Frank Martela: Valonöörit - Sisäisen motivaation käsikirja

Tykkään lukea talouskirjojen ohella sekä filosofiaa että valmennuskirjoja. Siispä Frank Martelan teos Valonöörit - Sisäisen motivaation käsikirja oli mieluisa lukukokemus, koska se yhdistää kiitettävällä tavalla filosofiaa ja psykologiaa, teoriaa ja käytäntöä sekä oppeja ja elämänkokemuksia.

 

Frank Martela: Valonöörit - Sisäisen motivaation käsikirja

 

Olen seurannut Martelan tekstejä hänen blogistaan ja monet niistä ovat mielestäni erittäin laadukkaita. Hänellä on kyky tuoda asioihin erilainen tarkastelukulma. Fiksu ajattelija, kuten filosofin kai kuuluukin olla. Jos on lukenut Esa Saarista, pitää todennäköisesti myös Martelan kirjoituksista.

 

Osalle kirja sisäisestä motivaatiosta tuo heti mieleen Jari Sarasvuon Sisäisen Sankarin. Kyllä, tässä kirjassa viitataan Sarasvuon teokseen, itse asiassa varsin tyylikkääseen tapaan. Ja kyllä, myös minä olen lukenut Sarasvuon kaikki teokset (myös Captem Apotekon...). Kuitenkin Martelan kirjaa ei kannata arvioida suhteessa Sarasvuohon. Martela ja Sarasvuo toki kirjoittavat pohjimmiltaan samasta asiasta, mutta niin eri tavalla, että vertailu ei ole mielekästä. Sen sijaan kirjat täydentävät sopivasti toisiaan.

 

Valonöörit kirja pistää pohtimaan elämän peruskysymyksiä. Tai ainakin sen pitäisi pysähdyttää pohtimaan, sillä tämän kirjan lukeminen sellaisenaan ilman omaa ajatustyötä olisi suorittamista vailla sisältöä. Kirjaa lukiessa valaistuu. Oma elämä, omat arvot ja elämän päämäärät kirkastuvat. Palautuu mieliin jälleen ne asiat, joiden tekemisestä pitää ja joita pohjimmiltaan haluaisi tehdä enemmän. Kaiken kiireen ja arjen keskellä luettuna Valonööri voi myös aiheuttaa turhautumista, jos huomaa tekevänsä asioita, jotka eivät olekaan linjassa oman tahtotilan kanssa. Siitä kun ei voi syyttää muita kuin vain itseään.

 

Kirja antaa paljon ajateltavaa ja siksi se on lukemisen ja suosittelemisen arvoinen. Noteeraan tämän teoksen varsin korkealle tämän genren teoksena. Ja Frank Martelan kotisivut ovat todella kattavat, löytyy paljon mielenkiintoista materiaalia, ajatuksia ja keskustelua. Suosittelen tutustumaan.

 

Poiminnot

 

• Elämässä on lopulta vain kaksi suurta kysymystä: Mitä haluan tehdä? Miten saan sen tehtyä? (11)
• Sisäinen motivaatio on paitsi onnellisuuden, myös menestyksen salaisuus. (33)
• Menestys on kuin huume, jota tarvitaan jatkuvasti isompi annos. (35)
• Päämääränä menestys ei tee ketään onnelliseksi. Mutta sisäisesti motivoituneen tekemisen sivutuotteena menestys on kiva juttu. (35)
• Ihmisenä oleminen on kykyä arvostaa. (47)
• Ihminen on suhdelo. (52)
• "Todellisuudessa ihminen ei kaipaa kaikista rasituksista vapaata olemista, vaan ponnistelua kohti arvoistaan päämäärää." - Viktor Frankl (64)
• Vapaaehtoisuudessa on kyse siitä, että pääsemme toteuttamaan itseämme. (79)
• Onnellisuus ei synny siitä, mitä sinulla on. Se syntyy siitä, mitä teet joka päivä. (87)
• Älä mieti, minkä ammatin edustaja haluat olla, vaan mitä haluat tehdä päivästä toiseen. (89)
• Kun taitotaso ja haastetaso kohtaavat, ihminen voi päästä niin sanottuun flow-kanavaan. (96)
• Luonteenvahvuuksiin kannattaa panostaa. (100)
• Onnellisuus on eri asia kuin menestys. (111)
• Ihmisellä on tarve tuntea, että hänen teoillaan on myönteinen vaikutus maailmassa. (122)
• Jos haluat uskoa hyvään, tee hyviä tekoja. Ole se muutos, jonka haluat nähdä maailmassa. (135)
• Jos haluat huipulle missä tahansa alalla, on sinun harjoiteltava systemaattisesti vähintään 10 000 tuntia. Se tarkoittaa kolmen tunnin päivittäistä harjoittelua (viikonloput mukaanlukien) noin kymmenen vuoden ajan. (142)
• "Kutsumuksesi on siellä, missä intohimosi kohtaa maailman tarpeet". - Lauri Järvilehto (147)
• Kun tietää mitä haluaa, on herkempi havaitsemaan ne piilevätkin mahdollisuudet edistää tätä päämäärää. (159)
• Kirjoittamalla itsestäsi opit lisää itsestäsi. (160)
• Kutsumuksellisen työn prosessimalli: 1) Tunnista intohimosi, 2) Paikanna maailman tarve, jota intohimosi voisi palvella, 3) Hanki tarvittavat taidot, 4) Hio tekemisellesi ansaintamalli ja 5) Toimi! (164)
• "Jos joku kertoo sinulle, että raha on kaiken pahan alku ja juuri, voit olla s*****n varma, että hänellä ei ole sitä lainkaan." - Jim Young elokuvassa Boiler Room (194).
• Intohimo tekemiseen, itsensä ylittäminen ja itsekuri. Siinä balettitanssija Minna Tervamäen resepti menestykseen. (207)
• Jos et koskaan epäonnistu, et ole yrittänyt tarpeeksi. (220)
• Älä tuomitse lasta kympin oppilaan syndroomaan kehumalla häntä fiksuksi. Kannusta sen sijaan häntä haastamaan itseään ja oppimaan yrityksen ja erehdyksen kautta. Jos kehut, kehu sitkeydestä ja uurastuksesta: "Hyvin ponnisteltu". (223)
• Ihminen voi muuttua, älykkyys ei ole kiinteä ominaisuus, vaan osaamista voi kehittää harjoittelun kautta. (223)
• Tärkein valinta oman henkisen kasvun kannalta on usein se, keiden ihmisten kanssa päivänsä viettää. (233)
• Myös tutkimukset kertovat, että menestys tekee ihmisestä helposti mulkun. (235)
• Jos ei ole mitään minkä edestä kuolla, ei ole mitään, minkä vuoksi elää. (250)
• Elämän merkitys syntyy siitä, että tekee itselleen merkityksellisiä asioita ja tekee itsensä merkitykselliseksi toisille ihmisille. (256)
• Onnellisuus on mitä sinulle tapahtuu, kun keskityt tekemään itsellesi merkityksellisiä asioita. (260)
• Oman elämänsä voi hahmottaa kahdella tavalla; projektina tai tarinana. (265)

Ayn Rand: Philosophy - Who Needs It?

Ayn Randin tuotanto alkaa tämän kirjoituksen myötä olla luettuna ja yhteenvetoa lukuunottamatta käsiteltynä. Philosophy - Who Needs It on viimeisin kirja, jonka kanssa Rand työskenteli eläissään ja se koostuu useammasta novellista, jotka pääasiassa toimivat vastauksena joko jonkun esittämään kritiikkiin Randia kohtaan tai muuten kannanottoa johonkin yleisesti vallitsevaan näkemykseen. Tyyliltään se siis poikkeaa merkittävästi muista hänen teoksistaan, ennen kaikkea Atlas Shruggedista ja The Fountainheadista.

 

Ayn Rand: Philosophy- Who Needs It

Teoksena Philosophy - Who Needs It on keskinkertaista Randia, jos sitäkään. Siinä Rand asemoi oman objektivistisen filosofiansa suhteessa sekä klassisiin filosofeihin että aikansa yhteiskuntaan. Kollektiivinen ajattelu saa läpi kirjan kyytiä ja kapitalismille pyritään luomaan filosofinen viitekehys. Kirja ei saanut aikanaan kovinkaan hyvää vastaanottoa, eikä se kyllä merkkiteokseksi nousekaan, ainakaan suhteessa Randin tunnetumpiin teoksiin. Ehkä tekstiä hallitsee liikaa tarkoitus vastata muiden ajatuksiin oman ajattelun sijasta. Teoksen taustallahan on hänen USA:n Military Academyssa pitämänsä puhe.

 

Jos siis jossain kohtaa haluaa oikaista, niin tämän Randin voi hyvinkin jättää lukematta. Joitain hyviä sitaatteja, mutta kokonaisuutena jää varsin sekavaksi. Hienoa on huomata, Randin nostavan Ludwig von Misesin esille omana taloustieteen suosikkinaan. Näin tulee luoduksi yhteys itävaltalaisen koulukunnan ja randilaisyyden välillä, vaikka toki perustavaa laatua olevia eroavaisuuksia näiden ajattelusta löytyykin.

 

Poiminnot

• Tribalism is a product of fear, and fear is the dominant emotion of any person, culture or society that rejects man's power of survival: reason. (58)
• If you ask me to name the man most responsible for the present state of the world, the man whose influence has almost succeeded in destroying the achievements of the Renaissance - I will name Immanuel Kant. (87)
• Capitalism did not create poverty - it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the in the early years of capitalism were thefirst chance the poor had ever had to survive. (91)
• Capitalism and altruism cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society. Tell it to anyone who attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the "public good" or the "general welfare" or "service to society" or the benefits it brings to the poor. All these things are true, but they are by-products, the secondary consequences of capitalism - not its goal, purpose or moral justification. The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neiher sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of the others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need. (91)
• Philosophy is a necessity for a rational being: philosophy is the foundation of science, the organizer of man's mind, the integrator of his knowledge, the programmer of his subconscious, the selector of his values. To set philosophy against reason, i.e., against man's power of cognition, to turn philosophy into an apologist for and a protector of superstition - is such a crime against humanity that no modern atrocities can equal it; it is the cause of modern atrocities. (111)
• Concepts are the products of a mental process that integrates and organizes the evidence provided by man's senses. Man's senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only source of information. Without sensory evidence, there can be no concepts; without concepts, there can be no language; without language, there can be no knowledge and no science. (121)
• In reality and in the Objectivist ethics, there is no such a thing as "duty". There is only choice and the full, clear recognition of a principle obscured by the notion of "duty": the Law of Causality. (133)
• Inflation is a man-made scourge, made possible by the fact that most men do not understand it. It is a crime committed on so large a scale that its size is its protection: the integrating capacity of the victims' minds breaks down before the magnitude - and the seeming complexity - of the crime, which permits it to be committed openly, in public. For centuries, inflation has been wrecking one country after another, yet men learn nothing, offer no resistance, and perish - not like animals driven to slaughter, but worse: like animals stampending in search of a butcher. If I told you that the precondition of inflation is psycho-epistemological - that inflation is hidden under perceptual illusions created by broken conceptual links - you would not understand me. (170)
• Money is the tool of men who have reached a high level of productivity and a long-range control over their lives. Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption and buys time for future production. To fulfill this requirement, money has to be some material commodity which is imperishable, rare, homogenous, easily stored, not subject to wide fluctuations of value, and always in demand among those you trade with. This leads you to the decision to use gold as money. (172)
• There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production. (174)
• If student minorities have succeeded in demanding that they be given courses on such subjects as Zen Buddhism, guerilla welfare, Swahili, and astrology, then an intellectual student minority can succeed in demanding courses on, for instance, Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in literature. At very least, such courses would save the student's mind; potentially, they would save the culture. (271)

Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead

Suomessa ei tietääkseni ole kovin montaa henkilöä, joka olisi lukenut koko Ayn Randin tuotannon. Alan kohta olemaan lähellä tuota kyseenalaista meriittiä. Hulluutta, ajanhaaskausta vai jotain hyödyllistä? Kaikkea noista. Viime vuonna tuli luettua Atlas Shrugged, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism - The Unknown Ideal ja For The New Intellectual. Nyt luettuna on The Fountainhead ja Philosophy - Who Needs it?. Seuraava Rand (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology tai Anthem)saa nyt kuitenkin hetken odottaa vuoroaan.

 

Alkuinnostukseni heräsi pari vuotta sitten Randin filosofiaa kohtaan. Kerrankin löytyi kirjailija ja ajattelija, joka puolusti minua kiinnostavia arvoja ja asioita. Randilla on poikkeuksellinen kyky pukea sanoiksi ikuinen yksilön ja vapauden puolustaminen. Filosofisesti Rand on laadukasta luettavaa. Samoin yhteiskunnalliselta ajattelultaan Rand on terävää tekstiä. Tieteellisesti Randin lukeminen oli selkeä harharetki. Lähdin hakemaan Randilta ajatuksia väitöskirjani viitekehykseen, mutta siltä osin en ole saanut mitään. Rand ei ole akateemisesti noteerattava lähde ja teokset eivät ole missään määrin tieteellisiä, joten väitöskirjani kannalta hurahtaminen Randin kirjoihin oli puhtaasti ajanhaaskausta. Viihdearvoltaan Rand on vähintäänkin keskikastia. Kaunokirjallisina tuotoksina pääteokset Atlas Shrugged ja The Fountainhead ovat pääosin viihdyttävää luettavaa, mutta tarinaltaan turhan pitkiä. Sitaattiaineistoa saa paljon, ja sitä löytyykin kiitettävästi internetistä, esim täältä. Siispä kirjojen lukemisen sijasta Randin ajatuksiin kannattaa mielummin tutustua verkossa, ainakin aluksi. Näin säästyy merkittävästi aikaa muulle.

Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead on Randin toinen kuuluisa teos Atlas Shruggedin ohella. Osa pitää The Fountainheadia jopa ykkösteoksena, mutta minä asemoin sen kaunokirjallisten teosten kakkoseksi. Kyseessä on älyttömän iso kirja, 727 sivua, joten ihan hetken mielijohteesta tätä eeposta ei lueta. Kannattaa ylipäätään miettiä kaksi kertaa, haluaako tätä teosta lähteä lukemaan. Tarina on mielestäni liian pitkä, ja monilta osin jopa pitkästyttävä. Kuten sitaattipoiminnoistanikin huomaa, ensimmäiset 150 sivua on mukaansatempaavaa, mutta sen jälkeen tulee noin 450 sivun synkkä jakso, josta ei löydy juurikaan mielenkiintoisia asioita, ja siten teos meinaa viedä lukijansa epätoivoon. Meinasin itsekin lopettaa monta kertaa kesken. Lopun 150 sivua sitten onkin taas varsin tiukkaa tykitystä.

The Fountainheadin tarina on selostettu varsin hyvin muiden toimesta, joten en lähde sitä tässä enää selittämään. Kannattaa lukea se vaikka täältä. Kirjan sisältö selittyy parhaiten sen henkilöiden kautta. Ne löytyy hyvin kuvattuna myös täältä. Päähenkilö Howard Roark on periaatteen mies, jästipääksikin häntä voisi hyvin kutsua. Elää omien standardiensa mukaan, ei anna tippaakaan periksi, tiedostaa aina olevansa oman maailmakuvansa mukaisesti oikeassa. Kärsii koko elämänsä jääräpäisyytensä myötä menettämistä mahdollisuuksista, mutta ei silti luovu periaatteistaan. Kunnioitettavavaa sinänsä, mutta myös raskasta. Kirjaa lukiessa sitä usein miettii, pitääkö sitä ihmisen olla noin periaatteellinen ja kumpi onkaan tärkeämpää, olla omasta mielestään oikeassa vai olla onnellinen, jos näiden välillä on ristiriitaa. Koko kirjan ajan sitä miettii, miksi asioiden pitää mennä näin. Epäoikeudenmukaisuuden esille tuomalla, Roarkin rooliin samaistuminen on jopa ahdistava lukukokemus.

Kirjan suurin opetus on, että itsekkyys ei ole pahasta vaan nimenomaan päinvastainen eli itsettömyys. Itsetön on ihminen, joka ei ole sinut itsensä kanssa eikä kunnioita itseään vaan elää elämäänsä muille. Tämän epäkohdan The Fountainhead avaa monien arkipäiväisten hahmojen myötä. Liian moni hahmo toi mieleen vastineet oikeasta elämästä. Howard Roarkit sen sijaan ovat harvassa. Kuten myös John Galtit. Vai, kuka on John Galt? Kuten Atlas Shrugged, niin myös The Fountainhead huipentuu oikeussalissa pidettävään puheeseen. Puhe löytyy tämän tekstin lopusta. Lue vaikka se, sen sijaan The Fountainheadin lukemisen sijasta suosittelen muuta parempaa ajankäyttöä.

Poiminnot

"Rules? Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. Not two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doen't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it." - Howard Roark (12)

"Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal." - Howard Roark (12)

"I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one" - Howard Roark (13)

"I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom."
"You call that freedom?"
"To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing." - Howard Roark (141)

"The ability to say Yes or No is the essence of all ownership. It's your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function - the act of valuing. Yes or No, "I wish" or "I do not wish". You can't say Yes without saying I. There's no affirmation without the onw who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours." - Howard Roark (564)

"Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity." - Howard Roark (604)

"A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's all I am." Howard Roark (606)

"I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist." - Howard Roark (608)

"Egotistical? An egotist would have loved it. You use words in the strangest way". - Wynand
"In the exact way. I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself". - Howard Roark (631)

“Yes! And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The man whose sole aim is to make money. Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose--to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury--he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're second-handers. Look at our so-called cultural endeavors. A lecturer who spouts some borrowed rehash of nothing at all that means nothing at all to him--and the people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.” - Howard Roark (633)

"A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it. ... Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence - such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence. That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handlers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: Is this true? They ask: Is this what others think is true? Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, bud friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are all the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life." - Howard Roark (634)

"Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing." - Howard Roark (635)

"I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once - and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters." - Howard Roark (636)

"If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect from others." - Howard Roark (636)

"The worst second-handler of all - the man who goes after power". - Howard Roark (636)

Howard Roarkin puhe oikeudessa

“Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted dardness off the earth. Centuries later, the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build. He was considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden terrritory. But thereafter, men could travel past any horizon. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had opened the roads of the world.

“That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures—because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer—because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

“No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building—that was his goal and his life. Not those who heard, read, operated, believed, flew or inhabited the thing he had created. The creation, not its users. The creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men.

“His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

“The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself.

“And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind.

“But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

“We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. Yet that capacity is our only means of survival.

"Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways—by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.

“The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.

"The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.

“The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.

“The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.

“Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.

“No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of expoloitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.

“The man who attemps to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality—the man who lives to serve others—is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.

“Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

“Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the sufferings of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer—in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man’s body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive.

“Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

“Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.

“Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative—and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.

“This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.

“The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.

“The egotist is the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man—and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.

“Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

“In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him a commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner.

“No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for proper co-operation among men.

“The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

“A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule—alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.

“Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.

“But men were taught to regard second-handers—tyrants, emperors, dictators—as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.

“From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.

“The creator—denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited—went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.

“The ‘common good’ of a collective—a race, a class, a state—was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men’s hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.

“The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is—Hands off!

“Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results. Look into your own conscience.

“It is an ancient conflict. Men have come close to the truth, but it was destroyed each time and one civilization fell after another. Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

“Now, in our age, collectivism, the rule of the second-hander and second-rater, the ancient monster, has broken loose and is running amuck. It has brought men to a level of intellectual indecency never equaled on earth. It has reached a scale of horror without precedent. It has poisoned every mind. It has swallowed most of Europe. It is engulfing our country.

“I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live.

“Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt.

“I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it.

“I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.

“I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I dedigned it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid.

“I do not blame Peter Keating. He was helpless. He had a contract with his employers. It was ignored. He had a promise that the structure he offered would be built as designed. The promise was broken. The love of a man for the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are now considered a vague intangible and an inessential. You have heard the prosecutor say that. Why was the building disfigured? For no reason. Such acts never have any reason, unless it’s the vanity of some second-handers who feel they have a right to anyone’s property, spiritual or material. Who permitted them to do it? No particular man among the dozens in authority. No one cared to permit it or to stop it. No one was responsible. No one can be held to account. Such is the nature of all collective action.

“I did not receive the payment I asked. But the owners of Cortlandt got what they needed from me. They wanted a scheme devised to build a structure as cheaply as possible. They found no one else who could do it to their satisfaction. I could and did. They took the benefit of my work and made me contribute it as a gift. But I am not an altruist. I do not contribute gifts of this nature.

“It is said that I have destroyed the home of the destitute. It is forgotten that but for me the destitute could not have had this particular home. Those who were concerned with the poor had to come to me, who have never been concerned, in order to help the poor. It is believed that the poverty of the future tenants gave them the right to my work. That their need constituted a claim on my life. That it was my duty to contribute anything demanded of me. This is the second-hander’s credo now swallowing the world.

"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

“I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

“It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

“I wished to come here and say that the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor. Those of you who do not understand this are the men who’re destroying the world.

“I wished to come here and state my terms. I do not care to exist on any others.

“I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. To my country, I wish to give the ten years which I will spend in jail if my country exists no longer. I will spend them in memory and in gratitude for what my country has been. It will be my act of loyalty, my refusal to live or work in what has taken its place.

“My act of loyalty to every creator who ever lived and was made to suffer by the force responsible for the Cortlandt I dynamited. To every tortured hour of loneliness, denial, frustration, abuse he was made to spend—and to the battles he won. To every creator whose name is known—and to every creator who lived, struggled and perished unrecognized before he could achieve. To every creator who was destroyed in body or in spirit. To Henry Cameron. To Steven Mallory. To a man who doesn’t want to be named, but who is sitting in this courtroom and knows that I am speaking of him.”

Ayn Rand: For The New Intellectual

Jatketaan Ayn Randin parissa. For The New Intellectual on eräänlainen Ayn Randin aiempien teosten koontiteos. Siinä esitellään lyhyesti Randin pääteokset We The Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead ja Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shruggedista esitellään mm. John Galtin loppupuhe kokonaan.
 

Ayn Rand: For the New Intellectual

For The New Intellectual on ylistyspuheenvuoro ajattelijoille. Rand nostaa valokeilaan kaksi ihmistyyppiä, joita hän selvästi arvostaa ylitse muiden eli ammattilaiset liikemiehet/naiset ja ammattilaiset ajattelijat eli tieteentekijät, kirjailijat ja uutta luovat. Rand peräänkuuluttaa näiden kahden ihmisryhmän yhteistyötä, koska uudet ajatukset (tiede) ja niiden soveltaminen käytäntöön (liiketoiminta) ovat yhteiskuntaa eteenpäin vievä voima.

 

For The New Intellectual ei itsessään ole merkittävä teos. Ensikertalaiselle se toimii hyvänä johdantona Randin tuotantoon. Sen perusteella voi päättää, haluaako lähteä lukemaan syvällisemmin muita teoksia. Randia jo lukeneelle se on tiivistelmä aiemmista ajatuksista lisättynä lyhyellä johdannolla. Muutamia sitaatin arvoisia lainauksia sentään tästäkin kirjasta sain talteen.

Poiminnot

• When a man, a business corporation or an entire society is approaching bankruptcy, there are two courses that those involved can follow: they can evade the reality of their situation and act on a frantic, blind, range-of-the-moment expediency – not daring to look ahead, wishing no one would name the truth, yet desperately hoping that something will save them somehow – or they can indentify the situation, check their premises, discover their hidden assets and start rebuilding.
• The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together, as brothers born of the industrial revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism – and if they perish, they will perish together.
• Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
• Capitalism wiped out slavery in matter and in spirit. It replaced Attila and the Witch Doctor, the looter of wealth and the purveyor of revelations, with two new types of man; the producer of wealth and the purveyor of knowledge – the businessman and the intellectual.
• Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living – and of thought – ever higher for all those who take part in mankind’s productive activity.
• The professional businessman is the field agent of the army whose lieutenant-commander-in-chief is the scientist. The businessman carries scientific discoveries from the laboratory of the inventor to industrial plants, and transform them into material products that will men’s physical needs and expand the comfort of men’s existence. By creating mass market, he makes these products available to every income level of society. By using machines, he increases the productivity of human labor, thus raising labor’s economic rewards. By organizing human effort into productive enterprises, he creates employment for men of countless professions. He is the great liberator who, in the short span of a century and a half, has released them from the terrible drudgery of an eighteen-hour workday of manual labor for their barest subsistence, has released them from famines, from pestilences, from the stagnant hopeless and terror in which most of mankind has lived in all the pre-capitalist centuries – and in which most of it still lives, in non-capitalist countries.
• There ought to be a private, voluntary program of “student exchanges” between the intellectuals and the businessmen, the two groups that need each other most, yet know less and understand less about each other than any alien society in any distant corner of the globe. The businessmen need to discover the intellect, the intellectuals need to discover reality.
• Honor is a thing to be earned.
• Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution – or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-handler who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement. (The Fountainhead)
• Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But creator is the man who stands alone. (The Fountainhead)
• The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is – Hands off! (The Fountainhead)

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)

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

Who is John Galt? Saatat olla kuullut kysymyksen, mutta tiedätkö vastauksen? Tämä kysymys toistuu ensimmäiset 600 sivua Ayn Randin 1168-sivuisessa mestariteoksessa Atlas Shrugged. Maailma näyttää menevän erikoiseen suuntaan ja vastuunkantajat ovat vähissä. Tapahtuu asioita, jotka ovat ihan kuin tästä maailmasta. Konkreettisia esimerkkejä pienistä asioista, joissa ihmiset toimivat ajattelemattomuuttaan väärin ja välinpitämättömästi. Dagny Taggart tarinan päähenkilönä yrittää kaikkensa, mutta ei saa otetta siitä, mitä taustalla oikein tapahtuu. John Galt antaa vinkkejä itsestään ennen varsinaista ilmaantumistaan.

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged

John Galt on lakkokenraali. Hän haluaa pysäyttää maailman moottorit agitoimalla ahkerat ja ajattelevat ihmiset lakkoon, mielen lakkoon. Mitä jos vastuunkantajat kaikkoavat maailmasta? Mitä jos he kohauttavat olkapäitään ja päättävät yksinkertaisesti poistua? Päättävät lopettaa tekemisensä, jättäävät kaiken taaksensa ja vain katoavat? Mitä jää jäljelle? Miten yhteiskunta toimii, jos kukaan ei kanna vastuuta? Mitä jos ahkerien mitta vain tulee täyteen?

 

Kapitalismin klassikko

 

Ayn Randin Atlas Shrugged on todellinen jättipaketti. Ei voi kuin ihmetellä, kuinka Rand on pystynyt pitämään kokonaisuuden tarinan koossa. Alussa asiat vaikuttavat viattomilta, mutta tarinan kehittyessä niille tulee merkitys ja ne kumuloituvat kaaokseksi. Kirja on luonteeltaan syvällistä yhteiskuntafilosofiaa. Se avaa tarinan muodossa yleisen yhteiskunnallisen ajattelumme ongelmia. Erityisesti se hyökkää altruismia ja valtiokeskeisyyttä kohtaan. Sankariksi Rand nostaa itsenäisen yksilön, joka omilla toimillaan tavoittelee omaa onnellisuuttaan.

 

Atlas Shrugged on klassikko. Erityisesti USA:ssa teoksella on oma merkittävä roolinsa ja siihen viitataan usein, sekä hyvässä että pahassa. Minä asemoin Atlas Shruggedin kolmen parhaan lukemani kirjan joukkoon. Lukukokemuksena se on suoritus, josta voi olla ylpeä. Moni sen tahtoisi lukea, mutta 1168 sivua karsii jyvät akanoista. Ilman todellista tahtoa sitä ei kannata edes aloittaa. Vähän kuin Raamattukin, vain hyvin harvat ovat sen alusta loppuun lukeneet. Atlas Shruggedia voi perustellusti tituleerata yhdeksi kapitalismin raamatuista. Hauskana anekdoottina kirjassa esiintyy kultaisella dollarimerkillä varustettuja savukkeita, jotka symboloivat kapitalismin henkeä. Jos tuollaisia olisi oikeasti tarjolla, todennäköisesti alkaisin polttamaan.

 

Atlas Shruggedin parasta antia ovat monipuoliset ja mielikuvitukselliset henkilöhahmot. John Galt itsessään on elävä legenda, mutta tarinaan mahtuu paljon muitakin. Hank Rearden, yrittäjä, innovaattori ja oman tiensä kulkija. Todellinen taistelija, yrittäjyyden perikuva. Francisco d'Anconia, mies joka yllättää kaikki toimimalla toisin kuin hänen oletettaisiin toimivan. Ragnar Danneskjöld, mies joka haluaa poistaa Robin Hood-sankaruuden maailmasta toimimalla juuri päinvastoin kuin Hood. Päähenkilönä tarinassa kuitenkin on Dagny Taggart, nainen joka ei pääse perheyrityksenä johtoon, vaikka kaiken vastuun kantaakin. Pahiksia tarinaan mahtuu myös useita. Moni näistä veljeilee valtion kanssa pyrkien politikoimalla pönkittämään omaa valta-asemaansa. Havahduttavinta näissä kaikissa henkilöissä on se, että jokaiselle löytyy helposti vastinpari elävästä elämästä.

 

Atlas Shruggedin opetus

 

Atlas Shruggedissa John Galt kumppaneineen kutsuu valitsemiaan henkilöitä "mielen lakkoon" eli jättämään kaiken taakseen ja kohauttamaan olkapäitään nyky-yhteiskunnalle. Kuten yleisesti lakoissa, tässä lakossa kukaan ei esitä kenellekään vaatimuksia, sen sijaan yksilöt vain jättävät roolinsa yhteiskunnassa, kun mitta tulee täyteen.

Ajatus olkapäiden kohottamisesta ja taustalle poistumisesta on kiehtova. Ei käy kiistäminen, etteikö se välillä kävisi mielessä. Nykymaailmassa tämä voisi tarkoittaa vaikka sitä, että tietyn pisteen, tietyn riippumattomuuden tilan, saavutettua sitä voisi todeta, että nyt riitti ja muuttaisi ulkomaille. Mielettömäksi menevä verotus voisi olla yksi tällainen laukaiseva tekijä. Itse voisin lähteä vaikka Sveitsiin.

 

Onko downshiftaaminen mielen lakkoilua?

 

Toisaalta aloin miettimään, onko nykyilmiöistä downshiftaaminen yksi muoto "to shrugg" eli liittyä mielen lakkoon? Osittain on, sanoisin, mutta kuitenkin vain niissä tapauksissa, joissa downshiftaaja jää elämään omilla saavutuksillaan, eikä valinnallaan rasita muuta yhteiskuntaa. Tiedän monia tapauksia, jotka työnteollaan ja sijoitustoiminnallaan tähtäävät tiettyyn varallisuustasoon, tiettyyn taloudelliseen riippumattomuuteen, jonka jälkeen he tahtovat alkaa elää rennommin ja alkaa toteuttamaan aktiivisemmin arvojensa mukaisia asioita. Tällaiseen valintaan yksilöllä tulee olla vapaa oikeus. Toinen downshiftaamisen muoto eli vähemmän tekeminen ja muiden siivellä eläminen siitä syystä, että ei viitsitä tehdä enempää, ei sen sijaan sovellu randilaiseen ajatteluun.

Kirjan parhaat palat

Kirjan parhaat palat voi kiteyttää kolmeen osioon. Francisco d'Anconian puhe juhlissa esitettyyn väitteeseen, että raha on kaiken pahan alku, on mestarillinen tykitys, joka ei selittelyitä kaipaa. Puhe löytyy kokonaisuudessaan alta. Toinen huippukohta on Ragnar Danneskjöldin perustelut sille, miksi hän haluaa hävittää Robin Hoodin levittämän ajattelun maailmasta. Ensiajatuksella tuskin kukaan sanoo vastustavansa Robin Hoodia, mutta kun kuulee Danneskjöldin argumentit, alkaa asiaa ajattelemaan uudella tavalla. Ehkä rikkaiden ryöstäminen ei sittenkään ole oikeudenmukaista. Kolmas kohokohta on John Galtin puheet, erityisesti kirjan viimeisessä kappaleessa esitetty loppupuhe, jossa kiteytyy Randin filosofian ydinkohdat ja Atlas Shruggedin sanoma. Tämä puhe on 66 sivua pitkä, joten liitän siihen vain linkin. Nämä lukemalla saa jo jonkinlaisen käsityksen siitä, millainen mestariteos Ayn Randin Atlas Shrugged on. Jos elämässäsi on joskus riittävästi aikaa tälle teokselle, suosittelen lukemaan, koska se takuulla jättää jäljen omaan ajatteluusi koko loppuelämäksi.

Francisco d'Anconia's Money Speech

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

Ragnar Danneskjöld on Robin Hood

"I've chosen a special mission of my own. I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in".
What man?
Robin Hood. He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I'm the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich - or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.
What in blazes do you mean?
... Ragnar:  ... I have never robbed a private ship and never taken any private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel - because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from the violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government. But I have seized every lootcarrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others. I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices - that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others - that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us - and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads doen on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as the moral idea." ". . . Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."

This in John Galt Speaking

John Galt's final speech can be read here. It's circa 66 pages long, but still highly worth of reading.

"We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt. There is a difference between our strike and all those practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endager you, not to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, accoring to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality - the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind." (1011)

Some extra quotations 

"What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster. And that's what I'm doing: I'm manufacturing time... I'm producing everything I need, I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life." (722)

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (731)

"There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in the whole of human history. Every other kind and class has stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable - except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind on strike." John Galt (738)

Some links to Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.dailypaul.com/133313/francisco-d-anconias-ayn-rands-money-speech-in-atlas-shrugged

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged