Part 9 (1/2)

See also ALTRUISM; CAPITALISM; COMPROMISE; ”CONSERVATIVES ” vs. ”LIBERALS”; FAITH; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; ”LIBERALS”; ”LIBERTARIANS”; ORIGINAL SIN; RELIGION; STATISM; TRADITION.

”Conservatives” vs. ”Liberals.” Both [conservatives and liberals] hold the same premise-the mind-body dichotomy-but choose opposite sides of this lethal fallacy.

The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production, of industry, of trade, of business, of physical goods, of material wealth. But they advocate government control of man's spirit, i.e., man's consciousness; they advocate the State's right to impose censors.h.i.+p, to determine moral values, to create and enforce a governmental establishment of morality, to rule the intellect. The liberals want freedom to act in the spiritual realm; they oppose censors.h.i.+p, they oppose government control of ideas, of the arts, of the press, of education (note their concern with ”academic freedom”). But they advocate government control of material production, of business, of employment, of wages, of profits, of all physical property-they advocate it all the way down to total expropriation.

The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories-with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Was.h.i.+ngton. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe-but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.

Yet it is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists, who proclaim the superiority of the soul over the body, who represent what I call the ”mystics of spirit.” And it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists, who regard man as an aggregate of meat, and who represent what I call the ”mystics of muscle.”

This is merely a paradox, not a contradiction: each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to the activities it despises. Observe that the conservatives insult and demean the rich or those who succeed in material production, regarding them as morally inferior-and that the liberals treat ideas as a cynical con game. ”Control,” to both camps, means the power to rule by physical force. Neither camp holds freedom as a value. The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness; the liberals, his body.

[”Censors.h.i.+p: Local and Express,” PWNI, 228; pb 186.]

See also CENSORs.h.i.+P; ”CONSERVATIVES”; FREEDOM; ”LIBERALS”; MYSTICS of SPIRIT and MUSCLE; PROPERTY RIGHTS; RELIGION; RIGHTISTS and LEFTISTS; SOUL-BODY DICHOTOMY; ”WINDOW-DRESSING. ”

Const.i.tution. Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Const.i.tution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals-that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government-that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government.

[”The Nature of Government,” VOS, 154; pb 114.]

Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written doc.u.ment-the Const.i.tution-which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments-unrestricted governments acting on unprovable a.s.sumptions-demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.

[”Censors.h.i.+p: Local and Express,” PWNI, 221; pb 181.]

A complex legal system, based on objectively valid principles, is required to make a society free and to keep it free-a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny.

The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradictions in the Const.i.tution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a const.i.tution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government.

[”The Nature of Government,” VOS, 154; pb 113.]

The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate cornmerce is one of the major errors in the Const.i.tution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Const.i.tution's foundation, the entering wedge of' statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Const.i.tution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination.

[”Censors.h.i.+p: Local and Express,” PWNI, 225; pb 184.]

See also AMERICA; FOUNDING FATHERS; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; LAW, OBJECTIVE and NON-OBJECTIVE; PHYSICAL FORCE.

”Consumerism.” No ”anti-concept” launched by the ”liberals” goes so far so crudely as the [conservatives'] tag ”consumerism.” It implies loudly and clearly that the status of ”consumer” is separate from and superior to the status of ”producer”; it suggests a social system dedicated to the service of a new aristocracy which is distinguished by the ability to ”consume” and vested with a special claim on the caste of serfs marked by the ability to produce.

[”The Obliteration of Capitalism,” CUI, 185.]

There is no such thing as ”consumers' rights,” just as there can be no ”rights” belonging to some special group or race and to no others. There are only the rights of man-rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals. The right to be protected from physical injury or fraud belongs to all men, not merely to ”consumers,” and does not require any special protection other than that provided by the criminal law....

If a businessman-or any other citizen-willfully and knowingly cheats or injures others (”consumers” or otherwise), it is a matter to be proved and punished in a criminal court. But the precedent which [the ”consumer protection” movement] is here attempting to establish is the legal hallmark of a dictators.h.i.+p: preventive law-the concept that a man is guilty until he is proved innocent by the permissive rubber stamp of a commissar or a Gauleiter.

What protects us from any private citizen who may choose to turn criminal and injure or defraud us? That, precisely, is the proper duty of a government. But if the government a.s.sumes a totalitarian power and its officials are not subject to any law, then who will protect us from our protectors? What will be our recourse against the dishonesty, vindictiveness, cupidity or stupidity of a bureaucrat?

If matters such as science are to be placed into the unanswerable power of a single bureau, what will guarantee the superior wisdom, justice and integrity of the bureaucrats? Why, the vote of the people, a statist would answer-of the people who choose the ruler who then appoints the bureaucrats-of the same people whom [he] does not consider competent to choose electric toasters, credit contracts, face lotions, laxative tablets or canned vegetables.

[”Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?” TON, May 1962, 20.]

You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you're incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others-that you're unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler-that you're unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of a.s.sistant greaser.

[GS, FNI, 208; pb 167.]

See also ”ANTI-CONCEPTS”; CONSUMPTION; FRAUD; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PRODUCTION; SERVICE; TRIBAL PREMISE (in ECONOMICS).

Consumption. Consumption is the final, not the efficient, cause of production. The efficient cause is savings, which can be said to represent the opposite of consumption: they represent unconsumed goods. Consumption is the end of production, and a dead end, as far as the productive process is concerned. The worker who produces so little that he consumes everything he earns, carries his own weight economically, but contributes nothing to future production. The worker who has a modest savings account, and the millionaire who invests a fortune (and all the men in between), are those who finance the future. The man who consumes without producing is a parasite, whether he is a welfare recipient or a rich playboy.

[”Egalitarianism and Inflation,” PWNI, 160; pb 132.]

Trained in college to believe that to look beyond the immediate moment-to look for causes or to foresee consequences-is impossible, modern men have developed context-dropping as their normal method of cognition. Observing a bad, small-town shopkeeper, the kind who is doomed to fail, they believe-as he does-that lack of customers is his only problem; and that the question of the goods he sells, or where these goods come from, has nothing to do with it. The goods, they believe, are here and will always be here. Therefore, they conclude, the consumer -not the producer-is the motor of an economy. Let us extend credit, i.e., our savings, to the consumers-they advise-in order to expand the market for our goods.

But, in fact, consumers qua consumers are not part of anyone's market; qua consumers, they are irrelevant to economics. Nature does not grant anyone an innate t.i.tle of ”consumer”; it is a t.i.tle that has to be earned-by production. Only producers const.i.tute a market-only men who trade products or services for products or services. In the role of producers, they represent a market's ”supply”; in the role of consumers, they represent a market's ”demand.” The law of supply and demand has an implicit subclause: that it involves the same people in both capacities.

When this subclause is forgotten, ignored or evaded-you get the economic situation of today.

[Ibid., 157; pb 130.]

See also ”CONSUMERISM”; FINAL CAUSATION; INVESTMENT; PRODUCTION; PURCHASING POWER; SAVINGS.

Context. Knowledge is contextual.... By ”context” we mean the sum of cognitive elements conditioning the acquisition, validity or application of any item of human knowledge. Knowledge is an organization or integration of interconnected elements, each relevant to the others.... Knowledge is not a mosaic of independent pieces each of which stands apart from the rest....

In regard to any concept, idea, proposal, theory, or item of knowledge, never forget or ignore the context on which it depends and which conditions its validity and use.

[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 5.1 Concepts are not and cannot be formed in a vacuum; they are formed in a context; the process of conceptualization consists of observing the differences and similarities of the existents within the field of one's awareness (and organizing them into concepts accordingly). From a child's grasp of the simplest concept integrating a group of perceptually given concretes, to a scientist's grasp of the most complex abstractions integrating long conceptual chains-all conceptualization is a contextual process; the context is the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development.

This does not mean that conceptualization is a subjective process or that the content of concepts depends on an individual's subjective (i.e., arbitrary) choice. The only issue open to an individual's choice in this matter is how much knowledge he will seek to acquire and, consequently, what conceptual complexity he will be able to reach. But so long as and to the extent that his mind deals with concepts (as distinguished from memorized sounds and floating abstractions), the content of his concepts is determined and dictated by the cognitive content of his mind, i.e., by his grasp of the facts of reality. If his grasp is noncontradictory, then even if the scope of his knowledge is modest and the content of his concepts is primitive, it will not contradict the content of the same concepts in the mind of the most advanced scientists.

The same is true of definitions. All definitions are contextual, and a primitive definition does not contradict a more advanced one: the latter merely expands the former.

[ITOE, 55. ].

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge.

[GS, FNI, 154; pb 126.]

One must never make any decisions, form any convictions or seek any values out of context, i.e., apart from or against the total, integrated sum of one's knowledge.

[”The Ohjectivist Ethics,” VOS, 21; pb 26.]

See also CERTAINTY; CONTEXT-DROPPING; CONTRADlCTIONS; DEFINITIONS; HIERARCHY of KNOWLEDGE; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); KNOWLEDGE; PRINCIPLES.

Context-Dropping. Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion. In regard to one's desires, there are two major ways of context-dropping: the issues of range and of means.

A rational man sees his interests in terms of a lifetime and selects his goals accordingly. This does not mean that he has to be omniscient, infallible or clairvoyant. It means that he does not live his life short-range and does not drift like a b.u.m pushed by the spur of the moment. It means that he does not regard any moment as cut off from the context of the rest of his life, and that he allows no conflicts or contradictions between his short-range and long-range interests. He does not become his own destroyer by pursuing a desire today which wipes out all his values tomorrow.

A rational man does not indulge in wistful longings for ends divorced from means. He does not hold a desire without knowing (or learning) and considering the means by which it is to be achieved.

[”The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests,” VOS, 60; pb 51.]

Whenever you tear an idea from its context and treat it as though it were a self-sufficient, independent item, you invalidate the thought process involved. If you omit the context, or even a crucial aspect of it, then no matter what you say it will not be valid....