Part 6 (2/2)

[”Collectivized 'Rights,' ” VOS, 136; pb 101.1 A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or a.s.sociations.

Any group that does not recognize this principle is not an a.s.sociation, but a gang or a mob....

The notion of ”collective rights” (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that ”rights” belong to some men, but not to others-that some men have the ”right” to dispose of others in any manner they please-and that the criterion of such privileged position consists of numerical superiority.

[Ibid., 137; pb 102.]

The notion that ”Anything society does is right because society chose to do it,” is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles and the banishment of morality from social issues.

[Ibid., 136; pb 101.]

See also COLLECTIVISM; FOREIGN POLICY; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; MORALITY; NATIONAL RIGHTS; SELF-DETERMINATION of NATIONS.

Collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group-whether to a race, cla.s.s or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ”the common good.”

[”The Only Path to Tomorrow,” Reader's Digest, Jan. 1944, 8.]

Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective-society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc.-is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it.

[Leonard Peikoff, OP, 7; pb 17.]

Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group ... and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force-and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.

[”Racism,” VUS, 175; pb 128.]

Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory ... both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state.

[” 'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing,” CUI, 180.]

Modern collectivists ... see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural ent.i.ty apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

[”Collectivized 'Rights,' ” VOS, 138; pb 103. J The philosophy of collectivism upholds the existence of a mystic (and unperceivable) social organism, while denying the reality of perceived individuals-a view which implies that man's senses are not a valid instrument for perceiving reality. Collectivism maintains that an elite endowed with special mystic insight should rule men-which implies the existence of an elite source of knowledge, a fund of revelations inaccessible to logic and transcending the mind. Collectivism denies that men should deal with one another by voluntary means, settling their disputes by a process of rational persuasion; it declares that men should live under the reign of physical force (as wielded by the dictator of the omnipotent state)-a position which jettisons reason as the guide and arbiter of human relations.h.i.+ps.

From every aspect, the theory of collectivism points to the same conclusion: collectivism and the advocacy of reason are philosophically ant.i.thetical ; it is one or the other.

[Leonard Peikoff, ”n.a.z.ism vs. Reason,” TO, Oct. 1969, 1.]

The political philosophy of collectivism is based on a view of man as a congenital incompetent, a helpless, mindless creature who must be fuoled and ruled by a special elite with some unspecified claim to superior wisdom and a l.u.s.t for power.

[”Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?” TON, May 1962, 17.]

What subjectivism is in the realm of ethics, collectivism is in the realm of politics. Just as the notion that ”Anything I do is right because I chose to do it,” is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality-so the notion that ”Anything society does is right because society chose to do it,” is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles and the banishment of morality from social issues.

[”Collectivized 'Rights,' ” VOS, 135; pb 101.]

As a cultural-intellectual power and a moral ideal, collectivism died in World War II. If we are still rolling in its direction, it is only by the inertia of a void and the momentum of disintegration. A social movement that began with the ponderous, brain-cracking, dialectical constructs of Hegel and Marx, and ends up with a horde of morally unwashed children stamping their foot and shrieking: ”I want it now!” -is through.

[”The Cas.h.i.+ng-In : The Student 'Rebellion,' ” CUI, 266.]

Collectivism has lost the two crucial weapons that raised it to world power and made all of its victories possible: intellectuality and idealism, or reason and morality. It had to lose them precisely at the height of its success, since its claim to buth was a fraud: the full, actual reality of socialist-cornnrunist-fascist states has demonstrated the brute irrationality of collectivist systems and the inhumanity of altruism as a moral code.

[Ibid., 269.]

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.

Observe the snarling, hysterical hatred with which they greet any suggestion that sacrifice is not necessary, that a non-sacrificial society is possible to men, that it is the only society able to achieve man's well-being.

[”Theory and Practice,” CUI, 137.]

The advocates of collectivism are motivated not by a desire for men's happiness, but by hatred for man ... hatred of the good for being the good; ... the focus of that hatred, the target of its pa.s.sionate fury, is the man of ability.

[”An Unt.i.tled Letter,” PWNI, 123; pb 102.) See also ALTRUISM; ”COLLECTIVE RIGHTS”; ”COMMON GOOD”; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; INDIVIDUALISM; SELFISHNESS; SOCIAL SYSTEM; SOCIETY; STATISM; TRIBALISM; TRIBAL PREMISE (in ECONOMICS).

”Common Good.” The tribal notion of ”the common good” has served as the moral justification of most social systems-and of all tyrannies-in history. The degree of a society's enslavement or freedom corresponded to the degree to which that tribal slogan was invoked or ignored.

”The common good” (or ”the public interest”) is an undefined and undefinable concept: there is no such ent.i.ty as ”the tribe” or ”the public” ; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such; ”good” and ”value” pertain only to a living organism-to an individual living organism-not to a disembodied aggregate of relations.h.i.+ps.

”The common good” is a meaningless concept, unless taken literally, in which case its only possible meaning is: the sum of the good of all the individual men involved. But in that case, the concept is meaningless as a moral criterion: it leaves open the question of what is the good of individual men and how does one determine it?

It is not, however, in its literal meaning that that concept is generally used. It is accepted precisely for its elastic, undefinable, mystical character which serves, not as a moral guide, but as an escape from morality. Since the good is not applicable to the disembodied, it becomes a moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it.

When ”the common good” of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. It is tacitly a.s.sumed, in such cases, that ”the common good” means ”the good of the majority” as against the minority or the individual. Observe the significant fact that that a.s.sumption is tacit: even the most collectivized mentalities seem to sense the impossibility of justifying it morally. But ”the good of the majority,” too, is only a pretense and a delusion: since, in fact, the violation of an individual's rights means the abrogation of all rights, it delivers the helpless majority into the power of any gang that proclaims itself to be ”the voice of society” and proceeds to rule by means of physical force, until deposed by another gang employing the same means.

If one begins by defining the good of individual men, one will accept as proper only a society in which that good is achieved and achievable. But if one begins by accepting ”the common good” as an axiom and regarding individual good as its possible but not necessary consequence (not necessary in any particular case), one ends up with such a gruesome absurdity as Soviet Russia, a country professedly dedicated to ”the common good,” where, with the exception of a minuscule clique of rulers, the entire population has existed in subhuman misery for over two generations.

[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 20.]

Only on the basis of individual rights can any good-private or public -be defined and achieved. Only when each man is free to exist for his own sake-neither sacrificing others to himself nor being sacrificed to others-onty then is every man free to work for the greatest good he can achieve for himself by his own choice and by his own effort. And the sum total of such individual efforts is the only kind of general, social good possible.

[”Textbook of Americanism,” pamphlet. 1 1.]

See also ALTRUISM; COLLECTIVISM; DEMOCRACY; lNDIVIDUAL RIGHTS: MINORITY RIGHTS; ”PUBLIC INTEREST,” the; SOVIET RUSSIA; TRIBALISM.

Common Sense. Common sense is a simple and non-self-conscious use of logic.

[Ayn Rand, question period following Lecture I 1 of Leonard Peikoff's series ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” (1976).]

That which today is called ”common sense” is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence.

[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 45; pb 41.]

Americans are the most reality-oriented people on earth. Their outstanding characteristic is the childhood form of reasoning: common sense. It is their only protection. But common sense is not enough where theoretical knowledge is required: it can make simple, concrete-bound connections-it cannot integrate complex issues, or deal with wide abstractions, or forecast the future.

[”Don't Let It Go,” PWNI, 257; pb 211.]

See also AMERICA; ARISTOTLE; LOGIC.

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