Ayn Rand: Capitalism

Viime aikoina olen lukenut laajasti Ayn Randin tuotantoa. Aloitin The Art of Non-Fictionilla, jatkoin mestariteos Atlas Shruggedilla ja nyt kävin läpi Capitalismin. Seuraavaksi vuorossa on For The New Intellectual, The Virtue of Selfisness sekä Philosophy - Who Needs it? sekä kun löytyy sopiva hetki, toinen mestariteos The Fountainhead.

Ayn Rand: Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal on Ayn Randin ylistyspuheenvuoro kapitalismista. Siinä otetaan käsijarru pois päältä ja paahdetaan täysillä ja kritiikittä kapitalismin ilosanomaa. Teksti menee kiihkoilun puolelle, niin innostuneesti Rand suitsuttaa kapitalismin ylivertaisuutta. On huomioitava, että Neuvostoliitossa syntyneelle ja sieltä pakoon lähteneelle Randille kapitalismi ja USA merkitsivät henkikökohtaista vapautta ja totaalista yhteiskuntajärjestelmän muutosta. Nämä traagiset elämänkäänteet vaikuttavat väkisinkin Randin suhtautumiseen ja kirjoituksiin. Harva kapitalistisessa yhteiskunnassa koko ikänsä asunut syttyisi vastaavaan kipinään.

 

Kirja koostuu lyhyistä kolumnityyppisistä kirjoituksista ja mukana on myös kaksi ulkopuolista kirjoittajaa, Nathaniel Branden ja Alan Greenspan. Jostain syystä Rand irtisanoutui myöhemmin Brandenin teksteistä todeten, että ne eivät edusta randilaista objektiivisuutta. Greenspan sen sijaan on kirjoittajana äärimmäisen mielenkiintoinen, onhan kyseessä USA:n liittovaltion keskuspankin Fedin entinen pääjohtaja. Greenspan ja Rand olivat sydänystäviä pitkän aikaa ja Greenspan osallistui Randin vetämiin keskustelukerhoihin. Kirjoituksissaan Greenspan ottaa kiitettävän kapitalistisen linjan, jota hän ei kuitenkaan aina Fedin johdossa noudattanut.

 

Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal on kaltaiselleni kapitalistille kiihottavaa luettavaa. Se toteaa asioita tykittämällä eli varsin napakasti ilmaisee asian olevan jollain tavalla, piste. Perusteluja näkemyksille tarjotaan randilaisesta objektiivisuuden filosofiasta johtaen. Ihan aina asiat eivät välttämättä ole niin mustavalkoisia kuin tässä esitetään, mutta suoraviivaisuudessaan ja selkeydessään Rand on kyllä ylivertainen. Kapitalismin ylivertaisuutta epäilevien keskuudessa tämä kirja aikaansaa ärsytystä. Kommunisti ei tätä kirjaa kestäisi lukea. Jos Randin Atlas Shruggedia voi verrata yhdeksi kapitalismin raamatuista, niin tämä lienee sitten kapitalismin katekismus.

 

Kapitalismia käsittelevä kirjallisuus on subjektiivisen näkemykseni mukaan liiaksi kallellaan kritiikkiin, eikä positiiviseen analyysiin. Tältä osin Randin teos on arvokas osa kapitalismin puolustamisessa. Tämä on teos, joka pitäisi suomentaa, koska kirjalla on paljon annettavaa myös suomalaiseen yhteiskunnalliseen keskusteluun. Toisin kuin romaanimuotoinen Atlas Shrugged, tämä kirja sisältää pelkkää asiaa tiivistetyssä muodossa, joten ehkä tämä on hyvä ensiaskel Randin tuotantoon siitä kiinnostuneille. Ainakin minä suosittelen tätä teosta lämpimästi!

Poiminnot

• Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles - specially, those of laissez-faire capitalism - as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context. Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics - on a theory of man's nature and of man's relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate consistent political theory and achieve it in practice... Objectivists are not conservatives. We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish.
• No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism - and none has ever been attacked so savagely, viciously, and blindly.
• It must be remembered that the institution of private property, in the full, legal meaning of the term, was brought into existence only by capitalism.
• All wealth is produced by somebody and belongs to somebody.
• Mankind is not an entity, an organism, or a coral bush. The entity involved in production and trade is man. It is with the study of man - not of the loose aggregate known as a "community" - that any science of the humanities has to begin. (5)
• The right to life is the source of all rights, including the right to property. ...Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced. (9)
• Is man free? In mankind's history, capitalism is the only system that answers: yes. Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. (10)
• In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgements, convictions, and interest dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason. (11)
• Corresponding to the four branches of philosophy, the four keystones of capitalism are: metaphysically, the requirement of man's nature and survival - epistemologically, reason - ethically, individual rights - politically, freedom. (11)
• The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. (12)
• The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of "things in themselves" nor of man's emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man's consciousness according to a rational standard of value. ...The good is an aspect of reality in relation to man. ...Of all the social systems in mankind's history, capitalism is the only system based on an objective theory of values. (14)
• Capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history (1815-1914). (34)
• The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity. (38)
• The proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect men from criminals; the military forces, to protect men from foreign invaders; and the law courts, to protect men's property and contracts from breach by force and fraud, and to settle disputes among men according to objectively defined laws. (43)
• A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values - better products or services, at a lower price - than others are able to offer. Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by a free, general, "democratic" vote - by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the country. (44)
• Let me define the difference between economic power and political power: economic power is exercised by means of positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of negative, by threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values, the bureacurat's tool is fear. (45)
• There is no way to legislate competition: there are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom, how many competitors should exist in any given field, what should be their relative strenght or their so-called "relevant markets", what prices they should charge, what methods of compensation are "fair" or "unfair". None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a free market. (53)
• Businessmen are the symbol of a free society - the symbol of America. If and when they perish, civilization will perish. (62)
• The ultimate regulator of competition in a free economy is the capital market. So long as capital is free to flow, it will tend to seek those areas which offer the maximum rate of return. ...Therefore, the existence of a free capital market does not quarantee that a monopolist who enjoys high profits will necessary and immediately find himself confronted by competition. What it does guarantee is that a monopolist whose high profits are caused by high prices, rather than low costs, will soon meet competition organized by the capital market. - Alan Greenspan. (69)
• The belief that unions can cause a general rise in the standard of living is a myth. - Nathaniel Branden. (89)
• Economic progress, like every other form of progress, has only one ultimate source: man's mind - and can exist only to the extent that man is free to translate his thought into action. -Nathaniel Branden. (91)
• Education should be liberated from the control or intervention of government, and turned over to profit-making private enterprise, not because education is unimportant, but because education is so crucially important. - Nathaniel Branden. (95)
• In a free economy, inherited wealth is not an impediment or a threat to those who do not possess it. Wealth, is not a static, limited quantity that can only be divided or looted; wealth is produced; its potential quantity is virtually limited. ...The greater the amount of wealth, of industrial development, in existence, the higher the economic rewards (in wages and profits) and the wider the market for ability - for new ideas, products and services. - Nathaniel Branden. (97)
• Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. - Alan Greenspan. (106)
• The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. ...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. ...The financial policy of welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. - Alan Greenspan. (107)
• Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial history - and the solution is lassez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of government intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State. (116)
• Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices. (130)
• Contrary to the ”argument of scarcity”, if you want to make a limited resource available to the whole people, make it private property and throw it on a free open market. (134)
• Since “public property” is a collective fiction, since the public as a whole can neither use nor dispose of its “property”, that “property” will always be taken over by some political “elite”, by a small clique which will then rule the public – a public of literal, dispossessed proletarians. (139)
• The airways should be turned over to private ownership. The only way to do it now is to sell radio and television frequencies to the highest bidders (by an objectively defined, open, impartial process) – and thus put an end to the gruesome fiction of “public property”. (139)
• Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind. (141)
• Altruism is not a doctrine of love, but of hatred for man. (148)
• Collectivism does not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable end. Sacrifice is its end – sacrifice as a way of life. It is man’s independence, success, prosperity, and happiness that collectivists wish to destroy. (148)
• Colbert, chief adviser of Louis XIV asked a group of manufacturers what he could do for industry. A manufacturer named Legendre answered: “Laissez-nous faire!” (“Let us alone!”), (153)
• A principle is “a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend”. Thus a principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes. It is only by means of principles that one can set one’s long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment. It is only principles that enable a man to plan his future and to achieve it. (157)
• Businessmen – who provide us with the means of livelihood, with jobs, with labor-saving devices, with modern comforts, with an ever-rising standard of living – are the men most immediately and urgently needed by society. (174)
• There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matter of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. (202)
• Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man’s right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by the present standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then we – we, the champions of man – accept it and choose to be damned by the world. We choose to wear the name “Capitalism’ printed on our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility”. (213)
• If you want to fight for capitalism, there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that can ever win in a moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. This means: the argument from man’s right to exist – from man’s inalienable individual right to his own life. (224)
• Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future – if mankind is to have a future. Those who wish to fight for it must discard the title of “conservatives”. “Conservatism” has always been misleading name, inappropriate to America. Today, there is nothing left to “conserve”. (225)
• Observe that both “socialism” and “fascism” involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates “the vesting of ownership and control” in the community as a whole, i.e. in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government. Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms; it means “property”, without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility. (227)
• In any undertaking or establishment involving more than one man, it is the owner or owners who set the rules and terms of appropriate conduct; the rest of the participants are free to go elsewhere and seek different terms, if they do not agree. There can be no such thing as the right to act on whim, to be exercised by some participants at the expense of others. …It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires and whims. (294)
• Capitalism valued a man’s life as it had never been valued before. (325)
• An idea is a light turned on in a man’s soul. (348)
• When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind. (352)
• The source of wealth is man’s mind. (352)
• Right to property is a right to action, like all others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values. (370)
• The purpose of law and of government is the protection of individual rights. (384)