Part 34 (2/2)
See also AXIOMATIC CONCEPTS; AXIOMS; COROLLARIES; IRREDUCIBLE PRIMARIES; LOGIC; OBJECTIVITY; PERCEPTION; REASON; SELF-EVIDENT; VALIDATION.
Property Rights. The right to life is the source of all rights-and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the 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.
[”Man's Rights,” VOS, 125; pb 94.]
Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property-by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.
[”The Property Status of Airwaves,” CUI, 122.]
Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reaiity-to think, to work and to keep the results-which means: the right of property. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of ”human rights” versus ”property rights,” as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that ”human rights are superior to ”property rights” simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the t.i.tle of ”human.”
The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence to work: those who're able to think, will not work under compulsion; those who will, won't produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner's terms, by trade and by volitional consent. Any other policy of men toward man's property is the policy of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages who play it short-range and starve when their prey runs out-just as you're starving today, you who believed that crime could be ”practical” if your government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance to robbery illegal.
[GS, FNI, 230; pb 182.]
Man has to work and produce in order to support his life. He has to support his life by his own effort and by the guidance of his own mind. If he cannot dispose of the product of his effort, he cannot dispose of his effort; if he cannot dispose of his effort, he cannot dispose of his life. Without property rights, no other rights can be practiced.
[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 18.]
If some men are ent.i.tled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Any alleged ”right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as ”the right to enslave.”
A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort....
The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property.
The right of free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without danger of suppression, interference or punitive action by the government. It does not mean that others must provide him with a lecture hall, a radio station or a printing press through which to express his ideas.
Any undertaking that involves more than one man, requires the voluntary consent of every partic.i.p.ant. Every one of them has the right to make his own decision, but none has the right to force his decision on the others.
There is no such thing as ”a right to a job”-there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man's right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no ”right to a home,” only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no ”rights to a 'fair' wage or a 'fair' price” if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no ”rights of consumers” to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no ”rights” of special groups, there are no ”rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.” There are only the Rights of Man-rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.
Property rights and the right of free trade are man's only ”economic rights” (they are, in fact, political rights)-and there can be no such thing as ”an economic bill of rights.” But observe that the advocates of the latter have all but destroyed the former.
[”Man's Rights,” VOS, 129; pb 96.]
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 clas.h.i.+ng views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.
[”The Cas.h.i.+ng-in: The Student 'Rebellion,' ” CUI, 259.]
The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the inst.i.tution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree-and thus keeps the road open to man's most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.
[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 19.]
The inst.i.tution of private property, in the full, legal meaning of the term, was brought into existence only by capitalism. In the pre-capitalist eras, private property existed de facto, but not de jure, i.e., by custom and sufferance, not by right or by law. In law and in principle, all property belonged to the head of the tribe, the king, and was held only by his permission, which could be revoked at any time, at his pleasure. (The king could and did expropriate the estates of recalcitrant n.o.blemen throughout the course of Europe's history.) [Ibid., 13.]
See also CAPITALISM; CAUSALITY; COMMUNISM; CONTRACTS; FASCISM/n.a.z.iSM; FREE SPEECH; FREEDOM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; PATENTS and COPYRIGHTS; PRODUCTION; SOCIALISM; STATISM.
Propositions. Since concepts, in the field of cognition, perform a function similar to that of numbers in the field of mathematics, the function of a proposition is similar to that of an equation: it applies conceptual abstractions to a specific problem.
A proposition, however, can perform this function only if the concepts of which it is composed have precisely defined meanings. If, in the field of mathematics, numbers had no fixed, firm values, if they were mere approximations determined by the mood of their users-so that ”5,” for instance, could mean five in some calculations, but six-and-a-half or four-and-three-quarters in others, according to the users' ”convenience”-there would be no such thing as the science of mathematics.
[ITOE, 100.].
See also CONCEPTS; DEFINITIONS; GRAMMAR; INDUCTION and DEDUCTION; LANGUAGE; MEANING (of CONCEPTS); NUMBERS; THOUGHT/THINKING.
Psycho-Epistemology. Psycho-epistemology is the study of man's cognitive processes from the aspect of the interaction between the conscious mind and the automatic functions of the subconscious.
[”The Psycho-Epistemology of Art,” RM, 20; pb 18.]
”Psycho-epistemology,” a term coined by Ayn Rand, pertains not to the content of a man's ideas, but to his method of awareness, i.e., the method by which his mind habitually deals with its content.”
[Leonard Peikoff, editor's footnote to Ayn Rand's ”The Missing Link,” PWNI, 47; pb 39.]
The subconscious is an integrating mechanism. Man's conscious mind observes and establishes connections among his experiences; the subconscious integrates the connections and makes them become automatic. For example, the skill of walking is acquired, after many faltering attempts, by the automatization of countless connections controlling muscular movements; once he learns to walk, a child needs no conscious awareness of such problems as posture, balance, length of step, etc.-the mere decision to walk brings the integrated total into his control.
A mind's cognitive development involves a continual process of automatization. For example, you cannot perceive a table as an infant perceives it-as a mysterious object with four legs. You perceive it as a table, i.e., a man-made piece of furniture, serving a certain purpose belonging to a human habitation, etc.; you cannot separate these attributes from your sight of the table, you experience it as a single, indivisible percept-yet all you see is a four-legged object; the rest is an automatized integration of a vast amount of conceptual knowledge which, at one time, you had to learn bit by bit. The same is true of everything you perceive or experience; as an adult, you cannot perceive or experience in a vacuum, you do it in a certain automatized context- and the efficiency of your mental operations depends on the kind of context your subconscious has automatized.
”Learning to speak is a process of automatizing the use (i.e., the meaning and the application) of concepts. And more: all learning involves a process of automatizing, i.e., of first acquiring knowledge by fully conscious, focused attention and observation, then of establis.h.i.+ng mental connections which make that knowledge automatic (instantly available as a context), thus freeing man's mind to pursue further, more complex knowledge.” (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) The process of forming, integrating and using concepts is not an automatic, but a volitional process-i.e., a process which uses both new and automatized material, but which is directed volitionally. It is not an innate, but an acquired skill; it has to be learned-it is the most crucially important part of learning-and all of man's other capacities depend on how well or how badly he learns it.
This skill does not pertain to the particular content of a man's knowledge at any given age, but to the method by which he acquires and organizes knowledge-the method by which his mind deals with its content. The method programs his subconscious computer, determining how efficiently, lamely or disastrously his cognitive processes will function. The programming of a man's subconscious consists of the kind of cognitive habits he acquires; these habits const.i.tute his psycho-epistemology.
It is a child's early experiences, observations and subverbal conclusions that determine this programming. Thereafter, the interaction of content and method establishes a certain reciprocity: the method of acquiring knowledge affects its content, which affects the further development of the method, and so on.
[”The Comprachicos.” NI., 192.]
Most people know nothing about psycho-epistemology. They take their habitual method of thought for granted, leaving it unidentified and unquestioned. Yet this kind of ignorance can be disastrous.... Men can automatize wrong methods of thought without even knowing it. In order to achieve intellectual control, therefore, in order to enjoy the full power over your mind that volition makes possible, you must identify your psycho-epistemological methods, and correct those, if any, which are not consonant with your adult knowledge.
This is a crucial discovery of Miss Rand's-the discovery of psycho-epistemology, and of its roots, forms, and errors. Without such knowledge, men would be left at the mercy of unidentified mental habits that they hardly even suspected-habits that perhaps derived unknowingly from childhood errors that they long since had consciously renounced. Psycho-epistemology represents a whole science, a new branch of psychology.
[Leonard Peikoff, ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 6.]
Men's epistemology-or, more precisely, their psycho-epistemology, their method of awareness-is the most fundamental standard by which they can be cla.s.sified. Few men are consistent in that respect: most men keep switching from one level of awareness to another, according to the circ.u.mstances or the issues involved, ranging from moments of full rationality to an almost somnambulistic stupor. But the battle of human history is fought and determined by those who are predominantly consistent, those who, for good or evil, are committed to and motivated by their chosen psycho-epistemology and its corollary view of existence.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 18; pb 21.]
While the alleged advocates of reason oppose ”system-building” and haggle apologetically over concrete-bound words or mystically floating abstractions, its enemies seem to know that integration is the psycho-epistemological key to reason, that art is man's psycho-epistemological conditioner, and that if reason is to be destroyed, it is man's integrating capacity that has to be destroyed.
[”Art and Cognition,” RM, pb 77.]
See also ANTI-CONCEPTUAL MENTALITY; AUTOMATIZATION; CONSCIOUSNESS; EPISTEMOLOGY; FREE WILL; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); LEARNING; PSYCHOLOGY; RATIONALITY; STYLE; SUBCONSCIOUS.
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