The Journals of Ayn Rand (111 page)

And as for those who wish to rule, who think they don’t want to work under compulsion, but want to exercise compulsion upon others to make them work—the same applies to them. If they think work can be done under compulsion, they know nothing about the nature of work. If they find it necessary to use compulsion on others, it means that they need something from those others. Well—we refuse it to them. They think they want to force their inferiors. What about us—the men of ability, their equals or superiors? Do they think they can force us? And as to those they think are inferiors, what is the standard when force is involved? If they believe that they cannot deal with a man’s intelligence, because he hasn’t any, force will not give it to him. If, by their own definition, they are the men of intelligence, what do they need from the stupid ones and what do they fear?

 

Show that Taggart’s attitude is a total dead-end, the hatred of that which he himself needs for survival, the hatred of his own gain or advantage—the
real
paradox. This has to be the advance notice of his final scene, of the full revelation that the parasite functions on the principle of death.

Cherryl’s
attitude in this scene is trust and naive admiration; she feels encouraged, uplifted that a man like Taggart finds her of interest or value; she thinks he sees something good in her.
Taggart’s
attitude toward her is contempt—contempt for a person so low as to admire
him;
yet he wants the admiration—and he knows that it can come only from someone who is low; he would fear any better sort of person. That is why he hates Cherryl’s later attempt to rise.

The paradox is that he wants her admiration to be sincere—that is what attracts him to Cherryl—he would not want the flattery and pretense of a designing gold-digger, and he would recognize that as a lie. He wants the good (sincerity) from and for an evil (from stupidity, for his rottenness)—and there is the “moral blackmail” or exploitation of the good against itself: he wants the advantage of a real virtue (sincerity) for the satisfaction of his rottenness, he wants good in the service of evil, he wants to use and hurt Cherryl by means of nothing but her own virtue, not by means of any of her bad qualities (hurt her—because it is deceit and fraud that he is putting over on her). He wants the satisfaction of a
real
admiration for virtues which he does not possess—he wants a spiritual reward, unearned—he wants the spiritual, moral “something for nothing”—and the “something” in this case has to be real, while nothing about him is.

That is why their relationship leads to tragedy. Good cannot come from evil; Cherryl’s [admiration comes] not from stupidity, but from ignorance, so Taggart’s scheme could not work; she had to begin to see the truth. Her horror is the discovery that he has a desire to keep her low, to have her rotten, not to let her improve or rise—that he loved her, not for her value, but for her rottenness, that
that
is what he saw and sought in her. She sees the horror of “love as an answer to evil,” instead of “love as an answer to value”—which is the whole essence of man’s need of love. In their marriage, what pleased him was her inferiority, which made him superior and magnanimous by comparison. He lost his interest in her when she lost her inferiority. She realizes that he wanted his “love” for her to be alms—he did not want her to deserve it, to
earn
it.
(There’s
another perverted “balance” —real “disinterested,” “rewardless” altruism—he wanted something unearned from her, and he wanted her to get something unearned from him. The reality of something
earned,
of a real virtue or a
real value
and “spiritual payment or exchange,” was intolerable to him, it smashed his whole fraudulent structure of emotions and relationships. And here is an example of Taggart’s “death principle”—he cannot tolerate any
value;
but the basis of life is search for and achievement of
values.)

In contrast to the relationship of Dagny and Rearden, James Taggart’s [feeling for] Cherryl is not love as an answer to and reward for value, but the ghastly perversion which is love as alms—love as a “looking down”—love, not for value, but for its absence—the essential pattern of any unearned love, such as “love of humanity,” love as pity, as mercy, as anything but
justice.
(Love as justice is essentially admiration—
and nothing else.)

In their subsequent meetings, James Taggart takes pleasure in stressing his unhappiness, in whining—because he knows that Cherryl cares and feels concern. She is the first person who has ever really cared about what he feels, who doesn’t want to see him suffer—so he enjoys making her suffer when he whines and complains. His motive here is an ugly, twisted mixture of sadism and, at the same time, appeal for her pity. His own feeling for her is based, in a sense, on pity—since he looks down upon her; yet, at the same time, he wants her to feel pity for him, for his suffering—which means, in effect, to look down upon him.

 

 

Have an example (later) of how Taggart uses his “Washington” power—what it consists of. Some ghastly little bureaucrat has the crucial power to decide some tremendous issue (the power is his accidentally, not intentionally, through the sheer complex stupidity of the laws and the set-up) —and he decides it in Taggart’s favor for some such consideration as a thousand dollars and a dinner at a nightclub with “important people.” The results of his decision involve billions [of dollars] of other people’s wealth, are disastrous to Rearden and to the economy of the whole country. (This may be used with regard to the moratorium on brains.)

 

 

The guilt of the creators
is that they don’t claim moral value, moral superiority, and moral sanction.

One of the causes of it
—generosity: the reluctance to rub it in, to remind the weaker ones of their weakness; the belief that the weaker ones know it anyway and are grateful; the benevolence of over-abundance, the pleasure of helping others to enjoy life; the belief that the weaker ones do enjoy life and
are
on the moral standard of loving life, ability and greatness; the living power of strength, which respects living human beings and leaps in to eliminate suffering anywhere, almost automatically.

The
result
—the creators are the ones who suffer, who permit the parasites to become their torturers, who make it possible for the parasites to destroy everything sacred to the creators, to hamper the creators’ work and function, to block the creators’ way, to destroy all the things the creators live for, to spread and commit evil, and finally to destroy the creators themselves. This is the “penalizing of virtue” and the “torture of the best by means of the best within them.” The parasites have no weapon—except the creator’s own moral virtue turned against him. May God damn every man who uses another man’s virtue to his detriment, as a means of
harming
the victim.

The proper course
—not to support or tolerate any man who is not on the creators’ moral standard. To define that standard and then follow it ruthlessly, with total consistency, in every aspect of one’s life. To make no allowances and permit oneself no pity. To give nothing
unearned
to anyone, in any form—not physical and most particularly not
spiritual.
Neither financial alms nor
undeserved
affection.
Self-interest
must be present in one’s every action.

(If Rearden has no selfish interest in Lillian, he
must
leave her; never mind what she feels or why. If Rearden does not approve of Philip’s way of living, he
must not
support him. Even if Philip were struggling to work, Rearden must not give him loans or help,
unless
it is on a real business basis, that is, unless Rearden can actually get a profit from the loan. Then it would help them both. Not otherwise. Not if Rearden does it only for Philip’s sake. This is the crime of
selflessness.
And here is the outline of the “
trader principle.
”)

Since the basis of the creators’ morality is the principle of living, they commit the greatest moral sin possible to them when they become “their own executioners,” i.e., when they furnish the means for their destroyers to destroy them.

The creators must understand the basic difference between themselves and the parasites: the creators are on the life principle, the parasites are on the principle of death. The creators’ final, overall purpose is the continuation of human life (one’s own, and, as secondary consequence,
all
human life, since there is no conflict or contradiction here); the parasite’s final, overall purpose is destruction and death
(not
a “pitiful, inept attempt to live,” which would deserve the stronger man’s help—but
actually
the intention to destroy oneself and others, to destroy everything that constitutes life, every form of pleasure and happiness first of all, and, as close second, every form of virtue, value, competence, greatness).

When the bastards preach that “virtue suffers in this world,” they do mean it, though not in the way it sounds. In
their
world, virtue does suffer and is meant to suffer—the
real
virtue, the virtue of competence; while their phony altruist virtue, of course, fails and suffers in relation to physical success—and this gives them ground for damning this earth, for considering it evil. So the result is that the truly virtuous, competent man is made to feel guilty, to feel that his success is evil, to suffer spiritually and morally—while the altruist makes a glory of his own failure and appropriates moral satisfaction (which he can’t enjoy, just the same).