Dans cet épisode :

• Les droits
• Individualisme et collectivisme
• L’État
• Le capitalisme
• Les relations internationales

Sources

Lorsqu’aucun nom n’est précisé, l’auteur est Ayn Rand. Si jamais un propos tenu au cours du podcast vous semble avoir besoin d’être sourcé et ne l’est pas ici, contactez-moi, je ferai mon possible pour compléter ce manque. Mais ces sources n’ont pas vocation à être absolument exhaustives.

Introduction

[00:32] Dépendance de politique à la philosophie fondamentale

• « Choose Your Issues » (1962), dans The Objectivist Newsletter, vol. 1, n°1, janvier, p. 1 : « Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles […] as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context. Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics — on a theory of man’s nature and of man’s relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. »
• « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1982), chap. 1, p. 11 : « politics is not the cause, but the last consequence of philosophical ideas. »
• « Philosophical Detection » (1974) dans Ibid., chap. 2, p. 14-15 : « In philosophy, the fundamentals are metaphysics and epistemology, On the basis of a knowable universe and of a rational faculty’s competence to grasp it, you can define man’s proper ethics, politics and esthetics. (And if you make an error, you retain the means and the frame of reference necessary to correct it.) But what […] will you do if you advocate political freedom on the grounds that you feel it is good, and find yourself confronting an ambitious thug who declares that he feels quite differently? »
• « What Can One Do? » (1972) dans Ibid, chap. 17, p. 245 : « The battle is primarily intellectual (philosophical), not political. Politics is the last consequence, the practical implementation, of the fundamental (metaphysical-epistemological-ethical) ideas that dominate a given nation’s culture. You cannot fight or change the consequences without fighting and changing the cause; nor can you attempt any practical implementation without knowing what you want to implement. »

Les droits

[02:21] Les droits comme moyen de survie

• Atlas Shrugged (35th Anniversary Edition, New York, Dutton, 1992 ; œuvre originale de 1957), p. 1061 : « Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life. »
• « Individual Rights » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), chap. 21, p. 153-154 : « Rights are those conditions of existence which are required by man’s nature for his proper survival. […] That is the survival of man qua man—the survival in that form which his nature as a certain kind of living entity actually requires. »
  « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1964), chap. 14, p. 108 : « To recognize individual rights means to recognize and accept the conditions required by man’s nature for his proper survival. »

[02:45] Contexte social des droits

• « Individual Rights » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 21, p. 153 : « A right is a moral concept, applicable only in a social context. On a desert island the question of rights would not arise, even though the question of morality certainly would. On a desert island a man would need a moral code, a knowledge of what is right or wrong for him to do, as much as he would need it in society. But, as to rights, that is a concept which applies strictly to relationships among men. It is a social application of morality. »
• « The Political Structure of a Free Society » dans Ibid. : « [Rights] pertains to what is good for man in relation to other men. On a desert island, you would still need morality, but you wouldn’t need rights, because there would be no one to infringe your freedom of action. It is only in a society that the question of rights arises. And the basic issue is: Does one man have the right to dispose of the life of another? »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York, Dutton, 1991),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 351 : « If a man lived on a desert island, there would be no question of defining his proper relationship to others. Even if men interacted on some island but did so at random, without establishing a social system, the issue of rights would be premature. There would not yet be any context for the concept or, therefore, any means of implementing it; there would be no agency to interpret, apply, enforce it. When men do decide to form (or reform) an organized society, however, when they decide to pursue systematically the advantages of living together, then they need the guidance of principle. That is the context in which the principle of rights arises. »

[03:20] L’individu comme seul titulaire des droits

• « Collectivized “Rights” », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 101-103 : « Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms. Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the “rights” of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking. […] 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 associations. Any group that does not recognize this principle is not an association, 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. »

[04:47] Nature objective des droits

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1061 : « You who’ve lost the concept of a right, you who swing in impotent evasiveness between the claim that rights are a gift of God, a supernatural gift to be taken on faith, or the claim that rights are a gift of society, to be broken at its arbitrary whim—the source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. »
• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 94 : « The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God—others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man’s nature. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, « Objectivism Versus the Intrinsic and Subjective » (1983), dans Understanding Objectivism (New York: New American Library, 2012), Lecture 6, p. 203 : « On every issue, there’s a subjectivist view, an intrinsicist view, and an Objectivist view, and after a while you start to recognize it. What is the intrinsicist view of rights? Where do rights come from? They’re self-evident… […] This is the idea of rights as a product of some factor out there endowing you with rights. […] As against that, there are the moderns who swing all the way around, and in rebellion against intrinsicists, their view is, “Yes, there are rights,” but rights are created how? By social conventions—by the legislature, by Congress… […] The Objectivist view is neither of those; the Objectivist view is, “Given a certain goal—life—given certain facts of reality as our context, then, in a certain situation, we must respect certain principles of behavior that have nothing to do with an outside revelation or a dogma, and that have nothing to do with any acts of Congress or anybody’s preference.” »
• WRIGHT Darryl, « A Human Society« , dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (Chichester / Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, 2016), Part III, chap. 7, p. 185 : « In her terminology, individual rights are neither subjective (arbitrarily set by society) nor intrinsic (set in full detail by mind‐independent reality) but objective (to be defined by a human consciousness according to rational moral criteria derived from the nature of man and reality). »

[05:30] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur les droits

• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 93-94 : « A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action— which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his 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. »

[09:11] Sens de la liberté

• « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (1961), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 46 : « What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion. […] Freedom, in a political context, has only one meaning: the absence of physical coercion. »
• « Conservatism: An Obituary » (1960), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 192 : « Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else. »

[09:21] Pas de droits à une chose

• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 96-98 : « Jobs, food, clothing, recreation (!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them? If some men are entitled 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. […] 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). […] Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man’s freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men. Private citizens are not a threat to one another’s rights or freedom. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 356 : « “Economic rights” in this context means a man’s right, simply by virtue of existing, to man-made goods and services, such as food, clothing, a home, a job, education, day care, medical care, a pension. All such claims involve a contradiction : if my right to life entails a right to your labor or its product, you cannot have a right to liberty or property. If my unearned claim is not satisfied, my “right” is violated; if it is satisfied—as a matter of right, regardless of your choice—then your right to life is violated; you become a rightless creature, who functions by my or society’s permission. Free milk for part of the population, as one political theorist puts the point, means slave labor for the rest. The “right to enslave,” Ayn Rand observes, is a contradiction in terms; it means the right to infringe rights. »

[10:20] La DUDH de 1948 comme contraire à l’esprit des droits de l’homme

• ONU, Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme (1948) : « Article 22. Toute personne, en tant que membre de la société, a droit à la sécurité sociale… […] Article 23. Toute personne a droit au travail, au libre choix de son travail, à des conditions équitables et satisfaisantes de travail et à la protection contre le chômage. […] Article 24. Toute personne a droit au repos et aux loisirs et notamment à une limitation raisonnable de la durée du travail et à des congés payés périodiques. Article 25. Toute personne a droit à un niveau de vie suffisant pour assurer sa santé, son bien-être et ceux de sa famille, notamment pour l’alimentation, l’habillement, le logement, les soins médicaux ainsi que pour les services sociaux nécessaires ; elle a droit à la sécurité en cas de chômage, de maladie, d’invalidité, de veuvage, de vieillesse… […] Article 26. Toute personne a droit à l’éducation. L’éducation doit être gratuite… »
• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 97 : « Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness—not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy. The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life. 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. »

[10:52] Principe de non déclenchement de la force physique

• Textbook of Americanism (1946), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (Chicago: Capitalistpig Publications, 2018), « 7. How Do We Determine That A Right Has Been Violated? », p. 6 : « A right cannot be violated except by physical force. One man cannot deprive another of his life, nor enslave him, nor forbid him to pursue his happiness, except by using force against him. Whenever a man is made to act without his own free, personal, individual, voluntary consent—his right has been violated. Therefore, we can draw a clear-cut division between the rights of one man and those of another. It is an objective division—not subject to the differences of opinion, nor to majority decision, nor to the arbitrary decree of society. No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1023 : « Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others. To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live. Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind. »

[11:44] La force physique de représailles

• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 32-33 : « Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. »
• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 108 : « The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 8 « Virtue », p. 320 : « Ayn Rand holds that to initiate force against others is evil. But to use force in retaliation, against the individual(s) or nation(s) that started its use, is completely proper. Using force in retaliation means using it not against the innocent, but to stop criminals or aggressors. »

[12:12] Force vs. violence

• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 8 « Virtue », p. 319 : « Turning to another point, we often hear denunciations not of force, but of violence. “Violence” names a particular form of force, force that is swift, intense, rough, and/or accompanied by fury. The moral issue we have been identifying, however, is not a matter of form. The evil is coercion and anyone who initiates it, whether he is a wild-eyed hit man brandishing a machine gun or a prim little bureaucrat with his weapons on call but discreetly out of sight. To denounce “violence” but not the initiation of force as such is to imply that only the first of these men is evil. This would mean that the rule of brutality is moral if carried out decorously, with the niceties of the electoral process observed, the right documents filled in, and the agony of the victims kept out of the newspapers. Such is what today’s intellectuals do believe and what they are trying to insinuate into the public mind. »

[12:27] Fraude et violation de contrat

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 111 : « A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right—i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 8 « Virtue », p. 319 : « An example of the indirect use of force would be the gaining of someone’s property by fraud. In such a case, any consent the owner has expressed is nullified; the owner did not consent to the transfer of goods that actually occurred. Morally, the crime here is indistinguishable from plain robbery; the difference is only one of form. »

[12:44] Les droits comme principe égoïste

• Q&A « The Wreckage of the Consensus » (1967) : « It is certainly in my rational self-interest to live in a free society and not in a dictatorship. »
• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 95 : « Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 354-356 : « All rights rest on the ethics of egoism. Rights are an individual’s selfish possessions—his title to his life, his liberty, his property, the pursuit of his own happiness. Only a being who is an end in himself can claim a moral sanction to independent action. If man existed to serve an entity beyond himself, whether God or society, then he would not have rights, but only the duties of a servant. »
• SMITH Tara, Moral Rights and Political Freedom (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1995), chap. 2 « The Egoism of Rights », p. 66-67 : « We can appreciate the egoism of rights by considering the issue from two perspectives, focusing on what the recognition of rights protects and what it forbids. First, when we consider what rights protect (freedom of action) and the reason for which it is protected (each individual’s own life), we can see that rights are an instrument toward a thoroughly self-interested purpose. The telos of rights is egoistic. It can be attained only through self-interested action. Freedom is necessary to secure such action, so rights should be recognized as a means of protecting individuals’ freedom. This reasoning for rights is egoistic through and through. The second perspective that illuminates rights’ egoism is consideration of the behavior that respect for rights forbids. One individual’s rights prohibit others’ interference with her freedom to lead her life for whatever ends she chooses (as long as she does not violate others’ rights). This prohibition is incompatible with altruism, however, since it denies that others’ need justifies encroachment onto a rightholder’s territory. »

[13:11] Rejet des droits par Auguste Comte

• COMTE Auguste, Catéchisme positiviste (Garnier Flammarion, 1966, ouvrage original de 1852), Troisième partie, Dixième entretien, p. 237-238 : « La notion de droit doit disparaître du domaine politique, comme la notion de cause du domaine philosophique. […]  Le positivisme n’admet jamais que des devoirs, chez tous envers tous. Car son point de vue toujours social ne peut comporter aucune notion de droit, constamment fondée sur l’individualité. Nous naissons chargés d’obligations de toute espèce, envers nos prédécesseurs, nos successeurs, et nos contemporains. Elles ne font ensuite que se développer ou s’accumuler avant que nous puissions rendre aucun service. Sur quel fondement humain pourrait donc s’asseoir l’idée de droit, qui supposerait raisonnablement une efficacité préalable ? […] Tout droit humain est donc absurde autant qu’immoral. »

[13:26] L’égalité en droits

• « The Age of Envy » (1971), dans Return of the Primitive (New York: Meridian / Penguin Group, 1999), p. 140 : « “Equality,” in a human context, is a political term: it means equality before the law, the equality of fundamental, inalienable rights which every man possesses by virtue of his birth as a human being, and which may not be infringed or abrogated by man-made institutions, such as titles of nobility or the division of men into castes established by law, with special privileges granted to some and denied to others. […] But this is not the meaning that the altruists ascribe to the word “equality.” They turn the word into an anti-concept: they use it to mean, not political, but metaphysical equality—the equality of personal attributes and virtues, regardless of natural endowment or individual choice, performance and character. It is not man-made institutions, but nature, i.e., reality, that they propose to fight—by means of man-made institutions. »
• « Individual Rights » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 21, p. 155 : « All rights have to be universal, pertaining equally to all men. There is no other way to make the concept of rights tenable or even intelligible. Rights belong to an individual and, since they are derived from his nature, the same rights belong to all individuals. »
• Lettre à John Hospers du 29 avril 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (New York, Plume, 1997), chap. 7 « Letters to a philosopher », p. 556 : « A rational man has to recognize that reason permits no arbitrary, subjective beliefs or values—and that the value he attaches to his own life and his objective right to it are based on the nature of life in general and of human life in particular; therefore, if he values his own life, he has to recognize the right of all other human beings to value their own lives in the same way, for the same reasons and on the same terms. »

[13:40] Sur l’égalitarisme

• « The Age of Envy » (1971), dans Return of the Primitive (New York: Meridian / Penguin Group, 1999), p. 140 : »They turn the word [equality] into an anti-concept: they use it to mean, not political, but metaphysical equality—the equality of personal attributes and virtues, regardless of natural endowment or individual choice, performance and character. It is not man-made institutions, but nature, i.e., reality, that they propose to fight—by means of man-made institutions. Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the “unfairness” of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact—in defiance of facts. Since the Law of Identity is impervious to human manipulation, it.is the Law of Causality that they struggle to abrogate. Since personal attributes or virtues cannot be “redistributed,” they seek to deprive men of their consequences—~of the rewards, the benefits, the achievements created by personal attributes and virtues. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 8 « Virtue », p. 290-291 : « “Egalitarianism” in this context does not mean that men should be equal before the law. Nor does it mean that men should be granted “equal treatment” in the sense of principled treatment, as against the injustices that flow from a double standard. It means that “equality” supersedes justice. In this view, the most heroic creator on earth, the most abysmal villain, and every person in between should share equally in every value, from love to prestige to money to important jobs to college degrees to newspaper coverage to political power, regardless of what any individual deserves or earns or has or has not done—regardless of his character, his achievements, his ability, his talent, his flaws, his vices, his virtues. »

Individualisme et collectivisme

[14:00] L’individualisme d’Ayn Rand

• Textbook of Americanism (1946), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), « 1. What is the basic issue in the world today? », p. 2 : « Individualism holds that man has inalienable rights which cannot be taken away from him by any other man, nor by any number, group or collective of other men. Therefore, each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group. »
• « Racism » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 129 : « Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Counterfeit Individualism », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 18, p. 135 : « The theory of individualism is a central component of the Objectivist philosophy. Individualism is at once an ethical-political concept and an ethical-psychological one. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights, the principle that man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 361 : « “Individualism” means emphasis on the individual. Subjectivists of the personal variety use the term to denote and sanction whim-worship. Ayn Rand, however, uses the term within the context of her basic premises. « Individualism » is the view that, in social issues, the individual is the unit of value; this is a moral corollary of the principle that each man is an end in himself. Politically, as an expression of this approach, an « individualist » social system is one that upholds individual rights. »

[14:31] Le collectivisme

• Textbook of Americanism (1946), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), « 1. What is the basic issue in the world today? », p. 2 : « Collectivism holds that man has no rights; that his work, his body and his personality belong to the group; that the group can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare. Therefore, each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, The Ominous Parallels (Briarcliff Manor, NY: Scarborough House, 1982), chap. 1 « The Cause of Nazism », p. 7-8 : « Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. 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; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it—or its representative, the state—deems this desirable. »

[14:48] La « prémisse tribale » du collectivisme

• « The Roots of War » (1966) dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Signet Books ed. New York: The New American Library, 1967), chap. 2, p. 36 : « It is obvious that the ideological root of statism (or collectivism) is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases to whatever it deems to be its own “good.” Unable to conceive of any social principles, save the rule of brute force, they believed that the tribe’s wishes are limited only by its physical power and that other tribes are its natural prey, to be conquered, looted, enslaved, or annihilated. The history of all primitive peoples is a succession of tribal wars and intertribal slaughter. »
• « The Only Path to Tomorrow » (1944), dans The Ayn Rand Column (Oceanside, CA: Second Renaissance Books, 1991), chap. 27, p. 108 : « Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. A savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. »
• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 30 : « It is morally obscene to regard wealth as an anonymous, tribal product and to talk about “redistributing” it. The view that wealth is the result of some undifferentiated, collective process, that we all did something and it’s impossible to tell who did what… »

[15:08] L’homme comme animal contractuel

• ARISTOTE, Les Politiques, (Flammarion, trad. Pierre Pellegrin, 1993), Livre I, chap. 2 p. 90 [1253a2-3] : « Il est manifeste, à partir de cela, que la cité fait partie des choses naturelles, et que l’homme est par nature un animal politique… »
• « A Nation’s Unity » (1972), dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 2, n° 2, p. 3 : « Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men; living in a human society is his proper way of life—but only on certain conditions. Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal. He is a contractual animal. He has to plan his life long-range, make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreements they entered). »

[15:32] Les bienfaits de la vie en société

• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 32 : « Can man derive any personal benefit from living in a human society? Yes—if it is a human society. The two great values to be gained from social existence are: knowledge and trade. Man is the only species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; the knowledge potentially available to man is greater than any one man could begin to acquire in his own life-span; every man gains an incalculable benefit from the knowledge discovered by others. The second great benefit is the division of labor: it enables a man to devote his effort to a particular field of work and to trade with others who specialize in other fields. This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill and productive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm. »

[15:46] La valeur conditionnelle de la vie en société

• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 32 : « But these very benefits indicate, delimit and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society. Parasites, moochers, looters, brutes and thugs can be of no value to a human being—nor can he gain any benefit from living in a society geared to their needs, demands and protection, a society that treats him as a sacrificial animal and penalizes him for his virtues in order to reward them for their vices, which means: a society based on the ethics of altruism. No society can be of value to man’s life if the price is the surrender of his right to his life. »
• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 107-108 : »A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment—a society that sets up a conflict between its edicts and the requirements of man’s nature—is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society destroys all the values of human coexistence, has no possible justification and represents, not a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat to man’s survival. Life on a desert island is safer than and incomparably preferable to existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. »

[16:00] La société ne fait pas l’individu

• The Fountainhead (New York: Signet, 1952, ouvrage original publié en 1943), p. 679 : « We inherit the products of the thought of other men. We inherit the wheel. We make a cart. The cart becomes an automobile. The automobile becomes an airplane. But all through the process what we receive from others is only the end product of their thinking. The moving force is the creative faculty which takes this product as material, uses it and originates the next step. This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men. That which it creates is the property of the creator. Men learn from one another. But all learning is only the exchange of material. No man can give another the capacity to think. »
• « Our Cultural Value-Deprivation » (1966), dans The Voice of Reason (New York: Meridian, 1990), chap. 11, p. 102 : « A social environment can neither force a man to think nor prevent him from thinking. But a social environment can offer incentives or impediments; it can make the exercise of one’s rational faculty easier or harder; it can encourage thinking and penalize evasion or vice versa. »
• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (New York, New American Library / Penguin Group USA Inc., 2005), « 3. Metaphysics and Epistemology », p. 156 : « The issue here is: What is primary in a man’s development, society or his own mind? Of course, his own mind has primacy. Society cannot make or unmake him. An immoral society can mangle him and make it enormously difficult for him to develop properly psychologically. A rational society can help a man’s development a great deal. In a mixed society, the best minds and those who are strongest morally might withstand the pressure from society, whereas the average person will find it beyond his individual independent capacity and give up. Society cannot form a person. It cannot force him to accept ideas; but it can discourage him. »
• BRANDEN Nathaniel, « Alienation » (1965) dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 23, p. 290 : « To the extent that a man attempts to live without thinking, he experiences himself as passive, his person and actions are the accidental products of forces he does not understand, […] By his default, such a person turns himself into the social determinists’ view of man: into an empty mold waiting to be filled, into a will-less robot waiting to be taken over by any environment and any conditioners. »

[17:06] L’enfance

• « The Stimulus and the Response » (1972) dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 176 : »This means: we all begin as babies and remain in that state; since a baby is not self-sufficient, neither is an adult; nothing has happened in-between. Observe also the same method of setting up a straw man that was used in regard to volition: setting it up outside of reality. E.g., in order to be an individual, Thomas A. Edison would have had to appear in the jungle by parthenogenesis, as an infant without human parents, then rediscover, all by himself, the entire course of the science of physics, from the first fire to the electric light bulb. Since no one has done this, there is no such thing as individualism. »
• « Notes Regarding the Welfare State » dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 4 « Atlas Shrugged », chap. 13 « Notes While Writing: 1947-1952 », entrée du 25 mars 1949, p. 592 : « Children, of course, cannot satisfy their needs either. But that is what constitutes being a child, what distinguishes a child from an adult. Childhood is growth into, preparation for, adulthood—for the state of independence, i.e., a state in which one can satisfy one’s needs. Should society begeared to and ruled by the standards of the incomplete, the unformed, the not-yet-fully-human? »
• « Education« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 20, p. 151 : « After all, a society is not geared to the requirements of any particular group of citizens, of any age, and certainly not to the requirements of children. It is the job of parents to provide the proper environment for their children and bring them up to be adults. It is not their right to demand that adults remain in a state of arrested development… »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Egalitarianism and Inflation » (conférence donnée en 1974), enregistrement YouTube [00:54:16] : « An infant cannot earn his own sustenance. Nor can a child exercise his rights ; he doesn’t know what the pursuit of happiness means, nor know what freedom is and how to use it. All human rights depend on his nature as a rational being; therefore, the child has to wait until he has developed his mind and acquired enough knowledge to be able to come into full independent exercise of his rights. […] But the child cannot claim for himself the rights of an adult, simply because he is not able, he is not competent to exercise them.

[17:35] La société comme moyen, l’individu comme fin

• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 93 : « The United States was the first moral society in history. All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. »
• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 27 : « The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others—and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. »
• Lettre à John Temple Graves du 12 août 1936, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Arrival in America to We the Living« , p. 35 : « [T]he whole question of individualism or collectivism rests primarily on the choice between two basic principles: either we believe that the State exists to serve the individual or that the individual exists to serve the State. […] I believe more firmly than in any Ten Commandments that the State exists only and exclusively to serve the individual. »

[18:01] Rejet des notions de bien collectif

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 20-21 : « “The common good” (or “the public interest”) is an undefined and undefinable concept: there is no such entity 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 relationships. “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 assumed, 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 assumption 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. »

[18:38] Les réussites collectives comme conséquences secondaires

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 29 : « America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to “the common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. Do not, however, make the error of reversing cause and effect: the good of the country was made possible precisely by the fact that it was not forced on anyone as a moral goal or duty; it was merely an effect; the cause was a man’s right to pursue his own good. It is this right—not its consequences—that represents the moral justification of capitalism. »
• « Altruism« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 20, p. 151 : « When you raise your own level, in the sense of any rational achievement, a secondary consequence is that all mankind profits, each person to the extent of his own rationality. When you attain any rational goal, it is of benefit to other men because they too gain a value from it—new knowledge or a new product. Every discovery you make as an individual is a benefit to others. But you cannot reverse that process. How would you go about improving all mankind first, and only then profiting by that improvement? If you are able to improve mankind, it means that you already are in an advanced position—that you are a leader who can convey something of value to others. »
• Lettre à Richard Mealand du 31 juillet 1947, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 372 : « Actually, individualism is the only principle which benefits both the individual and the rest of society— but it is not the “social good” that is the standard and justification, it is the right of the individual to live his own life for his own sake—which means, neither sacrificing others to himself nor sacrificing himself to others. »

[19:00] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur l’individualisme

• Lettre à Linda Lynneberg du 17 avril 1947, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 365 : « [T]he essence of Individualism is that nobody, neither you nor I nor Marx, can tell a man what he must live for, nor subordinate his rights to a goal set by us. Individualism is not for ANY purpose, not “to promote” anything, not anything whatever, right or wrong or indifferent. It’s true that Individualism leads to the development of human creative activity (and is the only code that does), to human happiness, to human prosperity and to every desirable thing men can wish for. But these are consequences, not goals; secondary results, not purposes set in advance. »

L’État

[19:55] L’État sert à protéger les droits de l’homme

• Textbook of Americanism (1946), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), « 8. What is the proper function of government? », p. 7 : « The proper function of government is to protect the individual rights of man; this means—to protect man against brute force. »
• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1062 : « The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. »
• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 95 : « The Declaration of Independence laid down the principle that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” This provided the only valid justification of a government and defined its only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical violence. »
• « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (1961), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 46 : « The only proper function of the government of a free country is to act as an agency which protects the individual’s rights, i.e., which protects the individual from physical violence. »

[20:16] Ce qu’est l’État

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 107 : « A government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area. »

[20:28] Base de l’autorité de l’État

• « Collectivized “Rights” », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 103 : « The government of such a nation is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense). »
• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 110 : « The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose. There is only one basic principle to which an individual must consent if he wishes to live in a free, civilized society: the principle of renouncing the use of physical force and delegating to the government his right of physical self-defense, for the purpose of an orderly, objective, legally defined enforcement. Or, to put it another way, he must accept the separation of force and whim (any whim, including his own). »
• Voir aussi les sources de « [19:55] L’État sert à protéger les droits de l’homme. » plus haut.

[20:58] Bannir la force des relations sociales

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 108-109 : « The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships—thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement. […] If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules. This is the task of a government—of a proper government—its basic task, is only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 366 : « The purpose of government is to bar men’s use of physical force against others for any reason—in part, by protecting men from aggressors, domestic or foreign; in part, by settling impartially disputes that involve men’s rights. »

[21:09] Les lois objectives

• « Objective Law » (1965), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 59-60 : « “Objective” means definable—graspable by a rational consciousness. An objective law, therefore, defines what is forbidden and what the penalty is. An objective law is one that a man can understand and apply, so that before committing an action, he is able to know whether it is a crime and what penalty he incurs by committing it. A law-abiding citizen should be able to apply the law as guidance for his own social actions. A non-objective law, on the other hand, is one without specific definition. It may have as many different interpretations as there are men. Under non-objective law, a citizen cannot tell what is permitted or forbidden. He cannot tell what the punishment will be for violators. A non-objective law is left strictly to the interpretation of the authorities—usually judges, and under dictatorships, commissars. It is in fact indefinable. »
• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 110 : « Since the protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of a government, it is the only proper subject of legislation: all laws must be based on individual rights and aimed at their protection. All laws must be objective (and objectively justifiable): men must know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it. »
• « Vast Quicksands » (1963), dans The Objectivist Newsletter : « When men are caught in the trap of non-objective law, when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat’s whim, when they have no way of knowing what unknown “influence” will crack down on them for which unspecified offense, fear becomes their basic motive, if they remain in the industry at all—and compromise, conformity, staleness, dullness, the dismal grayness of the middle-of-the-road are all that can be expected of them. Independent thinking does not submit to bureaucratic edicts, originality does not follow “public policies,” integrity does not petition for a license, heroism is not fostered by fear, creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun. Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves. »
• Voir aussi : SMITH Tara, « Objective Law » dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part. III, chap. 9, p. 209-221.

[21:56] Contrôle de la force physique de représailles

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 109 : « The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures. Men who attempt to prosecute crimes, without such rules, are a lynch mob. […] A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws. »
• Voir aussi les sources de : « [11:44] La force physique de représailles. » plus haut.

[22:44] Caractère arbitraire de la tyrannie

• « Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason » (1962) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 24, p. 254 : « It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear. »

[23:20] Un gouvernement des lois

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 109-110 : « The fundamental difference between private action and governmental action—a difference thoroughly ignored and evaded today—lies in the fact that a government holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. It has to hold such a monopoly, since it is the agent of restraining and combating the use of force; and for that very same reason, its actions have to be rigidly defined, delimited and circumscribed; no touch of whim or caprice should be permitted in its performance; it should be an impersonal robot, with the laws as its only motive power. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled. […] This is the means of subordinating “might” to “right.” This is the American concept of “a government of laws and not of men.” »
• ARISTOTE, Les Politiques, (op. cit.), Livre III, chap. 16, p. 267 [1287a20] : « Donc le gouvernement de la loi est plus souhaitable que celui d’un des citoyens et, selon le même argument, même s’il est meilleur que certains gouvernent, il faut les établir comme gardiens et serviteurs des lois. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 364 : « If men are to be free, they need a government of a definite kind. Such a government is a government of laws and not of men. »

[23:36] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur les restrictions de l’État

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 109-110 : « Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted. »

[24:17] L’équilibre des pouvoirs

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 113-114 : « 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. »
• Textbook of Americanism (1946), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), « Should Americans reject the conception of a world government? », p. 116 : « Observe what the proper structure of a free government in America was, where the principle was proper, and the prevalent, if not exclusive, philosophy was on the side of the rights of men. Yet, they knew well enough that you cannot have a system of government that depends on nothing but the integrity of the particular men who happen to be in power, because that also is an issue of non-objectivity. A government has to be so structured that if a scoundrel happened to be elected, he wouldn’t have a chance to do much, because there are balances and checks on him from the non-scoundrels. So [even] within one country, it is necessary to have counterbalances between various branches, in order to guarantee against arbitrary rule and tyranny, or [against] bad intentions or the bad policies of any one individual or even of a whole Congress, which is why there are two chambers in Congress. It’s all protections against the arbitrary use of power. »

[24:23] Objectivité contre anarchisme

• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), « 1. Politics and Economics », « Libertarianism and Anarchism », p. 75 : « Government is an absolute necessity if individual rights are to be protected, because you don’t leave force at the arbitrary whim of other individuals. Libertarian anarchism is pure whim worship, because what they refuse to recognize is the need of objectivity among men—particularly men of different views. And it’s good that people within a nation should have different views, provided we respect each other’s rights. No one can guard rights, except a government under objective laws. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 371-372 : « Anarchism is the idea that there should be no government. In Objectivist terms, this amounts to the view that every man should defend himself by using physical force against others whenever he feels like it, with no objective standards of justice, crime, or proof. “What if an individual does not want to delegate his right of self-defense?” the anarchist frequently asks. “Isn’t that a legitimate aspect of ‘freedom’?” The question implies that a “free man” is one with the right to enact his desire, any desire, simply because it is his desire, including the desire to use force. This means the equation of “freedom” with whim-worship. Philosophically, the underlying premise is subjectivism (of the personal variety). »
• BINSWANGER Harry « Objectivism vs. Anarchism » (1981), dans Foundations of a Free Society (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), « Part 2: Rights and Government », p. 231-232 : « The real target of the anarchist’s attack is objectivity. Objectivity requires one to prove that one is acting within one’s rights; they do not want to be held accountable to anyone for anything—not even regarding their use of physical force. They damn governmental retaliation because it is objective; they demand to be “free” to use force on whim. »

[25:09] Sophisme de l’anarchisme

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 112-113 : « Accepting the basic premise of the modern statists—who see no difference between the functions of government and the functions of industry, between force and production, and who advocate government ownership of business—the proponents of “competing governments” take the other side of the same coin and declare that since competition is so beneficial to business, it should also be applied to government. […] Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean. »
• BINSWANGER Harry « Objectivism vs. Anarchism » (1981), dans Foundations of a Free Society (op. cit.), « Part 2: Rights and Government », p. 230-231 : « The most twisted evasion of the “libertarian” anarchists in this context is their view that disputes concerning rights could be settled by “competition” among private force-wielders on the “free market.” This claim represents a staggering stolen concept: there is no free market until after force has been excluded. Their approach cannot be applied even to a baseball game, where it would mean that the rules of the game will be defined by whoever wins it. This has not prevented the “libertarian” anarchists from speaking of “the market for liberty” (i.e., the market for the market). By their talk of “competition” in the context of government, these “libertarian” anarchists endorse the statists’ equation of production and force. “Competition” is an economic, not a political, concept; it refers to the voluntary exchange of values, not to the exchange of gunfire. »
• MILLER Fred D. & MOSSOF Adam, « Political Theory« , dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part III, chap. 8, p. 203, n. 13 : « [T]he existence of a government is a necessary precondition for a free market. A free market is possible only when individuals can enter into voluntary transactions, and this is possible only if their rights—most importantly, their property and contract rights—are already protected by a government. »

[25:57] Besoin d’État pour les conflits honnêtes

• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 112 : « [E]ven a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 365-366 : « Even if everyone were completely virtuous, disagreements among men would still be possible, because man is not omniscient or infallible. Two individuals can contract to trade their products yet, innocently, fail to understand the terms of their agreement in the same way. One person can then act on his understanding, honestly believing that justice is on his side, while the other honestly believes that the action violates his own rights. »
• BINSWANGER Harry, « Egoism, Force and the Need for Government« , dans Foundations of a Free Society (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), « Part 2: Rights and Government », p. 279 : « Ayn Rand’s argument against “competing governments” is: “A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control—i.e., under objective law”. This is a philosophically deeper perspective on Locke’s description of “the end of civil society” as being “to avoid and remedy these inconveniences of the state of nature which necessarily follow from every man being judge in his own case.” »

[26:10] Les fonctions légitimes de l’État

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1062-1063 : « The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. »
• « The Nature of Government » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 112 : « The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physical force and the protection of men’s rights: the police, to protect men from criminals—the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders—the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective laws. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 42 : « The government should be concerned only with those issues, which involve the use of force. This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else. Everything else should be privately run and would be much better run. »

[26:27] Ayn Rand ne défend pas un « État minimal »

• Lettre à Martin Larson du 15 juillet 1960, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 8 « The Later Years », p. 582 : »In your concluding paragraphs, you state that you believe “in law, in the minimum necessary for the regulation of human interrelationships” and that you think I do also. […] Please do not ascribe to me the opposite of my statements. I do not know what principle you advocate. I know only that a formulation such as “the minimum necessary” can be claimed by any social theorist in defense of any system, from a timid, middle-of-the-road Republican platform writer to a communist or any totalitarian statist: after all, even a dictator can claim that he imposes only “the minimum necessary” controls—necessary, that is, to his purpose. »
• « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (1961), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 54 : »In the absence of any rational criteria of judgment, people attempted to judge the immensely complex issues of a free market by so superficial a standard as “bigness.” You hear it to this day: “big business,” “big government,” or “big labor” are denounced as threats to society, with no concern for the nature, source, or function of the “bigness,” as if size as such were evil. »
• « The Age of Mediocrity » (1981), dans The Objectivist Forum, vol. 2, juin 1981, p. 1 : »I am also in favor of spending more on defense—as much more as we can afford. »
• Voir aussi : SALMIERI Gregory « The Role of Government in a Free Society » (2020), interview avec Gloria Álvarez sur la chaîne YouTube du Ayn Rand Institute, [34:37].

[26:48] L’État ne peut avoir d’autres fonctions

• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), « 1. Politics and Economics », « The Scope of Government », p. 25-26 : « There is no such thing as a natural monopoly, any more than there is a natural crime. There isn’t a single profession or service of a productive nature that should be a monopoly, enforced by law. […] Under laissez-faire capitalism, there would be private, competing post offices, private roads, private schools. Nothing that can be done voluntarily should be done by force. And nothing has ever been done by force properly—except the proper functions of government: the police, the military, the law courts. Those are the functions of a government; they are non-competitive umpire functions. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 42 : « Not only the post office, but streets, roads, and above all, schools, should all be privately owned and privately run. I advocate the separation of state and economics. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 366 : « Any additional function would have to involve the government initiating force against innocent citizens. Such a government acts not as man’s protector, but as a criminal. »
• « The Political Structure of a Free Society » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 46 : »The government—or any organization—has no rights. A “right” is a concept that pertains only to the individual. »
• « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (1961), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 46 : « [A proper] government does not have the right to initiate the use of physical force against anyone—a right which the individual does not possess and, therefore, cannot delegate to any agency. But the individual does possess the right of self-defense and that is the right which he delegates to the government, for the purpose of an orderly, legally defined enforcement. »

[27:31] L’étatisme

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1063 : « But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 42 : « I am an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, of individual rights—there are no others—of individual freedom. It is on this ground that I oppose any doctrine which proposes the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, such as communism, socialism, the welfare state, fascism, Nazism and modern liberalism. I oppose the conservatives on the same ground. The conservatives are advocates of a mixed economy and of a welfare state. Their difference from the liberals is only one of degree, not of principle. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 369 : « “Statism” means any system that concentrates power in the state at the expense of individual freedom. Among other variants, the term subsumes theocracy, absolute monarchy, Nazism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, and plain, unadorned dictatorship. Such variants differ on matters of form, tactics, and/or ideology. Some statists nationalize the means of production; others allow the facade of private ownership but give the state control over the use and disposal of property. Some righteously practice a caste system; others, who also practice it, deny that they do. Some hold that free countries should move toward omnipotent government peacefully, by “evolution”; others cry for revolution. Some uphold statism on intrinsicist grounds (e.g., the divine right of kings, ayatollahs, or witch doctors); others invoke social subjectivism, citing the needs of the race, the nation, the class, mankind, or the tribe. »

[28:35] Financement des fonctions légitimes de l’État

• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 42 : « In principle, I believe that taxation should be voluntary, like everything else. But how one would implement this is a very complex question. I can only suggest certain methods, but I would not attempt to insist on them as a definitive answer. A government lottery, for instance, used in many countries in Europe, is one good method of voluntary taxation. There are others. Taxes should be voluntary contributions for the proper governmental services, which people do need and therefore would be and should be willing to pay for—as they pay for insurance. But, of course, this is a problem for a distant future, for the time when men will establish a fully free social system. It would be the last, not the first, reform to advocate. »
• « Government Financing in a Free Society » (1964), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 116-118 : « In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance. […] The choice of a specific method of implementation is more than premature today—since the principle will be practicable only in a fully free society, a society whose government has been constitutionally reduced to its proper, basic functions. […] Any program of voluntary government financing is the last, not the first, step on the road to a free society—the last, not the first, reform to advocate. It would work only when the basic principles and institutions of a free society have been established. It would not work today. »

[29:35] Des réformes graduelles

• Séance de questions-réponses dans « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (conférence donnée en 1961), enregistrement YouTube [01:08:25] : « Today every class of the population is a enormously dependent on government controls. Most professions, certainly most businesses, have to function under certain controls and their activities are calculated on that basis. Therefore if I or anyone else were to repeal all controls overnight by legislative fiat, that would create a disaster, and would be an arbitrary dictatorial action. What a free country would do in such a case is to give all the people concerned sufficient notice to readjust, reorganize, their economic activities. Therefore, after working out with economists, the kind of program necessary to decontrol the country, and what control should go first, I will then advise that one pass legislation announcing that a certain type of control will be abolished within a year, or three years, or five years, whichever the case may be, the time element being calculated to allow the people involved ample opportunity to readjust their activities gradually. You see, under a free enterprise system no change happens out of the blur and overnight. Every economic change, every development, is gradual. And therefore in a free society there are no immediate and disastrous changes. However in a position where we are today any sudden change can create enormous disastrous dislocations and therefore that would be the reason why one would have to decontrol gradually. »
• « Objectivism versus Conservatism » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 17 : « Objectivists do not argue that we can get out of today’s mess overnight. I have always said that a process of decontrol is required. The ultimate goal is complete free enterprise, but it has to be achieved gradually. To achieve it overnight, by fiat, would be (a) impossible, and (b) dictatorial. One cannot solve social questions that way. »

[29:48] La démocratie

• « The Political Structure of a Free Society » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 44-45 : « “Democracy” is an inappropriate term to apply to a free country. Its original meaning is: “unlimited majority rule,” i.e., the principle that a majority has the right to pass any law it pleases and the right to dispose of the minority in any way it wishes. A democracy is a form of government in which the state may take any action whatsoever, with the sole standard of right or wrong being a majority vote, a counting of noses. A democracy is thus incompatible with the constitution. […] This country is not a democracy. It was established as a republic, which means a system of free, representative government, limited by the principle of individual rights. It means that the majority may vote, but only within a strictly delimited sphere. It means that the majority cannot vote away the rights of any individual. […] Today of course, the colloquial meaning of “democracy” is simply general suffrage in a free country. But that is a sloppy and dangerous usage, which confuses the political issues and gives people the impression, if they don’t think carefully, that this country is based on unlimited majority rule. Nothing could be further from the truth. »
• « The Lessons of Vietnam » (1975) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.) chap. 14, p. 140 : « The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system—and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters’ power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny. »
• Screen Guide for Americans (1947), dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 3 « Transition Between Novels », chap. 10 « Communism and HUAC », p. 365 : « Don’t discredit our free elections. If you do that — you imply that elections should be abolished. »
• The Mike Wallace Interview (ABC-TV, 1959), enregistrement YouTube [10:17] : « I object to the idea that people have the right to vote on everything. The traditional American system was based on the idea that the majority will prevail only in public or political affairs and that it was limited by inalienable individual rights. Therefore, I do not believe that a majority can vote away a man’s life or property or freedom. I do not believe that if a majority vote on any issue, that makes the issue right. It doesn’t. »

[30:46] Philosophie du vote

• « How to Judge a Political Candidate? » (1964), dans The Objectivist Newsletter, mars 1964, vol. 3, n° 3 : « One cannot expect, nor is it necessary, to agree with a candidate’s total philosophy—only with his political philosophy (and only in terms of essentials). It is not a Philosopher-King that we are electing, but an executive for a specific, delimited job. It is only political consistency that we can demand of him; if he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours. A contradiction of that kind will, of course, hamper the effectiveness of his campaign, weaken his arguments and dilute his appeal—as any contradictions undercut any man’s efficacy. But we have to judge him as we judge any work, theory or product of mixed premises: by his dominant trend. A vote for a candidate does not constitute an endorsement of his entire position, not even of his entire political position, only of his basic political principles. « 
• « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 6, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement YouTube [02:21:44] : « You can vote only so long as you think a given candidate has more virtues than flaws. But when it come two candidates and you regard both of them as evil, then there is no lesser evil. You just don’t vote. For instance, I abstained in 1952 and 1956; I didn’t vote for Eisenhower and I couldn’t vote for Stevenson. It’s not wrong not to vote. In spite all the things you hear to the contrary, not voting— particularly by people who understand the issues—is also a form of voting. You’re simply declaring that you don’t want any of the above. I certainly could not vote for either Reagan or Carter… »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « A Nation’s Unity » (conférence donnée en 1972), enregistrement YouTube [01:14:43] : « In a mixed economy, you’ll never get a fully consistent candidate. […] All one can really do is observe the total of a political figure’s speeches, policies, actions, and decide what does he really mean? What is his main line? What is the dominant line? And then hope for the best. »

[31:42] Limites de l’élection

• « How to Judge a Political Candidate? » (1964), dans The Objectivist Newsletter, mars 1964, vol. 3, n° 3 : « An election campaign is not the cause, but the effect and the product of a culture’s intellectual trends. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « A Nation’s Unity » (conférence donnée en 1972), enregistrement YouTube [01:09:47] : « [H]ow do I propose to change our politicians? I really don’t. Except to observe how they changed what they are. So long as the country is even semi-free, the politicians are not its determining element. They are what the electorate or the public opinion in effect makes them (or what they think public opinion wants of them). They have demonstrated that very clearly. Therefore, before one can engage in politics, one should engage in educational work. I have said that repeatedly. What we need is an educational campaign aimed at spreading a new philosophy, to make people understand what are individual rights whey they are right, why altruism is wrong… and the battle should be conducted by every person who is articulate at all. If you understand your ideas, try to spread them to as many people as you can. That is how public opinion changes, and that will change politicians. »
• « Objectivism versus Conservatism » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 20 : « [An Objectivist] cannot be committed to the total policy of any one candidate, because no one today in politics is that consistent. What the Objectivist should do in politics is advocate the right ideas. His political interests should be primarily educational. Elections are only the last step, the final result of the ideas that dominate a culture. He should not confine his activity to election years, because elections are actually won or lost throughout the year—during any time except November. By the time you come to an election in November, you are cashing in on the truth or falsehood of what has been advocated and accepted up to that point. »
• Voir aussi les sources de : « [00:32] Dépendance de politique à la philosophie fondamentale. » plus haut.

[31:58] La politique ne sert pas à imposer le bien

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 23 : « If one knows that the good is objective—i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man’s mind—one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man’s capacity to recognize the good, i.e., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man’s judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent. A value which one is forced to accept at the price of surrendering one’s mind, is not a value to anyone; the forcibly mindless can neither judge nor choose nor value. An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man’s life, needs, goals, and knowledge. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 366-367 : « [T]he state must not intervene in the intellectual or moral life of its citizens. It has no standards to uphold and no benefits to confer in regard to education, literature, art, science, sex (if adult and voluntary), or philosophy. Its function is to protect freedom, not truth or virtue. The right to think and act as one chooses necessarily includes the right to choose incorrectly, whether through ignorance or evasion (and then to suffer the consequences). An individual free to choose only what the government authorizes as correct has no freedom. A proper government is based on a definite philosophy, but it can play no role in promoting that philosophy. Such a responsibility belongs to private citizens, who can keep the right system only by exercising « eternal (ideological) vigilance. » If the agency with a monopoly on coercion undertakes to enforce ideas, any ideas, whether true or false, it thereby reverses its function; it becomes the enemy, not the protector, of the free mind and thus loses its moral basis for existing. In an intrinsicist or subjectivist approach to philosophy, virtue (along with truth, beauty, and all other human values) is divorced from the mind and therefore is attainable by means of force. In an objective approach, force and value are opposites. The goal of a proper society, accordingly, is not to compel truth or virtue (which would be a contradiction in terms), but to make them possible—by ensuring that men are left free. »

Le capitalisme

[32:50] Séparation de l’économie et de l’État

• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 33 : « When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. »
• « Introducing Objectivism » (1962), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.) chap. 1, p. 4 : « In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. »
• The Mike Wallace Interview (ABC-TV, 1959), enregistrement YouTube [12:33] : « I am opposed to all forms of controls. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly: I am for the separation of state and economics. Just as we had separation of state and Church, which led to peaceful coexistence among different religions after a period of religious wars. So the same applies to economics. If you separate the government from economics, if you do not regulate production and trade, you will have peaceful cooperation and harmony and justice among men.
• « Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise » (1959), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 109 : « The issue is not between pro-business controls and pro-labor controls, but between controls and freedom. […] Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial history—and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of government intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State. »

[33:20] Ce qu’est le capitalisme

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 19 : « Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 380 : « “Capitalism,” in Ayn Rand’s definition, “is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.” This is a definition in terms of fundamentals and not of consequences. “Capitalism,” by contrast, may not be defined as “the system of competition.” Competition (for power and even for wealth) exists in most societies, including totalitarian ones. Capitalism does involve a unique form of competition, along with many other desirable social features. But all of them flow from a single root cause: freedom. »
• BERNSTEIN Andrew, The Capitalist Manifesto (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005), Part I, chap. 1 « What is Capitalism? », p. 32-33 : « The view of capitalism widespread in the world today is that it is an economic system in which production is controlled by the men of capital. Such a theory constitutes a definition by non-essentials and is far too narrow to permit a proper understanding. Human beings must understand the nature of freedom, the principle of individual rights and the role that the rational mind plays in man’s life. All of this is indispensable to understand capitalism and to appreciate the magnitude of its achievements. »

[34:26] Capitalisme et droits individuels

• Lettre à Emery DeWitt du 4 octobre 1941, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « We the Living to The Fountainhead« , p. 61 : « No country, nowhere, at no time, had any “freedoms” until political freedom was given reality by the economic freedom of capitalism. »
• « Man’s Rights« , dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 93 : »All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights. »
• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 12-13 : « The institution of serfdom had lasted, in one form or another, till well into the nineteenth century; it was abolished, politically, only by the advent of capitalism; politically, but not intellectually. […] It must be remembered that the institution 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 noblemen throughout the course of Europe’s history.) »
• « A Preview » (1972), dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, n° 24 : « America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more—and nothing less. The rest—everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything “noble and just,” and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history—was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle. The first consequence was the principle of political freedom, i.e., an individual’s freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by the government. The next was the economic implementation of political freedom: the system of capitalism. »
• « Racism » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 129 : « It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. It is the capitalist North that destroyed the slavery of the agrarian-feudal South in the United States. »

[34:57] Le capitalisme pur n’a jamais existé

• « The Objectivist Ethics » (1961), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 33 : « A pure system of capitalism has never yet existed, not even in America; various degrees of government control had been undercutting and distorting it from the start. Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future—if mankind is to have a future. »
• « The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age » (1961) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 91 : « A full, perfect system of capitalism has never yet existed in history. Various degrees of government intervention and control remained in all the mixed, semi-free economies of the nineteenth century, undercutting, hampering, distorting, and ultimately destroying the operations of a free market. But during the nineteenth century, mankind came close to economic freedom, for the first and only time in history. Observe the results. Observe also that the degree of a country’s freedom from government control was the degree of its progress. America was the freest and achieved the most. »

[35:14] Manque de justification morale du capitalisme

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 30-31 : « It is often asked: Why was capitalism destroyed in spite of its incomparably beneficent record? The answer lies in the fact that the lifeline feeding any social system is a culture’s dominant philosophy and that capitalism never had a philosophical base. […] As a resurgent tide of mysticism engulfed philosophy in the nineteenth century, capitalism was left in an intellectual vacuum, its lifeline cut. Neither its moral nature nor even its political principles had ever been fully understood or defined. Its alleged defenders regarded it as compatible with government controls (i.e., government interference into the economy), ignoring the meaning and implications of the concept of laissez-faire. Thus, what existed in practice, in the nineteenth century, was not pure capitalism, but variously mixed economies. »
• « Conservatism: An Obituary » (1960), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 195 : « The conflict between capitalism and altruism has been undercutting America from her start and, today, has reached its climax.
  The American political system was based on a different moral principle: on the principle of man’s inalienable right to his own life—which means: on the principle that man has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself, and that men must deal with one another as traders, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. But this moral principle was merely implied in the American political system: it was not stated explicitly, it was not identified, it was not formulated into a full, philosophical code of ethics. This was the unfulfilled task which remained as a deadly flaw in our culture and which is destroying America today. Capitalism is perishing for lack of a moral base and of a full philosophical defense. »

[35:50] Justifications utilitaires / économiques du capitalisme

• Lettre à Leonard Read du 16 août 1943, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 257-258 : « Marxist (collectivist) economics have been blasted, refuted and discredited quite thoroughly. Capitalist (or individualist) economics have never been refuted. Yet people go right on accepting Marxism. If you look into the matter closely, you will see that most people know in a vague, uneasy way, that Marxist economics are screwy. Yet this does not stop them from advocating the same Marxist economics. […] Here is the dilemma in which the public finds itself when listening to our conservatives: the public is told, in net effect, that collectivism is a noble, desirable ideal, but collectivist economics are impractical. In order to have a practical economy, that of capitalism, we must resign ourselves to an immoral society, that of individualism. »
• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 14-15 : »[The tribal] premise is shared by the enemies and the champions of capitalism alike; it provides the former with a certain inner consistency, and disarms the latter by a subtle, yet devastating aura of moral hypocrisy—as witness, their attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of “the common good” or “service to the consumer” or “the best allocation of resources.” »
• PEIKOFF Leonard « The Philosophic Basis of Capitalism » (Conférence, 1980), enregistrement YouTube [06:38] : « Capitalism is the only practical social system. This has been demonstrated time and again, it’s the only system that makes wealth and prosperity possible. This is known, it’s been known and proved since the days at least of the classical economists and it’s repeated daily, regularly by the conservatives today. But although it’s known, it has changed nothing. We have the most practical system, everyone including its enemies know that point full well, and yet the whole world is galloping away from it and is against it. If you see a spectacle like that, you have to conclude that whoever or whatever it is that moves the world, they don’t care about practicality. »

[36:11] Primauté du choix moral sur le choix économique

• Lettre à Leonard Read du 16 août 1943, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 257 : « [E]conomics have the same place in relation to the whole of a society’s life as economic problems have in the life of a single individual. A man does not exist merely in order to earn a living; he earns a living in order to exist. His economic activities are the means to an end; the kind of life he wants to lead, the kind of purpose he wants to achieve with the money he earns determines what work he chooses to do and whether he chooses to work at all. A man completely devoid of purpose (whether it be ambition, career, family or anything) stops functioning in the economic sense. That is when he turns into a bum in the gutter. Economic activity per se has never been anybody’s end or motive power. And don’t think that any kind of law of self-preservation would work here— that a man would want to produce merely in order to eat. He won’t. For self-preservation to assert itself, there must be some reason for the self to wish to be preserved. Whatever a man has accepted, consciously or unconsciously, through routine or through choice as the purpose of his life—that will determine his economic activity. And the same holds true of society and of men’s convictions about the proper economics of society. That which society accepts as its purpose and ideal (or to be exact, that which men think society should accept as its purpose and ideal) determines the kind of economics men will advocate and attempt to practice; since economics are only the means to an end. »
• Lettre à Archibald Ogden du 16 août 1943, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « We the Living to The Fountainhead« , p. 87 : « Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, we now see the capitalist system being discredited and destroyed all over the world, even though this system has given men the greatest material comforts and benefits ever achieved on earth. The reason is that men “do not live by bread alone” and that the capitalist system has stood in their eyes for nothing but bread. They have been taught to consider it as a practical, realistic system, but not an ethical one. A system without an ideal. Every defender of capitalism, so far, has found nothing better to say than, in effect, “Men are imperfect, so they’ll never work for anything but money, so capitalism is best, isn’t this sad?—communism is really the moral ideal, but human nature can never live up to it, – etc., etc.” Say that to men—and they will kill themselves and others and destroy the world in order to reach the ideal. »

[36:26] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur la primauté du moral sur l’économique

• Lettre à Leonard Read du 28 février 1946, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 257-259 : « The root of the whole modern disaster is philosophical and moral. People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism. You cannot reverse cause and effect. And you cannot destroy the cause by fighting the effect. That is as futile as trying to eliminate the symptoms of a disease without attacking its germs. »

[36:59] Le capitalisme comme système moral

• « For the New Intellectual » (1961), dans For the New Intellectual (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1963), p. 63 : « We must fight for capitalism not as a “practical” issue, not as an economic issue, but with the most righteous pride as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves and nothing less will save it. »
• « The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age » (1961) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 93-94 : « The moral code which is implicit in capitalism had never been formulated explicitly. The basic premise of that code is that man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that man must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself, and that men must deal with one another as traders, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. […] Capitalism does not tell men to suffer, but to pursue enjoyment and achievement, here, on earth—capitalism does not tell men to serve and sacrifice, but to produce and profit—capitalism does not preach passivity, humility, resignation, but independence, self-confidence, self-reliance—and, above all, capitalism does not permit anyone to expect or demand, to give or to take the unearned. In all human relationships—private or public, spiritual or material, social or political or economic or moral—capitalism requires that men be guided by a principle which is the antithesis of altruism: the principle of justice.
• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 20 : « The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. »
• « Introducing Objectivism » (1962), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.) chap. 1, p. 4 : « The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. »

[37:48] Incompatibilité de l’altruisme et du capitalisme

• « For the New Intellectual » (1961), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 61-62-63 : « Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces. »
• « The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age » (1961) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 94 : « If the good, the virtuous, the ideal, is suffering and self-sacrifice—then, by that standard, capitalism had to be damned as evil. »
• « Speaking Freely » (1972), interview d’Ayn Rand avec Edwin Newman, NBC-TV, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 27, p. 215 : « Capitalism is incompatible with the morality of altruism. Now, one must be clear on what altruism really is. Altruism is the idea that you must live not for your own sake, but for the sake of others—that service to others is the only justification of your life—that you are, in effect, a sacrificial animal existing only for whoever wants to be the collector of sacrifices. Capitalism, however, demands that you pursue your own interests, simultaneously granting the same right to everybody else—which means that you deal with people, not by force, but solely by voluntary agreement and trade. Every man has a right to exist for his own sake. He is not permitted to engage in crimes of violence, which would be a violation of rights and a contradiction, but short of that, his life is his own. You deal with others when you want to, and if you don’t want to, each man goes his own way, in pursuit of his own goals. You neither sacrifice yourself to others nor others to yourself. That is the anti-altruist view. That is the kind of morality required by capitalism. »
• « The Sanction of the Victims » (1981), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 151 : « Altruism is incompatible with capitalism—and with businessmen. […] And here is the profound gulf between businessmen and altruism: businessmen do not sacrifice themselves to others—if they did, they would be out of business in a few months or days—they profit, they grow rich, they are rewarded, as they should be. This is what the altruists, the collectivists and other sundry “humanitarians” hate the businessmen for: that they pursue a personal goal and succeed at it. Do not fool yourself-by thinking that altruists are motivated by compassion for the suffering: they are motivated by hatred for the successful. »

[38:26] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur la justification altruiste de la dictature

• Lettre à John Hospers du 29 avril 1961, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 7 « Letters to a philosopher », p. 555 : « [I]f “self-interest” is the element that makes crime evil, then robbery, torture, murder, mass slaughter are not evil when committed in the interest of others—and this precisely is the moral concept by means of which all the horrors of modern dictatorships are accepted, condoned, excused and justified today. »

[38:55] Cause philosophique, conséquence politique

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap.  1, p. 19 : »The power that determines the establishment, the changes, the evolution, and the destruction of social systems is philosophy. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 10 « Government », p. 350 : « Politics rests on ethics (and thus on metaphysics and epistemology); it is an application of ethics to social questions. Politics, therefore, is a conclusion drawn from all the fundamentals of a philosophic system; it is not the system’s start or any kind of primary. This is true of every theory of politics, no matter where it stands in the ideological spectrum. »
• Voir aussi les sources de : « [00:32] Dépendance de politique à la philosophie fondamentale. » plus haut.

[39:28] Les économies actuelles comme mixtes

• « The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus » (1967), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 20, p. 213 : « No defender of capitalism can permit himself to ignore the exact meaning of the term “laissez-faire”—and of the term “mixed economy,” which clearly indicates the two opposite elements involved in the mixture: the element of economic freedom, which is capitalism, and the element of government controls, which is statism. »
• « The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age » (1961) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 90-91 : « The term “laissez-faire capitalism,” which one has to use today in order to be understood, is actually a redundancy: only an economy of total “laissez faire” is capitalism; anything else is a “mixed economy,” that is, a mixture, in varying degrees, of freedom and controls, of voluntary choice and government compulsion, of individualism and collectivism. »
• The Tonight Show (oct. 1967), interview avec Johnny Carson reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 26, p. 201 : « Carson: Then we do not have a true capitalistic society now, in this country? Ayn Rand: No, we don’t. We have a mixed economy, which means a mixture of some freedom and a great number of controls. »
• « Collectivized “Rights” », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 105 : « [T]here is no fully free country today, since the so-called “Free World” consists of various “mixed economies,”… »

[39:47] L’élément étatiste comme cause des échecs des économies mixtes

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 31 : « Since controls necessitate and breed further controls, it was the statist element of the mixtures that wrecked them; it was the free, capitalist element that took the blame. »
• « For the New Intellectual » (1961), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 61-62 : « Whenever they hear capitalism being denounced, let them check the facts and discover which of the two opposite political principles—free trade or government controls —was responsible for the alleged iniquities. When they hear it said that capitalism has had its chance and has failed, let them remember that what ultimately failed was a “mixed” economy, that the controls were the cause of the failure, and that the way to save a country is not by making it swallow a full, “unmixed” glass of the poison which is killing it. »
• « Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise » (1959), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 48-49 : « 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. The giants of American industry —such as James Jerome Hill or Commodore Vanderbilt or Andrew Carnegie or J. P. Morgan—were self-made men who earned their fortunes by personal ability, by free trade on a free market. But there existed another kind of businessmen, the products of a mixed economy, the men with political pull, who made fortunes by means of special privileges granted to them by the government, such men as the Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad. It was the political power behind their activities—the power of forced, unearned, economically unjustified privileges—that caused dislocations in the country’s economy, hardships, depressions, and mounting public protests. But it was the free market and the free businessmen that took the blame. Every calamitous consequence of government controls was used as a justification for the extension of the controls and of the government’s power over the economy. »

[40:00] Économies mixtes et groupes de pression

• « The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus » (1967), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 20, p. 213 : « A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. Such a system— or, more precisely, anti-system—breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self-preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting—and draining—the productive elements of the country. A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force.
• « Racism » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 130 : « The growth of racism in a “mixed economy” keeps step with the growth of government controls. A “mixed economy” disintegrates a country into an institutionalized civil war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and special privileges at the expense of one another. »

[40:08] Le libre marché

• « The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age » (1961) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 90-91 : « The fundamental principle of capitalism is the separation of State and Economics—that is: the liberation of men’s economic activities, of production and trade, from any form of intervention, coercion, compulsion, regulation, or control by the government. This is the essence of capitalism, which is implicit in its theory and in the operation of a free market… »
• « Myths of Capitalism« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 40 : « [U]nder laissez-faire capitalism, the government would have to take its hands off the economy altogether and could not enact laws in favor of any group—neither business, nor labor, nor anyone else. »
• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 19 : « In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. »
• « For the New Intellectual » (1961), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 23 : « A society based on and geared to the conceptual level of man’s consciousness, a society dominated by a philosophy of reason, has no place for the rule of fear and guilt. Reason requires freedom, self-confidence and self-esteem. It requires the right to think and to act on the guidance of one’s thinking—the right to live by one’s own independent judgment. Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. »

[40:39] Sens moral de loi de l’offre et de la demande

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 26-27 : « The economic value of a man’s work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand; it represents the total rejection of two vicious doctrines: the tribal premise and altruism. It represents the recognition of the fact that man is not the property nor the servant of the tribe, that a man works in order to support his own life—as, by his nature, he must—that he has to be guided by his own rational self-interest, and if he wants to trade with others, he cannot expect sacrificial victims, i.e., he cannot expect to receive values without trading commensurate values in return. The sole criterion of what is commensurate, in this context, is the free, voluntary, uncoerced judgment of the traders. »

[41:44] La valeur socialement objective

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 24 : « The free market represents the social application of an objective theory of values. […] It is in regard to a free market that the distinction between an intrinsic, subjective, and objective view of values is particularly important to understand. The market value of a product is not an intrinsic value, not a “value in itself” hanging —in a vacuum. A free market never loses sight of the question: Of value to whom? And, within the broad field of objectivity, the market value of a product does not reflect its philosophically objective value, but only its socially objective value. […] Just as the number of its adherents is not a proof of an idea’s truth or falsehood, of an art work’s merit or demerit, of a product’s efficacy or inefficacy —so the free-market value of goods or services does not necessarily represent their philosophically objective value, but only their socially objective value, i.e., the sum of the individual judgments of all the men involved in trade at a given time, the sum of what they valued, each in the context of his own life. »
• « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (1961), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 47 : « In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined—not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone’s “greed” or by anyone’s need—but by the law of supply and demand. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 11 « Capitalism », p. 396 : « The market price of a product is determined by the conjunction of two evaluations, i.e., by the voluntary agreement of sellers and buyers. If sellers decide to charge a thousand dollars for a barrel of flour because they feel “greed,” there will be no buyers; if buyers decide to pay only a nickel a barrel because they feel “need,” there will be no sellers and no flour. The market price is based not on arbitrary wishes, but on a definite mechanism: it is at once the highest price sellers can command and the lowest price buyers can find. Economic value thus determined is objective. »

[42:30] L’État ne peut décréter la valeur économique

• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 11 « Capitalism », p. 396 : « The dominant view today is that economic value (like every other kind) is not objective, but arbitrary. Monopolists or other “exploiters,” subjectivists claim, charge any amount they feel like charging; landlords and bankers set rents or interest rates at whim; employers pay whatever niggardly wage their avarice decrees. Economic theory and history alike prove that capitalism does not work this way […] The standard cure for capitalism’s “arbitrary prices” is recourse to the state; the government, we are told, must legislate an inherently “fair price” independent of market conditions. This represents intrinsicism posing as the solution to subjectivism. […] Since force and mind are opposites, the government under capitalism does not legislate prices; it does not legislate any value-judgments, economic or otherwise. »
• GHATE Onkar, « On American Political Philosophy », dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), p. 33 : « [T]he law [of supply and demand] recognizes that the economic value of your product is not what you or the government decrees it to be, but what others are willing to exchange for it.

[42:43] L’étalon-or

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 413 : « Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. »
• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), « 1. Politics and Economics », p. 40 : « Gold has an objective material value—its value is not established by arbitrary decree. Gold was selected as the medium of exchange in most civilizations because it had an actual physical use and value; it was not a mere piece of paper. When currency is not backed by gold, then we are under the power of a government that arbitrarily sets the value of money, devaluates the currency, inflates credit, and taxes us indirectly through the manipulation of money (which is more disastrous than direct taxation). The government’s power to destroy the objective value and security of currency is precisely what ultimately destroys the economy. »
• « Egalitarianism and Inflation » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 154 : « Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption and buys time for future production. To fulfill this requirement, money has to be some material commodity which is imperishable, rare, homogeneous, easily stored, not subject to wide fluctua¬ tions of value, and always in demand among those you trade with. This leads you to the decision to use gold as money. Gold money is a tangible value in itself and a token of wealth actually produced. »

[43:01] Le libre marché est dirigé par les producteurs

• « What is Capitalism? » (1965), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 26 : « The mental parasites—the imitators who attempt to cater to what they think is the public’s known taste—are constantly being beaten by the innovators whose products raise the public’s knowledge and taste to ever higher levels. It is in this sense that the free market is ruled, not by the consumers, but by the producers. The most successful ones are those who discover new fields of production, fields which had not been known to exist. A given product may not be appreciated at once, particularly if it is too radical an innovation; but, barring irrelevant accidents, it wins in the long run. It is in this sense that the free market is not ruled by the intellectual criteria of the majority, which prevail only at and for any given moment; the free market is ruled by those who are able to see and plan long-range—and the better the mind, the longer the range. »
• « Egalitarianism and Inflation » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 157-158 : « Consumers qua consumers are not part of anyone’s market; qua consumers, they are irrelevant to economics. Nature does not grant anyone an innate title of “consumer”; it is a title that has to be earned—by production. Only producers constitute 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. »

[43:40] La concurrence

• « The Moratorium on Brains » (1971), dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, n° 2, p. 4 : « Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. »
• The Fountainhead (op. cit.), p. 679 : « The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men. The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive. »
• « The “Conflicts” of Men’s Interests » (1962), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 55 : « It is only the passive, parasitical representatives of the “humility metaphysics” school who regard any competitor as a threat, because the thought of earning one’s position by personal merit is not part of their view of life. They regard themselves as interchangeable mediocrities who have nothing to offer and who fight, in a “static” universe, for someone’s causeless favor. »
• PEIKOFF Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (op. cit.),  chap. 11 « Capitalism », p. 380 : « “Capitalism,” by contrast, may not be defined as “the system of competition.” Competition (for power and even for wealth) exists in most societies, including totalitarian ones. Capitalism does involve a unique form of competition, along with many other desirable social features. But all of them flow from a single root cause: freedom. »
• https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/competition.html

[44:04] Les lois antitrust

• « America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business » (1961), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 49 : « If I were asked to choose the date which marks the turning point on the road to the ultimate destruction of American industry, and the most infamous piece of legislation in American history, I would choose the year 1890 and the Sherman Act—which began that grotesque, irrational, malignant growth of unenforceable, uncompliable, unjudicable contradictions known as the antitrust laws. »
• Ibid., p. 52-53 : « The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. It means: forcing people to be free at the point of a gun. It means: protecting people’s freedom by the arbitrary rule of unanswerable bureaucratic edicts. »
• Ibid., p. 54-55 : « There is no way to legislate competition; there are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom, how many competitors should exist in any given field, what should be their relative strength or their so-called “relevant markets,” what prices they should charge, what methods of competition are “fair” or “unfair.” None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a free market. »
• « Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason » (1962), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 24, p. 258 : « The antitrust laws give the government the power to prosecute and convict any business concern in the country any time it chooses. The threat of sudden destruction, of unpredictable retaliation for unnamed offenses, is a much more potent means of enslave¬ ment than explicit dictatorial laws. »

[44:24] La pyramide des aptitudes

• Atlas Shrugged (op. cit.), p. 1064 : « [W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you. When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing. The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. […] In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the “competition” between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of “exploitation” for which you have damned the strong. »

[46:08] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur l’esprit et la prospérité

• « Let Us Alone! » (1962) dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 141-142 : « The statists’ epistemological method consists of endless debates about single, concrete, out-of-context, range-of-the-moment issues, never allowing them to be integrated into a sum, never referring to basic principles or ultimate consequences—and thus inducing a state of intellectual disintegration in their followers. The purpose of that verbal fog is to conceal the evasion of two fundamentals: (a) that production and prosperity are the product of men’s intelligence, and (b) that government power is the power of coercion by physical force. Once these two facts are acknowledged, the conclusion to be drawn is inevitable: that intelligence does not work under coercion, that man’s mind will not function at the point of a gun. This is the essential issue to consider; all other considerations are trivial details by comparison.
  The details of a country’s economy are as varied as the many cultures and societies that have existed. But all of mankind’s history is the practical demonstration of the same basic principle, no matter what the variants of form: the degree of human prosperity, achievement, and progress is a direct function and corollary of the degree of political freedom. »

[47:50] Rejet du concept de « méritocratie »

• « An Untitled Letter » (1973), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 126 : « “Meritocracy” is an old anti-concept and one of the most contemptible package deals. By means of nothing more than its last five letters, that word obliterates the difference between mind and force: it equates the men of ability with political rulers, and the power of their creative achievements with political power. There is no difference, the word suggests, between freedom and tyranny: an “aristocracy” is tyranny by a politically established elite, a “democracy” is tyranny by the majority—and when a government protects individual rights, the result is tyranny by talent or “merit” (and since “to merit” means “to deserve,” a free society is ruled by the tyranny of justice). »

[48:48] L’éthique individuelle dans un système mixte ou étatiste

• « The Question of Scholarships » (1966), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 42-45 : « The victims [of the welfare-state] do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it. It does not matter, in this context, whether a given individual has or has not paid an amount of taxes equal to the amount of the scholarship he accepts. First, the sum of his individual losses cannot be computed; this is part of the welfare-state philosophy, which treats everyone’s income as public property. […] Those who advocated such laws are morally guilty, since they assumed the “right” to force employers and unwilling coworkers. But the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money, unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration. […] The same moral principles and considerations apply to the issue of taking government jobs. […] The issue is primarily ideological, not financial. Minimizing the financial injury inflicted on you by the welfarestate laws, does not constitute support of welfare statism (since the purpose of such laws is to injure you) and is not morally reprehensible. Initiating, advocating, or expanding such laws is. »

Les relations internationales

[50:36] Primauté de la politique intérieure

• « Nationalism vs. Internationalism » (1962), dans The Ayn Rand Column (op. cit.), chap. 20, p. 78-79 : « Contrary to all the internationalists, it is domestic policies that are of primary importance, not foreign affairs. A nation’s own political system is its first concern. »
• « The Shanghai Gesture » (1972), Part III, dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, n° 15, p. 4 : « [L]ike charity—courage, consistency, integrity have to begin at home. Foreign policy is merely a consequence of domestic policy. »
• Ibid., Part II, dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, n° 14, p. 3 : »According to a rational morality, the President of a country has no right to pursue any goal except the legitimate interests—the good—of his own country; he has no right to sacrifice his country to a game of international altruism. »
• « “Extremism,” or the Art of Smearing » (1964), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 175-176 : « [T]he concept of “concern” was switched into “selfless concern.” The ultimate result was a view of foreign policy which is wrecking the United States to this day: the suicidal view that our foreign policy must be guided, not by considerations of national self-interest, but by concern for the interests and welfare of the world, that is, of all countries except our own. »
• « Objectivism versus Conservatism » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 18 : « Modern politicians seem to recognize the self-interest of every little tribe in every corner of Africa or Asia, and are willing to abet the most blatant forms of racist nationalism. But they do not recognize the possibility that the United States has any legitimate national interests. »

[50:57] Refus de l’aide étrangère basé sur l’altruisme

• « The Pull Peddlers » (1962), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 16, p. 167 : « The sickening generalities and contradictions cited in justification of the foreign aid program fall roughly into two categories which are offered to us simultaneously: the “idealistic” and the “practical,” or mush and fear. The “idealistic” arguments consist of appeals to altruism and swim out of focus in a fog of floating abstractions about our duty to support the “underdeveloped” nations of the entire globe, who are starving and will perish without our selfless help. »
• « The Dying Victim of Berlin » (1962), dans The Ayn Rand Column (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 50 : « Those who do not understand the process by which the morality of altruism is destroying the world, may observe it in the disgraceful nightmare of America’s foreign policy. We are draining our life-blood—our economic power— on the sacrificial altar of global needs, asking nothing in return. »
• « Theory and Practice » (1962), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 12, p. 137 : »Next time you refuse yourself some necessity you can’t afford or some small luxury which would have made the difference between pleasure and drudgery— ask yourself what part of your money has gone to pay for a crumbling road in Cambodia or for the support of those “selfless” little altruists of the Peace Corps, who play the role of big shots in the jungle, at taxpayers’ expense. If you wish to stop it, you must begin by realizing that altruism is not a doctrine of love, but of hatred for man. »

[51:10] Soutien d’un pays allié

• « The Lessons of Vietnam » (1975) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.) chap. 14, p. 142 : « The first intended victim of the new isolationism will probably be Israel—if the “antiwar” efforts of the new isolationists succeed. (Israel and Taiwan are the two countries that need and deserve U.S. help—not in the name of international altruism, but by reason of actual U.S. national interests in the Mediterranean and the Pacific.) »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand avec Jerry Schwartz (1980), dans The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, numéro du 27 avril 1980 : « [I]f your question means “should the United States have allies on the international scene?”, yes, if it serves our proper self-interest. »
• MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), « 1. Politics and Economics », « Foreign Policy », p. 96 : « Why should we help Israel? Israel is fighting not just the Arabs but Soviet Russia, who is sending the Arabs armaments. Russia is after control of the Mediterranean and oil. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Apollo and Dionysus » (conférence donnée en 1969), enregistrement YouTube [01:35:57] : « As to any fight for freedom abroad, I believe: let us send all the military equipment that we can spare (without sacrifice) to any fight for freedom, whether it’s against fascist kind or communist kind (which is of course two variants of the same thing). »

[51:19] Le libre échange

• « The Roots of War » (1966) dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 39 : « 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 competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another. »
• « Myths of Capitalism« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 40 : « [A]n interesting aspect of tariffs is that they were one of the early government interferences in the economy—and were prompted, not by labor or by the liberals, but by business. It was businessmen who favored tariffs, and in so doing, they were committing economic suicide, as we can see today. »
• « Racism » (1963), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 129 : « It is capitalism that broke through national and racial barriers, by means of free trade. »

[51:40] et [52:39] Refus des relations avec les dictatures

• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Cultural Update » (conférence donnée en 1978), enregistrement YouTube [00:52:51] : « Should [a businessman] deal with foreign governments? […] Here you would have to judge individual case according to the nature of the particular foreign government. Because I think it is totally immoral to deal with Soviet Russia, as it was to deal with Nazi Germany, or with any real dictatorship. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 42 : « I would advocate that which the Soviet Union fears above all else: economic boycott. I would advocate a blockade of Cuba and an economic boycott of Soviet Russia; and you would see both those regimes collapse without the loss of a single American life. »
• Journals : « The free enterprises must not deal with anyone except free enterprises, otherwise they are working for their own destruction. »
• Lettre à Edna Lonigan du 10 avril 1949, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 436 : »I most emphatically denounce and despise the idea of any “cultural rapprochement between the American and Russian peoples.” I do not wish to seek rapprochement with a people while it is enslaved and to make deals with a slave “culture.”” No kind of “rapprochement” or “culture” is possible while the Soviet government remains in existence. To make friends with slaves, while they remain slaves, is to support the regime of their masters. Instead of talking about “rapprochement,” the decent and self-respecting people of all free countries should impose the most rigid cultural blockade and boycott against all totalitarian countries—and thus declare that they do not accept as “culture” any product of a reign of brute force, and that they do not deal on “cultural” terms with bloody mass-slaughterers. »

[51:45] Sociétés libres ou semi-libres vs dictatures

• « Collectivized “Rights” », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 105 : « There is a difference between a country that recognizes the principle of individual rights, but does not implement it fully in practice, and a country that denies and flouts it explicitly. All “mixed economies” are in a precarious state of transition which, ultimately, has to turn to freedom or collapse into dictatorship. There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule—executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses—the nationalization or expropriation of private property—and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 64 : « A dictatorship has four characteristics: one-party rule, executions without trial for political offenses, expropriation or nationalization of private property, and censorship. Above all, this last. So long as men can speak and write freely, so long as there is no censorship, they still have a chance to reform their society or to put it on a better road. »

[53:11] Organismes internationaux

• The Tonight Show (oct. 1967), interview avec Johnny Carson reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 26, p. 202 : « I do not believe that the United Nations should exist at all, because it is an organization based on an impossible contradiction. It is supposed to be dedicated to preserving peace and to protecting rights, and yet Russia, which is the worst offender against peace and individual rights, on the largest scale, is one of the charter members. That really amounts to a town’s having gangsters as part of its crime-fighting committee. »
• Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 42 : « I do not sanction the grotesque pretense of an organization allegedly devoted to world peace and human rights, which includes Soviet Russia, the worst aggressor and bloodiest butcher in history, as one of its members. The notion of protecting rights, with Soviet Russia among the protectors, is an insult to the concept of rights and to the intelligence of any man who is asked to endorse or sanction such an organization. I do not believe that an individual should cooperate with criminals, and, for all the same reasons; I do not believe that free countries should cooperate with dictatorships. »

[53:25] Le « droit international »

• Extrait du workshop Objectiviste sur l’éthique et la politique (1969-1971), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.), A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), Part III, « International Law and the “Laws” of War », p. 118-119 : « International law—as it’s been understood before—is simply agreements among, at the time, semi-civilized governments to observe certain rules, and they’re no more valid nor better than the government[s] that subscribe to them. If the governments involved share certain basic principles and they make an agreement consonant with those principles, the enforcement would come from them. If one of them changes its mind or changes its personnel, and violates that international law, there’s nothing that can be done about it. You know the contradiction of international law? The attempt to make [the] use of physical force, which is war, subject to some kind of laws. You can’t. You can agree by mutual consent not to murder prisoners, or not to bomb women and children if it can be helped, but it’s an agreement of no great significance actually, because the idea of a war means two groups of men have decided they cannot reach any rational agreement, and they resort to force. The standard now is: who can bring the other one to submission by means of force? If they have been brought to that state, everything goes. There can be no laws being observed—or not even an etiquette—if you consider that men are slaughtering each other and are deciding issues by means of murder. »

[53:36] Pas d’autorité mondiale

• Textbook of Americanism (1946), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.) A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), p. 116 : « Should Americans reject the conception of a world government? Yes, on the grounds of checks and balances. On the grounds that since a government has a very dangerous kind of monopoly, the monopoly on the principle of force, and in administering the use of physical force. […] Just project the consequences if there is only one government in the world. Then it’s a monopoly on the use of force. Well, suppose a government controls the nuclear arsenal of the world. What do any dissenters do? And who can effectively prevent such a government from turning in to a total dictatorship? »
• « To Young Scientists » (1962), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.) chap. 3, p. 16 : « Needless to say, capitalism does not force individuals or nations into the collectivist slave pen of a world government. The so-called One World is merely “one neck ready for one leash.” »

[54:04] L’étatisme déclencheur de guerre

• « The Roots of War » (1966) dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 37 : « 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 Nazi 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 ship 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. »

[54:27] La souveraineté comme conditionnelle

• « Collectivized “Rights” », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 103-104 : « Such a nation has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations. But this right cannot be claimed by dictatorships, by savage tribes or by any form of absolutist tyranny. A nation that violates the rights of its own citizens cannot claim any rights whatsoever. In the issue of rights, as in all moral issues, there can be no double standard. A nation ruled by brute physical force is not a nation, but a horde—whether it is led by Attila, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Khrushchev or Castro. What rights could Attila claim and on what grounds? This applies to all forms of tribal savagery, ancient or modern, primitive or “industrialized.” Neither geography nor race nor tradition nor previous state of development can confer on some human beings the “right” to violate the rights of others. The right of “the self-determination of nations” applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships. Just as an individual’s right of free action does not include the “right” to commit crimes (that is, to violate the rights of others), so the right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as “the right to enslave.” A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal—but neither can do it by right. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Global Balkanization » (conférence donnée en 1977), enregistrement YouTube [01:13:49] : « If we become a dictatorship, and a freer country attacks us, they have the right to do so. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (conférence donnée en 1974), enregistrement SoundCloud [20:05] : « [In a dictatorship] the citizens still have individual rights, but the country does not have any right. Anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in this country; and neither you, nor country nor anyone can have the cake and eat it too… »

[55:44] Pas de devoir de libérer les peuples

• « Collectivized “Rights” », dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 104 : »Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the nonexistent “rights” of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « Apollo and Dionysus » (conférence donnée en 1969), enregistrement YouTube [01:35:57] : « As to any fight for freedom abroad, I believe: let us send all the military equipment that we can spare (without sacrifice) to any fight for freedom, whether it’s against fascist kind or communist kind (which are of course two variants of the same thing). Don’t ever let us dare take American lives to sacrifice for somebody else’s freedom, or to sacrifice them in any form. »
• Ibid., enregistrement YouTube [01:43:00] : « If we hadn’t gone into Vietnam, I don’t believe it’s our responsibility to protect either side in the war. It’s their country; let them fight it out. »

[56:12] Les civils dans une guerre

• Extrait du workshop Objectiviste sur l’éthique et la politique (1969-1971), dans HOENIG Jonathan (éd.), A New Textbook of Americanism (op. cit.), Part III, « International Law and the “Laws” of War », p. 119 : « [T]here’s such a thing as “don’t bombard hospitals.” Well, it is valid if both sides see an advantage in it. But the idea of “don’t murder women and children,” I don’t think it is particularly relevant if you’re murdering men. What’s the difference? And it’s demonstrated in Vietnam all the time, because women and children are right there with the guerrillas. How are you going to make a distinction? If it’s tactically necessary to bomb civilians during a war, you have to. More than that, it’s your moral duty to do so. Because otherwise what are you doing? A kind of medieval tournament where people are dying while waving ladies’ handkerchiefs? No laws can hold, nothing can hold, no morality can hold against a state of war. In a war, one party is the aggressor, and anything that the other party does is morally justified, because it’s an act of self-defense. And the total annihilation of the aggressor is proper, except for the fact that you have to be damn sure that you’re not both at fault, which is sometimes the case. »
• Séance de questions-réponses dans « A Nation’s Unity » (conférence donnée en 1972), enregistrement YouTube [02:35] : « Why do you think people should be concerned about the nature of their government? Certainly the majority in any country at war is innocent. But if by neglect, ignorance, or helplessness they couldn’t overturn bad government and choose a better one, then they must pay the price for the sins of their government, as we are all paying for the sins of ours. That’s why we have to be interested in the philosophy of government and in seeing, to the extent we can, seeing to it that we have a good government. Because a government is not an independant entity, it’s supposed to represent the people of a nation. If some people put up with Soviet dictatorship—not all of them you know, but some do as they did in Germany—they deserve whichever their government deserves. There is no innocent people in war. The only thing to be concerned with is: who started that war? And once you can establish, that it’s a given country, there is no such thing as considerations for the “right” of that country, because it has initiated the use of force and therefore stepped outside the principle of rights. »

Conclusion

[57:00] Opposition de l’Objectivisme aux courants politiques classiques

• Sur l’opposition au conservatisme, voir : « Conservatism: An Obituary » (1960), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 192-201 ; « Objectivism versus Conservatism » (1964), interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 15-22 ; « The Age of Mediocrity » (conférence donnée en 1981).
• Sur l’opposition au progressisme, voir la plupart des textes de recueil Return of the Primitive (op. cit.) ; ainsi que « The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age » (1961) dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 85-99 ; « A Preview » (1972), dans The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, n° 22–24.
• Sur l’opposition au centrisme, voir : « “Extremism,” or the Art of Smearing » (1964), dans Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (op. cit.), chap. 17, p. 173-182 ; « The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus » (1967) et « The Wreckage of the Consensus » (1967), dans Ibid., chap. 20 et 21, p. 202-235 ; « The Enemies of “Extremism”« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 23-30.
• Sur l’opposition au libertarianisme, voir : « Libertarians » dans The Ayn Rand Lexicon (New York: New American Library, 1986), p. 253-254 ; MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), Chap. 1 « Politics and Economics », section « Libertarianism and Anarchism », p. 72-76. Voir aussi SCHWARTZ Peter, « Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty » (1985), dans The Voice of Reason (op. cit.), chap. 31, p. 311-333 ; ou cet article.

[57:24] Une philosophie politique libérale

• « Speaking Freely » (1972), interview d’Ayn Rand avec Edwin Newman, NBC-TV, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 27, p. 218 : « I am certainly in favor of the nineteenth-century liberals, who were advocates of capitalism and of individual rights. »
• GARMONG Robert, « The Arc of Liberalism« , dans Foundations of a Free Society (op. cit.), « Part 3: Rand and the Classical Liberal Tradition on Intellectual Freedom », p. 304 : « Although in America Ayn Rand’s ideas are most often cited favorably by self-described conservatives or libertarians, in historical terms she is heir to the tradition of liberalism. »

[57:42] Une radicale pour le capitalisme

• « Choose Your Issues » (1962), dans The Objectivist Newsletter, vol. 1, n° 1, janvier, p. 1 : « We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish. »
• « Focus on Youth » (1976), interview d’Ayn Rand reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 29, p. 233-234 : « I wasn’t called a “radical for capitalism”; I called myself that. And I did so in order to indicate that my philosophy of capitalism is radically—that is, fundamentally—different from current theories. It was to indicate a basic disagreement with today’s political philosophies that I chose this description. »