The Journals of Ayn Rand (113 page)

Under a collectivist system, the basic principle is suffering and incompetence. A worker works to
contribute
something to the collective—not for his own profit, reward, or satisfaction. His boss is not supposed to make a profit. The customer is not supposed to be the man who has earned the price of the product, but the incompetent or disabled who
needs
it. The purpose of the whole society is to work for and be inspired by the incompetent and the disabled. If the goods produced are supposed to be a value—then it is suffering and incompetence (the “death qualities”) which are rewarded, not success and ability, not the “life qualities.” It’s not only that the “life qualities” are penalized; it’s that the “death qualities” are made the inspiration, goal, and motivation of the whole society.

Also, every man in such a society is a beggar, whether he earns or doesn’t earn his “share.” A worker simply gives his effort—as alms to society. Whatever he gets in return is alms given to him by society (by other workers), since he has no claim or
right
to a reward; he does not
sell
his product, he
gives
it. It is not even supposed to be his to give; he has no property rights to his product or to himself, and therefore the payment he receives is not
his
in the proper sense of a salary earned, it is a gift, a
charity
from society. (His
production
gives him no right, but his
need
does. He may demand that others take care of him, but he may not take care of himself. Failure, misery, incompetence are to his advantage and give him a claim; effort and ability give him nothing.)

Re: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
” In a
normal
human being,
need and ability are exactly balanced.
A normal man has the capacity to produce everything he needs—if he does not copy or borrow his desires from others, but stays within the bounds of his own mind, i.e., if he is not a second-hander who defines his needs or desires by envying (or wishing to impress) the men of greater ability who can produce more than he can—and if he lives in a free, capitalistic economy. (Besides, in a free, capitalistic economy the better minds help him to produce more than his own ability could produce if he were left entirely to his own devices.)

The only instance when a man’s needs exceed his ability to satisfy them is the state of illness—the sick, disabled, or insane; i.e., the abnormal.

Can society be geared to and ruled by the standards of the abnormal?
Should normal men exist for the sake of the abnormal? Should the abnormal be the goal, inspiration and
first concern
of the normal? Can healthy men live on the regime of a hospital?

(Children, of course, cannot satisfy their needs either. But
that
is what constitutes being a child, what distinguishes a child from an adult. Childhood is growth into, preparation for, adulthood—for the state of independence, i.e., a state in which one
can
satisfy one’s needs. Should society be geared to and ruled by the standards of the incomplete, the unformed, the not-yet-fully-human?)

A system which penalizes honesty and rewards dishonesty is vicious. This is what happens in the “needs” society. Assuming that the goods produced are a value (and they are, since everybody’s goal is to produce them), and assuming that all the citizens have accepted the “needs” principle as their moral code—then an honest man, trying to be an altruist-collectivist, will have to minimize his needs, demand as little as possible from society and thus be penalized, i.e., get less value; whereas a dishonest man, preaching but not practicing the general moral creed, will exaggerate his needs in every way he can, demand as much as possible from society and thus be rewarded, getting greater value the more he was able to cheat (since every “selfish” demand is cheating, i.e., is breaking the altruist principle). The better you observe this moral code, the more you suffer; the greater your break of the code, the more you are rewarded.

Now, if the person himself is not allowed to present his demands and define his own needs—
who does it?
The vote of the collective? By what standard does the collective then decide and define it? What is a “need”—beyond a cave, a bearskin and a bone to chew? And can even these be determined by others? What kind of bone, for instance?

A man with no right to demand any payment and no right to define his own needs is in a lower position than a slave or a charity ward in a poor-house, and certainly lower than an animal.

In a capitalist system, a man is not asked to sacrifice himself or penalize himself. It is
honesty
that brings rewards—the honest exercise of one’s best ability, the honest production of valuable goods. Production has to be honest—when there are no
controls
or force involved to help one man to defraud others, no way to gain anything except through demonstrated ability, voluntarily accepted by others as a
value.
The man fully living up to the principle of personal ambition, personal responsibility, and independence is the man who wins, who gets the most value. There is no foothold or loophole for the dishonest. The man who cheats, who doesn’t produce or tries to be a parasite in any manner, is defeated by the system itself.

Note for Dagny and the old worker
(who tells her about the beginning of the strike): He tells her about the terrible state of working in the “needs” system—when you hate your own effort, when you lose your self-respect by the constant pressure of the incentive to do less and less, the incentive
not to do your best.
You begin to hate all your brothers [because you] worry which one of them is going to develop new needs that will become your responsibility, your burden. You begin to hate them for every pleasure they may enjoy, you begin to meddle into their private lives, because if they break a leg it’s you who’ll suffer, who’ll have to work and pay for it; you begin to meddle into their sex lives, because if they produce more babies, it’s you who’ll have to carry the burden. You can plan nothing, count on nothing, you have no future, since you don’t know when or where someone’s need will claim your whole effort, regardless of what plans or ambition you may have had for
your own
future.

And since you do not approve of their desires or needs, you lose the incentive to work; you cannot work if the concrete result or aim of your effort is repugnant to you. And you have the nasty doubt of whether those brothers of yours
will
take care of you, in case
you
need something; you begin to suspect them and to hate them for this, too. Dependence breeds hatred—and you’re doubly dependent on them: in your aim and in your needs, in both your production and your consumption.

(If this cannot be told by the same worker, have Dagny meet some other ex-worker, who tells her this,
earlier.) (I
think this last, another worker, will be better—somewhere along her quest for the motor, but not in Chapter XI.)

More for above point:
How can you judge the
needs
of your brothers and approve or disapprove? By what standard? You would have to take the attitude that you approve without standards, merely because
this is what they want.
But by your common moral code,
they
have no moral right to want or ask anything, they cannot define their needs either. Who does it, then? The elite super mind, of course. The dictator of the collective who is “the voice of the people,” who “exists only to serve and knows what is good for them.”
This
illustrates the real motive and appeal of collectivism. This is the secret ambition of all the collectivist professors.

Altruism seeks to patch the wounds of the sick by cutting off pieces of the bodies of the healthy.

 

 

The main line of this whole part should be centered on Dagny-Rearden-Francisco. The events of economic ruin should be subordinated to their personal conflict, should be merely indicated, not presented in detail. From now on, the steps of destruction are accelerated, and also the signs of the strike, the steps of the clarification of the strikers’ purpose, motive, and philosophy.

 

 

 

Stress the
reason of everybody’s fudging and cowardice:
people know that they now have to exist by favor, not by independent work and merit. Therefore, they must not offend anyone or criticize anything, they must not make enemies, they must try to make friends of everybody, they can’t tell on whose favor they may have to depend or when, they can’t tell at whose mercy they may be in the future. They
do
know one thing: that they are now in a world of arbitrary power and undefined values, that reason, justice, merit are gone—and therefore it is dangerous to be moral, it is useless to be honest, it is more important to have “friends” than to have virtue; this is a world where
morality
is being penalized.

May 10, 1949

“So you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of ability who refused to feel guilty about it. I am the first man who would not do penance for my virtues nor allow them to be used as the tools of my own destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer martyrdom at the hands of those who were kept alive by my energy, yet who wished me to bear punishment for the privilege of saving their lives. I am the first man who did not accept—neither in weakness nor in generosity—the miserable little enticement of affection offered by liars and beggars in exchange for my lifeblood. I am the first man who told them that I did not need them—and until they learned to deal with me as traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me, as I would exist without
them;
then I would let them learn whose is the need and whose the power—and if mankind’s survival is the standard, whose terms would set the way to survive.”

 

 

Another proof of the noble nature of money is that people are able to keep it only so long as they keep their virtues—and no longer. When men become corrupt, when they compromise, when they lose their self-respect and their courage—swarms of looters rise at once to seize their wealth, and the men are unable to defend it. When their money is unearned, when they do not have the proud, virtuous knowledge of their right to it—they are unable to hold it.