Cogent essays defending capitalism, free markets, and non-aggression morally, ethically, philosophically, and practically. If you're not an objectivist, why not (no fallacies please)? Why do you think initiation of force is necessary or justified?

I had just finished reading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" when I picked this up. I said in my review of Smith's "The Wealth of Nations", that it was the best economics book I had ever read, as it was simple, cogent, and articulate. But now having read Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" I feel I might have to take that back.

Rand's book is very easy to understand, just as Smith's was. But Rand's view on capitalism differs in some ways from Smith's. While Rand preached a complete laissez-faire capitalism, Smith preached only "free-trade" capitalism. Rand wanted no laws, rules, regulations hindering the free market, while Smith seemed to want a few; not too many, though.

Rand stated in this book throughout, that the reason why Capitalism is "Unknown" and never really fully was, is because it has lacked a philosophical/moral reasoning and justification for it. Rand believed that you cannot rely on the economic arguments for capitalism, as that is not sufficient. The real justification lies in the philosophical realm and that no one was presenting it properly to the masses. She says that (circa 1960's) Conservatives were worse than the liberals, as they had every opportunity to defend capitalism to the fullest extent, but never did. They just allowed the liberals to run all over their presentation, and they constantly backed down in fear.

There are many other articles in this book written by Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen- all of which are very good, and go well with the overall narrative/idea. This book answered a lot of the questions that I had, and which are still being debated and talked about today, i.e., monopolies, big business, corporations, small businesses, anti trust, child labor, unions, minimum wage, gold standard et. al. It is very comprehensive I must say; but it is also easily understandable and well presented. Rand and her ideas like to K.I.S.S.

I read "The Virtue of Selfishness" before this, and it fits very nicely into the moral and philosophical framework of "Capitalism", you must know those justifications before you can begin to understand her reasoning on anything else. I am now going to read Rand's "Philosophy: Who Needs It?"

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS DEFENDING CAPITALISM ON A “MORAL” BASIS

Ayn Rand wrote in the Introduction to this 1966 book, “This book is not a treatise on economics. It is a collection of essays on the MORAL aspects of capitalism… our primary interest is no politics or economics as such, but ‘man’s nature and man’s relationship to existence’----and that we advocate capitalism because it is the only system geared to the life of a rational being… 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… The method of capitalism’s destruction rests on never letting the world discover WHAT it is that is being destroyed---on never allowing it to be identified within the hearing of the young. The purpose of this book is to identify it… This book is addressed to the young---in years or in spirit----who are not afraid to know and are not ready to give up.” [She also added in a November 1970 note, “Nathaniel Branden is no longer associated with me, with my philosophy of with ‘The Objectivist.’”]

In the first essay, she observes, “In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival. If some men do not choose to think, they can survive only by imitating and repeating a routine of work discovered by others… Regardless of what choice is made, in this issue… the fact remains that reason is man’s means of survival and that men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.” (Pg. 17)

She says, “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned… In a capitalist society, no man or group may INITIATE the use of physical force against others. The only function of government… is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force… It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man’s nature—the connection between his survival and his use of reason---that capitalism recognizes and protects. In a capitalism society, all human relationships are VOLUNTARY. Men are free to cooperate or not… as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate.” (Pg. 19)

She points out, “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.” (Pg. 21) She continues, “The OBJECTIVE theory holds that the good is … an EVALUATION of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value… Of all the social systems in mankind’s history, capitalism is the only system based on an objective theory of values.” (Pg. 22)

She asserts, “unilateral pacificism is merely an invitation to aggression. Just as an individual has the right of self-defense, so has a free country if attacked. But this does not give its government the right to draft men into military service---which is the most blatantly statist violation of a man’s right to his own life… a volunteer army is the most efficient army… A free country has never lacked volunteers when attacked by a foreign aggressor.” (Pg. 40) Later, she adds, “Not many men would volunteer for such wars as Korea and Vietnam. Without the power to draft, the makers of our foreign policy would not be able to embark on adventures of this kind. This is one of the best practical reasons for the abolition of the draft.” (Pg. 228)

She acknowledges, “A system of pure, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism has never yet existed anywhere. What did exist were only so-called mixed economies, which means: a mixture, in varying degrees, of freedom and controls, of voluntary choice and government coercion, of capitalism and statism.” (Pg. 48) She asserts, “All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.” (Pg. 48)

She contends, “Trusts came into existence because they were the most efficient units in those industries which, being relatively new, were too small to support more than one large company… The observable tendency of an industry’s dominant companies eventually to lose part of their share of the market, is not caused by antitrust legislation, but by the fact that it is difficult to prevent new forms from entering the field when the demand for a certain product increases.” (Pg. 66)

Branden notes, “Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, of growth, of progress; no one has a VESTED RIGHT to a position if others can do better than he can. When people denounce the free market as ‘cruel,’ the face they are decrying is that the market is ruled by a single moral principle: JUSTICE. And that is the root of their hatred for capitalism.” (Pg. 76)

She states of compulsory education, “The answer to this question becomes evident if one makes the question more concrete…. ‘Should the government be permitted to remove children forcibly from their homes, with or without the parents’ consent, and subject the children to educational training and procedures of which the parents may or may not approve?... the answer is clearly: NO. There are no moral grounds whatever for the claim that education is the prerogative of the State… The doctrine that education should be controlled by the State is consistent with the Nazi or communist theory of government.” (Pg. 89)

She suggests “The disgracefully low level of education in America today is the predictable result of a State-controlled school system… More and more people are entering college---and fewer and fewer people are emerging properly educated. Our educational system is like a vast bureaucracy… in which the trend is toward a policy of considering everything about a teacher’s qualifications… except his teaching ability… The solution is to bring the field of education into the marketplace.” (Pg. 90)

Of the student rebellion movement in the ‘60s, she comments, “no rights of any kind can be exercised without property rights. 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. There was no way for the Berkeley administration to answer the rebels except by evoking property rights.” (Pg. 259)

For anyone interested in the Objectivist perspective on political and economic issues, this book will be ‘must reading.”

Two words: Raving lunacy

I did not give this 3 stars because I agree with most of it or even half of it. I gave it 3 stars because I do think she did a good job of conveying her ideas, and the essays made me think about my views and examine whether they were based on faulty assumptions. Also, I found this book much easier and more entertaining than other Rand books I've read.

Here are just a few issues I had with Rand's ideas. She seems to willfully ignore basic economic concepts such as the tragedy of the commons. ToC is basically the worst world-wide threat right now. Global climate change invalidates so many of her arguments right off the bat. She ignores how money can generate more money without any innovation or hard work. Modern research in the irrationality of man also disproves many of her arguments. Her arguments against anti-trust laws can be effortlessly dismissed by anyone who has previously paid for cable or an internet connection. I think she terribly discounts the good that labor unions have done for working people. Now that labor unions have lost power in many industries I think we've all felt some of the negative effects both in the economy, politics, and in loss of our leisure time, though we may not all associate it with that cause. And OMG did she honestly try to make an argument in favor of child labor? That's when you know that unfettered capitalism has really jumped the shark. As an aside, her attack on altruism is diametrically opposed to both Christianity and the current science of happiness.

There were also interesting parts that challenged me to think - and occasionally I even agree with some things. For example, I agree that many government subsidies are a horror. I have long had an intense dislike of the corn subsidy and its terrible results for both our economy and health. Nor am I a fan of train subsidies. Clearly, the price point for trains should be in between buses and airplanes? Yet trains often cost the same or more as a flight. I am also interested in Rand's argument about unemployment being related to government interference in the market. That seems plausible when government interference in immigration is considered, but I don't know enough about the research and numbers - and a fully mobile world labor market doesn't seem likely anytime soon. She appears to be mostly right about the hypocrisy of both political parties with regards to religion and reason.

Rand makes the argument that it's not true that too much of a good thing is always bad, and that's correct that it's not ALWAYS true. But it is sometimes true. (Even excessive water consumption can kill you.) I don't think she succeeded in proving that unfettered capitalism is better than capitalism with regulation.

Funny to read a young Alan Greenspan's arguments for eliminating the federal reserve and returning to the gold standard.

Libër që në Shqipëri mund të jetë lexuar nga fare pak njerëz...

2024-05-31 Very surprised that Goodreads does not have a review by me of this book yet, since it is one of my very favorites.
All the essays are highly worthwhile.
All the authors very insightful.

This book has the classic article by Alan Greenspan on Gold, which for much of his career at the Fed. he tried to ignore on the PR level as well as on the implementation of the basic understanding level, but worked very hard to tie the price of the dollar to gold at on a short-term "practical" level. if that is confusing, read the article, then contact me, and I will be happy to explain more thoroughly.

One of my favorite and oft cited/recommended chapters/articles is by Robert Hessen on the condition of women and children under the industrial revolution. It is crucial history to understand. Too few people appreciate the "conditions shifting" nature of critiques of capitalism/industrial revolution/etc. especially by socialists, Marxists, or coercive collectivists in general.

This book is vastly less known and less read than Rand's more famous fiction: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and of course the novella Anthem, but I believe this book could be even more important, in that is carefully explains why so many pernicious myths about capitalism are wrong, lays out the facts of the matter, and shows how capitalism is vastly more moral and efficacious in providing for human needs.

When is this nonsense going to die its long overdue death? This books is a collection of misrepresentations, misunderstandings, straw man arguments, opinions, and conjecture. Some of her musings were never anything more than that, some were proven wrong by science or course of history, but bottom line, when you largely quote your own works of fiction as "proof" for your "theories", you're bound to be wrong at least some of the time. This book is wrong most of the time.

El mejor del año.

The only novel by Ayn Rand I've read is Atlas Shrugged, which, quite frankly, I thought was atrocious. I was interested in the ideas Rand presents in it, but it just doesn't work as a novel, in my opinion. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which Ayn Rand says in the introduction "is a nonfiction footnote to Atlas Shrugged," is far more palatable, since it's just a collection of essays instead of a collection of essays under the guise of fiction.

I can't say I agree with everything written by Rand and the other contributors (for example, I think it's possible to acknowledge both the importance of the early 20th century "captains of industry" and that they often failed to provide safe working conditions for their employees), but I found most of these essays to be uplifting.

This is the cherry that tops the Ayn Rand sundae I've been consuming for the past 2 1/2 years. Capitalism really is an unknown ideal, and it's a shame that it was never given an honest chance to fully manifest. What we have now is nowhere near capitalism- we're on a downward slippery slope to socialism...which I'm dreading more with each passing law. She had it right all along. I find it amazing that someone could be so dead-on in predicting what the future would be like if we had kept going in the direction towards collectivism (which we have). She was Orwellian in her foresight about the political/social/economic/moral future of this country and the world.