Part 46 (2/2)
The sensory-perceptual awareness of an adult does not consist of mere sense data (as it did in his infancy), but of automatized integrations that combine sense data with a vast context of conceptual knowledge. The visual arts refine and direct the sensory elements of these integrations. By means of selectivity, of emphasis and omission, these arts lead man's sight to the conceptual context intended by the artist. They teach man to see more precisely and to find deeper meaning in the field of his vision.
It is a common experience to observe that a particular painting-for example, a still life of apples-makes its subject ”more real than it is in reality.” The apples seem brighter and firmer, they seem to possess an almost self-a.s.sertive character, a kind of heightened reality which neither their real-life models nor any color photograph can match. Yet if one examines them closely, one sees that no real-life apple ever looked like that. What is it, then, that the artist has done? He has created a visual abstraction.
He has performed the process of concept-formation-of isolating and integrating-but in exclusively visual terms. He has isolated the essential, distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of apples, and integrated them into a single visual unit. He has brought the conc-eptual method of functioning to the operations of a single sense organ, the organ of sight.
[”Art and Cognition.” RM, pb 47.]
See also ABSTRACTION (PROCESS of); ART; ARTISTIC CREATION; CONCEPTS; DECORATIVE ARTS; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); PAINTING; PERCEPTION; PHOTOGRAPHY; SCULPTURE; STYLIZATION.
Volition. See Free Will.
Volitional. ”Volitional” means selected from two or more alternatives that were possible under the circ.u.mstances, the difference being made by the individual's decision, which could have been otherwise.
[Leonard Peikoff. ”The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976). Lecture 3.]
See also FREE WILL.
Voting. The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system-and its value depends on the const.i.tutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
[”The Lessons of Vietnam,” ARL, III, 24, 3.]
A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device-within a strictly, const.i.tutionally delimited sphere of action-for choosing the practical means of implementing a society's basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote.
[”Who Is the Final Authority in Ethics?” TON, Feb. 1965, 8.]
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.
[”Collectivized 'Rights,' VOS, 140; pb 104.]
The citizens of a free nation may disagree about the specific legal procedures or methods of implementing their rights (which is a complex problem, the province of political science and of the philosophy of law), but they agree on the basic principle to be implemented: the principle of individual rights. When a country's const.i.tution places individual rights outside the reach of public authorities, the sphere of political power is severely delimited-and thus the citizens may, safely and properly, agree to abide by the decisions of a majority vote in this delimited sphere. The lives and property of minorities or dissenters are not at stake, are not subject to vote and are not endangered by any majority decision; no man or group holds a blank check on power over others.
[Ibid., 138; pb 103.]
See also CONSt.i.tUTION; DEMOCRACY; ECONOMIC POWER vs. POLITICAL POWER; GOVERNMENT; INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS; REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT; REPUBLIC; STATISM; TYRANNY.
W.
War. Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate. (The first is dictators.h.i.+p, the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the cause of wars.) [”The Wreckage of the Consensus,” CUI, 224.]
Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relations.h.i.+ps. By the nature of its basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.
Men who are free to produce, have no incentive to loot; they have nothing to gain from war and a great deal to lose. Ideologically, the principle of individual rights does not permit a man to seek his own livelihood at the point of a gun, inside or outside his country. Economically, wars cost money; in a free economy, where wealth is privately owned, the costs of war come out of the income of private citizens-there is no overblown public treasury to hide that fact-and a citizen cannot hope to recoup his own financial losses (such as taxes or business dislocations or property destruction) by winning the war. Thus his own economic interests are on the side of peace.
In a statist economy, where wealth is ”publicly owned,” a citizen has no economic interests to protect by preserving peace-he is only a drop in the common bucket-while war gives him the (fallacious) hope of larger handouts from his master. Ideologically, he is trained to regard men as sacrificial animals; he is one himself; he can have no concept of why foreigners should not be sacrificed on the same public altar for the benefit of the same state.
The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of traders-for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as ”selfish” and conquest as ”n.o.ble.”
Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history-a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world-from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
[”The Roots of War,” CUl, 38.]
Statism-in fact and in principle-is nothing more than gang rule. A dictators.h.i.+p is a gang devoted to looting the effort of the productive citizens of its own country. When a statist ruler exhausts his own country's economy, he attacks his neighbors. It is his only means of postponing internal collapse and prolonging his rule. A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights, will not recognize the rights of nations: a nation is only a number of individuals.
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.
Observe that the major wars of history were started by the more controlled economies of the time against the freer ones. For instance, World War I was started by monarchist Germany and Czarist Russia, who dragged in their freer allies. World War II was started by the alliance of n.a.z.i Germany with Soviet Russia and their joint attack on Poland.
Observe that in World War II, both Germany and Russia seized and dismantled entire factories in conquered countries, to s.h.i.+p them home -while the freest of the mixed economies, the semi-capitalistic United States, sent billions worth of lend-lease equipment, including entire factories, to its allies.
Germany and Russia needed war; the United States did not and gained nothing. (In fact, the United States lost, economically, even though it won the war: it was left with an enormous national debt, augmented by the grotesquely futile policy of supporting former allies and enemies to this day.) Yet it is capitalism that today's peace-lovers oppose and statism that they advocate-in the name of peace.
[Ibid., 37.]
If men want to oppose war, it is stalism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged ”good” can justify it-there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.
[Ibid., 42.]
Just as, in domestic affairs, all the evils caused by statism and government controls were blamed on capitalism and the free market-so, in foreign affairs, all the evils of statist policies were blamed on and ascribed to capitalism. Such myths as ”capitalistic imperialism,” ”war-profiteering,” or the notion that capitalism has to win ”markets” by military conquest are examples of the superficiality or the unscrupulousness of statist commentators and historians.
The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade-i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges-the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and compet.i.tion among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another. During the nineteenth century, it was free trade that liberated the world, undercutting and wrecking the remnants of feudalism and the statist tyranny of absolute monarchies.
[Ibid., 38.]
Capitalism wins and holds its markets by free compet.i.tion, at home and abroad. A market conquered by war can be of value (temporarily) only to those advocates of a mixed economy who seek to close it to international compet.i.tion, impose restrictive regulations, and thus acquire special privileges by force.
[Ibid., 39.]
Remember that private citizens-whether rich or poor, whether businessmen or workers-have no power to start a war. That power is the exclusive prerogative of a government. Which type of government is more likely to plunge a country into war: a government of limited powers, bound by const.i.tutional restrictions-or an unlimited government, open to the pressure of any group with warlike interests or ideologies, a government able to command armies to march at the whim of a single chief executive?
[Ibid., 40.]
It is true that nuclear weapons have made wars too horrible to contemplate. But it makes no difference to a man whether he is killed by a nuclear bomb or a dynamite bomb or an old-fas.h.i.+oned club. Nor does the number of other victims or the scale of the destruction make any difference to him.
[Ibid., 42.]
If nuclear weapons are a dreadful threat and mankind cannot afford war any longer, then mankind cannot afford statism any longer. Let no man of good will take it upon his conscience to advocate the rule of force-outside or inside his own country. Let all those who are actually concerned with peace-those who do love man and do care about his survival-realize that if war is ever to be outlawed, it is the use of force that has to be outlawed.
[Ibid., 43.]
See also CAPITALISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; DRAFT; FOREIGN POLICY; FREEDOM; GENOCIDE; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PEACE MOVEMENTS; PHSICAL FORCE; SOVIET RUSSIA; STATISM; TRADER PRINCIPLE; TRIBALISM; UNITED NATIONS.
Welfare State. Since the things man needs for survival have to be produced, and nature does not guarantee the success of any human endeavor, there is not and cannot be any such thing as a guaranteed economic security. The employer who gives you a job, has no guarantee that his business will remain in existence, that his customers will continue to buy his products or services. The customers have no guarantee that they will always be able and willing to trade with him, no guarantee of what their needs, choices and incomes will be in the future. If you retire to a self-sustaining farm, you have no guarantee to protect you from what a Hood or a hurricane might do to your land and your crops. If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty-as the practical results of every totalitarian economy, communist or fascist, have demonstrated.
Morally, the promise of an impossible ”right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don't. ”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.” (”Man's Rights” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) There can be no such thing as the right to enslave, i.e., the right to destroy rights.
[”A Preview,” ARL, I, 22, 2.]
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