary representatives of a dark past. Move over, comrades, and make room for your latest fellow-travelers, who had always belonged on your side — then take a look, if you dare, at the kind of past they represent.

This is the spectacle of religion climbing on the bandwagon of statism, in a desperate attempt to recapture the power it lost at the time of the Renaissance.

The Catholic Church has never given up the hope to reestablish the medieval union of church and state, with a global state and a global theocracy as its ultimate goal. Since the Renaissance, it has always been cautiously last to join that political movement which could serve its purpose at the time. This time, it is too late: collectivism is dead intellectually; the bandwagon on which the Church has climbed is a hearse. But, counting on that vehicle, the Catholic Church is deserting Western civilization and calling upon the barbarian hordes to devour the achievements of man’s mind.

There is an element of sadness in this spectacle. Catholicism had once been the most philosophical of all religions. Its long, illustrious philosophical history was illuminated by a giant: Thomas Aquinas. He brought an Aristotelian view of reason (an Aristotelian epistemology) back into European culture, and lighted the way to the Renaissance. For the brief span of the nineteenth century, when his was the dominant influence among Catholic philosophers, the grandeur of his thought almost lifted the Church close to the realm of reason (though at the price of a basic contradiction). Now, we are witnessing the end of the Aquinas line — with the Church turning again to his primordial antagonist, who fits it better, to the mind-hating, life-hating St. Augustine. One could only wish they had given St. Thomas a more dignified requiem.

The encyclical is the voice of the Dark Ages, rising again in today’s intellectual vacuum, like a cold wind whistling through the empty streets of an abandoned civilization.

Unable to resolve a lethal contradiction, the conflict between individualism and altruism, the West is giving up. When men give up reason and freedom, the vacuum is filed by faith and force.

No social system can stand for long without a moral base. Project a magnificent skyscraper being built on quicksand: while men are struggling upward to add the hundredth and two-hundredth stories, the tenth and twentieth are vanishing, sucked under by the muck. That is the history of capitalism, of its swaying, tottering attempt to stand erect on the foundation of the altruist morality.

It’s either-or. If capitalism’s befuddled, guilt-ridden apologists do not know it, two fully consistent representatives of altruism do know it: Catholicism and communism.

Their rapprochement, therefore, is not astonishing. Their differences pertain only to the supernatural, but here, in reality, on earth, they have three cardinal elements in common: the same morality, altruism — the same goal, global rule by force — the same enemy, man’s mind.

There is a precedent for their strategy. In the German election of 1933, the communists supported the Nazis, on the premise that they could fight each other for power later, but must first destroy their common enemy, capitalism. Today, Catholicism and communism may well cooperate, on the premise that they will fight each other for power later, but must first destroy their common enemy, the individual, by forcing mankind to unite to form one neck ready for one leash.

The encyclical was endorsed with enthusiasm by the communist press the world over. “The French Communist party newspaper, L’Humanite, said the encyclical was ‘often moving’ and constructive for highlighting the evils of capitalism long emphasized by Marxists,” reports The New York Times (March 30, 1967).

Those who do not understand the role of moral self-confidence in human affairs, will not appreciate the sardonically ludicrous quality of the following item from the same report: “The French Communists, however, deplored the failure of the Pope to make a distinction between rich Communist countries and rich capitalist countries in his general strictures against imbalance between the ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ nations.”

Thus, wealth acquired by force, is rightful property, but wealth earned by production, is not; looting is moral, but producing is not. And while the looters’ spokesmen object to the encyclical’s damnation of wealth, the producers’ spokesmen crawl, evading the issues, accepting the insults, promising to give their wealth away. If capitalism does not survive, this is the spectacle that will have made it unworthy of survival.

The New York Times (March 30, 1967) declared editorially that the encyclical “is remarkably advanced in its economic philosophy. It is sophisticated, comprehensive and penetrating . . .” If, by “advanced,” the editorial meant that the encyclical’s philosophy has caught up with that of modern “liberals,” one would have to agree — except that the Times is mistaken about the direction of the motion involved: it is not that the encyclical has progressed to the twentieth century, it is that the “liberals” have reverted to the fourth.

The Wall Street Journal (May 10, 1967) went further. It declared, in effect, that the Pope didn’t mean it. The encyclical, it alleged, was just a misunderstanding caused by some mysterious conspiracy of the Vatican translators who misinterpreted the Pope’s ideas in transferring them from the original Latin into English. “His Holiness may not be showering compliments on the free market system. But he is not at all saying what the Vatican’s English version appeared to make him say.”

Through minute comparisons of Latin paragraphs with their official and unofficial translations, and columns of casuistic hair-splitting, The Wall Street Journal reached the conclusion that it was not capitalism that the Pope was denouncing, but only “some opinions” of capitalism. Which opinions? According to the unofficial translation, the encyclical’s paragraph 26 reads as follows: “But out of these new conditions, we know not how, some opinions have crept into human society according to which profit was regarded (in these opinions) as the foremost incentive to encourage economic progress, free competition as the supreme rule of economics, private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right which would accept neither limits nor a social duty related to it…”

“In the Latin,” said the article, “Pope Paul is acknowledging the hardships … in the development of ‘some kinds of capitalism.’ But he puts the blame for that not on ‘the whole woeful system’ — i.e., the whole capitalistic system — but on some corrupt views of it.”

If the views advocating the profit motive, free competition, and private property are “corrupt,” just what is capitalism? Blank out. What is The Wall Street Journal’s definition of capitalism? Blank out. What are we to designate as “capitalism” once all of its essential characteristics are removed? Blank out.

This last question indicates the unstated meaning of that article: since the Pope does not attack capitalism, but only its fundamental principles, we don’t have to worry.

And for what, do you suppose, did that article find courage to reproach the encyclical? “What might have been wished for in the encyclical was an acknowledgment that capitalism can accept, and in the United States as well as other places does accept, a great many social responsibilities.”

Sic transit gloria viae Wall.

A similar attitude, with a similar range of vision, is taken by Time magazine (April 7, 1967). “Although Pope Paul had probably tried to give a Christian message relevant to the world’s contemporary economic situation, his encyclical virtually ignored the fact that old-style laissez-faire capitalism is about as dead as Das Kapital. Quite clearly, the Pope’s condemnation of capitalism was addressed to the unreconstructed variety that persists, for example, in Latin America.”

If this were a competition, the prize would go to Fortune, the businessmen’s magazine (May 1967). Its attitude is aggressively amoral and a-philosophical; it is proudly determined to maintain the separation of economics and ethics. “Capitalism is only an economic system,” it says.

First acknowledging the Pope’s “praiseworthy purpose,” Fortune declares:

But despite its modern and global vision, Populorum Progressio may be a self-defeating document. It takes a dated and suspicious view of the workings of economic enterprise.… The Pope has set up a straw man that has few defenders — if this passage [paragraph 26] is taken literally. Unalloyed laissez-faire in fact governs no significant part of the world’s commerce.… ‘Ownership,’ in advanced countries, has evolved in a way that subsumes ‘social obligations’ … ‘Absolute’ private rights are irrelevant in advanced industrial societies.”

After conceding all that, Fortune seems to be astonished and hurt that the Pope did not find it necessary to include businessmen among the “men of good will” whom he calls upon to combat global poverty.

In omitting any specific reference to the businessman, he slights a natural and necessary ally, who, indeed is already deeply committed in many parts of the world to the kind of effort that Paul urges. Perhaps the businessman is taken for granted, as a kind of primordial force that can be counted upon to provide motive power, and that needs only to be tamed and harnessed and carefully watched. [And isn’t that Fortune’s own view of businessmen in their “unalloyed” state?]

The Vatican has seldom seemed able to look at capitalism as other than a necessary evil, at best, and Populorum Progressio suggests that a better understanding still comes hard. This is not to suggest that capitalism is a complete formula for social enlightenment and progress; it is only an economic system that men of good will can use — more successfully than any other system yet conceived — to attain the social goals that politics and religion help to define.”

Observe the indecency of trying to justify capitalism on the grounds of altruistic service. Observe also the naivete of the cynical: it is not their wealth nor the relief of poverty that the encyclical is after.

Militantly concrete-bound, equating cynicism with “practicality,” modern pragmatists are unable to see beyond the range of the moment or to grasp what moves the world and determines its direction. Men who are willing to swim with any current, to compromise on anything, to serve as means to anyone’s ends, lose the ability to understand the power of ideas. And while two hordes of man-haters, who do understand it, are converging on civilization, they sit in the middle, declaring that principles are straw men.

I have heard the same accusation directed at Objectivism: we are fighting a straw man, they say, nobody preaches the kind of ideas we are opposing.

Well, as a friend of mine observed, only the Vatican, the Kremlin, and the Empire State Building[1] know the real issues of the modern world.

[1] This publication moved its offices to the Empire State Building in September

“The Ethics of Emergencies” was originally published in The Virtue of Selfishness in 1964.

The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: “Should one risk one’s life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?”

Consider the implications of that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):

1. Lack of self-esteem — since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.
2. Lack of respect for others — since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone’s help.
3. A nightmare view of existence — since he believes that men are trapped in a “malevolent universe” where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.
4. And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality — since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.

By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others — that to value another means to sacrifice oneself — that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.

The men who accept that dichotomy but choose its other side, the ultimate products of altruism’s dehumanizing influence, are those psychopaths who do not challenge altruism’s basic premise, but proclaim their rebellion against self-sacrifice by announcing that they are totally indifferent to anything living and would not lift a finger to help a man or a dog left mangled by a hit-and-run driver (who is usually one of their own kind).

Most men do not accept or practice either side of altruism’s viciously false dichotomy, but its result is a total intellectual chaos on the issue of proper human relationships and on such questions as the nature, purpose or extent of the help one may give to others. Today, a great many well-meaning, reasonable men do not know how to identify or conceptualize the moral principles that motivate their love, affection or good will, and can find no guidance in the field of ethics, which is dominated by the stale platitudes of altruism.

On the question of why man is not a sacrificial animal and why help to others is not his moral duty, I refer you to Atlas Shrugged. This present discussion is concerned with the principles by which one identifies and evaluates the instances involving a man’s nonsacrificial help to others.

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less “selfish,” than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.

This applies to all choices, including one’s actions toward other men. It requires that one possess a defined hierarchy of rational values (values chosen and validated by a rational standard). Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible.

Love and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish values: love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.

A “selfless,” “disinterested” love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.

Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.

Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife’s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.

But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him — as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference between Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband should sacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice — nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.

The Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.

Consider the soul of the altruistic moralist who would be prepared to tell that husband the opposite. (And then ask yourself whether altruism is motivated by benevolence.)

The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one’s own rational self-interest and one’s own hierarchy of values: the time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in relation to one’s own happiness.

To illustrate this on the altruists’ favorite example: the issue of saving a drowning person. If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one’s own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it: only a lack of self-esteem could permit one to value one’s life no higher than that of any random stranger. (And, conversely, if one is drowning, one cannot expect a stranger to risk his life for one’s sake, remembering that one’s life cannot be as valuable to him as his own.)

If the person to be saved is not a stranger, then the risk one should be willing to take is greater in proportion to the greatness of that person’s value to oneself. If it is the man or woman one loves, then one can be willing to give one’s own life to save him or her — for the selfish reason that life without the loved person could be unbearable.

Conversely, if a man is able to swim and to save his drowning wife, but becomes panicky, gives in to an unjustified, irrational fear and lets her drown, then spends his life in loneliness and misery — one would not call him “selfish”; one would condemn him morally for his treason to himself and to his own values, that is: his failure to fight for the preservation of a value crucial to his own happiness. Remember that values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and that one’s own happiness has to be achieved by one’s own effort. Since one’s own happiness is the moral purpose of one’s life, the man who fails to achieve it because of his own default, because of his failure to fight for it, is morally guilty.

The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not “selflessness” or “sacrifice,” but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one’s convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one’s values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.

The same principle applies to relationships among friends. If one’s friend is in trouble, one should act to help him by whatever nonsacrificial means are appropriate. For instance, if one’s friend is starving, it is not a sacrifice, but an act of integrity to give him money for food rather than buy some insignificant gadget for oneself, because his welfare is important in the scale of one’s personal values. If the gadget means more than the friend’s suffering, one had no business pretending to be his friend.

The practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational welfare) of the person involved into one’s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.

But this is a reward which men have to earn by means of their virtues and which one cannot grant to mere acquaintances or strangers.

What, then, should one properly grant to strangers? The generalized respect and good will which one should grant to a human being in the name of the potential value he represents — until and unless he forfeits it.

A rational man does not forget that life is the source of all values and, as such, a common bond among living beings (as against inanimate matter), that other men are potentially able to achieve the same virtues as his own and thus be of enormous value to him. This does not mean that he regards human lives as interchangeable with his own. He recognizes the fact that his own life is the source, not only of all his values, but of his capacity to value. Therefore, the value he grants to others is only a consequence, an extension, a secondary projection of the primary value which is himself.

“The respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel toward other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: ‘Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.’ In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotion of sympathy and any feeling of ‘species solidarity.’”[1]

Since men are born tabula rasa, both cognitively and morally, a rational man regards strangers as innocent until proved guilty, and grants them that initial good will in the name of their human potential. After that, he judges them according to the moral character they have actualized. If he finds them guilty of major evils, his good will is replaced by contempt and moral condemnation. (If one values human life, one cannot value its destroyers.) If he finds them to be virtuous, he grants them personal, individual value and appreciation, in proportion to their virtues.

It is on the ground of that generalized good will and respect for the value of human life that one helps strangers in an emergency — and only in an emergency.

It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.

An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible — such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).

By “normal” conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.

It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one’s power. For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck, should help to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life). But this does not mean that after they all reach shore, he should devote his efforts to saving his fellow passengers from poverty, ignorance, neurosis or whatever other troubles they might have. Nor does it mean that he should spend his life sailing the seven seas in search of shipwreck victims to save.

Or to take an example that can occur in everyday life: suppose one hears that the man next door is ill and penniless. Illness and poverty are not metaphysical emergencies, they are part of the normal risks of existence; but since the man is temporarily helpless, one may bring him food and medicine, if one can afford it (as an act of good will, not of duty) or one may raise a fund among the neighbors to help him out. But this does not mean that one must support him from then on, nor that one must spend one’s life looking for starving men to help.

In the normal conditions of existence, man has to choose his goals, project them in time, pursue them and achieve them by his own effort. He cannot do it if his goals are at the mercy of and must be sacrificed to any misfortune happening to others. He cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is impossible.

The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.

Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs — such as wealth or knowledge  are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work. One’s sole obligation toward others, in this respect, is to maintain a social system that leaves men free to achieve, to gain and to keep their values.

Every code of ethics is based on and derived from a metaphysics, that is: from a theory about the fundamental nature of the universe in which man lives and acts. The altruist ethics is based on a “malevolent universe” metaphysics, on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed — that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him — that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them.

As the simplest empirical refutation of that metaphysics — as evidence of the fact that the material universe is not inimical to man and that catastrophes are the exception, not the rule of his existence — observe the fortunes made by insurance companies.

Observe also that the advocates of altruism are unable to base their ethics on any facts of men’s normal existence and that they always offer “lifeboat” situations as examples from which to derive the rules of moral conduct. (“What should you do if you and another man are in a lifeboat that can carry only one?” etc.)

The fact is that men do not live in lifeboats — and that a lifeboat is not the place on which to base one’s metaphysics.

The moral purpose of a man’s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and incidental — as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence — and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life.

(February 1963)

[1] Nathaniel Branden, “Benevolence versus Altruism,” The Objectivist Newsletter, July 1962.

 

“The Sanction of the Victims,” Ayn Rand’s last public lecture, is also available in print form in The Voice of Reason.

Announcer: Ladies and gentleman, I am honored to present to you Miss Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand: Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, since the subject of these seminars is investment, I must start by stating that I am not an economist, and have no purely economic advice to give you. But what I am anxious to discuss with you are the preconditions that make it possible for you to gain and to keep the money which you can then invest.

I shall by start by asking you a question on the moral premise: what human occupation is the most useful socially? The borrowed premise is the concept of social usefulness. It is not part of my philosophy to evaluate things by a social standard. But this is the predominant standard of value today, and sometimes it can be very enlightening to adopt the enemy’s standard. So let us borrow the notion of social concern for just a little while, just long enough to answer the question: what human occupation is the most useful socially?

Since men’s basic tool of survival is his mind, the most crucially important occupation is the discovery of knowledge. That is the occupation of scientists. But scientists are not concerned with society, with social issues or with other men. Scientists are essentially loners. They pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. A great many scientific discoveries and technological discoveries were known before the Industrial Revolution and did not affect human existence. The steam engine, for instance, was known in ancient Greece, but knowledge of that sort remained an exclusive concern that lived and died with the scientist, and for century after century had not connection to the lives of the rest of mankind.

Now suppose that a group of men decided to make it their job to bring the results of the achievements of science within the reach of man, to apply scientific knowledge to the improvement of man’s life on earth. Wouldn’t such men be the greatest social benefactors as they have been since the Industrial Revolution? (Will you excuse me please; I don’t want any pictures taken of me. Please, gentlemen, don’t photograph me. I am much too old for that. Just leave me as I am.) Wouldn’t such men be the greatest social benefactors as they have been since the Industrial Revolution? Shouldn’t the socially concerned humanitarians, those who hold social usefulness as their highest value, regard such men as heroes? If I say no, such men are not regarded as heroes today — they are the most hated, blamed, denounced men in the humanitarian society — would you believe me? Or would you think that I am inventing some sort of irrational fiction, and would you say that something is wrong, terribly wrong in such a society?

But this isn’t all. There is something much worse. It isn’t merely the fact that these heroic men are the victims of an unspeakable justice. It is the fact that they are first to perpetuate that injustice against themselves. That they adopt a public stance of perpetual apology and universal appeasement, proclaim themselves guilty of an unspecified evil, begging the forgiveness of every two-bit intellectual, every unskilled laborer, every unemployed politician. No, this is not fiction. That country is the United States of America today. That self-destroying group of men is you, the American businessman. When I say you, I mean the group as a whole. I accept the tenet present company is excepted. However, if any of you find the shoe that fits, wear it with my compliments.

Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would commit suicide. The American businessman are carrying out that prediction, in destroying themselves, they are destroying capitalism, of which they are the symbol and product in America which is the greatest and freest example that capitalism has ever reached. There is no outside power that can destroy such men in such a country. Only an inner power can do it: the power of morality. More specifically, the power of a contemptibly evil idea accepted as a moral principle: altruism. Remember that altruism does not mean benevolence or consideration for other men. Altruism is a moral theory which preaches that man must sacrifice himself for others. That he must place the interests of others above his own. That he must live for the sake of others.

Altruism is a monstrous notion. It is the morality of cannibals devouring one another. It is theory of profound hatred for man. (I seem to have competition here. I will let you go first. Okay?) It is a theory of profound hatred for men, for reason, for achievement, for any form of human success or happiness on earth. Altruism is incompatible with capitalism, and with businessmen. Businessmen are a cheerful, benevolent, optimistic, predominantly American phenomenon. The essence of their job is the constant struggle to improve human life, to satisfy human desires, not to practice resignation, surrender, and worship of suffering. And here is the profound gulf between businessmen and altruism: businessmen do not sacrifice themselves to others. If they did, they would be out of business in a few months or days. They profit, they grow rich, they are rewarded as they should be. This is what the altruists, the collectivists, the other humanitarians hate the businessmen for: that they pursue a personal goal and succeed at it.

Do not fool yourself by thinking that altruists are motivated by compassion for the suffering. They are motivated by hatred for the successful. The evidence is all around us. (Thank you.) The evidence is all around us, but one small example sticks in my mind as extremely eloquent. In the early 1930s, an assistant of Jane Addams, the famous social worker, went on a visit to Soviet Russia and wrote a book about her experience. The sentence that I remember is, “How wonderful it was to see everybody equally shabby.” If you think that you should try to appease the altruist, this is what you are appeasing.

The great tragedy of capitalism, and of America, is the fact that most businessmen have accepted the morality of altruism, and are trying to live up to it, which means that they are doomed before they start. Another contributory evil is the philosophical root of altruism, which is mysticism: the belief in the supernatural, which preaches contempt for matter, for wealth, well-being, or happiness on earth. The mystics are constantly crying appeals for your pity, your compassion, your help to the less fortunate, yet they are condemning you for all the qualities of character that make you able to help them.

Evil theories have to rely on evil means in order to hold their victims. Altruism and collectivism cannot appeal to human virtues. They have to appeal to human weaknesses. And when there not enough weaknesses, they have to manufacture them. It is in the nature of altruism and collectivism, that the more they need a person or group, the more they denounce their victims, induce guilt, and struggle to never let the victims discover their own importance and acquire self- esteem. The businessmen are needed most by the so-called humanitarians, because the businessmen produce the sustenance the humanitarians are unable to produce. Doctors come next in the hierarchy of being needed, and observe the hostility, the denunciations and the attempts to enslave the doctor’s in today’s society.

Most businessmen today have accepted the feeling of guilt induced in them by the altruist. They are accused of anything and everything. For instance, a college is denounce the businessmen to sacrifice themselves to the snail darter doctor and the Furbish lousewort. But the businessmen’s actual guilt is their treason against themselves, which is also a treason against their country. The statement that aroused such fury among the collectivists, “What is good for General Motors is good the country,” was true, and the reverse is also true. What is bad for industry is bad for this country. I am here to ask you a question on my own, not on borrowed premises. What are you doing to be the advocates of capitalism, particularly the young? Appeasement is the betrayal of not only one’s values, but of all those who share one’s values. If, for whatever misguided reason, businessmen are indifferent to and ignorant of philosophy, particularly moral and political philosophy, it would be better if they kept silent rather than spread the horrible advertisements that make us cringe with embarrassment. By us, I mean advocates of capitalism. Mobil Oil ran ads in the New York Times which stated the following, I quote from memory, “of the expression of free, private, responsible enterprise, will strike out free and private as non-essential.” One of the big industries advertises on television that they are full of “people working for people” and some other big company announces on television that its goal is “ideas that help people.” I do not know what the ghastly PR man who came up with these slogans wanted us to think. That the companies work for free, or that they traded with people rather than with animals? Actually, their purpose was to suggest populism in some indirect kind. It was actually the desire to give the impression that businessmen work for nothing but others, for the people, that they are in fact no better than the politicians.

The worst of the bunch is some new group in Washington D.C. called something like Committee for the American Way, which puts out a television commercial showing some ugly, commonplace people, of all kinds, each proclaiming that he likes a different kind of music. I like rock and roll, I like Jazz, I like Beethoven, and etc. ending on a voice declaring, “This is the American way, with every man entitled to have and express his own opinion.” I, who come from Soviet Russia, can assure you that the debates and differences of that kind were and are permitted in Soviet Russia. What about political or philosophical issues? Why didn’t they show people disagreeing about nuclear weapons or about abortion or about affirmative action? If that committee stands for the American way, there is no such way any longer.

Observe also that in today’s proliferation of pressure groups, the lowest sort of unskilled laborer is regarded as the public, and presents claims to society in the name of the public interest, and is encouraged to assert his right to a livelihood, but the businessman, the intelligent, the creative, the successful man, who made the laborers’ livelihood possible, have no rights and no legitimate interests, are not entitled to their livelihood, their profits, and are not part of the public. Every kind of ethnic group is enormously sensitive to any slight. If one made the derogatory remark about the Kurds of Iran, dozens of voices would leap to their defense. But no one speaks out for businessmen when they are attacked and insulted by everyone as a matter of routine.

What causes this overwhelming injustice? The businessmen’s own policies: their betrayal of their own values, their appeasement of enemies, their compromise, all of which add up to an air of moral cowardice. Actually, the fact that businessmen are creating and supporting their own destroyers.

The sources and centers of today’s philosophical corruption are the universities. Businessmen are both content. (Thank you, that is the most important point.) Businessmen are both contemptuous of and superstitiously frightened by the subject of philosophy. There is a vicious circle involved here. Businessmen have good grounds to despise philosophy, as it is taught today. But it is taught that way because businessmen have abandoned the intellect to the lowest rung of the unemployables. All the conditions and ideas necessary to turn men into abjectly helpless serfs of dictatorship rule the institutions of today’s higher education as the tight monopoly with very few and rare exceptions. Hatred of reason and worship of blind emotions, hatred of the success and worship of self-sacrifice, hatred of the individual and worship of the collective — these are the fundamental notions that dominate today’s universities. These notions condition and paralyze the minds of the young. If you want to discover how a country philosophy determines its history, I urge you to read The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff, to be published this coming spring by Stein and Day. This brilliant book presents the philosophical similarities between the state of America’s culture today and the state of Germany’s culture in the Weimar Republic in the years preceding the rise of Nazism. After you read this book, you will know the power of philosophy, and you will know that one cannot play with it irresponsibly as people do today, nor can one ignore it.

It is the businessmen’s money that supports American universities, not merely in the form of taxes and government handouts, but much worse, in the form of voluntary, private contributions, donations and endowments etc. In preparation for this lecture, I tried to do some research on the nature and amounts of such contributions. I had to give it up. It is too complex and too vast a field for the efforts of one person. To untangle it now would require a major research project and probably years of work. All I can say is only that millions and millions and millions of dollars are being donated to universities by big business enterprises every year, and that the donors have no idea what their money is being spent on, or whom it is supporting. What is certain is only the fact that some of worst anti-business, anti-capitalism propaganda has been financed by businessmen in such projects.

Money is a great power, because in a free or even a semi-free society, it is a frozen form of energy, of productive energy, and therefore the spending of money is a grave responsibility. Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of the so-called academic freedom, it is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree. It means ideas, which you consider wrong, false, and evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers, yet that is what businessmen are doing with such reckless irresponsibility. (Thank you.) On the faculties of most colleges and universities, the advocates of reason, individualism and capitalism are a very small minority, often represented by feeble specimens of window-dressing. But the valiant minority of authentic fighters is struggling against overwhelming odds and growing very slowly. The hardships, injustices and persecutions suffered by these young advocates of reason and capitalism are too terrible a story to be told briefly. These are the young people whom businessmen should support. Or, if businessmen are too ignorant of academic issues, they should leave academic matters alone. But to support irrationalists, nihilists, socialists, and communists, who form an impenetrable barrier against the young advocates of capitalism, denying them jobs, recognition, or a mere hearing is an unforgiveable outrage on the part of irresponsible businessmen, who imagine that it is morally safe to give money to institutions of higher learning.

The lasting influence of the universities is caused by the fact that most people question the truths or falsehood of philosophical ideas only in their youth, and whatever they learn in college marks them for life. If they are given intellectual poison, as they are today, they carry it into their professions, particularly in the humanities. Observe the lifeless, grayness, the boring mediocrity of today’s culture. Observe the empty pretentiousness and mawkish sentimentality of today’s stage, screen, and television writing. There are no serious dramas any longer, and such few as attempt to be serious are of a leftist-collectivist persuasion. On this subject, I can speak from personal experience. For several years, a distinguished producer in Hollywood has been attempting to make a television mini-series or a movie of my novel Atlas Shrugged. He was stopped on two counts. One: he could not find the writer able to write a Romantic drama, even though there are good writers in Hollywood. Romanticism is completely unknown to them. And two: he could not raise the money for his project. Allow me to say, even though I do not like to say it, that if there existed a novel of the same value and popularity as Atlas Shrugged, but written to glorify collectivism, which would be a contradiction in terms, it would have been produced on the screen long ago. You are not, I hope, applauding that fact, that there are too many supporters of left kind of writers. Well, I do not believe in giving up, and so, in answer to many questions, I chose this occasion to make a very special announcement. I am writing a nine hour teleplay for Atlas Shrugged. (Thank you. Thank you very much.) I intend to produce the mini-series myself. There is a strong possibility that I will be looking for outside financing to produce the Atlas Shrugged series. I am not afraid of that.

In conclusion, let me touch a briefly on another question often asked of me. What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be, “but I don’t think of him, and the more I see the less I think.” I did not vote for him, nor for anyone else, and events seem to justify me. The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called Moral Majority and sundry other severe religionists (thank you) who are struggling, apparently with his approval, to take us back to the Middle Ages by the unconstitutional union of religion and politics. The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Regan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost like Herbert Hoover to be invoked as an example of capitalism’s failure for the next fifty years. Observe Reagan’s futile attempts to arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element, but he will not find it in the God, family, tradition swamp. The greatest inspirational leadership this country could ever find rests in the hands of the most typically American group: the businessmen, but they could provide it only if the acquired philosophical self-defense and self-esteem. Here is what young Americans have to say about it: I quote from the May 15, 1980 of the Intellectual Activist, a newsletter by Peter Schwartz, “Feminists threatened to publicize the names of psychologists that hold their convention in a state which has not yet endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. Unionists protest political functions that serve lettuce approved by César Chavez, yet businessmen are willing not simply to tolerate denunciations of free enterprise, but to financially sponsor them.” Then, I quote from an article by M. Northrup Buechner, “The Root of Terrorism,” in the October, 1981 issue of the Objectivist Forum, published by Harry Binswanger, “Imagine the effect if some prominent businessmen were to defend publicly their right to their own lives. Imagine the earth-shaking social reverberations if they were to assert their moral, excuse me, if they were to assert their moral right to their own profits, not because those profits are necessary for economic progress or the elimination of poverty, which are purely collectivist justifications, but because a living being has the right to live and progress, and do the best he can for his life for the time he has on this earth.” I recommend both of these publications very highly. You may write to the Intellectual Activist at 131 Fifth Ave, NY, NY 10003, and to the Objectivist Forum at Box 5311, NY, NY 10150.

As for me, I will close with a quotation which is probably familiar to you, and I will say that the battle for capitalism will be won when we find a president capable of saying it. “The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, and grandeur, any goodness, any joy, that has ever existed on this earth.” Thank you.

A version of this talk appeared in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1989).

Have you ever wondered about the process of the collapse of a civilization? Not the cause of the collapse — the ultimate cause is always philosophical — but the process, the specific means by which the accumulated knowledge and achievements of centuries vanish from the earth?

The possibility of the collapse of Western civilization is not easy to imagine or to believe. Most people do not quite believe it — in spite of all the horror movies about the end of the world in a nuclear blast. But of course the world has never been destroyed by a sudden catastrophe. Man-made catastrophes of that size are not sudden; they are the result of a long, slow, gradual process, which can be observed in advance.

Let me remind you — as I have said many times before — that there is no such thing as historical determinism. The world does not have to continue moving toward disaster. But unless men change their philosophical direction — which they still have time to do — the collapse will come. And if you want to know the specific process that will bring it about, that process — the beginning of the end — is visible today.

In The New York Times of January 18, 1976, under the title “Europe’s Restive Tribes,” columnist C. L. Sulzberger is crying out in anxious bewilderment against a phenomenon he cannot understand: “It is distressing to return from Africa and find the cultivated old continent of Europe subsiding into its own form of tribalism just as new African governments make concerted efforts to curb the power of tribes and subordinate them to the greater concept of the nation-state.”

By “tribalism,” Mr. Sulzberger means the separatist movements spreading throughout Europe. “Indeed,” he declares,

it is a peculiar phenomenon of contemporary times that so many lands which had formerly been powerful and important seem obsessed with reducing the remnants of their own strength. . . . There is no logical reason that a Scotland which was proud to be considered part of the British Empire’s heart when the sun never set on it, from Calcutta to Capetown, is now increasingly eager to disengage from what is left of that grand tradition on an offshore European island. [Emphasis added.]

Oh yes, there is a very logical reason why Great Britain is falling apart, but Mr. Sulzberger does not see it — just as he does not see what was grand about that old tradition. He is the Times’ columnist specializing in European affairs, and, like a conscientious reporter, he is disturbed by something which he senses to be profoundly wrong — but, tending to be a liberal, he is unable to explain it.

He keeps coming back to the subject again and again. On July 3, 1976, in a column entitled “The Split Nationality Syndrome,” he writes: “The present era’s most paradoxical feature is the conflict between movements seeking to unify great geographical blocs into federations or confederations, and movements seeking to disintegrate into still smaller pieces the component nations trying to get together.”

He offers an impressive list of examples. In France there is a Corsican autonomy movement, and similar movements of French Basques, of French Bretons, and of French inhabitants of the Jura belt west of Switzerland. “Britain is now obsessed with what is awkwardly called ‘devolution.’ This means watered-down autonomy and is designed to satisfy Welsh, but above all Scottish, nationalists.” Belgium remains split “by an apparently insoluble language dispute between French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish.” Spain is facing demands for local independence “in Catalonia and the northern Basque country. . . . German-speaking inhabitants of Italy’s Alto Adige yearn to leave Rome and submit to Vienna. There is a tiny British-Danish argument . . . over the status of the Faroe Islanders. . . . In Yugoslavia there are continuing disputes between Serbs and Croats. . . . There is also unresolved ferment among Macedonians . . . some of whom, on occasion, revive old dreams of their own state including Greek Salonika and part of Bulgaria.”

Please remember that these tribes and subtribes, which most of the world has never heard of — since they have achieved no distinction to hear about — are struggling to secede from whatever country they are in and to form their own separate, sovereign, independent nations on their two-by-four stretches of the earth’s crust.

I must make one correction. These tribes did achieve a certain kind of distinction: a history of endless, bloody warfare.

Coming back to Mr. Sulzberger: Africa, he points out, is torn apart by tribalism (in spite of the local governments’ efforts), and most of Africa’s recent wars were derived “from tribal causes.” He concludes by observing: “The schizophrenic impulses splitting Europe threaten actually to atomize Africa — and all in the name of progress and unity.”

In a column entitled “Western Schizophrenia” (December 22, 1976), Mr. Sulzberger cries: “The West is not drawing closer together; it is coming apart. This is less complicated but perhaps more distressing in North America than in Europe.” For myself, I will add: and more disgusting.

Mr. Sulzberger continues: “Canada is apparently getting ready to tear itself asunder for emotional if illogical reasons which, on a massive scale, resemble the language dispute that continually splits Belgium . . .” He predicts the possibility of a formal separation between French-speaking Quebec and the rest of Canada, and comments sadly and helplessly: “Whatever happens, it is hard to foresee much good for the West ensuing.” Which is certainly true.

Now what are the nature and the causes of modern tribalism?

Philosophically, tribalism is the product of irrationalism and collectivism. It is a logical consequence of modern philosophy. If men accept the notion that reason is not valid, what is to guide them and how are they to live? Obviously, they will seek to join some group — any group — which claims the ability to lead them and to provide some sort of knowledge acquired by some sort of unspecified means. If men accept the notion that the individual is helpless, intellectually and morally, that he has no mind and no rights, that he is nothing, but the group is all, and his only moral significance lies in selfless service to the group — they will be pulled obediently to join a group. But which group? Well, if you believe that you have no mind and no moral value, you cannot have the confidence to make choices — so the only thing for you to do is to join an unchosen group, the group into which you were born, the group to which you were predestined to belong by the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient power of your body chemistry.

This, of course, is racism. But if your group is small enough, it will not be called “racism”: it will be called “ethnicity.”

For over half a century, modern liberals have been observing the fact that their ideas are achieving the opposite of their professed goals: instead of “liberation,” communism has brought the blood-drenched dictatorship of Soviet Russia — instead of “prosperity,” socialism has brought starvation to China, and Cuba, and India (and Russia) — instead of “brotherhood,” the welfare state has brought the crumbling stagnation and the fierce, “elitist” power struggle of Great Britain, and Sweden, and many other, less obvious victims — instead of “peace,” the spread of international altruism has brought about two world wars, an unceasing procession of local wars, and the suspending of a nuclear bomb over the heads of mankind. Yet this record does not prompt the liberals to check their premises or to glance, for contrast, at the record of the social system the last remnants of which they are so ferociously destroying.

Now we are seeing another demonstration of the fact that their professed goals are not the motive of today’s liberals. We are seeing a special kind of intellectual cover-up — a cover-up so dirty and so low that it makes Watergate look like a childish caper.

Observe that ever since World War II, racism has been regarded as a vicious falsehood and a great evil, which it certainly is. It is not the root of all social evils — the root is collectivism — but, as I have written before (in The Virtue of Selfishness), “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” One would think that Hitler had given a sufficient demonstration of racism’s evil. Yet today’s intellectuals, particularly the liberals, are supporting and propagating the most virulent form of racism on earth: tribalism.

The cover-up that makes it possible lies in a single word: ethnicity.

“Ethnicity” is an anti-concept, used as a disguise for the word “racism” — and it has no clearly definable meaning. But you can get a lead to its meaning if you hunt through a dictionary. The following are the results of my hunt through The Random House College Dictionary (1960), a book intended for young people.

I found no such term as “ethnicity.” But I found “ethnic,” which is defined as follows: “pertaining or peculiar to a population, esp. to a speech group, loosely also to a race.” Under “ethnic group,” the definition given as sociological usage reads: “a group of people, racially or historically related, having a common and distinctive culture, as an Italian or Chinese colony in a large American city.”

I looked up the word “culture.” The definition given as sociological usage reads: “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another.” I looked up also the word “tribe.” The definition reads: “1. any aggregate of people united by ties of descent from a common ancestor, community of customs, and traditions, adherence to the same leaders, etc. 2. a local division of a primitive or barbarous people.”

The meaning of the sum of these definitions is fairly clear: the term “ethnicity” stresses the traditional, rather than the physiological characteristics of a group, such as language — but physiology, i.e., race, is involved and mentioned in all but one of these definitions. So the advocacy of “ethnicity,” means racism plus tradition — i.e., racism plus conformity — i.e., racism plus staleness.

The acceptance of the achievements of an individual by other individuals does not represent “ethnicity”: it represents a cultural division of labor in a free market; it represents a conscious, individual choice on the part of all the men involved; the achievements may be scientific or technological or industrial or intellectual or esthetic — and the sum of such accepted achievements constitutes a free, civilized nation’s culture. Tradition has nothing to do with it; tradition is being challenged and blasted daily in a free, civilized society: its citizens accept ideas and products because they are true and/or good — not because they are old or because their ancestors accepted them. In such a society, concretes change, but what remains immutable — by individual conviction, not by tradition — are those philosophical principles which correspond to reality, i.e., which are true.

The “old” and the “ancestral” are the standards of tradition, which supersedes reality, the standards of value of those who accept and practice “ethnicity.” Culture, in the modern sociologists’ view, is not a sum of achievements, but of “ways of living . . . transmitted from one generation to another.” This means: concrete, specific ways of living. Can you — who are still the children of the United States of America — imagine the utter horror of a way of living that does not change from generation to generation? Yet this is what the advocates of ethnicity are advocating.

Is such a way of living compatible with reason? It is not. Is it compatible with independence or individuality? It is not. Is it compatible with progress? Obviously not. Is it compatible with capitalism? Don’t be funny. What century are we talking about? We are dealing with a phenomenon that is rising out of prehistorical ages.

Atavistic remnants and echoes of those ages have always existed in the backwaters of civilized countries, particularly in Europe, among the old, the tired, the timid, and those who gave up before they started. Such people are the carriers of “ethnicity.” The “ways of living” they transmit from generation to generation consist in: folk songs, folk dances, special ways of cooking food, traditional costumes, and folk festivals. Although the professional “ethnics” would (and did) fight wars over the differences between their songs and those of their neighbors, there are no significant differences between them; all folk art is essentially similar and excruciatingly boring: if you’ve seen one set of people clapping their hands while jumping up and down, you’ve seen them all.

Now observe the nature of those traditional ethnic “achievements”: all of them belong to the perceptual level of man’s consciousness. All of them are ways of dealing with or manipulating the concrete, the immediately given, the directly perceivable. All of them are manifestations of the preconceptual stage of human development.

I quote from one of my articles: “The concrete-bound, anti-conceptual mentality can cope only with men who are bound by the same concretes — by the same kind of ‘finite’ world. To this mentality, it means a world in which men do not have to deal with abstract principles: principles are replaced by memorized rules of  behavior, which are accepted uncritically as the given. What is ‘finite’ in such a world is not its extension, but the degree of mental effort required of its inhabitants. When they say ‘finite,’ they mean ‘perceptual.’” (This is from “The Missing Link” [in Philosophy: Who Needs It]. That article deals with the psycho-epistemological roots of modern tribalism.)

In the same article I said: “John Dewey’s theory of Progressive education (which has dominated the schools for close to half a century), established a method of crippling a child’s conceptual faculty and replacing cognition with ‘social adjustment.’ It was and is a systematic attempt to manufacture tribal mentalities.”

A symptom of the tribal mentality’s self-arrested, perceptual level of development may be observed in the tribalists’ position on language.

Language is a conceptual tool — a code of visual-auditory symbols that denote concepts. To a person who understands the function of language, it makes no difference what sounds are chosen to name things, provided these sounds refer to clearly defined aspects of reality. But to a tribalist, language is a mystic heritage, a string of sounds handed down from his ancestors and memorized, not understood. To him the importance lies in the perceptual concrete, the sound of a word, not its meaning. He would kill and die for the privilege of printing on every postage stamp the word “postage” for the

English-speaking and the word “postes” for the French-speaking citizens of his bilingual Canada. Since most of the ethnic languages are not full languages, but merely dialects or local corruptions of a country’s language, the distinctions which the tribalists fight for are not even as big as that.

But, of course, it is not for their language that the tribalists are fighting: they are fighting to protect their level of awareness, their mental passivity, their obedience to the tribe, and their desire to ignore the existence of outsiders.

The learning of another language expands one’s abstract capacity and vision. Personally, I speak four — or rather three-and-a-half — languages: English, French, Russian, and the half is German, which I can read but not speak. I found this knowledge extremely helpful when I began writing: it gave me a wider range and choice of concepts; it showed me four different styles of expression; it made me grasp the nature of languages as such, apart from any set of concretes.

(Speaking of concretes, I would say that every civilized language has its own inimitable power and beauty, but the one I love is English — the language of my choice, not of my birth. English is the most eloquent, the most precise, the most economical, and, therefore, the most powerful. English fits me best — but I would be able to express my identity in any Western language.)

The tribalists clamor that their language preserves their “ethnic identity.” But there is no such thing. Conformity to a racist tradition does not constitute a human identity. Just as racism provides a pseudo-self-esteem for men who have not earned an authentic one, so their hysterical loyalty to their own dialect serves a similar function: it provides a pretense at “collective self-esteem,” an illusion of safety for the confused, frightened, precarious state of a tribalist’s stagnant consciousness.

The proclaimed desire to preserve one’s language and/or its literary works, if any, is a cover-up. In a free, or even semi-free country, no one is forbidden to speak any language he chooses with those who wish to speak it. But he cannot force it on others. A country has to have only one official language if men are to understand one another — and it makes no difference which language it is, since men live by the meaning, not the sound, of words. It is eminently fair that a country’s official language should be the language of the majority. As to literary works, their survival does not depend on political enforcement.

But to the tribalists, language is not a tool of thought and communication. Language to them is a symbol of tribal status and power — the power to force their dialect on all outsiders. This appeals not even to the tribal leaders, but to the sick, touchy vanity of the tribal rank and file.

In this connection, I want to mention a hypothesis of mine, which is only a hypothesis because I have given no special study to the subject of bilingual countries, i.e., countries that have two official languages. But I have observed the fact that bilingual countries tend to be culturally impoverished by comparison to the major countries whose language they share in part. Bilingual countries do not produce many great, first-rate achievements in any intellectual line of endeavor, whether in science, philosophy, literature, or art. Consider the record of Belgium (which is French-speaking in part) as against the record of France — or the record of Switzerland (a trilingual country) as against the record of France, of Germany, of Italy — or the record of Canada as against the record of the United States.

The cause of the poor records may lie in the comparative territorial smallness of those countries — but this does not apply to Canada versus the United States. The cause may lie in the fact that the best, most talented citizens of the bilingual countries tend to emigrate to the major countries — but this still leaves the question: Why do they?

My hypothesis is as follows: the policy of bilingual rule (which spares some citizens the necessity to learn another language) is a concession to, and a perpetuation of, a strong ethnic-tribalist element within a country. It is an element of anti-intellectuality, conformity, and stagnation. The best minds would run from such countries: they would sense, if not know it consciously, that tribalism leaves them no chance.

But quite apart from this particular hypothesis, there can be no doubt that the spread of tribalism is an enormously anti-intellectual evil. If, as I said, some elements of “ethnicity” did remain in the backyards of civilized countries and stayed harmless for centuries, why the sudden epidemic of their rebirth?

Irrationalism and collectivism — the philosophical notions of the prehistorical eras — had to be implemented in practice, in political action, before they could engulf the greatest

scientific-technological achievements mankind had ever reached. The political cause of tribalism’s rebirth is the mixed economy — the transitional stage of the formerly civilized countries of the West on their way to the political level from which the rest of the world has never emerged: the level of permanent tribal warfare.

As I wrote in my article on “Racism” (in The Virtue of Selfishness): “The growth of racism in a ‘mixed economy’ keeps step with the growth of government controls. A ‘mixed economy’ disintegrates a country into an institutionalized civil war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and special privileges at the expense of one another.”

When a country begins to use such expressions as “seeking a bigger share of the pie,” it is accepting a tenet of pure collectivism: the notion that the goods produced in a country do not belong to the producers, but belong to everybody, and that the government is the distributor. If so, what chance does an individual have of getting a slice of that pie? No chance at all, not even a few crumbs. An individual becomes “fair game” for every sort of organized predator. Thus people are pushed to surrender their independence in exchange for tribal protection.

The government of a mixed economy manufactures pressure groups — and, specifically, manufactures “ethnicity.” The profiteers are those group leaders who discover suddenly that they can exploit the helplessness, the fear, the frustration of their “ethnic” brothers, organize them into a group, present demands to the government — and deliver the vote. The result is political jobs, subsidies, influence, and prestige for the leaders of the ethnic groups.

This does not improve the lot of the group’s rank and file. It makes no difference to the hard-pressed unemployed of any race or color what quota of jobs, college admissions, and Washington appointments were handed out to the political manipulators from their particular race or color. But the ugly farce goes on, with the help and approval of the intellectuals, who write about “minority victories.”

Here is a sample of the goal of such victories. In The New York Times of January 17, 1977, a news story was headlined as follows: “Hispanic Groups Say They Are Inequitably Treated in Support for Arts.” At a hearing on the subject, New York State Senator Robert Garcia declared: “What we are really talking about is dollars and whether we are receiving a fair share of the revenues generated in this state.” The purpose of the demands for state dollars was “to assure the growth of ‘non-mainstream art forms.’” This means: art forms which people do not care to see or to support. The recommendations reached at the hearing included the demand that “at least twenty-five percent of the money goes to Hispanic arts.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what your tax money is being spent on: the new profiteers of altruism are not the poor, the sick, or the unemployed, but ethnic females swishing their skirts in old Spanish dances which were not too good even when they were new.

This is a typical example of the motives and the vested interests behind the growth, the pushing, and the touting of “ethnicity.” An interesting article was published in the British magazine Encounter (February 1975). It is entitled “The Universalisation of Ethnicity” and is written by Nathan Glazer, a well-known American sociologist. It is quite revealing of the modern intellectuals’ attitude toward the spread of ethnicity — more revealing in what Mr. Glazer does not say than in what he does.

He observes: “The overwhelming majority of people . . . are born into a religion, rather than adopt it, just as they are born into an ethnic group. In this respect both are similar. They are both groups by ‘ascription’ rather than ‘achievement.’ They are groups in which one’s status is immediately given by birth rather than gained by some activities in one’s life.”

This is eminently — and horribly — true. There is a great deal to be said about the horrifying approach of a world dominated by people who prefer “ascription” to “achievement,” and who seek a physiologically determined, automatically given status rather than a status they have to earn. Mr. Glazer does not say it; he merely reports.

He is disturbed by the relationship of “ethnic group” to “caste,” but treats it merely as a problem of definitions. But, of course, castes are inherent in the notion of ethnicity — castes of superiors and inferiors, determined by birth, enforced and perpetuated by law, dividing people into “aristocrats,” “commoners,” etc., down to “untouchables.”

Mr. Glazer makes a true and profoundly important statement: “The United States is perhaps unique among the states of the world in using the term ‘nation’ to refer not to an ethnic group but to all who choose to become Americans.” But he draws no conclusions from it. Yet it is extremely significant that the United States was the archenemy and the destroyer of ethnicity, that it abolished castes and any sort of inherited titles, that it granted no recognition to groups as such, that it recognized only the right of the individual to choose the associations he wished to join. Freedom of association is the opposite of ethnicity.

Mr. Glazer does not raise the question of the original American philosophy and the relationship of its destruction to the rise of ethnicity. The focus of his interest lies elsewhere. He writes: “The Socialist hope for a trans-national class struggle, based on class identification, never came to pass. Instead, it has been replaced by national and ethnic conflicts.” And: “In most countries national interests and ethnic interests seem to dominate over class interests.” Mr. Glazer is baffled by this development. He offers some tentative explanations with which he himself is not satisfied, such as: “The trends of modernisation, even while they do destroy some bases of distinctive culture and distinctive identity, create a need for a new kind of identity related to the old, intimate type of village or tribal association.” A modern, technological society, which includes nuclear bombs and space travel — to be run by villages or by tribal associations?

Mr. Glazer himself tends to dismiss theories of this sort, and admits that he cannot find an explanation. “This is the heart of the darkness. Why  didn’t the major lines of conflict within societies become class conflicts rather than ethnic conflicts? . . . In most developing countries Marxism remains the ideology of the students and often of the ruling group — but ethnicity is the focus around which identity and loyalty have been shaped.” Mr. Glazer comes closer to an answer when he observes that ethnicity has “an irrational appeal,” but he takes it no further. He says instead:

It would seem that the rallying cries that mobilise the classes have, in recent decades, had less power than the rallying cries that mobilise the races, tribes, religions, language-users — in short, the Ethnic Groups. Perhaps the epidemic of ethnic conflicts reflects the fact that leaders and organisers believe they can get a more potent response by appealing to ethnicity than they can by appealing to Class Interest.

True, leaders and organizers do believe this — but why? The answer to Mr. Glazer’s questions lies in the fact that Marxism is an intellectual construct; it is false, but it is an abstract theory — and it is too abstract for the tribalists’ concrete-bound, perceptual mentalities. It requires a significantly high level of abstraction to grasp the reality of “an international working class” — a level beyond the power of a consciousness that understands its own village, but has trouble treating the nearest town as fully real. No, the level of men’s intelligence has not deteriorated from natural causes; it has been pushed down, retarded, stultified by modern anti-intellectual education and modern irrationalist philosophy.

Mr. Glazer does not see or is not concerned with any part of this answer. It is obvious that he is disturbed by the spread of ethnicity, but he tries to hope for the best — and this leads him, in conclusion, to a truly unspeakable statement. After proposing some sort of solution in the form of “either guaranteed shares for each group, or guaranteed rights for each individual and each group,” he continues: “The United States in the past seemed to find the approach in terms of ‘guaranteed rights’ more congenial than the approach in terms of guaranteed shares; but recently Americans have begun to take individual rights less seriously, and to take group shares more seriously.” After I recovered from feeling sick at my stomach, I asked myself: What Americans has Mr. Glazer been observing or associating with? I do not know — but his statement is libel against an entire nation. His statement means that Americans are willing to sell their rights for money — for a “share of the pie.”

In his last paragraph Mr. Glazer observes that there was time when “the problems of Ethnicity, as a source of conflict within nations and between nations, have generally appeared as simply a left-over, an embarrassment from the past. It is my conviction they must now be placed at the very centre of our concern for the human condition.”

He is right to fear such a prospect.

There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred — than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes. If a man believes that his own character is determined at birth in some unknown, ineffable way, and that the characters of all strangers are determined in the same way — then no communication, no understanding, no persuasion is possible among them, only mutual fear, suspicion, and hatred. Tribal or ethnic rule has existed, at some time, in every part of the world, and, in some country, in every period of mankind’s history. The record of hatred is always the same. The worst kinds of atrocities were perpetrated during ethnic (including religious) wars. A recent grand-scale example of it was Nazi Germany.

Warfare — permanent warfare — is the hallmark of tribal existence. A tribe — with its rules, dogmas, traditions, and arrested mental development — is not a productive organization. Tribes subsist on the edge of starvation, at the mercy of natural disasters, less successfully than herds of animals. War against other, momentarily luckier tribes, in the hope of looting some meager hoard, is their chronic emergency means of survival. The inculcation of hatred for other tribes is a necessary tool of tribal rulers, who need scapegoats to blame for the misery of their own subjects.

There is no tyranny worse than ethnic rule — since it is an unchosen serfdom one is asked to accept as a value, and since it applies primarily to one’s mind. A man of self-esteem will not accept the notion that the content of his mind is determined by his muscles, i.e., by his own body. But by the bodies of an unspecified string of ancestors? Determinism by the means of production is preferable; it is equally false, but less offensive to human dignity. Marxism is corrupt, but clean compared to the stale, rank, musty odor of ethnicity.

As to the stagnation under tribal rule — take a look at the Balkans. At the start of this century, the Balkans were regarded as the disgrace of Europe. Six or eight tribes, plus a number of sub-tribes with unpronounceable names, were crowded on the Balkan peninsula, engaging in endless wars among themselves or being conquered by stronger neighbors or practicing violence for the sake of violence over some microscopic language differences. “Balkanization” — the breakup of larger nations into ethnic tribes — was used as a pejorative term by the European intellectuals of the time. Those same intellectuals were pathetically proud when they managed, after World War I, to glue most of the Balkan tribes together into two larger countries: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. But the tribes never vanished; they have been popping up in minor explosions all along, and a major one is possible at any time.

In the light of tribalism’s historical record, it is ludicrous to compromise with it, to hope for the best or to expect some sort of fair “group shares.” Nothing can be expected from tribalism except brutality and war. But this time, it is not with bows and arrows that the tribes will be armed, but with nuclear bombs.

As a tiny preview of what tribalism would mean in a modern, technological civilization, a story in The New York Times of January 23, 1977, reports that the French-speaking Canadians of Quebec had demanded the use of French in all official dealings, including at airports, but “a federal court upheld a ban by the federal Ministry of Transport on the use of French for landings at Montreal’s two international airports. (English is the language accepted at airports in every nation of the world.)”

Let me remind you of the recent terrible collision of two planes in the Canary Islands. Although all the personnel involved spoke English perfectly, the investigations seem to indicate that the collision was caused by linguistic misunderstandings. But what is that to the Canadians of Quebec, or to Idi Amin of Uganda, or to any other ethnic tribalists who might demand that their language be spoken by every plane pilot in the world? Incidentally, that collision took place because the small airport was overcrowded with planes that could not land at a nearby major airport: the major airport had been bombed by ethnic terrorists who were seeking the independence of the Canary Islands from Spain.

How long would the achievements of a technological civilization last under this sort of tribal management?

Some people ask whether local groups or provinces have the right to secede from the country of which they are a part. The answer is: on ethnic grounds, no. Ethnicity is not a valid consideration, morally or politically, and does not endow anyone with any special rights. As to other than ethnic grounds, remember that rights belong only to individuals and that there is no such thing as “group rights.” If a province wants to secede from a dictatorship, or even from a mixed economy, in order to establish a free country — it has the right to do so. But if a local gang, ethnic or otherwise, wants to secede in order to establish its own government controls, it does not have that right. No group has the right to violate the rights of the individuals who happen to live in the same locality. A wish — individual or collective — is not a right.

Is there a way to avoid the rebirth of global tribalism and the approach of another Dark Ages? Yes, there is, but only one way — through the rebirth of the antagonist that has demonstrated its power to relegate ethnicity to a peaceful dump: capitalism.

Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is) — yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed — yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic — yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

Capitalism has been called cruel — yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe.

As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem — these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism.

If you want an example of what had once been the spirit of America — a spirit which would be impossible today, but which we must now struggle to bring to a rebirth — I will quote from an old poem that represents the opposite of the abject self-abasement of ethnicity. It is a poem called “The Westerner” by Badger Clark.

He begins with “My fathers sleep on the Eastern plain and each one sleeps alone” — he acknowledges his respect for his forefathers, then says:

But I lean on no dead kin.
My name is mine for fame or scorn,
And the world began when I was born,
And the world is mine to win.

“What is Romanticism?” was originally published in The Romantic Manifesto (1971).

Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man and of existence. In forming a view of man’s nature, a fundamental question one must answer is whether man possesses the faculty of volition — because one’s conclusions and evaluations in regard to all the characteristics, requirements and actions of man depend on the answer.

Their opposite answers to this question constitute the respective basic premises of two broad categories of art: Romanticism, which recognizes the existence of man’s volition — and Naturalism, which denies it.

In the field of literature, the logical consequences of these basic premises (whether held consciously or subconsciously) determine the form of the key elements of a literary work.

1. If man possesses volition, then the crucial aspect of his life is his choice of values — if he chooses values, then he must act to gain and/or keep them — if so, then he must set his goals and engage in purposeful action to achieve them. The literary form expressing the essence of such action is the plot. (A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax.)

The faculty of volition operates in regard to the two fundamental aspects of man’s life: consciousness and existence, i.e., his psychological action and his existential action, i.e., the formation of his own character and the course of action he pursues in the physical world. Therefore, in a literary work, both the characterizations and the events are to be created by the author, according to his view of the role of values in human psychology and existence (and according to the code of values he holds to be right). His characters are abstract projections, not reproductions of concretes; they are invented conceptually, not copied reportorially from the particular individuals he might have observed. The specific characters of particular individuals are merely the evidence of their particular value-choices and have no wider metaphysical significance (except as material for the study of the general principles of human psychology); they do not exhaust man’s characterological potential.

2. If man does not possess volition, then his life and his character are determined by forces beyond his control — if so, then the choice of values is impossible to him — if so, then such values as he appears to hold are only an illusion, predetermined by the forces he has no power to resist — if so, then he is impotent to achieve his goals or to engage in purposeful action — and if he attempts the illusion of such action, he will be defeated by those forces, and his failure (or occasional success) will have no relation to his actions. The literary form expressing the essence of this view is plotlessness (since there can be no purposeful progression of events, no logical continuity, no resolution, no climax).

If man’s character and the course of his life are the product of unknown (or unknowable) forces, then, in a literary work, both the characterizations and the events are not to be invented by the author, but are to be copied from such particular characters and events as he has observed. Since he denies the existence of any effective motivational principle in human psychology, he cannot create his characters conceptually. He can only observe the people he meets, as he observes inanimate objects, and reproduce them — in the implicit hope that some clue to the unknown forces controlling human destiny may be discovered in such reproductions.

These basic premises of Romanticism and Naturalism (the volition or anti-volition premise) affect all the other aspects of a literary work, such as the choice of theme and the quality of the style, but it is the nature of the story structure — the attribute of plot or plotlessness — that represents the most important difference between them and serves as the main distinguishing characteristic for classifying a given work in one category or the other.

This is not to say that a writer identifies and applies all the consequences of his basic premise by a conscious process of thought. Art is the product of a man’s subconscious integrations, of his sense of life, to a larger extent than of his conscious philosophical convictions. Even the choice of the basic premise may be subconscious — since artists, like any other men, seldom translate their sense of life into conscious terms. And, since an artist’s sense of life may be as full of contradictions as that of any other man, these contradictions become apparent in his work; the dividing line between Romanticism and Naturalism is not always maintained consistently in every aspect of every given work of art (particularly since one of these basic premises is false). But if one surveys the field of art and studies the works produced, one will observe that the degree of consistency in the consequences of these two basic premises is a remarkably eloquent demonstration of the power of metaphysical premises in the realm of art.

With very rare (and partial) exceptions, Romanticism is non-existent in today’s literature. This is not astonishing when one considers the crushing weight of the philosophical wreckage under which generations of men have been brought up — a wreckage dominated by the doctrines of irrationalism and determinism. In their formative years, young people could not find much evidence on which to develop a rational, benevolent, value-oriented sense of life, neither in philosophical theory nor in its cultural echoes nor in the daily practice of the passively deteriorating society around them.

But observe the psychological symptoms of an unrecognized, unidentified issue: the virulently intense antagonism of today’s esthetic spokesmen to any manifestation of the Romantic premise in art. It is particularly the attribute of plot in literature that arouses an impassioned hostility among them — a hostility with deeply personal overtones, too violent for a mere issue of literary canons. If plot were a negligible and inappropriate element of literature, as they claim it to be, why the hysterical hatred in their denunciations? This type of reaction pertains to metaphysical issues, i.e., to issues that threaten the foundations of a person’s entire view of life (if that view is irrational). What they sense in a plot structure is the implicit premise of volition (and, therefore, of moral values). The same reaction, for the same subconscious reason, is evoked by such elements as heroes or happy endings or the triumph of virtue, or, in the visual arts, beauty. Physical beauty is not a moral or volitional issue — but the choice to paint a beautiful human being rather than an ugly one, implies the existence of volition: of choice, standards, values.

The destruction of Romanticism in esthetics — like the destruction of individualism in ethics or of capitalism in politics — was made possible by philosophical default. It is one more demonstration of the principle that that which is not known explicitly is not in man’s conscious control. In all three cases, the nature of the fundamental values involved had never been defined explicitly, the issues were fought in terms of non-essentials, and the values were destroyed by men who did not know what they were losing or why.

This was the predominant pattern of issues in the field of esthetics, which, throughout history, has been a virtual monopoly of mysticism. The definition of Romanticism given here is mine — it is not a generally known or accepted one. There is no generally accepted definition of Romanticism (nor of any key element in art, nor of art itself).

Romanticism is a product of the nineteenth century — a (largely subconscious) result of two great influences: Aristotelianism, which liberated man by validating the power of his mind — and capitalism, which gave man’s mind the freedom to translate ideas into practice (the second of these influences was itself the result of the first). But while the practical consequences of Aristotelianism were reaching men’s daily existence, its theoretical influence was long since gone: philosophy, since the Renaissance, had been retrogressing overwhelmingly to the mysticism of Plato. Thus the historically unprecedented events of the nineteenth century — the Industrial Revolution, the child-prodigy speed in the growth of science, the skyrocketing standard of living, the liberated torrent of human energy — were left without intellectual direction or evaluation. The nineteenth century was guided, not by an Aristotelian philosophy, but by an Aristotelian sense of life. (And, like a brilliantly violent adolescent who fails to translate his sense of life into conscious terms, it burned itself out, choked by the blind confusions of its own overpowering energy.)

Whatever their conscious convictions, the artists of that century’s great new school — the Romanticists — picked their sense of life out of the cultural atmosphere: it was an atmosphere of men intoxicated by the discovery of freedom, with all the ancient strongholds of tyranny — of church, state, monarchy, feudalism — crumbling around them, with unlimited roads opening in all directions and no barriers set to their newly unleashed energy. It was an atmosphere best expressed by that century’s naive, exuberant and tragically blind belief that human progress, from here on, was to be irresistible and automatic.

Esthetically, the Romanticists were the great rebels and innovators of the nineteenth century. But, in their conscious convictions, they were for the most part anti-Aristotelian and leaning toward a kind of wild, freewheeling mysticism. They did not see their own rebellion in fundamental terms; they were rebelling — in the name of the individual artist’s freedom — not against determinism, but, much more superficially, against the esthetic “Establishment” of the time: against Classicism.

Classicism (an example of a much deeper superficiality) was a school that had devised a set of arbitrary, concretely detailed rules purporting to represent the final and absolute criteria of esthetic value. In literature, these rules consisted of specific edicts, loosely derived from the Greek (and French) tragedies, which prescribed every formal aspect of a play (such as the unity of time, place and action) down to the number of acts and the number of verses permitted to a character in every act. Some of that stuff was based on Aristotle’s esthetics and can serve as an example of what happens when concrete-bound mentalities, seeking to by-pass the responsibility of thought, attempt to transform abstract principles into concrete prescriptions and to replace creation with imitation. (For an example of Classicism that survived well into the twentieth century, I refer you to the architectural dogmas represented by Howard Roark’s antagonists in The Fountainhead.)

Even though the Classicists had no answer to why their rules were to be accepted as valid (except the usual appeal to tradition, to scholarship and to the prestige of antiquity), this school was regarded as the representative of reason. (!)

Such were the roots of one of the grimmest ironies in cultural history: the early attempts to define the nature of Romanticism declared it to be an esthetic school based on the primacy of emotions — as against the champions of the primacy of reason, which were the Classicists (and, later, the Naturalists). In various forms, this definition has persisted to our day. It is an example of the intellectually disastrous consequences of definitions by non-essentials — and an example of the penalty one pays for a non-philosophical approach to cultural phenomena.

One can observe the misapprehended element of truth that gave rise to that early classification. What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values, an element that had been missing in the stale, arid, third- and fourth-hand (and rate) repetitions of the Classicists’ formula-copying. Values (and value-judgments) are the source of emotions; a great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the Romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement and all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life. This emotional element was the most easily perceivable characteristic of the new movement and it was taken as its defining characteristic, without deeper inquiry.

Such issues as the fact that the primacy of values in human life is not an irreducible primary, that it rests on man’s faculty of volition, and, therefore, that the Romanticists, philosophically, were the champions of volition (which is the root of values) and not of emotions (which are merely the consequences) — were issues to be defined by philosophers, who defaulted in regard to esthetics as they did in regard to every other crucial aspect of the nineteenth century.

The still deeper issue, the fact that the faculty of reason is the faculty of volition, was not known at the time, and the various theories of free will were for the most part of an anti-rational character, thus reinforcing the association of volition with mysticism.

The Romanticists saw their cause primarily as a battle for their right to individuality and — unable to grasp the deepest metaphysical justification of their cause, unable to identify their values in terms of reason — they fought for individuality in terms of feelings, surrendering the banner of reason to their enemies.

There were other, lesser consequences of this fundamental error, all of them symptoms of the intellectual confusion of the age. Groping blindly for a metaphysically oriented, grand-scale, exalted way of life, the Romanticists, predominantly, were enemies of capitalism, which they regarded as a prosaic, materialistic, “petty bourgeois” system — never realizing that it was the only system that could make freedom, individuality and the pursuit of values possible in practice. Some of them chose to be advocates of socialism; some turned for inspiration to the Middle Ages and became shameless glamorizers of that nightmare era; some ended up where most champions of the non-rational end up: in religion. All of it served to accelerate Romanticism’s growing break with reality.

When, in the later half of the nineteenth century, Naturalism rose to prominence and, assuming the mantle of reason and reality, proclaimed the artists’ duty to portray “things as they are” — Romanticism did not have much of an opposition to offer.

It must be noted that philosophers contributed to the confusion surrounding the term “Romanticism.” They attached the name “Romantic” to certain philosophers (such as Schelling and Schopenhauer) who were avowed mystics advocating the supremacy of emotions, instincts or will over reason. This movement in philosophy had no significant relation to Romanticism in esthetics, and the two movements must not be confused. The common nomenclature, however, is significant in one respect: it indicates the depth of the confusion on the subject of volition. The “Romantic” philosophers’ theories were a viciously malevolent, existence-hating attempt to uphold volition in the name of whim worship, while the esthetic Romanticists were groping blindly to uphold volition in the name of man’s life and values here, on earth. In terms of essentials, the brilliant sunlight of Victor Hugo’s universe is the diametrical opposite of the venomous muck of Schopenhauer’s. It was only philosophical package-dealing that could throw them in the same category. But the issue demonstrates the profound importance of the subject of volition, and the grotesque distortions it assumes when men are unable to grasp its nature. This issue may also serve as an illustration of the importance of establishing that volition is a function of man’s rational faculty.

In recent times, some literary historians have discarded, as inadequate, the definition of Romanticism as an emotion-oriented school and have attempted to redefine it, but without success. Following the rule of fundamentality, it is as a volition-oriented school that Romanticism must be defined — and it is in terms of this essential characteristic that the nature and history of Romantic literature can be traced and understood.

The (implicit) standards of Romanticism are so demanding that in spite of the abundance of Romantic writers at the time of its dominance, this school has produced very few pure, consistent Romanticists of the top rank. Among novelists, the greatest are Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky, and, as single novels (whose authors were not always consistent in the rest of their works), I would name Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Among playwrights, the greatest are Friedrich Schiller and Edmond Rostand.

The distinguishing characteristic of this top rank (apart from their purely literary genius) is their full commitment to the premise of volition in both of its fundamental areas: in regard to consciousness and to existence, in regard to man’s character and to his actions in the physical world. Maintaining a perfect integration of these two aspects, unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures, these writers are enormously concerned with man’s soul (i.e., his consciousness). They are moralists in the most profound sense of the word; their concern is not merely with values, but specifically with moral values and with the power of moral values in shaping human character. Their characters are “larger than life,” i.e., they are abstract projections in terms of essentials (not always successful projections, as we shall discuss later). In their stories, one will never find action for action’s sake, unrelated to moral values. The events of their plots are shaped, determined and motivated by the characters’ values (or treason to values), by their struggle in pursuit of spiritual goals and by profound value-conflicts. Their themes are fundamental, universal, timeless issues of man’s existence — and they are the only consistent creators of the rarest attribute of literature: the perfect integration of theme and plot, which they achieve with superlative virtuosity.

If philosophical significance is the criterion of what is to be taken seriously, then these are the most serious writers in world literature.

The second rank of Romanticists (who are still writers of considerable merit, but of lesser stature) indicates the direction of Romanticism’s future decline. This rank is represented by such writers as Walter Scott and Alexander Dumas. The distinguishing characteristic of their work is the emphasis on action, without spiritual goals or significant moral values. Their stories have well-built, imaginative, suspenseful plot structures, but the values pursued by their characters and motivating the action are of a primitive, superficial, emphatically non-metaphysical order: loyalty to a king, the reclaiming of a heritage, personal revenge, etc. The conflicts and story lines are predominantly external. The characters are abstractions, they are not Naturalistic copies, but they are abstractions of loosely generalized virtues or vices, and characterization is minimal. In time, they become a writer’s own self-made bromides, such as “a brave knight,” “a noble lady,” “a vicious courtier” — so that they are neither created nor drawn from life, but picked from a kind of ready-to-wear collection of stock characters of Romanticism. The absence of any metaphysical meaning (apart from the affirmation of volition implicit in a plot structure) is evident in the fact that these novels have plots, but no abstract themes — with the story’s central conflict serving as the theme, usually in the form of some actual or fictionalized historical event.

Going farther down, one can observe the breakup of Romanticism, the contradictions that proceed from a premise held subconsciously. On this level, there emerges a class of writers whose basic premise, in effect, is that man possesses volition in regard to existence, but not to consciousness, i.e., in regard to his physical actions, but not in regard to his own character. The distinguishing characteristic of this class is: stories of unusual events enacted by conventional characters. The stories are abstract projections, involving actions one does not observe in “real life,” the characters are commonplace concretes. The stories are Romantic, the characters Naturalistic. Such novels seldom have plots (since value-conflicts are not their motivational principle), but they do have a form resembling a plot: a coherent, imaginative, often suspenseful story held together by some one central goal or undertaking of the characters.

The contradictions in such a combination of elements are obvious; they lead to a total breach between action and characterization, leaving the action unmotivated and the characters unintelligible. The reader is left to feel: “These people couldn’t do these things!”

With its emphasis on sheer physical action and neglect of human psychology, this class of novels stands on the borderline between serious and popular literature. No top-rank novelists belong to this category; the better-known ones are writers of science fiction, such as H. G. Wells or Jules Verne. (Occasionally, a good writer of the Naturalistic school, with a repressed element of Romanticism, attempts a novel on an abstract theme that requires a Romantic approach; the result falls into this category. For example, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.) It is obvious why the novels of this category are enormously unconvincing. And, no matter how skillfully or suspensefully their action is presented, they always have an unsatisfying, uninspiring quality.

On the other side of the same dichotomy, there are Romanticists whose basic premise, in effect, is that man possesses volition in regard to consciousness, but not to existence, i.e., in regard to his own character and choice of values, but not in regard to the possibility of achieving his goals in the physical world. The distinguishing characteristics of such writers are grand-scale themes and characters, no plots and an overwhelming sense of tragedy, the sense of a “malevolent universe.” The chief exponents of this category were poets. The leading one is Byron, whose name has been attached to this particular, “Byronic,” view of existence: its essence is the belief that man must lead a heroic life and fight for his values even though he is doomed to defeat by a malevolent fate over which he has no control.

Today, the same view is advocated philosophically by the existentialists, but without the grand-scale element and with Romanticism replaced by a kind of sub-Naturalism.

Philosophically, Romanticism is a crusade to glorify man’s existence; psychologically, it is experienced simply as the desire to make life interesting.

This desire is the root and motor of Romantic imagination, its greatest example, in popular literature, is O. Henry, whose unique characteristic is the pyrotechnical virtuosity of an inexhaustible imagination projecting the gaiety of a benevolent, almost childlike sense of life. More than any other writer, O. Henry represents the spirit of youth — specifically, the cardinal element of youth: the expectation of finding something wonderfully unexpected around all of life’s corners.

In the field of popular literature, Romanticism’s virtues and potential flaws may be seen in a simplified, more obvious form.

Popular literature is fiction that does not deal with abstract problems; it takes moral principles as the given, accepting certain generalized, common-sense ideas and values as its base. (Common-sense values and conventional values are not the same thing; the first can be justified rationally, the second cannot. Even though the second may include some of the first, they are justified, not on the ground of reason, but on the ground of social conformity.)

Popular fiction does not raise or answer abstract questions; it assumes that man knows what he needs to know in order to live, and it proceeds to show his adventures in living (which is one of the reasons for its popularity among all types of readers, including the problem-laden intellectuals). The distinctive characteristic of popular fiction is the absence of an explicitly ideational element, of the intent to convey intellectual information (or misinformation).

Detective, adventure, science-fiction novels and Westerns belong, for the most part, to the category of popular fiction. The best writers of this category come close to the Scott-Dumas group: their emphasis is on action, but their heroes and villains are abstract projections, and a loosely generalized view of moral values, of a struggle between good and evil, motivates the action. (As contemporary examples of the best in this class: Mickey Spillane, Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton.)

When we go below the top level of popular fiction, we descend into a kind of no man’s land where literary principles are barely applicable (particularly if we include the field of movies and television). Here, the distinctive characteristics of Romanticism become almost indistinguishable. On this level, writing is not the product of subconscious premises: it is a mixture of elements picked by random imitation rather than by sense-of-life creation.

A certain characteristic is typical of this level: it is not merely the use of conventional, Naturalistic characters to enact Romantic events, but worse: the use of characters who are romanticized embodiments of conventional values. Such embodiments represent canned values, empty stereotypes that serve as an automatic substitute for value-judgments. This method lacks the essential attribute of Romanticism: the independent, creative projection of an individual writer’s values — and it lacks the reportorial honesty of the (better) Naturalists: it does not present concrete men “as they are,” it presents human pretensions (a collective role-playing or an indiscriminate collective daydream) and palms this off as reality.

Most of the “slick-magazine” fiction popular before World War II belongs to this class, with its endless variations on the Cinderella theme, the motherhood theme, the costume-drama theme, or the common-man-with-a-heart-of-gold theme. (For example, Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, Barry Benefield.) This type of fiction has no plots, only more or less cohesive stories, and no discernible characterizations: the characters are false journalistically, and meaningless metaphysically. (It is an open question whether this group belongs to the category of Romanticism; it is usually regarded as Romantic simply because it is far removed from anything perceivable in reality concretely or abstractly.)

As far as their fiction aspects are concerned, movies and television, by their nature, are media suited exclusively to Romanticism (to abstractions, essentials and drama). Unfortunately, both media came too late: the great day of Romanticism was gone, and only its sunset rays reached a few exceptional movies. (Fritz Lane’s Siegfried is the best among them.) For a while, the movie field was dominated by the equivalent of the slick-magazine Romanticism, with a still less discriminating level of taste and imagination, and an incommunicable vulgarity of spirit.

Partly in reaction against this debasement of values, but mainly in consequence of the general philosophical-cultural disintegration of our time (with its anti-value trend), Romanticism vanished from the movies and never reached television (except in the form of a few detective series, which are now gone also). What remains is the occasional appearance of cowardly pieces, whose authors apologize for their Romantic attempts, by means of comedy — or mongrel pieces, whose authors beg not to be mistaken for advocates of human values (or human greatness), by means of coyly, militantly commonplace characters who enact world-shaking events and perform fantastic feats, particularly in the realm of science. The nature of this type of scenario can best be encapsulated by a line of dialogue on the order of: “Sorry, baby, I can’t take you to the pizza joint tonight, I’ve got to go back to the lab and split the atom.”

The next, and final, level of disintegration is the attempt to eliminate Romanticism from Romantic fiction — i.e., to dispense with the element of values, morality and volition. This used to be called the “hard-boiled” school of detective fiction; today, it is plugged as “realistic.” This school makes no distinction between heroes and villains for detectives and criminals, or victims and executioners) and presents, in effect, two mobs of gangsters fighting savagely and incomprehensibly (no motivation is offered) for the same territory, neither side being able to do otherwise.

This is the dead end where, arriving by different roads, Romanticism and Naturalism meet, blend and vanish: deterministically helpless, compulsively evil characters go through a series of inexplicably exaggerated events and engage in purposeful conflicts without purpose.

Beyond this point, the field of literature, both “serious” and popular, is taken over by a genre compared to which Romanticism and Naturalism are clean, civilized and innocently rational: the Horror Story. The modern ancestor of this phenomenon is Edgar Allan Poe; its archetype or purest esthetic expression is Boris Karloff movies.

Popular literature, more honest in this respect, presents its horrors in the form of physical monstrosities. In “serious” literature, the horrors become psychological and bear less resemblance to anything human; this is the literary cult of depravity.

The Horror Story, in either variant, represents the metaphysical projection of a single human emotion: blind, stark, primitive terror. Those who live in such terror seem to find a momentary sense of relief or control in the process of reproducing that which they fear — as savages find a sense of mastery over their enemies by reproducing them in the form of dolls. Strictly speaking, this is not a metaphysical, but a purely psychological projection; such writers are not presenting their view of life; they are not looking at life; what they are saying is that they feel as if life consisted of werewolves, Draculas and Frankenstein monsters. In its basic motivation, this school belongs to psychopathology more than to esthetics.

Historically, neither Romanticism nor Naturalism could survive the collapse of philosophy. There are individual exceptions, but I am speaking of these schools as broad, active, creative movements. Since art is the expression and product of philosophy, it is the first to mirror the vacuum at the base of a culture and the first to crumble.

This general cause had special consequences affecting Romanticism, which hastened its decline and collapse. There were also special consequences affecting Naturalism, which were of a different character and their destructive potential worked at a slower rate.

The archenemy and destroyer of Romanticism was the altruist morality.

Since Romanticism’s essential characteristic is the projection of values, particularly moral values, altruism introduced an insolvable conflict into Romantic literature from the start. The altruist morality cannot be practiced (except in the form of self-destruction) and, therefore, cannot be projected or dramatized convincingly in terms of man’s life on earth (particularly in the realm of psychological motivation). With altruism as the criterion of value and virtue, it is impossible to create an image of man at his best — “as he might be and ought to be.” The major flaw that runs through the history of Romantic literature is the failure to present a convincing hero, i.e., a convincing image of a virtuous man.

It is the abstract intention — the grandeur of the author’s view of man — that one admires in the characters of Victor Hugo, not their actual characterizations. The greatest Romanticist never succeeded in projecting an ideal man or any convincing major characters of a positive nature. His most ambitious attempt, Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, remains a giant abstraction that never integrates into a person, in spite of isolated touches of profound psychological perceptiveness on the part of the author. In the same novel, Marius, the young man who is supposed to be Hugo’s autobiographical projection, acquires a certain stature only by means of what the author says about him, not by means of what he shows. As far as characterization is concerned, Marius is not a person, but the suggestion of a person squeezed into a straitjacket of cultural bromides. The best-drawn and most interesting characters in Hugo’s novels are the semi-villains (his benevolent sense of life made him unable to create a real villain): Javert in Les Misérables, Josiana in The Man Who Laughs, Claude Frollo in Notre-Dame de Paris.

Dostoevsky (whose sense of life was the diametrical opposite of Hugo’s) was a passionate moralist whose blind quest for values was expressed only in the fiercely merciless condemnation with which he presented evil characters; no one has equaled him in the psychological depth of his images of human evil. But he was totally incapable of creating a positive or virtuous character, such attempts as he made were crudely inept (for example, Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov). It is significant that according to Dostoevsky’s preliminary notes for The Possessed, his original intention was to create Stavrogin as an ideal man — an embodiment of the Russian-Christian-altruist soul. As the notes progressed, that intention changed gradually, in logically inexorable steps dictated by Dostoevsky’s artistic integrity. In the final result, in the actual novel, Stavrogin is one of Dostoevsky’s most repulsively evil characters.

In Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis, the best-drawn, most colorful character, who dominates the novel, is Petronius, the symbol of Roman decadence — while Vinicius, the author’s hero, the symbol of the rise of Christianity, is a cardboard figure.

This phenomenon — the fascinating villain or colorful rogue, who steals the story and the drama from the anemic hero — is prevalent in the history of Romantic literature, serious or popular, from top to bottom. It is as if, under the dead crust of the altruist code officially adopted by mankind, an illicit, subterranean fire were boiling chaotically and erupting once in a while; forbidden to the hero, the fire of self-assertiveness burst forth from the apologetic ashes of a “villain.”

The highest function of Romanticism — the projection of moral values — is an extremely difficult task under any moral code, rational or not, and, in literary history, only the top rank of Romanticists were able to attempt it. Given the added burden of an irrational code, such as altruism, the majority of Romantic writers had to avoid that task — which led to the weakness and neglect of the element of characterization in their writing. In addition, the impossibility of applying altruism to reality, to men’s actual existence, led many Romantic writers to avoid the problem by escaping into history, i.e., by choosing to place their stories in some distant past (such as the Middle Ages). Thus, the emphasis on action, the neglect of human psychology, the lack of convincing motivation were progressively dissociating Romanticism from reality — until the final remnants of Romanticism became a superficial, meaningless, “unserious” school that had nothing to say about human existence.

The disintegration of Naturalism brought it to the same state, for different reasons.

Although Naturalism is a product of the nineteenth century, its spiritual father, in modern history, was Shakespeare. The premise that man does not possess volition, that his destiny is determined by an innate “tragic flaw,” is fundamental in Shakespeare’s work, But, granted this false premise, his approach is metaphysical, not journalistic. His characters are not drawn from “real life,” they are not copies of observed concretes nor statistical averages: they are grand-scale abstractions of the character traits which a determinist would regard as inherent in human nature: ambition, power-lust, jealousy, greed, etc.

Some of the famous Naturalists attempted to maintain Shakespeare’s abstract level, i.e., to present their views of human nature in metaphysical terms (for example, Balzac, Tolstoy). But the majority, following the lead of Emile Zola, rejected metaphysics, as they rejected values, and adopted the method of journalism: the recording of observed concretes.

The contradictions inherent in determinism were obvious in this movement from the start. One does not read fiction except on the implicit premise of volition — i.e., on the premise that some element (some abstraction) of the fiction story is applicable to oneself, that one will learn, discover or contemplate something of value and that this experience will make a difference. If one were to accept the deterministic premise fully and literally — if one were to believe that the characters of a fiction story are as distant and irrelevant to oneself as the unknowable inhabitants of another galaxy and that they cannot affect one’s life in any way whatever, since neither they nor the reader have any power of choice — one would not be able to read beyond the first chapter.

Nor would one be able to write. Psychologically, the whole of the Naturalist movement rode on the premise of volition as on an unidentified subconscious “stolen concept.” Choosing “society” as the factor that determines man’s fate, most of the Naturalists were social reformers, advocating social changes, claiming that man has no volition, but society, somehow, has. Tolstoy preached resignation and passive obedience to society’s power. In Anna Karenina, the most evil book in serious literature, he attacked man’s desire for happiness and advocated its sacrifice to conformity.

No matter how concrete-bound their theories forced them to be, the writers of the Naturalist school still had to exercise their power of abstraction to a significant extent: in order to reproduce “real-life” characters, they had to select the characteristics they regarded as essential, differentiating them from the non-essential or accidental. Thus they were led to substitute statistics for values as a criterion of selectivity: that which is statistically prevalent among men, they held, is metaphysically significant and representative of man’s nature; that which is rare or exceptional, is not. (See Chapter 7.)

At first, having rejected the element of plot and even of story, the Naturalists concentrated on the element of characterization — and psychological perceptiveness was the chief value that the best of them had to offer. With the growth of the statistical method, however, that value shrank and vanished: characterization was replaced by indiscriminate recording and buried under a catalogue of trivia, such as minute inventories of a character’s apartment, clothing and meals. Naturalism lost the attempted universality of Shakespeare or Tolstoy, descending from metaphysics to photography with a rapidly shrinking lens directed at the range of the immediate moment — until the final remnants of Naturalism became a superficial, meaningless, “unserious” school that had nothing to say about human existence.

There were several reasons why Naturalism outlasted Romanticism, even if not for long. Chief among them is the fact that Naturalism’s standards are much less demanding. A third-rate Naturalist may still have some perceptive observations to offer; a third-rate Romanticist has nothing.

Romanticism demands mastery of the primary element of fiction: the art of storytelling — which requires three cardinal qualities: ingenuity, imagination, a sense of drama. All this (and more) goes into the construction of an original plot integrated to theme and characterization. Naturalism discards these elements and demands nothing but characterization, in as shapeless a narrative, as “uncontrived” (i.e., purposeless) a progression of events (if any) as a given author pleases.

The value of a Romanticist’s work has to be created by its author; he owes no allegiance to men (only to man), only to the metaphysical nature of reality and to his own values. The value of a Naturalist’s work depends on the specific characters, choices and actions of the men he reproduces — and he is judged by the fidelity with which he reproduces them.

The value of a Romanticist’s story lies in what might happen; the value of a Naturalist’s story lies in that it did happen. If the spiritual ancestor or symbol of the Romanticist is the medieval troubadour who roamed the countryside, inspiring men with visions of life’s potential beyond the dreary boundaries of their daily toil — then the symbol of the Naturalist is the back-fence gossip (as one contemporary Naturalist has somewhat boastfully admitted).

Contributing to the (temporary) dominance of Naturalism was the fact that precious stones attract a greater number of seekers of the unearned than do the more commonly available minerals. The essential element of Romanticism, the plot, can be purloined and disguised by recutting, even though it loses fire, brilliance and value with every stroke of a dime-store chisel. The original plots of Romantic literature have been borrowed in countless variations by countless imitators, losing color and meaning with each successive copy.

For example, compare the dramatic structure of The Lady of the Camellias (Camille) by Alexander Dumas fils, which is an unusually good play, to the endless series of dramas about a prostitute caught between her true love and her past, from Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie on down (or, properly speaking, on up) to Hollywood variants. The esthetic parasites of Romanticism helped to run it into the ground, turning its examples of inventiveness into worn-out bromides. This, however, does not detract from the original authors’ achievements; if anything, it underscores them.

Naturalism does not offer such opportunities to imitators. The essential element of Naturalism — the presentation of “a slice of life” at a specific time and place — cannot be borrowed literally. A writer cannot copy the Russian society of 1812 as presented in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He has to employ some thought and effort of his own, at least in the sense of using his own observations to present the people of his own time and place. Thus, paradoxically, on its lower levels Naturalism offers a chance for some minimal originality, which Romanticism does not. In this respect, Naturalism would appeal to some writers seeking the possibility of a literary achievement on a modest scale.

There were, however, many imitators (of a less obvious kind) among the Naturalists, and many pretentious mediocrities, particularly in Europe. (For example, Romain Rolland, a romanticizing Naturalist who, in intellectual stature, belongs with the slick-magazine Romanticists.) But at Naturalism’s height, the movement included writers of genuine literary talent, particularly in America. Its best representative is Sinclair Lewis, whose novels display a perceptive, critical, first-rate intelligence at work. The best of Naturalism’s contemporary survivors is John O’Hara, who combines a sensitive intelligence with a beautifully disciplined style.

Just as there was a kind of naively innocent, optimistic benevolence in the great Romanticists of the nineteenth century, so there was in the better Naturalists of the twentieth. The first were individual-oriented; the second, society-oriented. World War I marked the end of the great era of Romanticism, and accelerated the fading of individualism. (One may take as a tragic symbol the fact that Edmond Rostand died in 1918, in the flu epidemic following that war.) World War II marked the end of Naturalism, exposing the bankruptcy of collectivism, blasting the vague hopes and illusions of achieving a “benevolent” welfare state. These wars demonstrated existentially what their literary consequences demonstrated psychologically: that man cannot live without philosophy, and neither can he write.

In the eclectic shambles of today’s literature, it is hard to tell which is worse: a Western that explains the deeds of a cattle rustler by reference to his Oedipus complex — or a gory, cynical, “realistic” account of sundry horrors which reveals the message that love is the solution to everything.

Except for the exceptions, there is no literature (and no art) today — in the sense of a broad, vital cultural movement and influence. There are only bewildered imitators with nothing to imitate — and charlatans who rise to split-second notoriety, as they always did in periods of cultural collapse.

Some remnants of Romanticism may still be found in the popular media — but in such a mangled, disfigured form that they achieve the opposite of Romanticism’s original purpose.

The best symbolic projection of these remnants’ meaning (whether the author intended it or not) was given in a brief television story of The Twilight Zone series, some years ago. In some indeterminate world of another dimension, the shadowy, white-clad, authoritarian figures of doctors and social scientists are deeply concerned with the problem of a young girl who looks so different from everyone else that she is shunned as a freak, a disfigured outcast unable to lead a normal life. She has appealed to them for help, but all plastic surgery operations have failed — and now the doctors are grimly preparing to give her a last chance: one more attempt at plastic surgery; if it fails, she will remain a monstrosity for life. In heavily tragic tones, the doctors speak of the girl’s need to be like others, to belong, to be loved, etc. We are not shown any of the characters’ faces, but we hear the tense, ominous, oddly lifeless voices of their dim figures, as the last operation progresses. The operation fails. The doctors declare, with contemptuous compassion, that they will have to find a young man as deformed as this girl, who might be able to accept her. Then, for the first time, we see the girl’s face: lying motionless on the pillow of a hospital bed, it is a face of perfect, radiant beauty. The camera moves to the faces of the doctors: it is an unspeakably horrifying row, not of human faces, but of mangled, distorted, disfigured pigs’ heads, recognizable only by their snouts. Fade-out.

The last remnants of Romanticism are sneaking apologetically on the outskirts of our culture, wearing the masks of a similar plastic surgery operation which has been partially successful. Under the pressure of conformity to the pigs’ snouts of decadence, today’s Romanticists are escaping, not into the past, but into the supernatural — explicitly giving up reality and this earth. The exciting, the dramatic, the unusual — their policy is declaring, in effect — do not exist; please don’t take us seriously, what we’re offering is only a spooky daydream.

Rod Serling, one of the most talented writers of television, started as a Naturalist, dramatizing controversial journalistic issues of the moment, never taking sides, conspicuously avoiding value-judgments, writing about ordinary people — except that these people spoke the most beautifully, eloquently romanticized dialogue, a purposeful, intellectual, sharply focused dialogue-by-essentials, of a kind that people do not speak in “real life,” but should. Prompted, apparently, by the need to give full scope to his colorful imagination and brilliant sense of drama, Rod Serling turned to Romanticism — but placed his stories in another dimension, in The Twilight Zone.

Ira Levin, who started with an excellent first novel (A Kiss Before Dying), now comes out with Rosemary’s Baby, which goes beyond the physical trappings of the Middle Ages, straight to that eras spirit, and presents (seriously) a story about witchcraft in a modern setting; and, since the original version of the Virgin Birth, involving God, would probably be regarded as “camp” by today’s intellectual establishment, this story revolves around the obscenity of a Virgin Birth authored by the Devil.

Fredric Brown, an unusually ingenious writer, had been devoting his ingenuity to turning science fiction into stories of earthly or supernatural evil; now, he has stopped writing.

Alfred Hitchcock, the last movie-maker who has managed to preserve his stature and his following, gets away with Romanticism by means of an overemphasis on malevolence or on sheer horror.

This is the manner in which men of imagination now express their need to make life interesting. Romanticism — which started, in defiance of primordial evils, as a violent, passionate torrent of righteous self-assertiveness — ends up by dribbling through the fingers of tottering heirs who disguise their works and motives by paying lip service to evil.

I do not mean to imply that this type of appeasement is the product of conscious cowardice; I do not believe it is: which makes it worse.

Such is the esthetic state of our day. But so long as men exist, the need of art will exist, since that need is rooted metaphysically in the nature of man’s consciousness — and it will survive a period when, under the reign of irrationality run amuck, men produce and accept tainted scraps to satisfy that need.

As in the case of an individual, so in the case of a culture: disasters can be accomplished subconsciously, but a cure cannot. A cure in both cases requires conscious knowledge, i.e., a consciously grasped, explicit philosophy. It is impossible to predict the time of a philosophical Renaissance. One can only define the road to follow, but not its length. What is certain, however, is that every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics — a rational ethics — as a precondition of rebirth.

And, perhaps, no aspect needs it more desperately than the realm of art.

When reason and philosophy are reborn, literature will be the first phoenix to rise out of today’s ashes. And, armed with a code of rational values, aware of its own nature, confident of the supreme importance of its mission, Romanticism will have come of age.

(May–July 1969)

“The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests” was originally published in The Virtue of Selfishness in 1964.

Some students of Objectivism find it difficult to grasp the Objectivist principle that “there are no conflicts of interests among rational men.”

A typical question runs as follows: “Suppose two men apply for the same job. Only one of them can be hired. Isn’t this an instance of a conflict of interests, and isn’t the benefit of one man achieved at the price of the sacrifice of the other?”

There are four interrelated considerations which are involved in a rational man’s view of his interests, but which are ignored or evaded in the above question and in all similar approaches to the issue. I shall designate these four as: (a) “Reality,” (b) “Context,” (c) “Responsibility,” (d) “Effort.”

Per our agreement with publishers, to make room for other Ayn Rand non-fiction content, this essay has been temporarily removed, but will return in due course.

“Altruism as Appeasement” was originally published in the January 1966 issue of The Objectivist, now available in paperback, and later anthologized in The Voice of Reason (1989).

A few years ago, on the occasion of giving a lecture at M.I.T., I met a young student who was earnestly, intelligently concerned with opposing the trend to collectivism. I asked him his views on why so many of today’s young intellectuals were becoming “liberals.” He could not give me a full answer. But a few weeks later, he wrote me a remarkable letter.

He explained that he had given a great deal of thought to my question and had reached certain conclusions. The majority of college students, he wrote, do not choose to think; they accept the status quo, conform to the prescribed code of values and evade the responsibility of independent thought. “In adopting this attitude, they are encouraged by teachers who inspire imitation, rather than creation.”

But there are a few who are not willing to renounce their rational faculty. “They are the intellectuals — and they are the outsiders. Their willingness to think makes them shine forth as a threat to the stagnant security of the levelers in which they are immersed. They are teased and rejected by their schoolmates. An immense amount of faith in oneself and a rational philosophical basis are required to set oneself against all that society has ever taught. . . . The man who preaches individual integrity, pride and self-esteem is today virtually nonexistent. Far more common is the man who, driven by the young adult’s driving need for acceptance, has compromised. And here is the key — [the result of] the compromise is the liberal.

Per our agreement with publishers, to make room for other Ayn Rand non-fiction content, this essay has been temporarily removed, but will return in due course.

 

 

Ayn Rand Letters: Personal (1938 – 1950)

This is the fourth and final installment of previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, novels, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

This fourth installment of unpublished material contains six letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• Ethel Boileau (June 21, 1938)
• Leonard Read (November 30, 1945)
• Lynda Lynneberg (February 21, 1948)
• Hal Wallis (January 6, 1950)
• Lorine Pruette (April 28, 1950)
• Archibald Ogden (August 25, 1950)

What follows is the text of each letter, accompanied by remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.¹

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To Ethel Boileau (June 21, 1938)

Lady Ethel Boileau (1881–1942) was an English novelist, best known for Clansmen and Ballade in G Minor. Her correspondence with Rand began in 1936, when she wrote a glowing homage to We the Living after her American publisher had sent her a copy. After Rand read Clansmen in 1936, she wrote to Boileau that her “descriptions are so lovely that they have made me, an Americanized Russian, experience a feeling of patriotism toward Scotland. Your book makes me believe that Scotland is a country of strong individuals and, as such, she has all my sympathy and admiration.”  The letter below is a rare instance of Rand commenting about World War II.

Dear Lady Boileau,

Thank you so much for your letter. I was very sorry to hear that you have not been well, and I do hope that you have recovered completely. I am so happy to have met you and am looking forward to the time when you may come to American for another visit.²

However, looking at the picture of your charming house, I suspect that you may not be inclined to leave it often. I am sure that I should not. It has such a magnificent air of old Europe. I feel somewhat wistful as I say this, for the thought of Europe at present gives me a great deal of anxiety. I can well understand your feeling about it. I should not, perhaps, allow myself a definite opinion of the policy of a country which I do not know thoroughly, but I cannot help feeling a great sympathy for Premier Chamberlain. The least co-operation any European country has with Soviet Russia — the greater are the chances of saving Europe from another catastrophe. I am convinced that the major forces preparing for a general world conflict originate in Russia. I can only hope that the propaganda by the Soviet “United Front” will be defeated in England. It is being defeated here, or so it seems at present. The wave of Red public opinion appears to be ebbing quite definitely in New York, where it has always been at its strongest. I feel relieved for the first time in years.

I do hope that you have begun your next book. And I shall be waiting impatiently for the time when you resume the story of the Mallory family. The point at which you left them in “Ballade in G-minor” makes it unfair to keep your readers waiting too long. It will be interesting to see what happens to Colin now.

I am sending you a copy of “Anthem,” my new novel which I mentioned to you. It came out in England about a month ago, I believe. But there has been a delay in my receiving the copies here and they did not arrive until a few days ago. Incidentally, the clippings of reviews have been lost on their way to me from England and I have no idea how the book was received.³ I have been promised duplicates and am now waiting for them. I shall be most anxious to hear your opinion of this book.⁴

At present, I am working on my next novel — the very big one about American architects. For the last few months I have been wracking my brain and nerves upon the preliminary outline. It is always the hardest part of the work for me — and my particular kind of torture. Now it is done, finished, every chapter outlined—and there are eighty of them at present! The actual writing of it is now before me, but I would rather write ten chapters than plan one. So the worst of it is over.

I received a very charming letter from Princess [Marina] Chavchavadze. As she did not tell me her address, would you be so kind as to give her for me my regards and my gratitude for the kind things she said about “We the Living.”

My husband joins me in sending you our best wishes.

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To Leonard Read (November 30, 1945)

Leonard Read (1898–1983) was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education. He was general manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce when Rand met him (via Isabel Paterson). The meeting took place in late 1943, when Read arranged a dinner for some pro-free enterprisers (mostly businessmen and attorneys) to meet Rand. In her biographical interviews, she reported that at the dinner “were twelve men, and I was the thirteenth, and the only woman. And we had a round table. And I met all the best conservatives there.” That seems to be a major impetus in Rand’s involvement with leaders of the “conservative” movement, a movement with which she eventually became disillusioned. In 1961, she commented that Read “was much more — how would I put it — intellectual and idealistic then than he is now. And, for a long time, both Isabel Paterson and I regarded him as the hopeful rising conservative of a practical, but intellectual kind. Which he lost totally once he went on his own.” Based on her daily calendars, her last socializing with Read seems to have been in 1951.

Dear Leonard:

Thank you for your letter. I am sorry that we didn’t have a chance to see you again before we left New York. If you come to the Coast again on one of your flying trips, do let us know and try to give us an evening if possible.

I didn’t have any extra copies of “The Fountainhead,” but I got one here in town, have autographed it and am sending it to your friends, as you requested. The enclosed buck is your change — you sent four dollars and the book cost only $3.00. The postage is something like 7 cents, so I’ll contribute that.

Thanks for the copy of Rose Wilder Lane’s book reviews. I appreciate very much her note on my book. Yes, she has done a very good job on Bastiat and she is an excellent reviewer.

You asked where to get “We the Living.” It’s out of print. I have only my own single copy left. But I’m sending you, under separate cover, a copy of the English edition. It’s the same as the American edition, except that my love scenes have been slightly censored, unfortunately.

Let me know if anything of interest is happening among our conservatives. It seemed awfully dull and disappointing to me, what I saw of their activities in New York.

My trip east has done me a lot of good — I feel rested and reconciled to California for a while. But I’ll always miss New York and I’ll always love it better than any place on earth.

With best regards from both of us,

Sincerely,

On December 28, 1945, Read replied, “I am only partly through [We the Living], but what a book!”

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To Linda Lynneberg (February 21, 1948)

Rand met Linda Lynneberg when she came to work under Rand as a volunteer researcher during Wendell Willkie’s 1940 presidential campaign. They became friends, and Rand employed her as a typist in the early 1950s. In her biographical interviews, Rand said that Lynneberg got converted to Catholicism under Isabel Paterson’s influence and was “almost wrecked by it.” Nevertheless, Rand was still socializing with Lynneberg as late as 1975.

Dear Linda:

You are quite right, if I don’t write letters it’s because the book has been going along wonderfully. But thank you for your letters and for all the clippings and information about oil. I haven’t read all the booklets yet, but I believe it is just the kind of stuff I need.

I was very startled to hear about the existence of a Miss Ann Taggart. Now all you have to do is find Mr. Wesley Mouch for me. (I am afraid, however, that the Mouches are all around us everywhere.)

I hope you like the cigarette holder. I couldn’t get you a silver one in this shape. The silver ones were shorter and stubbier; I think they are intended for men. So I decided to buy the same kind I had. I hope the color will remind you of me.

No special news about us, except that I have been working on the novel very well indeed. I had to be interrupted this week with a lot of other business, such as the Italian movie of WE THE LIVING, which I ran for some of my friends and for which I am still negotiating a settlement. Also, you may have read in the papers that Warner Bros. are starting now on the production of THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Nobody is set for the cast yet — except Gary Cooper. Do you remember our meeting with him? I am certainly delighted about this, since of all the big name stars, he is my choice for Roark. The director is to be King Vidor. I have not met him yet, but I understand he is a conservative, at least he was a member of M.P.A. at one time, so I’m glad about that.

I have taken some time off to write to Pat and couldn’t do it in less than five single-spaced pages. I had a wonderful letter from her in answer, and believe it or not, I answered back, too. When Pat is in a good mood, she is like quicksand, completely irresistible, so maybe I shall become a good correspondent.

We had some terribly cold nights, and our moats were frozen solid, but I think spring is coming now. I am looking for your Texas bluebonnets, but so far they have not appeared yet.

The enclosed ad was discovered by Frank in a Valley paper. He thought you’d be pleased to see it. I think your sense of humor and his are very much alike.

I hope that your business will pick up and that you’ll feel better than you sounded in your last letter. I enjoyed your visit here so much that I hope you will come back before you return to New York. Incidentally, Teresa is back with us and everything is going along wonderfully, and the house is really comfortable and well run now.

Love from both of us,

P.S. I am sending this to your Tulsa address because I could not decipher the one you gave me for Oklahoma City. Your handwriting is as bad as mine. I hope this reaches you.

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To Hal Wallis (January 6, 1950)

From 1944 to 1949, Rand was a screenwriter for Hal Wallis (1898–1986), producer of Casablanca and many other famous films. Under Wallis, she wrote the screenplay for Love Letters (1945) and unproduced scripts of “The Crying Sisters” and “House of Mist.” Although she generally liked working with Wallis she became disappointed with the stories he was producing and disappointed in him personally when she discovered that their project for a film about the atom bomb (working title “Top Secret”) was merely a ploy by Wallis for him to sell the story rights to MGM, which was producing The Beginning or the End (1947). However, although she considered him a second-hander (in the Peter Keating sense) as a producer, she said in her biographical interviews in 1961 that “he was a very nice person, as a person, pleasant to deal with,” and they continued on friendly relations.

Dear Boss:

This is to thank you formally for your lovely present. It was such a nice gesture on your part that you broke my heart with kindness — a thing you have always known how to do. I was happy to know that you still remembered me. I hope you know that I will always think of you with respect and admiration.

Thank you for the past and the present, and all my best wishes to you for a Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

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To Lorine Pruette (April 28, 1950)

Lorine Pruette (1896–1977) was a well-known writer, psychoanalyst and feminist. In 1943, she reviewed The Fountainhead for the New York Times, a review that Rand was especially grateful for. In her biographical interviews, Rand commented: “That really saved my universe in that period. I expected nothing like that from the Times. And it’s the only intelligent review I have really had in my whole career as far as novels are concerned.”

Dear Lorine:

Thank you for your post card. I can’t tell you how homesick it made me for New York and for the nice evening we spent with you.

I don’t know yet when I will be back East, as I am deep in work on my new novel. It’s going along wonderfully and I am very happy with it. Your rose quartz is here on my desk as reminder and inspiration.

What are you doing? Have you been writing any articles or reviews? What has happened to your proposed article about me — or is it a subject the magazines are afraid of at present? Did you ever meet Archie Ogden? He has just gone back into the publishing business and is now editor of Appleton-Century. Do let me hear from you when you have the time.

With love from both of us.

This is the last correspondence between Rand and Pruette in the Ayn Rand Archives, but Rand moved permanently to New York City in 1951, and her daily calendars show numerous dinners with Pruette from 1951 through 1958.

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To Archibald Ogden (August 25, 1950)

Archibald Ogden was Rand’s editor on The Fountainhead. His almost legendary status among Objectivists was secured when he put his job on the line, telling his employer, Bobbs-Merrill, that if The Fountainhead wasn’t the book for them, then he wasn’t the editor for them.

Archie darling:

Thank you for your letter. It is I who have to ask you to forgive me for my long delay in answering, this time. I think you know that the only valid reason which could have prevented me from writing you sooner was the work on my novel. I am just approaching the end of Part I, and I did not dare interrupt myself while I had the whole world crashing — in the novel, I mean.

I hope that you won’t be let down by hearing that I am only at the end of Part I. As you know, my speed of writing always accelerates as I approach the climax of a story, so I don’t think that it will be too long now before I finish the whole book — but I won’t even make a guess at the date, in order not to disappoint you later. Part I, however, is about two-thirds of the whole book in length. I can’t tell you how much I wish I could show you what I have written since I saw you last. I know you would be pleased. Be patient with me for taking such a long time — it is really going to be worth the waiting. As for me, I am simply crazy about the story and I am very happy with it.

Thank you for the things you said about me in your letter, about my manner of integrating ideas into a story. You and I are probably the only two people in the literary profession who understand fully how difficult and how important this is. Your remarks on the subject were one more proof to me, though I didn’t need any, that you are the one and only editor for me. I hope that sooner or later you will be my official editor in fact. You will always be my personal one in spirit.

I was delighted to hear that you are happy at being back in the publishing business. This supports what I had always expected. You were wasting your talent on the movies, and publishing is where you belong.

Who is the young man you mention in your letter, the one who admires THE FOUNTAINHEAD and is writing a novel about the steel business? Is his name Thaddeus Ashby? I strongly suspect that it is, and if so, I must warn you to be careful. Ashby is a boy whom I met here some years ago and who professed a great admiration for THE FOUNTAINHEAD. I have not been in touch with him for a long time, but I have heard that he had gone to work in a steel mill and was writing a novel. He is a young man who professes all the ideals of Roark, but practices the methods of Peter Keating, or worse. When I met him, he told me a great many things about himself, all of which turned out to be untrue. For instance, he said that he had just come from the Pacific where he had been an aviator and had been shot down twice. Later, I learned that he had been in aviation training during the war, but had never left this country. If he gave you the impression that he learned about you and the history of THE FOUNTAINHEAD in some mysterious way — then that is a typical example of his behavior. He heard all about you and the history of THE FOUNTAINHEAD — from me. If he did not tell you so, it is probably because he knows that I would not give him a good recommendation, and that he had no right to approach you in that manner, to use — without my knowledge or approval — any information which he obtained from me. I do not want to be indirectly responsible for some fraud which he might possibly have in mind against you. My impression of him is that he is intelligent, but I have my doubts about his literary talent. It is possible that he may develop, but I would be inclined to doubt whether he is yet ready to produce a good novel. If you find that you want to deal with him, I would warn you to take every legal precaution that might be necessary. For instance, I would not advise you to give him any advance or commitment on unfinished work.

Let me know the name of the novel which is your own choice on your fall list — I would like to read it. No, do not send me a free copy — I want to have the privilege of buying and supporting any novel which is your choice. If I were a collectivist, I would be jealous of any writer you select, but since I am an individualist who believes that there is no clash of interest among people and that any talent is a help, not a threat, to another talent, I will wish you to discover a whole list of your own writers, all of them good. In fact, I wish you a whole harem of them. But, of course, being selfish, I want to be the wife No. 1. And being conceited, I am not afraid of competition for that title.

With best regards to both of you from both of us — and all my love to you,

Rand and Ogden remained friends until 1967, when Ogden submitted an introduction to the novel’s 25th anniversary edition, an introduction that Rand considered inappropriate. Her lengthy letter to him (pages 643–46 in Letters of Ayn Rand) concluded, “I must tell you frankly that I do not think it will be possible for you to write an Introduction which would be acceptable to me . . . . I will not attempt to tell you how sad and painful this is for me.”

Ayn Rand Letters: Nonfiction and Activism (1941 – 1961)

This is the third of four installments featuring previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, novels, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

This third group of unpublished material contains twelve letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• Gloria Swanson (February 3, 1941)
• DeWitt M. Emery (September 23, 1941)
• Edward A. Rumely (December 8, 1943)
• DeWitt Wallace (December 8, 1943)
• Leonard Read (April 16, 1946)
• Leonard Read (July 17, 1946)
• Alan Collins (August 19, 1946)
• Ev Suffens (August 30, 1946)
• Edna Lonigan (January 29, 1949)
• Edna Lonigan (February 12, 1949)
• Hedda Hopper (November 9, 1950)
• Editor, Commercial & Financial Chronicle (May 26, 1961)

What follows is the text of each letter with accompanying remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.¹

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To Gloria Swanson (February 3, 1941)

Ayn Rand met Gloria Swanson (1899–1983) during Wendell Willkie’s 1940 campaign for president and, during the last week of the doomed campaign, answered questions in a Manhattan movie studio converted into an auditorium and rented by Swanson for use in the campaign. “Of all the speakers who came to talk there and share the podium with me, the most memorable by far was Ayn Rand, who had a fascinating mind and held audiences spellbound,” wrote Swanson in her autobiography, Swanson on Swanson. Rand’s copy of the letter exists only in handwritten pencil.

Dear Miss Swanson,

I have just heard from Mr. Joseph Kamp that you are back in New York, and I am writing to thank you for the picture you sent me, for remembering my request and for the lovely way in which you granted it.⁵

Your picture is the only remembrance of the campaign that will remain with me. And working with you is my nicest memory of the whole campaign. I do hope that you have recovered a little from the disappointment which we all felt. I am not sure that I have quite recovered — or ever will. But then, I’ve always been like an elephant — and now I am beginning to realize what a sad load an elephant must be carrying through life.

With my gratitude and sincere admiration for you — since my days in Russia⁶ — to the present — and always —

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To DeWitt M. Emery (September 23, 1941)

DeWitt Emery (1882–1958) was founder of the National Small Business Men’s Association and the Small Business Economic Foundation (whose purpose was to explain to workers the advantages of the free-enterprise system). In her biographical interviews, Ayn Rand said that Emery was “a very outspoken free-enterpriser at the time. Since then, he’s become a compromiser.”

Two days before Rand’s letter below, Emery had written a note to her about a booklet that was designed to promote a proposed individualist organization, requesting that she “read and return [it] with your comments.” Also, dated the same day (September 23) as her letter, is a telegram from Emery: “Need your suggestions for revising booklet can you mail today.”

Dear Mr. Emery:

If I tell you that it is now 5 a.m. and I have just finished typing my version of the booklet which I am enclosing — you will forgive me for my delay in sending you the material I promised.

Not only did I have one of my busiest weeks, with heavy rush assignments from the studio, but I had to hunt for a new apartment and to make arrangements for moving day after tomorrow. I thought that you wanted the outline of the organization first, so I had not worked on the booklet until today — I only had a general idea of what I wanted to do with it. When I got your wire, I had to make arrangements with the studio to give me the day off. I hope that I have not inconvenienced you too much by the delay and that this will reach you in time.

I re-typed the whole thing — using parts of your version and substituting others. I hope that I have not departed too far from what you wanted. I made an outline of what I thought was the aim and purpose of the booklet — then stated it in my own way. I hope that it will meet with your approval — but you know that I am always open to and grateful for criticism.

I know that you will see for yourself what reasons prompted me to make such changes as I made. But if you want my written criticism of the booklet’s original version — for any possible discussion with your colleagues — I will state it here briefly:

1. There is a glaring, dangerous, unresolved contradiction between the opening of the booklet — the statement that national defense is destroying small business — and the later declaration that “the unconditional building of an impregnable defense” is the first aim of the NSBMA. As long as the defense situation is being used as the basis of the booklet’s whole appeal — our attitude towards it has to be stated unequivocably, beyond any un-patriotic suspicion and to the advantage of our cause.
2. Page 12 of booklet: Defense should not be placed as the first aim of a business men’s organization. It sounds false. If a prospective member is interested chiefly and primarily in defense — he will go to the U.S.O. or some such place.
3. Page 12. If an amateur like me may be permitted to be very emphatic about anything — I shall be so about the point of “labor’s rights” and “collective bargaining” being placed as one of the three sole, cardinal aims of a business men’s organization. Why, in the name of heaven, must we do that? Can’t we be considered respectable in defending our own rights and concerns without having to proclaim ourselves as champions of labor’s rights? For that noble purpose there’s the C.I.O. It is doing quite well. And I don’t see any declarations about protecting the rights of business men in its pamphlets. If that point was introduced into the booklet only as a sort of protection to cover the second part of the same paragraph — about “abolishing racketeering from labor unions” — it doesn’t work. It merely sounds like Willkie’s Elwood speech — and you know what that cost us. The whole subject of business men’s attitude towards labor is much too delicate. It is better not to touch it — unless we can devote to it pages and pages of full, clear-cut statement. A pious generality destroys the confidence of both labor and business men.
4. I think the printed booklet is too short. When we over-cut and over-simplify, we cannot help but be reduced to generalities. In this case, I think it is simply poor business practice. It looks as if we are trying to sell a pig in a poke. We say that we object to certain propaganda and we offer people to buy our counter-propaganda, but we never give a concrete indication of the nature of either. We say in effect that we’ll sell you “a product” — come and pay for it without asking what it is. After all, when a business man advertises an important commercial product, he puts out a long, beautiful, detailed prospectus — with fancy text and photographs. Shouldn’t ideas be sold in the same way? We must remember that people who are in a position to contribute money to our cause are still terribly bitter about the millions they poured into the Willkie campaign and the miserable results they got. I know that from the people who were connected with the Willkie Clubs. They all feel stung. Willkie, too, promised anti-government propaganda — and look at him now. That is why any mild, compromising generality reminds people too much of the barefoot boy from Indiana. Unless we can be strong, clear, positive, militant — as you were in your radio speech — nobody will trust us or follow us. Besides, take this much from an author: people would rather read twenty pages that give them some meat and hold their interest than ten pages of boiled down generalities that bore them.

Please don’t be angry at me for this criticism — and don’t tell me that I am “talking to you like to one of the masses,” as you snapped at me once. I think you know all this. I think also that you must have some “appeasers” on your board — all organizations of our side have them — and these arguments are intended for your use against them.

I shall type the outline of the organization set-up, which we discussed, this week-end and airmail it to you immediately. I am moving on Thursday evening. My new address will be:

The Bromley

139 East 35th Street

New York City

I don’t know yet what my new telephone number will be, but if you should want to reach me before I send it to you, the operator will give you the new number when you call the old one.

Please let me know what you think of my version of the booklet as soon as you find time. I shall be most anxious to hear it.

My best regards,

Sincerely,

On September 26, Emery responded that he had received her letter and turned it over to his colleague John Pratt. The only other reference in the Archives to Rand’s letter is Emery’s undated apology for not answering, “but I will.”

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To Edward A. Rumely (December 8, 1943)

Ed Rumely (1882–1964) was, according to Wikipedia, pro-Germany in World War I. He was convicted of “trading with the enemy” but was pardoned by President Coolidge. Rumely helped establish the Committee for Constitutional Government in 1941. An early supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he broke with FDR over his attempted Supreme Court “packing” plan (a term that Rumely supposedly coined).

Dear Dr. Rumely:

I am very sorry that I have unwittingly kept you waiting — but I did not arrive in Hollywood until December 5th (I stopped in Chicago for a few days) and I did not report to the Warner Brother Studios until yesterday, when your letter and wire were given to me.

The terms of the division of the $1,500 paid by Reader’s Digest for “The Only Path to Tomorrow” are acceptable to me as you suggest: $800 to me and $700 to your organization for the further distribution of the article.

I have made some changes in the proofs of the condensed article, which I am enclosing. I am enclosing also a letter to Mr. DeWitt Wallace, explaining my changes. Please read it and forward it to him. You will see why the changes were necessary. There aren’t many, but I have to insist on them. Also, please explain to Mr. Wallace the reason for my delay in answering you.

I am enclosing the copy of your letter, which I have signed — with the one added provision about the changes in the proofs of the article.

I am greatly disturbed by the fact that the proofs contain a separate box with the quotation from Wendell Willkie. The disturbing question is: will this box appear in the reprints of my article which you are ordering from the Reader’s Digest? If it does, it will look as if I am more being endorsed by or am collaborating with Mr. Willkie. There is no man in America at present to whom I am more opposed than to Mr. Willkie. I do not mind the box in the pages of a magazine, because it has no relation to me, but in the pages of a separate pamphlet, it will have. I never dreamed of a possibility of my pamphlet being issued like that and I am most anxious to prevent it. Can you have the thing reprinted without the box? If you can, please do so and save me from a most embarrassing and unhappy situation.

Thanking you for your co-operation and with my best wishes for our mutual success,

Sincerely yours,

P.S. Thank you for the books which you sent me. I appreciate it very much.

On December 16, 1941, Rumely wired Rand that the January “edition” of his newsletter had already been distributed and failure to correct the proof in time “was due partly [to] your delay” in returning the proof. However, he wrote, “Reprints can and will be adjusted in accordance with your letter and corrections.” The copy in the Archives does indeed reflect the requested changes that the Reader’s Digest ignored.

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To DeWitt Wallace (December 8, 1943)

DeWitt Wallace (1889–1981) was co-founder of Reader’s Digest in 1922. A staunch anti-Communist, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon in 1972.

Dear Mr. Wallace:

Thank you for accepting my article “The Individualist Credo,” now entitled “The Only Path to Tomorrow.” I am very glad and proud to have become a contributor to the Reader’s Digest.

I do not know whether it is considered correct in the circumstances to argue about the text of your condensation or whether one ever argues with the editor of the Reader’s Digest — but I assume that you do not want writers on such crucial subjects as politics and philosophy to sign their names to statements which are not their exact belief, so I feel sure you will not mind the few corrections I have made in the proofs.

With the exception of these few points, let me say that your condensation is excellent and I appreciate it very much.

In order not to appear arbitrary, I shall list here my reasons and explanations for each correction I made.

Page 1. The examples of totalitarian dictators I used were Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. Stalin has been eliminated in the proof. If you find it inadvisable to include Stalin at this time, then we must eliminate the whole list of examples and leave only the general statement. I do not object to that. But I object most emphatically to any mention of specific dictators which does not include Stalin. By omission and implication it amounts to saying that Stalin is not a totalitarian dictator. I would not allow this to be said in my name under any circumstances whatsoever.

In the following paragraph my definition of what constitutes the collectivist doctrine has been given an entirely different meaning. I have corrected it to read as I intended it. If you find this too strong, then cut the line out entirely and make the paragraph read: “No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. No dictator could rise if men…etc.” If you find it possible, please add the last sentence of this paragraph as I have marked it. I think it cinches the point. But I do not insist on this sentence. It is up to you. I would only be very pleased it you find it possible to include it.

Next paragraph: here I think it most important to end my sentence as marked. To say “where men deal with one another as equals” is a generality to which even a communist could subscribe. The whole point of my statement is the end of the sentence: “in voluntary, unregulated exchange.” Since individualism is my whole theme, religion and mission in life, you can understand why I want to give the best definition I can, and why I do not want to sound as if, at the most crucial point, I got away with a mere generality.

Page 2. My statement on what we must reject as total evil has been given an entirely different meaning. As the statement stands in the proof, it amounts to my saying that I would tolerate the abolition of individual rights if it really served the common good, but that I object to it only because it doesn’t. This is not my belief at all. In fact, this is the point on which our entire conservative side has ruined its stand. My belief is that I would not tolerate such an abolition for any cause and in any circumstances whatsoever. This is the heart of my whole article. Therefore, the statement must read as I marked it. By putting the words “common good” in quotes, we will avoid the impression which I believe your editors had in mind or were afraid of when they changed this sentence.

The other cut I made on this page is merely a suggestion to save you space. I notice that the article runs over and you need some cuts.

Page 3. The line: “when the Active is destroyed, the Passive can no longer be cared for” sounds as if I advocate that the Passive must be cared for, that it is our duty. I do not, when I say, as I marked, “the Passive cannot survive” it is a simple statement of fact, without altruistic implications.

In the next paragraph, the line: “There is no other way to help him in the long run” is inexact. There is no other way to help him in any run, long or short. Who but the Active can ever help anyone in any way?

In the same paragraph, I would like very much to add the final sentence, which I marked, about the extermination of the Active in a collectivist society. I think it clinches the point. But I leave this to your discretion. If you prefer to omit that sentence, do so. In this case, I don’t insist.

But the line about “the savage’s whole existence” (at bottom of page) must be kept as I marked it. Here again the meaning has been changed. It is incorrect to say that savages are ruled by their leaders; they are not; they are ruled by tribal laws and customs which also bind the leaders. It is my point that leaders usurp power. It is my point that the attempt to make all existence public and subject to communal laws or decrees is a reversion to savagery.

In the marginal note of my biography (Page 1), somebody gave you some wrong information. I came to this country in 1926, not 1931. My play “Night of January 16th” ran on Broadway for seven months, not three years. It was a good run, but not that good. I would rather not list my novel “Anthem” because it has not been published in this country, only in England. Above all — and this is most important to me — I would like my novel “The Fountainhead” described as “a novel on individualism.” I am asking this merely as a favor. If a reader likes my article and knows that my novel deals with the same subject, he would want to read the novel. This was my main purpose in selling this article to the Committee for Constitutional Government — to publicize the theme of my novel. So it is most important to me that this note appear in the article and its reprints. If you find it possible to do this — I would be extremely grateful.

Thanking you again for your acceptance,

Sincerely yours,

The Ayn Rand Archives contains no response from Wallace regarding Rand’s changes, and, despite the importance of her changes, the published version does not reflect those changes. In her biographical interviews, Rand mentions the Reader’s Digest reprint but makes no reference to their editing. The reprint by the Committee for Constitutional Government (see letter above) does reflect Rand’s changes, as does the reprint in The Ayn Rand Column.

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To Leonard Read (April 16, 1946)

Leonard Read (1898–1983) was a leading free-enterpriser and founder of the Foundation for Economic Education. This is one of many letters (and probably in-person discussions) in which Rand critiqued Read’s writing and thinking. Both she and Read even referred to her as his “loyal ghost.” Although she considered Read to be the best of the young right-wing intellectuals, she clearly had to exercise considerable patience to explain some fundamental errors.

Dear Leonard:

Thank you for your letter of April 9th, for the ANTHEM contract and for “The Road to Serfdom,” which I have received.

I have sent the completed version of ANTHEM to Miss Lindley.⁷ Can you tell me when we can expect to have galley proofs of it and approximately when you plan to have it out?

I am enclosing “The Scope of Economics and of Economic Education.” I have read it very carefully and to tell you the truth I find it completely confusing; I cannot quite figure out its point or purpose. It either contains too much or not enough. If it’s intended as a defense of capitalism, it’s not enough. If it’s intended as a prospectus for your educational program, it should not contain arguments, it sounds too much on the defensive; it should then contain nothing but statements.

The dictionary definition of economics, which you give on page 1, is clear and valid as its stands. So I don’t see the point of the elaboration that follows. I fail to see the purpose of the argument that to economize means to use to best advantage, therefore economics concerns only free men. This is not a good argument and will not hold. By this very definition, collectivists will claim that the best choice men can make is to let a central planning board plan all their economic activities, using everyone to best advantage, eliminating waste, duplication etc. In fact, this is just what the collectivists do claim; society as a single collective, they say, functions much more economically than a group of free, competing individuals; they call this last “economic chaos.” Of course, we’ll say that this isn’t true, that collectivism doesn’t accomplish any of its claims and that free enterprise is the only system that works to man’s best advantage. Then it becomes, or remains, an argument about the merits of two economics systems. The above definition accomplishes nothing; it can be claimed by both systems as a starting point for argument.

If you look up my long letter to you about economic education, you will see why I consider the last paragraph on page 2 of this article extremely wrong. This paragraph proposes, in effect, to teach freedom and independence by teaching economics. This can’t be done.

Page 3 of the article contains the truly dangerous confusion. To refer to burglary as an economic, though misdirected, activity is really to rob definitions of all meaning. Burglary comes under the head of “crime.” “Criminal activity” and “Economic activity” are two distinct conceptions. You may prove, and rightly, that the rulers of totalitarian economies engage in criminal activities, that their policies belong in the class of criminal violence. But you cannot say that a common burglar is engaged in economic activity. Yet this is what you do say, in a sentence such as: “Burglary may be an economic activity for a few successful and unpunished burglars.” This is really talking communist dialectics and adding to the present day idea that “all terms are relative.”

I have already mentioned to you my most emphatic objection to the use of the word “anti-social.” You know my reasons for this. The same applies to the implications of such phrases as “from the point of view of all concerned.”

What religious sanctions do you refer to in the first paragraph of page 3, as aiding economic violence? This is a question, not yet an objection. I don’t know what is meant here.

Why do you say — paragraph 2, page 3 — that Communism etc. restrict the economic opportunity “for at least a part of the citizenry?” Which part of the citizenry is not restricted under Communism? Do you mean to imply that Commissars have freedom of enterprise?

If you tell me what this article in intended to accomplish and to whom it is directed, I may be more helpful with positive suggestions on how to rewrite it.

Incidentally, since you’ve moved, will you give me your new address? I hope this will reach you.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

On April 19, Read answered Rand’s letter, suggesting that they discuss her points “personally.” He did, however, write that he tried to “rationalize” the definition of “economics” and hoped that she would have thought that “sensible.” But he said that he would edit out the “common good” wordage. The “long letter” to which Rand refers was her seven-page letter of February 2, 1946, in which she argues that “the mistake is in the very name” of his organization (Foundation for Economic Education) because what’s needed is philosophic not economic education. See Letters of Ayn Rand, pages 256–62.

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To Leonard Read (July 17, 1946)

Dear Leonard:

Thank you for your nice letter. I was certainly glad to hear of my popularity in the Read family. Please give my personal thanks to your son, Jim — but you must tell me just what he said in his introduction of me. Writers and women are notoriously curious; so you are making me suffer on both counts. Also, I would like to know what quotation you selected from Roark’s speech for your office. It is one of the few places where I wouldn’t mind seeing a quotation from Roark.⁸

Yesterday, I received the first copy of ANTHEM. It looks wonderful, and I was thrilled to see it.

I am enclosing the list you asked for, of the people to whom it might be advisable to send copies of ANTHEM. As you will notice, I have two lists — one of those to whom we might send a copy of the book, and the other one of people to whom I would send only the advertising leaflet, and who might want to buy a copy themselves. Some of the names on these lists are probably on your own mailing list and some are subscribers to The Freeman; so please have that checked, in order not to send out two copies to the same persons.

There are seven free copies which I would like to send out myself to the following people: Hal Wallis, Henry Blanke, Cecil deMille, Walt Disney, the Readers Digest, William Randolph Hearst and Lorine Pruette. If you will send me these seven copies, I will mail them out myself with a personal letter.

There is a question in my mind in regard to Lorine Pruette, which I mentioned to you when you were here. She is the reviewer who gave a grand review to THE FOUNTAINHEAD in the New York Times book section. If you remember, you wanted to ask Henry Hazlitt to review ANTHEM for the Times. I think it would be wonderful if he could do it, but if he can’t, please ask him whether it would be permissible for me to send a copy of the book to Miss Pruette and have her ask the book editor to let her review it. If such a procedure is permitted on the Times, I would like to ask her to do it. Let me know what Henry says about this, and if I can’t ask Miss Pruette to review the book, I will just send it to her for her own reading.

I am enclosing the first two issues of The Vigil which contain my TEXTBOOK OF AMERICANISM. I have asked The Vigil to put you on their mailing list, but I am not sure that they have attended to it. Please let me know whether you have already received these copies.

Now, about your speech, DEALING WITH COLLECTIVISM, which you sent me. I read it with interest, and I don’t think it is bad at all. In fact, it is quite good and accomplishes its purpose very tactfully. I like particularly the fact that you stressed the words “individualism” and “collectivism” often enough and in the right places.

But I found one startling instance of giving our case away — which was surprising from you. This was the second paragraph on Page 5: “No true lover of liberty will admit that there is another side to the case. He may admit that he does not know how to accomplish everything by voluntary methods, but his thinking will be aimed at finding out. He knows that coercion is destructive except when it is used as police force to prevent interferences with personal liberty.”

The second sentence of this paragraph is a blatant denial of the first. It is an admission that there are things which we should accomplish, and which can be accomplished by coercion, but not by voluntary methods. What are these things? There is not a single issue, objective or purpose — and I mean none whatever — which is desirable but cannot be accomplished by voluntary methods. If anyone presents you with an objective which you cannot accomplish by voluntary methods, it merely means that it should not be accomplished at all, that the objective itself is evil and improper. I cannot imagine what you had in mind when you wrote that sentence. If, as an example, you meant some such objective as how to insure permanent prosperity to everybody, the answer is that it cannot be done and should not be attempted. Any objective which cannot be achieved voluntarily is a self-contradictory proposition, a request for the impossible.

That sentence in your speech is an admission that coercive methods work sometimes for good purposes and with good results. Surely, you do not believe that. If you do, it is a loophole through which a collectivist can destroy your whole case. Once you grant him that some proper objective can be accomplished by force, the rest of the argument becomes merely a squabble over which objectives you or he will consider proper. You have granted him his premise.

Please let me know what you had in mind. I am worried about this, because it is the first breach I have seen in your intellectual armor. If you are not clear on this point, I would like to discuss it further, as my first job in the position of your “loyal ghost.”

Also, the last sentence of your paragraph which I quoted is extremely inaccurate and bad in its implications. You describe the police power of the government as the power of coercion, and you place it in the same category as any other coercion exercised by a government. That is not correct. What the government does in regard to criminals is not coercion; it is not an action, but a reaction; the use of force to answer force. The use of force here is not initiated by the government but by the criminal. Therefore, it is not the same thing (and does not rest on the same principle) as the action of a government initiating the use of force for some “social” purpose of its own.

I cover this very point in the second installment of my TEXTBOOK OF AMERICANISM. I would suggest that you read very carefully my questions #7 and #8. I think the definitions I give there cover the case — and it is extremely important for our side not to mix the proper police powers of the government with its usurped powers of economic coercion. This is a crucial point which collectivists are using to the hilt; one of their most frequent arguments goes like this: “If the government has the right to seize criminals, it also has the right to seize you.” We must not help them spread that kind of confusion.

There are two other points to which I object in your speech. On page 7, you mention as your aim: “Encouragement, including financial assistance, when necessary, to those scholars who are competent to produce such fundamental works as The Wealth of Nations, The Federalist Papers,” etc. This sentence sounds a bit naive. Such works as “The Wealth of Nations” or “The Federalist Papers” are achievements of genius, which is rare in any century, and they cannot be produced to order, just through financial assistance to scholars. I suggest that you say, instead, that you would like to provide financial assistance to scholars who can produce important works. That is the best any organization can hope to accomplish. Also, in the same paragraph. I would suggest that you do not quote Friedrich Hayek. I believe you agreed with me as to the dangerous weaknesses of his book which are viciously destructive to our cause. Therefore, I would not help to publicize his book.

The last sentence of this paragraph, to the effect that the support of the intellectuals can be regained “only as their devotion and understanding are re-won” is quite a dubious sentence, because it seems to imply that this devotion is to be re-won by financial assistance, that is, in plain language, by a bribe. I am sure you did not want to give that impression.

On page 8, fourth paragraph from the bottom, I object to your sentence: “I have almost a mystic faith in what can be accomplished by pursuing a course of utter and complete honesty — .” This sentence implies the confession that the speaker does not believe in reason as the final and most powerful argument in support of the ideas he advocates. It implies that he considers mystic faith a more convincing basis for the truth of his ideas. I am sure that few of your listeners would realize this, but what I am concerned with here is your own attitude. Unless, you are convinced, firmly, unquestionably, totally, completely and absolutely, in your own mind and for your own purposes, that REASON, not mystic faith, is the proper basis for all human actions and convictions, you will not be able to achieve for yourself a clear and consistent philosophy of life. The issue of rationalism versus anti-rationalism is a much more profound one than that of individualism versus collectivism. In fact, the first issue is the root of the second. I could write volumes on this particular point — and intend to do it some day. For the moment, I hope that you will understand this and agree with me. If not, I will have to attempt to write you a longer treatise on this.

Please let me know whether I have convinced you in regard to these objections or not. I take my duties of “ghost” very seriously, and want to be sure that they are bearing fruit.

With best regards.

Sincerely,

Read answered Rand’s letter on July 19, 1946. He wrote that he agreed “wholly” with her criticisms re “points no. 7 and 8” (unidentified), and he admitted to some “careless writing,” “but that’s all.” Read also agreed with her comment about Hayek and said that he had already changed “mystic faith” to “proposed faith.” But he defended himself against her charge that he was “giving our case away.” He was, he wrote, referring to people who want to support liberty but don’t know how, not implying that coercion might be a legitimate option.

As to Rand’s request that Read contact Lorine Pruette to write a review of Anthem, Read wrote that he would — but if he did, it was too late. Pruette wrote to Rand that she did want to review that book (calling it a “brilliant and heartening conception”), but the New York Times had already assigned another reviewer before Pruette offered herself. For Rand’s letters to Pruette about this issue, see Letters of Ayn Rand, pages 314, 330 and 336.

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To Alan Collins (August 19, 1946)

Alan Collins (1904–68) was Rand’s agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 1943 until his death in 1968. Beginning with the publishing of We the Living, Rand had long experience dealing with leftists in the book, film and theater worlds. We the Living had the misfortune to appear in the midst of the pro-Soviet “Red Decade,” when the New York publishing company staffs included Communist Party members, including Macmillan’s Granville Hicks, who tried unsuccessfully to prevent Macmillan from publishing the novel. As a consequence, she was particularly sensitive to the perils of navigating through those worlds. Herman Shumlin, the focus of this letter, was a highly successful theatrical producer and director whose Broadway hits include Inherit the Wind and Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes. His lengthy obituary in the New York Times includes this relevant and somewhat euphemistic characterization: “A crusty perfectionist who was a passionate political liberal, Mr. Shumlin had a strong sense of social commitment.”

The politically-tinged disagreement between Rand and Collins, evident in the letter below, was not the only such dispute between the two. One month later, Collins advised her not to join the American Writers Association because it was headed by “rabid reactionaries” Eugene Lyons and John T. Flynn. She replied that “the only thing I have against Flynn and Lyons is that they aren’t ‘reactionary’ enough.” (See Letters of Ayn Rand at page 327.)

Dear Alan:

Thank you for your letter of August 14th.

Yes, I know that there are damn few people connected with the theatre who are not pink or pinkish. This merely means that our field is limited, and that we can submit IDEAL only to a small group among theatrical producers. If we do not find the right man among that group, we must not try any further. It is useless even to consider the others. For my purposes they do not exist, nor are they in the theatrical business. Realistically speaking, they are in the propaganda business.

I have had to go through exactly the same situation in relation to publishers and THE FOUNTAINHEAD. The problem is only to find one man of taste and intelligence who would be to the theatrical equivalent of Archie Ogden. That is all I need. The more pink junk is being produced, the better chance there is for somebody to make a great hit with a serious play which is not pink. There is a growing audience for that in the theatre, just as there was among novel readers.

As to Herman Shumlin, you have unwittingly caused me some embarrassment by submitting IDEAL to him. I have never met the “gink,” but apparently he knows about me and has gone out of his way to be nasty, because he has made it a point to “smear” me and my work both to Warner Bros., when I was with them, and to Hal Wallis, when I went to work for him. This has been reported to me from both places. So you see what a bad position you put me in, when Shumlin finds that I am submitting a play to him.

Therefore, I would appreciate very much if you will tell him just exactly what you said in your letter: that you sent the script to him “with your tongue in your cheek” and without my knowledge; and that I objected to it, when I heard about it. I don’t actually care too much what people like Shumlin think, but since you gave him the impression that I am seeking his favor or support, I think you should correct that impression. I would appreciate it very much, just to keep the record clear.

Sincerely,

The Rand-Collins correspondence in the Archives contains no further reference to this issue.

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To Ev Suffens (August 30, 1946)

Ev Suffens was the stage name of Raymond Nelson, host of Midnight Jamboree, a classical music program on WEVD radio in New York City. Under his real name, he had an advertising business and taught at City College of New York. The O’Connors were big fans of Suffens. Rand made musical requests and in April 1936 sent him a fan letter addressed to “Dear Announcer” (see pages 26–27 in Letters of Ayn Rand), one of six letters to him reprinted in Letters of Ayn Rand. Shortly after her first letter, she inscribed a copy of We the Living to him as “my favorite radio announcer.” She and Frank owned two stuffed lions named Oscar and Oswald after characters on Suffens’s program, and the lions were like family pets. The O’Connors and the Suffenses became friends, as shown by the twenty-one calendar entries (mostly dinners) between 1943 (the earliest Rand daily calendar available) and 1952.

Dear Ev:

Sorry to have taken longer to answer this time. I didn’t know I would cause so much trouble in regard to the television rights to NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH.

I had forgotten all about the movie strings attached, so I have been trying to get them for you from the west coast front office. They have now asked me to ask you to write me an official letter, stating all the pertinent details of your proposed broadcast, such as: who will do it, what station, when and where, at whose expense — and particularly, is it a strictly experimental performance or a commercial one with a sponsor, and if so, who? I am then to send that letter to the Paramount officials, with a request from me that they grant you permission for this broadcast. I think they will do it, but I can’t be sure, because any legal matter or rights is always extremely complicated at the studios. Anyway, send me the letter, and I will try my best.

No, I don’t do my troweling in a floppy hat. I do it in a checkered shirt and shorts. If you saw me in that costume, I don’t think it would strain a beautiful friendship, but quite the opposite. At least, I hope so.

As to my new novel, I have just finished my final outline, and will start on the actual writing any moment. Can’t tell you much about it in a few words — but if THE FOUNTAINHEAD was a kind of a bombshell, wait until you read this one!

It looks as if we won’t be able to come to New York this time. I don’t like California any better than I did, but I am now so busy that I haven’t time to notice it. Still, I do miss New York, and I intend to come there to celebrate the new novel as soon as I can, which I hope will be next year.

Here is an idea that I wanted to consult you about — I am not sure I will do it, but let me know what you think of it. A small group of my conservative friends here, known as The Pamphleteers, who publish political non-fiction booklets, are publishing an American edition of my novelette, ANTHEM. If you remember, that is the one that was published only in England. They intend to sell it as a paper covered booklet in the regular book channels. Of course, they have to start it on a very small scale with very little advertising, but they hope that it will grow on the strength of my name. Would you undertake to handle a publicity campaign for it? I realize that publicity and advertising are two different mediums, but would you be interested in trying it? If so, what would you charge us, and what would be your general idea of a campaign? Let me know your ideas on the subject. I know that your ideas of salesmanship are about like mine — the dramatic and the different, so I thought you might be the ideal man for it, if we decide to have a publicity campaign.

Best regards from the two of us to the three of you. (And from Oscar and Oswald, too)

Sincerely,

Suffens responded by setting out the difficulties of getting backing for a television production, despite his having major clients such as Sears, Roebuck. He continued that he would “like to do” the publicity for Anthem and that “the fashionable shade of red is a much more subdued one than it was in the days when you first started singing in the wilderness.” Neither project came to fruition.

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To Edna Lonigan (January 29, 1949)

Edna Lonigan was a well-known conservative writer on economics and politics. She was a member of the board of directors and was secretary of the American Writers Association, which, according to Wikipedia, was “formed as a response to the ‘Cain Plan,’ a proposal put forth by the novelist and screenwriter James M. Cain. In July 1946, Cain proposed that an “American Authors’ Authority” be created to act as a central repository for copyrights and to negotiate collectively for authors to give them greater bargaining power. The AWA successfully opposed this plan.

Rand was on the AWA letterhead as a member of the National Committee from at least September 1947 and was elected to the board of directors in November 1949. Other board members included Morrie Ryskind, Fred Niblo and perennial Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas.

In a March 1949 letter to Rand, Lonigan wrote of Rand’s House Un-American Activities Committee testimony: “Your courageous, positive, beautifully clear statements fill me with joy.”

The Archives contains no letters to Rand from Lonigan that are specific responses to Rand’s letters below.

Dear Miss Lonigan:

Thank you very much for your letter of January 24.

I shall be glad to help the Association in any way I can with the plan to fight the Authors League’s defense of the ten Hollywood writers convicted of contempt of Congress.

If our Association plans to submit a brief to the Court in the case of these ten, I would like very much to see a copy of it before it is released officially and publicly. I think all the members of the Board should have a copy and a chance to make suggestions before it is released in our name.

My concern here is that the brief must be written most carefully so that it contain no sentences and no implication, direct or indirect, that we advocate any sort of Government censorship of ideas. You may remember my concern last year when I was in New York over the unfortunate stand taken by the Hearst papers at the time, when they tried to use the Hollywood hearings as a justification for establishing a Federal censorship of the movies. That is what the Reds accuse all conservatives of doing or trying to do — and we must be very sure not to give them any foothold to justify such an accusation.

I am enclosing a few suggestions for what I think should be our official stand on this question. Would you show it to the persons who will write the brief? I hope that they may find it of some help or value.⁹

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Edna Lonigan (February 12, 1949)

Dear Miss Lonigan:

Thank you for your report on the Board Meeting of January 27.

In regard to the three proposed versions of a possible amendment to the By-Laws of the Association, barring Communist as members, I want to place on record my approval of the first version, the one proposed by Louis Waldman, and my most emphatic opposition to the other two versions, those of John T. Flynn and Morris Markey.

Mr. Waldman’s version is clear-cut, objective and covers the issue completely. The other two versions are so inexact, self-contradictory and controversial that they do not constitute a definition of any kind.

I could not subscribe to Mr. Flynn’s version, because it confuses private boycotts with government censorship. I believe, for instance, that every member of our Association has a perfect right, and a moral duty, to boycott the DAILY WORKER.

Mr. Markey’s version would make it necessary for me to resign from the Association and necessary for the Association to expel me, because I most emphatically do not believe that the philosophy set forth in the Constitution of the United States is a “Democratic philosophy,” and I do not hold a “Democratic” philosophy, if one uses that word correctly. Nowadays, the word “Democratic,” like the word “liberal,” has lost all specific, objective meaning. It has become a rubber word which every person stretches to mean whatever he wishes it to mean. But since we are an organization of writers, we, above all people, should use words in their exact meaning. Historically and philosophically, a democratic philosophy means a belief in unlimited majority rule (total rule by the majority, unlimited by any individual rights). This is not the philosophy on which the Constitution was based. The United States is a Republic, not a Democracy. If proof is needed, here is a quotation from THE FEDERALIST:

“Such democracies (pure democracies) have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security of the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

And what does Mr. Markey mean when he states that we should all believe “the philosophy set forth in the Constitution of the United States and its Amendments”? Does he believe the Eighteenth Amendment? I don’t.¹⁰

I would appreciate it very much if you would read this letter at the next meeting of the Board when the proposed amendments are discussed.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Hedda Hopper (November 9, 1950)

Hedda Hopper (1885–1966) was a famous Hollywood gossip columnist and staunch anti-Communist. In her September 1957 column in the New York Daily News, Hopper referred to Rand as “one of the finest American citizens I know.”

Dear Hedda:

In case you have not seen it yet, here is the first copy of “The Freeman,” the new magazine of our side. I call your attention particularly to the statement of policy on p. 5 — “The Faith of the Freeman.” I think this magazine is the best thing that has happened among us “revolutionaries” in a long time.

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday.¹¹

Sincerely,

The Archives contains no letter in response to Rand’s letter.

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To Editor, Commercial & Financial Chronicle (May 26, 1961)

The Commercial & Financial Chronicle was a weekly business newspaper, founded in 1865 and modeled on The Economist. Never nearing the circulation of the Wall Street Journal, it ceased operation in 1987.

Dear Sir:

In the May 4, 1961 issue of The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, there appeared a review, by Mr. John Dutton, of my book FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND.¹² I wish to register my emphatic objection to Mr. Dutton’s literary procedure which I find incomprehensible: for some reason or motive unknown to me, about half of the review consists of statements attributed to me and presented in quotation marks, statements which I have never made and which are not contained in my book nor in anything else I have ever written.

The review consists of three columns of print. In paragraph 3, column 1, Mr. Dutton quotes a passage which, except for minor misprints, does come from my book FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL. In the next paragraph, Mr. Dutton takes parts of sentences which appear in different parts of my book, but which he puts together, without the customary dots or ellipsis, into a single, embarrassingly unintelligible passage.

Thereafter, all the passages purporting to be quotations from my book do not contain a single sentence written by me (paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 5 of column 2, and paragraphs 1, 2 of column 3) and do not correspond to anything in my book. These passages are not condensations or paraphrases, they are Mr. Dutton’s own editorializing improvisations on political themes, never seen by me before, yet presented in quotation marks. And the intention to pass them off as my words is emphasized by such inserts as “And Ayn Rand asks:” followed by long paragraphs that are not mine and that bear no resemblance to any writing, language or thought-sequence of mine.

I must state that the appallingly superficial, journalistic character of the ideas which Mr. Dutton attributes to me has no place in a book on philosophy and that my book does not deal with journalistic topics and is not written in journalistic terms. Some of those allegedly quoted passages contain Mr. Dutton’s own applications of my abstract ideas to currents events, and some contain the exact opposite of my ideas. What I am primarily concerned with is the fact that Mr. Dutton’s has permitted himself to paste my name or, in effect, my signature, on his own writing, without my knowledge and permission (a permission I would never grant to anyone) — and that his writing is far below the standard I have set for myself.

Since I have always maintained that ideas must be treated with the same scrupulous precision as financial matters or legal documents, and since I take an enormous amount of time, effort and thought on the formulation of my ideas, Mr. Dutton’s action is extremely embarrassing to me and damaging to my professional reputation. In as much as your newspaper is known for its accuracy and reliability, I feel certain that you will want to correct a misrepresentation of that kind.

I wish to state, for the record, that none of the quotations attributed to me in Mr. Dutton’s review are mine (with the exception of the first one, as noted above) — and that they are not my method of approach, nor my level of thinking, nor my kind of writing.

Sincerely,

P.S. Please print in full.

On June 15, 1961, the newspaper published “With Apologies To Ayn Rand” by John Dutton, which stated: “My column in the May 4 issue was based on Ayn Rand’s book entitled “FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND,” published by Random House. Owing to the erroneous use of quotation marks in some instances, what were actually the views of this columnist appeared in print as being specific quotations from Miss Rand’s book. This error is particularly to be regretted in light of the fact that in certain socio-economic areas touched on in my column, my own thinking and philosophy is not shared by Miss Rand.”¹³

Ayn Rand Letters: Fiction (1935 – 1980)

This is the second of four installments featuring previously unpublished Ayn Rand letters selected by Michael S. Berliner, editor of Letters of Ayn Rand. A total of forty letters have been divided into four groups for publication, according to general subject matter: Hollywood, fiction, nonfiction (including political activism), and more personal correspondence.

“While recently writing the complete finding aid to the Ayn Rand Papers, I noted some interesting letters that I hadn’t selected for the Letters book,” Berliner says. “Now, more than twenty years later, these letters struck me as meriting a wider audience. These unpublished letters were selected because of their insight into some particular topic or some aspect of Ayn Rand’s life, or, more often, as further evidence of how her mind worked on a variety of matters.

“I’d always been impressed by the care she took with non-philosophical issues and relatively trivial matters, and this mind-set comes across in virtually all of her correspondence. For a variety of reasons, she was not a ‘casual’ letter writer but always took great care to write with great precision on matters that today are usually relegated to a quick, unpunctuated tweet. For an explanation of her non-casual approach, see my preface to Letters of Ayn Rand on page xvi.”

This second group of unpublished letters contains fourteen letters addressed to the following individuals on the dates listed:

• A. H. Woods (October 17, 1935)
• Newman Flower (June 3, 1936)
• Channing Pollock (December 10, 1941)
• D. L. Chambers (February 14, 1944)
• Alan Collins (February 15, 1946)
• Ann Watkins (March 29, 1946)
• Ruth Meilandt (July 11, 1946)
• Ruth Meilandt (August 5, 1946)
• Alan Collins (August 6, 1946)
• Gerald Loeb (July 31, 1947)
• John L. B. Williams (December 13, 1947)
• Pincus Berner (April 3, 1948)
• Rosemary York (September 4, 1948)
• Jeannie Cornuelle (April 19, 1980)

What follows is an introduction by Berliner to this installment, followed by the text of each letter with remarks from Berliner (always in italics) supplying necessary context.¹

Please note:

• The letters published in this series are letters and not formal statements of Ayn Rand’s philosophic positions written for publication. Consequently, they should not be taken as definitive, and the reader should not ex­aggerate the importance of (a) possible ambiguities caused by her using informal rather than more precise language or (b) seeming conflicts with her published views. In all cases, her published statements are definitive.
• Photos, images, captions and footnotes are not part of Ayn Rand’s letters unless otherwise noted.
• These letters, owned by Leonard Peikoff, are part of Ayn Rand Papers collection. Their reproduction here is courtesy of the Ayn Rand Archives. The Ayn Rand Institute extends its warm appreciation to Leonard Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Archives, and also to Clarisa M. Randazzo, the volunteer who carefully transcribed all of the newly published Ayn Rand letters from the originals.

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The following fourteen letters concern Ayn Rand’s fiction output. Spread over forty-five years, these are among many dozens of her letters that illustrate the care she took with all aspects of her writing career — from advertising to cover art, from theatrical casting to book distribution and legal contracts.

To A. H. Woods (October 17, 1935)

H. (Al) Woods (1870–1951) was the producer of Night of January 16th on Broadway. Of his 142 Broadway plays, January 16th was his 136th. The first production of Ayn Rand’s play was in 1934 in Hollywood, under the title Woman on Trial, and was produced by E. E. Clive and starred Barbara Bedford (#13 on Rand’s Soviet-era list of favorite actresses). The play was then purchased by Woods and had a 29-week run on Broadway beginning September 16, 1935, one month before the letter below was written. Although the play provided significant income and induced Rand and her husband to move to New York City for the first time, it was not a pleasurable experience for her, because it was beset by actors who didn’t understand their lines, constant disputes with Woods over script and casting changes, pointless experiments and, finally, legal arbitration (won by Rand) over unpaid royalties. One such casting dispute is the subject of this letter to Woods. Rand was partly responding to an October 15 letter from Woods, in which he argued that Bakewell was good for the part, adding that “my judgment might be just a little bit better than yours.”

Dear Mr. Woods,

In reply to your letter of October 15th, I must state that I find it impossible to agree to the choice of Mr. William Bakewell for the part of “Guts Regan.” Since you went to some length in explaining your reasons for this choice, I must explain in detail my reasons for refusing to approve Mr. Bakewell in that part.

As I have stated in my letter of October 14th, I find Mr. Bakewell much too young for the part. Mr. Bakewell’s personality is that of a meek, harmless, wholesome high-school child and this is the type of part which he has played on the screen. His personality would not allow him to play even the part of a small-time gangster, merely a member of a gang. But when it comes to playing a man who, as “Guts Regan,” is the head of a gang and, more than that, the head of the underworld in New York City, the Public Enemy #1 with a price of $25,000 on his head — well, you must grant me that it becomes dangerously near to being ludicrous. Not only is Mr. Bakewell’s personality unsuited to the part, but he actually looks about eighteen years old. It may not be his real age, but that is the impression he gives on the stage. How a man under twenty could be accepted as an underworld dictator is more than I can understand.

You quote the instance of Miss Nolan and remind me that she, too, was too young for her part. Aside from the fact that this is quite irrelevant and that I shall discuss it later in fuller detail, I would like to remind you at this point that Miss Nolan does not look her age. I have heard people who saw the play voice the opinion that Miss Nolan was thirty. She is a good enough actress to conceal her youth. Unfortunately, Mr. Bakewell looks younger than his probable age, and the juvenile quality of his personality is carried into his voice, his stage manner and his whole performance, which I found thoroughly unsatisfactory. Furthermore, while we could “fake” on Miss Nolan’s age by omitting from the play the fact that she had been employed as a secretary for ten years, there is no possible way to cover up, soften or explain how a boy of eighteen became the leader of the underworld and was entrusted with the responsibility of assisting the foremost world financier in his most dangerous plot.

You said in your letter that you want “a man with some refinement and romance.” I can see absolutely no romantic quality in Mr. Bakewell and he has never, to my knowledge, played romantic characters on the screen. He has played juveniles of the “young brother” or “son” type, not lovers. You claim that Mr. Bakewell’s picture work may be an asset to him on the stage. I find that it will be a detriment, since he has always been associated in the public mind with the type of part I have described above, if we are to suppose that his name is sufficiently known to the public. However, I am inclined to think that any following he may have is hardly prominent enough to be considered as a box office attraction.

I may remind you that the Minimum Basic Agreement calls for “a first class production with a first class cast.” Mr. Bakewell has, evidently, never appeared on the professional stage, since he has just joined the Actors’ Equity Association, as I was informed. Being a beginner, as far as the stage is concerned, he can hardly be considered as a first-class stage actor.

You complain in your letter that I did not notify you of my disapproval for Mr. Bakewell before his seven days try-out period had elapsed. I have had no notice of any kind when Mr. Bakewell started rehearsing. I do not know now the date on which he was engaged. I do hope that this notice was not omitted intentionally to provide for an emergency such as this. The rehearsal which I attended with you and to which you refer in your letter of October 15th, took place not “about a week ago,” as you state, but on Friday, October 11th. I had not been notified even about that rehearsal, but happened to see, by chance, an announcement of it on the wall back stage, at the Ambassador Theater. You left that rehearsal before it was finished and I had no chance to speak you, nor did you ask me for my opinion. However, on the following day, Saturday, October 12th, I telephoned to you at your office and tried to make an appointment to see you. You refused the appointment and asked me what I wanted to see you about. When I stated that I wanted to discuss the cast, you answered that the cast pleased you, which was all that was necessary. I attempted to explain that I wanted to discuss Mr. Bakewell and give you my opinion of his performance. You hung up the receiver in the middle of my sentence without letting me finish my statement. You have yourself mentioned this episode to a person who has since repeated it before witnesses. However, I am sure that you will not attempt to deny this. On Monday, October 14th, I sent you a letter by messenger in order to avoid delay, stating my formal complaint. As you see, I have tried my best to settle the matter as quickly as possible.

May I also remind you that you have repeated persistently and on numerous occasions your claim that I had no say whatever about the casting of my play, that you would cast anyone you wished whether such persons met with my approval or not. On the few occasions when you agreed to discuss the cast with me, it was done after many most unpleasant arguments. May I remind you that, foreseeing a situation such as this, I came to your office at the time when you were first casting my play, before rehearsals started, and brought to your attention the fact that Mr. Pidgeon had been signed for another play and would not be able to remain with our company longer than the first few weeks. I suggested then that we agree on an actor to replace Mr. Pidgeon, in order not to hold up the play later, when Mr. Pidgeon would be forced to leave. Do I have to remind you that your answer was much less than polite and that you gave me to understand I was transgressing my rights as an author? This is in spite of the fact that our contract states clearly my right to approve of any and all members of the cast.

You have held to the letter of that contract and I have had to comply, no matter how difficult it has been at times. May I ask how you intend me to be bound by a contract while you do not intend to be bound by it? You must realize that if you allow an actor to appear on the stage in my play, disregarding my formal objection to that actor, you will break the Minimum Basic Agreement which we have both signed.

Quoting from your letter, I find that you make the following statement: “It is strange that you should pick out two people, Mr. Shayne and Mr. Conway, and suggest them for the part. I suppose those are the only two actors you know, owing to the fact that you have seen them both.” I do not see just what can be strange about it nor what does the fact of how many actors I had seen have to do with the case. I suggested Mr. Conway and Mr. Shayne because they are the only two actors I know who are familiar with the part and who could step into the play after one rehearsal. I believe I made this clear in my letter when I suggested them.

You state that you are sure Mr. Bakewell “will give a better performance than either of the two gentlemen you named.” How can you know it when, to my knowledge, you have never given either Mr. Conway or Mr. Shayne a chance to read the part for you? On the other hand, I have seen Mr. Bakewell rehearse the part and I have seen Mr. Conway play it in Hollywood, so I have the grounds necessary to make a comparison. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say that Mr. Conway’s performance was so superior to Mr. Bakewell’s that there can be no comparison.

As to Mr. Shayne, I have never said that he was the only weak link in our cast, as you claim I have. It is true that I have never been pleased with his performance in the part of the Defense Attorney, for the main reason that I found him too young for that part. If you remember, it was my first objection to him when I first met him as a prospective “Defense Attorney.” During the rehearsals that followed, I expressed my opinion to you and to Mr. Hayden, on several occasions, stating that I feared Mr. Shayne would not be satisfactory in the part. You assured me most emphatically that Mr. Shayne would improve with rehearsing and that he would be excellent in actual performance. You told me that you had seen him in another play and that he had been magnificent. Owing only to the fact that I trusted your judgment, I made no formal, definite objection and allowed Mr. Shayne to remain in the part. You know the consequences. You found it necessary to dismiss Mr. Shayne and replace him with Mr. Tucker, without any suggestion from me.

If you find that Mr. Shayne does not have weight enough for the part of “Guts Regan,” how can you possibly consider that Mr. Bakewell has it? Of the two, doesn’t Mr. Shayne have the infinitely stronger, more forceful, more mature personality? I am still convinced that Mr. Shayne is a good actor in a part to which he is suited, and your own opinion of his performance in another play supports my conviction. I believe that he could be satisfactory in the part of “Guts Regan,” and I do think that it would be worthwhile at least to allow him a reading of that part, if you are sincerely anxious to find an actor to replace Mr. Pidgeon on short notice, an actor who would be acceptable to both of us. The same consideration applies to Mr. Conway.

Coming back to the subject of Miss Nolan, I must state that I was surprised by your presentation of the facts in your letter. You claim that I wanted her out of the cast. I had never wanted that and the best proof of it is that Miss Nolan is in the cast and that I never made any formal complaint against her, as I am doing now against Mr. Bakewell. During the first week of rehearsals, I did feel dubious about Miss Nolan’s ability to handle the part of “Karen Andre,” but I told you, as well as Mr. Hayden, that I was willing to let her go on with the rehearsals, since I felt that she showed great promise and I saw a definite chance of her coming up to our expectations, with proper coaching. This she did accomplish and I was one of the first to express my enthusiasm for her excellent work. As you know, I was not the only one to doubt her ability to handle the part, at first. You yourself have told me that she was not adequate during her first rehearsals; and Mr. Shubert was ready to have her replaced, since he brought several prominent actresses to witness the rehearsals, for the purpose of offering them the part of “Karen Andre.” Had I had a definite objection against Miss Nolan, I could have taken advantage of the situation then and insisted on her dismissal. I did not to do it, because I felt that she would improve, as I had stated repeatedly. While Miss Nolan may be too young for her part in real life, she does not show it on the stage and I have not objected to her stage appearance. I cannot say this of Mr. Bakewell, since he does appear hopelessly boyish.

As to your statement that I can thank Miss Nolan for whatever success my play has had up to the present time, I do not think that you believe this yourself. I have seen no reviews to that effect nor have I heard anyone voice that opinion. Without casting any reflection on Miss Nolan’s excellent work, I must say that all the reviews attributed the possible success of my play to the idea of a jury drawn from the audience. The publicity stories which came from your own office have all stressed that jury angle and publicized it as the main novelty and attraction of the play. So why make unfair statements which lead us nowhere?

Referring to your letter further, I find that you mention and seem to resent my attitude toward Mr. Harland Tucker. I do not see what that can possibly have to do with the case. Furthermore, although I would not have selected Mr. Tucker as my idea of the type needed for the part of the Defense Attorney, I have not objected to his playing the part, since his acting is adequate. I do not recall discussing Mr. Tucker with any actors back stage and I am perfectly certain that I have never suggested him for the part of the “Doctor.”

And, finally, I do not doubt your ability to pick unknown talent nor the fact that you have discovered many great stars in the past. But, as you say in your letter, we can all make mistakes. If the casting of Mr. Shayne as the Defense Attorney was a mistake on your part, I am afraid that you are about commit a much graver mistake by allowing Mr. Bakewell to play “Guts Regan.” Mr. Shayne at his worst has never been as unsuited to the part of the “Defense Attorney” as Mr. Bakewell is to that of “Guts Regan.”

As you see, I have gone to great lengths in order to point out to you all the details of my complaint and to prove to you that this complaint is not unreasonable. I am very anxious to settle this matter in an amicable manner, if you will allow me to do so. However, your attitude on the question of casting has left me no choice but to demand an arbitration. I am sending today an application for arbitration on this question to the Dramatists’ Guild, along with a copy of this letter. You realize that if you allow Mr. Bakewell, over my objection, actually to perform in my play beginning Monday, October 21st, it may entitle me to claim a breach of our contract. I do hope that we can still avoid it.

If you can find another actor for the part of Regan, acceptable to both of us, please let me know so that the arbitration proceedings may be stopped. I hope that we will be able to agree on another actor, for we still have the time.

Sincerely yours,

On the same day as the letter above, Rand wrote to the Dramatists’ Guild requesting arbitration. But the next day, Rand withdrew her application for arbitration, stating that “Mr. Woods and I have reached an agreement.” The terms of that agreement are not known, but Bakewell continued to appear as “Guts” Regan until the play closed in April of 1936. Rand later commented: “I almost had an arbitration with him over a replacement for Walter Pidgeon during the last months or so of the play [during its preview in Philadelphia], when [Pidgeon] went to Hollywood. But it wasn’t worth it.” Because Pidgeon had the role of Regan in out-of-town tryouts and for the first month on Broadway, reviews of the play do not mention Bakewell. Bakewell’s reminiscences, Hollywood Be Thy Name, make no mention of the issue of his casting.

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To Newman Flower (June 3, 1936)

Newman Flower (1879–1964) was the proprietor of the publishing house Cassell & Co., which published We the Living, Anthem and The Fountainhead in the United Kingdom. Flower is best known for publishing Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and The Second World War. After receiving a copy of the U.S. edition of We the Living, Flower wrote to Rand on April 14, 1936: “I think this is a magnificent piece of work, and one of the finest first novels I have ever read in my life . . . . I am looking forward to seeing you one of the best most successful novelists on Cassell’s list.” Rand’s letter below is in response to a May 11, 1936, letter from Flower in which his specific suggestions were preceded by a more general explanation: “I will be very grateful if you will make one or two modifications in the proofs which I enclose, or else allow the penciled alternations to stand. The reason is this: the principal book buyer in this country is Boot’s Library. In America one can be more frank in a book than here because, if there is too much frankness, Boot’s will not take the book. This means the loss of the biggest customer.”

Dear Mr. Flower,

Thank you for your letter and the suggestions of changes in the galleys of my book.

I am perfectly willing to make the changes suggested, for I consider the somewhat too frank love passages as the least important ones in the book and I certainly would not want to let them handicap the novel as a whole or detract any possible buyers from it.

I do approve of the changes made and I have marked them on each galley with my initials.

On gallery 51, I have no objection whatever to substituting “stove” for “Primus” if there is the slightest danger of a libel suit.

In regard to galley 63, your editor was quite correct in saying that a “Primus” is lighted with spirit first. That is the proper way to light it, but spirit was so expensive in Russia at the time that everyone had to use kerosene instead, which added to the discomfort of using a “Primus.” I have inserted a few words of explanation to that effect; if you consider it advisable you may keep the insertion in the text; if not — please omit it.

On galley 42, I made an additional cut of three lines which may be considered objectionable. You may keep the lines in, if you find it safe, or eliminate them if it is preferable.

On galley 39, in the most objectionable scene of the book, I cut out the entire ending of the scene. I think you will agree with me that it is better to do so. The only importance of the scene is the psychology of Kira’s surrender in a cold, tense, matter-of-fact manner, without the usual sentimental love-making. I have kept enough of the scene to suggest this. The rest — the description of physical details — is not really important. Particularly if the strongest lines are cut out of the last paragraphs, the remaining lines have very little meaning, since they do not even create a definite mood. So I think it is best to omit these last paragraphs entirely. It will be safer and the story as such will not suffer from the omission.

If you find any other passages that arouse doubt on the same grounds as the above, please let me know and I shall be glad to adjust them. Of course I will want to see the suggested changes before they are printed and I would appreciate it if you would send them to me in advance, as the ones we have made so far. I would also appreciate it very much if you would send me the galleys when they are ready, for there were a few mistakes in the American galleys, which were corrected later and which the proofreader may not be able to catch.

If I am free in September when the book comes out, I shall be delighted to come to London. Until then, please let me know if you need any further information or pictures of me for publicity. I am collecting all the reviews on my book which are still coming in and I shall send then to you in a few days.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

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To Channing Pollock (December 10, 1941)

Channing Pollock (1880–1946) was a successful Broadway writer, responsible for such shows as the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911, 1915 and 1921 and other plays, many of which were turned into films. In the early 1940s, he and Rand attempted to create what she called “The Individualist Organization” in the wake of the failed Wendell Willkie presidential campaign. In a previous letter to Rand (dated November 27, 1941), Pollock included a copy of his letter of the same date to Mrs. William Henry Hays, president of the Republican Club of New York City. In that letter, Pollock recommended Rand as a speaker, writing: “I have not heard Miss Rand speak in public, but if she can do so with any degree of the conviction and eloquence with which she speaks in private, and with which she writes, she should be one of the greatest orators of all time. I have never met anyone of more remarkable personality and individuality, or with a more burning conviction.”

Dear Mr. Pollock:

Thank you for the letter which you wrote about me to Mrs. Hays. I can only say that I shall try to deserve the recommendation you gave me. I have not heard from the Republican Club as yet, but if I should get that lecture it will not please me more than the things which you said about me.

Please forgive my delay in answering your letter. So many things have happened to me lately that I have been in a sort of whirlwind. The big event in my life is that I have just sold a novel to Bobbs-Merrill Company. It is an unfinished novel on which I have been working for a long time and which I could not finish for lack of funds. Bobbs-Merrill liked it well enough to give me an advance that will permit me to leave my job at Paramount and finish the novel. I cannot say what it means to me — to be able to return to creative writing again. I think you will understand. I am afraid I’m so happy that I’m a little dizzy. I signed the contract yesterday.

When you have the time, I should like very much to hear from you and to see you, if possible.

You asked my husband’s first name. It is Frank O’Connor.

He joins me in sending you our best regards,

Sincerely,

There is no record of Rand speaking to the Republican Club of New York City, but the collection of her daily calendars doesn’t begin until 1943.

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To D. L. Chambers (February 14, 1944)

David Laurence Chambers was president of the publishing company Bobbs-Merrill when The Fountainhead was submitted to it in 1941. Archibald Ogden, one of the company’s editors, recommended the manuscript, but Chambers rejected it. Ogden then threatened to resign, writing: “If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you.” Chambers relented, wiring Ogden: “Far be it from me to dampen such enthusiasm. Sign the contract.” In the letter below, Rand is responding to a letter from Chambers dated February 3, 1944, almost a year after the novel was published, reminding Rand of restrictions on paper quantities implemented by the War Production Board but reassuring her of “our ability to supply all orders.” Chambers’s letter also ties motion picture-induced sales to a projected paperback edition of the novel.

Dear Mr. Chambers:

Thank you for your letter of February 3rd. I am astonished that you did not understand me when I wrote about the effect of a motion picture on the sales of a novel. An important picture with a good publicity campaign gives a great boost to the sales of a novel in its regular edition. I refer you to the case of “King’s Row.”

I was and am interested only in the sale of the regular edition. I am not thinking of a popular reprint. It is much too soon for that. Of course “The Fountainhead” cannot be put out in a 25¢ Pocket Book type of edition. But if the picture helps to sell 100,000 copies of the regular edition, I will call that a big sale. A picture can do that and, in this case, I think it will.

There can be, of course, no question of paper difficulty about printing 100,000 copies of “The Fountainhead” when they become needed. Other publishers have printed 500,000 copies of books longer than mine.

I am concerned over this matter, because “The Fountainhead” was allowed to get out of print twice, last summer and fall, last time (in October) for three weeks. Each time, this happened at a crucial moment, when the demand for the books was growing, and each time the demand was killed. The worry and trouble which I was forced to take over the matter in October prevented me from working on “The Moral Basis of Individualism,” which would have been finished then but for this matter. I did not expect such a disastrous occurrence a second time.

I am counting on you to see that this does not happen again. I realize fully how it happened. It was due to the pessimism of Bobbs-Merrill, who handled the book over-cautiously, played for loss and did not expect good sales. When the sale came, they were caught short. I think we can still make up for it. But please remember the we must make up for it. I do not intend to have “The Fountainhead” as the victim of miscalculation.

War-conditions in the printing industry do not relieve you of the contractual obligation to keep my book in print in step with the demand. Since we know that everything is done slower now, we must make our calculations accordingly. It is merely a matter of ordering new printings earlier and in a larger quantity than would have been necessary in peace-time, when the exact date of delivery could be predicted.

I believe we are almost out of print now, unless you have reordered since I left New York. I am particularly concerned about the Literary Guild campaign which will help our sales. I do not want to see a break like that go to waste again. The same applies to the time when the motion picture will come out. I expect you to have the book in print, in step with and sufficiently ahead of the demand.

Referring to the last paragraph of your letter on January 28th — to the Omnibook¹⁴ matter — I must remind you that what you call a “fait accompli” was an accomplished breach of contract. Please do not expect me to accept any more breaches, of any nature, in the future.

As to “The Moral Basis of Individualism” I shall finish it as soon as I can, but I cannot give you a definite date until I have finished my work for Warner Brothers. Your suggestion that I “do something on the book each day” is entirely out of the question. First, I am not permitted to do it by my contract with Warner Brothers. Second, do you really think that a serious book on so difficult a subject can be written in snatches and in between times?

If you are concerned over the fact that the book will come out too long after the Reader’s Digest article¹⁵ — I believe I will get ten other articles out of it, to help us when the time comes. But we must finish the job on “The Fountainhead” properly, before we undertake the next one.

Sincerely yours,

In a four-page response on February 22, 1944, Chambers addressed Rand’s various points in some detail, showing how seriously they were taken at Bobbs-Merrill. He concluded his letter by assuring Rand that “The Fountainhead has at all times had the devoted interest, the wholehearted support of our entire organization. It deserved it.”

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To Alan Collins (February 15, 1946)

Alan Collins (1904–68) was Rand’s literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 1943 until his death in 1968. That agency still handles her books. The letter below was in response to Collins’s letter of February 1, 1946, in which he conveyed the offer of Denver Lindley that “if he liked the new book [Atlas Shrugged], they [Appleton-Century] would be willing to put up an advance of $75,000 and a guarantee of somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000 for advertising.”

Dear Alan:

I am very much impressed by Denver Lindley’s offer and shall keep it in mind. However, it’s entirely premature. I have not started the writing of my next novel and won’t be able to start until I finish my six months at the studio. I merely have the outline of the novel ready in my mind. Wonder where Lindley got the idea that it was nearly finished.

I shall think of this offer whenever I feel like getting conceited about my own value. In the meantime, I’m glad that the novel has already earned two cocktails for you. Drink to it once in a while — I’ll need it.

Sincerely,

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To Ann Watkins (March 29, 1946)

Ann Watkins (1886–1967) was Rand’s literary agent beginning in 1935, although by the time of this letter, Alan Collins of Curtis Brown Ltd. was taking over most of Rand’s works. The Watkins agency still exists under the name Watkins/Loomis. Anthem was first published in 1938, by Cassell in the United Kingdom. The first American edition, a significant revision of the Cassell edition, is the one discussed in the letter below; it first appeared as the Vol. III, no. 1, issue of The Freeman. The Pamphleteers edition was taken over by Caxton Printers in 1953 and then by New American Library in 1961.

Dear Ann:

I have made a deal to have ANTHEM published as a pamphlet by Pamphleteers, Inc., an organization which publishes political booklets and which is run by some prominent California men who are friends of mine.

They sell their publications mainly through private orders and mailing lists — but they will also sell to bookstores, if they get requests for it. I have found out from a lawyer that I can take out a copyright on a revised version of ANTHEM. This will not stop anyone from using the original version as public domain, but it will protect the new version and will serve as a sort of “psychological” protection for the old one.

I am doing this in order to have ANTHEM issued in proper form in America — rather than have it suddenly appear in a pulp magazine. After that, if anyone still wants to print it without permission, it won’t be quite so bad.

Will you draw up a contract for this deal and mail it to me? I will get it signed and send a copy back to you. I presume we will need three copies made.

The name of the organization is: PAMPHLETEERS, INC., 725 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles 15, California.

The terms on which we agreed are as follows:

I grant them the right to publish a revised version of ANTHEM in booklet form.

If there are any second serial rights, such as requests from magazines for reprints, as a result of this publication, the money derived from such rights is to be divided equally between Pamphleteers, Inc. and me. The sale of such second serial rights is entirely up to me. They cannot authorize reprints without my consent.

All other rights are reserved to and by me.

Pamphleteers, Inc. are to pay me ten percent (10%) of all their gross receipts from the sale of this booklet, after the first 5,000 copies.

No changes of any kind whatsoever are to be made in the text of the booklet without my consent.

The copyright is to be taken out in their name (but to be owned by me — in the same manner as when a regular publisher takes out a copyright on a book in his own name.)

All advertising copy which they use for the booklet must have my approval.

(The first 5,000 copies are to be royalty free, because a great part of this number is given away free and the organization gets no profit until after this figure. My royalties are to be computed, not on the retail price of the booklet, but on their gross receipts, because their selling price varies according to the size of the order. We have not discussed the dates when they are to give me an accounting — I suppose it should be twice a year, as with regular publishers. They will send the accounting and the checks to you.)

These are the terms we have agreed upon. I’d like you to draw it up into a regular contract stated in proper legal terms. If there are any points which we have overlooked and which should be covered in the contract, please include them in the same way and on the same terms as they are in a contract with a regular publisher. Please let me know if there is any other important condition which I should discuss with them and include in the contract.

I am now revising the copy — and they will go into print as soon as I am ready. I would appreciate it very much if you would send me these contracts as soon as conveniently possible.

What is happening with Famous Fantastic Mysteries?¹⁶ We don’t, of course, have to inform them about this deal. I’d like to beat them to the publication, if possible.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Ruth Meilandt (July 11, 1946)

Ruth Meilandt, a manager at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, was one of the six “Pamphleteers” (who included Leonard Read) who comprised Pamphleteers, Inc., and handled much of the organization’s business matters.

Dear Miss Meilandt:

Thank you for the sketches of covers for ANTHEM, which you sent me.

The cover I have selected is sketch #6, but with an adaptation of my own which I am enclosing. I think #6 is the best for design, but I object very strongly to the drawing of the Grecian torch; it is much too conventional. What I would like to see in its place is the drawing of a flame, as I have indicated on my attempted version. To get the effect I have in mind (which would be excellent for the story and in keeping with it), I would like it to be the drawing of a stylized wind-blown flame — not a realistic conventional one. If the artist can do that, I think it would be very good. Also, I would urge very strongly that the oval be a single line, not too heavy, and that the letters of that title be drawn sharp and straight, not rounded as the artist has suggested. This makes the appearance of the jacket much stronger.

I do not care for sketch #5, because it is too crowded, because the odd lettering of the word ANTHEM makes it illegible at first glance, and because the torch is too conventional.

In order to have the cover right and not regret it afterwards, I would like very much to see the artist’s sketch of my suggestion before a cut is made from it. I will return it to you promptly.

I would also like to see a proof of the little advertising leaflet which Mr. Ingebretsen sent me.

As to the inquiry you received about purchasing a copy of WE THE LIVING, please tell the gentleman that the book is out of print now, and he can get a copy only by advertising for a second-hand one; or he may still find it in the public library.

Sincerely,

Meilandt responded two days later that Rand would shortly receive a revised sketch. The published edition replaced the drawing of the Grecian torch with a flame, as Rand recommended.

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To Ruth Meilandt (August 5, 1946)

Dear Miss Meilandt:

I am sorry if I seem to be giving you difficulties, but since you wanted the cover of ANTHEM to please me, I must tell you my true opinion, which is: that the change in lettering has practically ruined the appearance of the cover. It has thrown it out of balance, and the narrow lettering does not stand out as the original lettering on the drawing would have.

If changing this now will involve too much trouble and delay, I suppose you will have to let it go as it is. If it is still possible to change it, I would like you to have the lines within the oval hand-lettered in the kind of bold letters you had before. Since we have spent this much time on the cover, I would like very much to have it right and not to spoil it by a detail of this nature. Please charge the cost of the alterations and of the new lettering to me. I will be glad to bear this cost, as I think it is worth it.

Sincerely,

On August 16, 1946, Meilandt responded that she will send Rand “a photostat of the finished sketch for your approval.” And on August 19, 1946, Rand replied that “the revised cover which you sent me . . . looks fine now, and I am looking forward to getting the finished copies of the book.”

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To Alan Collins (August 6, 1946)

This letter is part of extensive correspondence between Rand, Collins and Ross Baker (sales manager of Bobbs-Merrill’s trade book department) regarding royalties.

Dear Alan:

Thank you for your letters of July 24th. I am sorry that you did not corner Ross Baker with the only question I wanted answered, which was: why did they not consult me before they made sales in the open market?¹⁷ They have never answered this, and all the rest of their explanations are completely irrelevant.

At present they are making me lose the open market sales entirely, since they will not even negotiate about this market, and since they take the position that I must not only accept their arbitrary conditions, but also accept their right to have taken this market without permission. Unless I do so, I cannot have the book sold on the open market, and since I will not do so, they are now responsible for a direct financial loss to me, through a method of doing business which comes awfully close to blackmail or high pressure. I will leave it up to you as to whether you will permit this to go on or not. I should think that this much can be settled without going to court. As for the rest, I will consult an attorney about it.

I may come to New York later this fall and settle this in person, but I do wish you could save me some of the trouble.

As to IDEAL, I was shocked to hear that you had submitted it to Shumlin.¹⁸ I am sorry that I did not warn you against doing this. Please make it a matter of irrevocable policy in the future not to send any work of mine to any producer or publisher known as a Communist. Do not send IDEAL to any producer who has an established pink reputation, such as the following: Oscar Serlin, Shepherd Traube, Orson Welles, the Playwrights’ Company or any left-overs of the Group Theatre. I do not know all of the current crop of red producers, but I will leave it up to your judgement to inquire about them and not to submit my play to those whom you find to be pink. Please be as careful about this as you possibly can. You must surely realize that those people will never produce anything of mine — nor would I let them produce it.

Sincerely yours,

On August 14, 1946, Collins responded that he thought Bobbs-Merrill “were doing you a good turn by selling” in the open market. He also told Rand that he had sent the script of “Ideal” to Shumlin “with tongue in cheek, for I wanted to see, in the light of his political prejudice, what his reaction to such a forthright script would be. Unfortunately, he sent it back without comment.”

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To Gerald Loeb (July 31, 1947)

Gerald Loeb (1899–1974) was a founding partner of the stock brokerage firm E.F. Hutton & Co. Rand and Loeb had a lengthy correspondence between 1943 and 1949, during which period her daily calendars list numerous meetings and dinners with him.

Dear Gerald:

Thank you very much for your many notes and letters to which I owe you an answer. I am late as usual, but you know me by now and you will forgive me.

First, I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your last visit here and meeting Rose. I am glad you wrote that she likes me, because I liked her very much and I think you will be very happy together. All my best wishes again for both of you.

I had a very nice letter from your mother in which she mentioned that you were to send us the photographs which she took of us here. This is just a reminder to tell you that we would like very much to have them.

I was interested to see the little pamphlet by Mr. E. F. Hutton and his ad in the New York Herald Tribune. The ad particularly is excellent. Mr. Hutton is obviously sincere about the fight, and I should like to meet him when I come to New York or if he over comes to the West Coast.¹⁹ I am glad you sent him a copy of ANTHEM. Let me know what he thought of it. Do you think I should send him some copies of my articles on Americanism in THE VIGIL, the Motion Picture Alliance magazine? I believe they could be helpful to him.

Now as to the letter from Miss Jean Dalrymple,²⁰ even though she paid some nice compliments to my writing, I wish you had not sent the letter to me, because it is a rather offensive letter, though I am sure she did not intend it as that. She says that she “certainly could be of assistance in having Miss Rand turn out a tremendous theater work.” Gerald, darling, you surely know me well enough by now to know that I do not write with anybody’s assistance. When and if I decide that I want to write a new play, I will write it. I have never undertaken a piece of writing on somebody’s suggestion, advice or prodding. When I come to New York I would be glad to meet Miss Dalrymple, but only on condition that she give up any idea of moulding me like some writer from P M.²¹

I have no special news about myself, except that I am working on my new novel, am enjoying it tremendously and it is going very well. I don’t know as yet when I will have it finished, but I know that I will not be able to come to New York this fall. So I am looking forward to seeing you and Rose here when you come west.

Best regards from both of us to both of you,

Sincerely,

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To John L. B. Williams (December 13, 1947)

John L. B. Williams (1892–1972) was an editor at Bobbs-Merrill.

Dear Mr. Williams:

Thank you ever so much for the copy of WE THE LIVING which you obtained for me. I was delighted to get it. I am enclosing my check for it. If you find that you can get any additional copies, I will be happy to have them.²²

I will not attempt to tell you what a wonderful time I had riding in the engine of the Twentieth Century. It was the greatest experience I ever had.²³ I guess I will save the description of it for my novel. I am back at work on it, and it is going well.

Thank you for the nice luncheons we had in New York. I am looking forward already to my next trip there.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Pincus Berner (April 3, 1948)

Pincus Berner (1899–1961) was Ayn Rand’s attorney, beginning with an arbitration in 1935 against producer Al Woods regarding Night of January 16th. The subject of the letter below is what Rand termed the “Banyai Case.” Shortly after the end of World War II, George and Tommy Banyai, without Rand’s permission, put on a French production of Night of January 16th. The lengthy dispute over royalties had already been going on for more than two years at the time of this letter to Pincus Berner. In 1949, Rand eventually sued George Banyai to recoup royalties. Rand and Berner caught him in various lies and trickery (Rand congratulated Berner “on the skill with which you pinned down the wriggling little liar”), but Banyai actually expanded productions of the play throughout Europe even while being sued for not paying royalties.

Dear Pinkie:

Thank you for your letter of March 18.

I thought I had made it clear that I would not join the French Society of Authors under any circumstances whatever. So please let us omit this from our considerations of the case.

Do you not find a peculiar discrepancy in Banyai’s attitude? You say in your letter, “I can see no point in suing Banyai in a local court. We have no figures on which to predicate the sum due you from him.” You also state that Banyai reported that the French Society has refused to give any statement or computation of the royalties accruing to me to date. Does Banyai mean to imply that he or his brother have no copies of their accounts or bookkeeping statements and no record of how much money they deposited with the French Society in my name? Why did he have to ask the Society for that account? The Society does not owe it to me — he does. Do you propose that we let him get away with that? I think you should demand, not ask, but demand an accounting from him at once.

Besides, I sent you a copy of the letter from Tommy Banyai of January 15, 1948, in which he states that the amount of my royalties at present is approximately 500,000 francs.

As you know, there is a clause in my contract with George Banyai which states that any differences arising between us are to be settled according to the laws of American courts. Therefore, I believe it would be a mistake for me to give Banyai permission to sue the French Society in my name. Such an action would amount to waiving my claim against Banyai and recognizing the jurisdiction of the French Society in this matter, which I do not recognize. My contract is with George Banyai, and my claim is against him. If he says that under French laws he is helpless against the French Society — my stand is that that is his problem, not mine, because our contract states specifically that I am not bound by French laws. Therefore, I think I must undertake a suit against him right now and in New York. It seems to me that the suit should be not merely for royalties, but for breach of contract and bad faith, and that the first demand we must take on him is to subpoena from him an accounting of the sums due me.

George Banyai has a great many activities and business connections in this country, so I believe we could attach whatever he owns or part of his salary to satisfy a judgment against him. It is my impression that he would not let matters go that far and that he would find a way to settle my claim. I don’t believe I mentioned to you that he was the representative of the French Society of Authors in Hollywood, so you can see what the situation really is.

I am not sure of the exact value of the franc by the rate that prevailed at the time my royalties became due; but as far as I can guess, the amount they owe me is probably somewhere between four and five thousand dollars. This is a sum which I believe can be collected from George Banyai in person right here.

On the grounds stated above, I would like you to institute a suit against George Banyai in New York and to ask for damages. Please let me know whether this can be done, what it involves and what would be the exact procedure to follow. Also please let me know whether you will undertake to handle it on a contingency basis or, if not, please tell me the exact sum you would charge me for handling this. You can realize why I cannot undertake this without advance knowledge of how much it will cost me.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

The outcome of Rand’s fight with the Banyais is not known. Papers in the Ayn Rand Archives indicate that Banyai did send some back royalties to Rand, but the last mention of the lawsuit is in an August 31, 1949, letter to Berner in which she implies that a motion for summary judgment was unsuccessful. Then, in the 1950s, Rand refers to Banyai’s “fraud” regarding Scandinavian rights to the play and says that his actions were “more nefarious — if that is possible” than in the French “affair.”

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To Rosemary York (September 4, 1948)

Dear Mrs. York:

Thank you for your letter of August 23rd.

I am enclosing the tipsheet which I have inscribed for Mrs. Bett Anderson.

Please tell Mrs. Anderson for me that I was delighted to hear of her request, and I am complying with real pleasure. I do remember her review of THE FOUNTAINHEAD very well indeed. It was one of the only two reviews which I really liked — the other one was Miss Lorine Pruette’s review in the NEW YORK SUNDAY TIMES. At a time when so much senseless drivel was being written about THE FOUNTAINHEAD by the majority of the reviewers, these two gave me hope that some real intelligence still existed in the world. I shall always be profoundly grateful to Mrs. Anderson for that.²⁴

The motion picture of my book is coming along beautifully, and if all goes as well as it has, I have reason to hope that it will be a great picture.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

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To Jeannie Cornuelle (April 19, 1980)

Jean Cornuelle and her family were friends of Ayn Rand and Frank O’Connor. Rand’s correspondence, primarily with Jean’s husband, Herb, began in 1950. Herb, whose business career included presidencies of Dole Pineapple and United Fruit Company, was one of the founders of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Dear Jeannie,

I was delighted to hear from you — but the reason that I did not answer you sooner is the improper request that your friend, Mr. Danks,²⁵ has imposed on you.

Mr. Danks has committed an illegal action in trying to adapt my book, Anthem. It is legally forbidden to adapt an author’s work without his/her prior permission. I categorically refuse to give such permission to Mr. Danks. I have not read his script, and I am returning it to you under separate cover.

The reason for my disapproval of Mr. Danks is that I cannot stand the thought of someone monkeying around with my material. My work means too much to me. If you remember the climax of The Fountainhead, I am sure you will understand this.

I am sorry that he has attempted to use you in such a manner — and I certainly do not hold it against you, only against Mr. Danks.

I was glad to hear about your family, although I cannot imagine you as a grandmother. I will always think of you as Dagny Taggart.

I am sorry to have to tell you that Frank died last November after a long illness.

I was glad to hear that there are “young Randians” in Hawaii. But you make a mistake in associating the Libertarians with me. They are my enemies and have nothing to do with my philosophy, except for occasional attempts to plagiarize it.

If you ever come to New York, please let me know. I would love to see you again.

With love to you and Herb — and do svidanie.²⁶

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