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10,000 Tampa Avenue
Chatsworth, California
November 3, 1946Â
Dear Rose Wilder Lane:Â
Here is the philosophical letter I owe you.Â
1. About âLove thy neighbor as thyself.â You are right that one of the troubles here lies in the word âlove.â Itâs certainly the wrong word, with no exact meaning in this particular slogan. That is the first reason why the slogan should be dropped. Any inexact statement of what purports to be a principle, creates nothing but harm.Â
But whatever meaning we attempt to attach to this sloganâit still remains a tenet of collectivism. If âloveâ here means self-preservation, as you say, or the protection of oneâs interestsâwell, it still means that you must preserve and protect others as much as yourself. Since your chief activity of self-preservation on earth is work to obtain food, the slogan means that you must work for others just as much as for yourself. If soâcollectivism is the proper social system for men. (A slogan or precept should be applied and observed literally, concretely, consistently, in every instance which it coversâor not at all.)Â
Actually, you not only must not preserve and protect others as yourselfâyou could not do it, if you attempted to. Each manâs fate is essentially his own. Any help you can give him is strictly of a secondary nature. Example: any poor relative. Have you ever succeeded in helping a person who did not want to help himself?Â
Now when you say âmy interests require that I do not jeopardize (and that if and when necessary, I protect) my neighborâsââthis is quite another matter, and not at all within the meaning or intention of that slogan. âNot to jeopardizeâ is not the same thing as âactively to preserve.â What you owe yourself is to work for your living; what you owe your neighbor is not to interfere with his work. This is not loving (or preserving) âas much as yourself.â Every moral duty you owe to yourself requires a positive action; everything you owe your neighbor is negativeâto abstain from action that would infringe his rights.Â
Itâs that element of owing, of a moral duty, which is crucial here. If you owe your protection to your neighborâthen it is a claim which he can and must present against you, should you fail in your duty. And who would define the debt and the failure? You or he?Â
âIf and when necessaryâ is an extremely dangerous statementâagain, because inexact. Here you have the base of the New Deal pattern of declaring one emergency after another. If you must help your neighbor in an emergency, then a man who is starving by reason of his own errors, shiftlessness or laziness is certainly in a state of emergency, he needs your help, so he would be justified in demanding it.Â
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Now I say, you owe nothing to your neighbor. If you want to help himâthat is another matter. Then the determining factor is your desireânot his need. It is then a favor to himânot his rightful due.Â
Now, must you always want to help him? Is it morally desirable that you should? No. Here is where the real issue comes in: you may (morally) wish to help him only when such help does not involve the sacrifice of your own interests. Example: you may loan money to a friend in need, if you really like him and can spare the money; but if you give him money which you need yourself for a major purpose of your ownâI say you are positively immoral. More specifically: if your friend needs money for food, and you pass up buying a new dress and give him the moneyâthat is all right. But that is not a sacrifice, because you actually wanted him to have food more than you wanted a new dress. But if that money was required to finance your education, or career, or wedding, or even if you wanted that dress for a date with your sweetheartâthen you would be immoral if you gave that money away. You cannot place the interests of another man above yours, nor on an equal basis with yours. Yours must come first. (Always remembering that his come first for him.) Thatâs the only way men can live together at all. Any conflict of interests must be solved by mutual voluntary agreement. Actually, there can be no essential conflict of interests among men, if none demands or expects that which is not his, if each man recognizes that none of the others exists for his sake and that he can demand nothing from them on the ground of his need.)
Take your own exampleâabout rushing to put out the fire in a neighborâs house. You may (and would) certainly do thatâif your own house is not on fire at the same time. But if it is? Whose house would you and should you save first? Of course your own, and properly so. Therefore, you cannot âlove him as you love yourself.âÂ
(And, incidentally, I would object to the sentence in your letter: âTherefore you will love your neighborâs house as yours, at least until the fire is out.â That is really using words much too loosely. You wouldnât love the house at all. At best, youâd feel sorry for the neighborâbut youâd feel nothing whatever for his house as suchâwhereas you actually do love your own house.)
Now of course I donât believe that there is any ânaturalâ or instinctive human action. (I wonât try to state my reasons hereâthat would have to be a treatise on the nature of man.) Human actions proceed from intellectual premises, accepted consciously as convictions or on faith, as axioms. So I donât think that you run to save your neighborâs house by reason of a natural impulse. You do so by reason of the premises you have accepted about human relations in generalâand one of them is benevolence toward other men, which is natural in the sense that there are good rational grounds for itâunless the particular man has forfeited this benevolence. Would you always rush to save that house? I am sure that if it were the house of, say, Henry
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WallaceâI would not rush to save it.Â
And this leads me to my main point about human relations: man being a creature of free will, any blanket commandment about what one should feel toward him is completely improper. Feeling proceeds from judgment based on a code of values. Man must be judged by his own record and actionsâwhich may be anything. You love or hate him accordingly. A blanket command to love is collectivism. Love (or any feeling toward another person) is and can only be individual, with an individual object, for the individual reasons of each particular case.
Personal note: Love is such a tremendous thing that it makes me twist with anger (almost âinstinctively,â only I know that it isnât an instinct) whenever I hear it said that I must love my neighbors or men in general. Love is such a great, magnificent exception which one grants only to such great qualities (to me, love is what I feel for Howard Roark) that it makes me sick to think I am expected to feel it for Hitler, Stalin or the village idiot. Yet, theyâre men, arenât they? No, Iâll never agree to love men, collectively, indiscriminately, just for being men. I love Roark too much.Â
Incidentally, you say that you âdonât exactly loveâ yourself. I know this will sound strange, but I do love myself. Though I grant you itâs a somewhat different kind of feeling than the one I feel for other people whom I love.Â
2. Now, next point. You ask, âIsnât there a vital distinction between co-operation and collectivism?â There isâand how! And it lies precisely in not having to love your neighbor as yourself. When you deal with men on a basis that involves no self-sacrificeâwhen you make contracts, or agreements, or hire people, or take a job, only as your personal interests may requireâonly then can you have true co-operation. Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of oneâs interests to those of others.
You are right, of course, when you say that collectivism disintegrates human cooperation and comes to âdog eat dog.â Only free, independent men can co-operate and feel benevolence toward one another. But they can do it only because (and only so long as) they know that co-operation will involve no pain or injury to themâthat is, no demand for self-sacrifice.Â
But co-operation cannot be placed first, in the sense of saying that we must co-operate with othersâif by co-operation you mean acting in a common enterprise. There are instances when we wish to act together with othersâand instances when we prefer to act alone. Here again, how would you apply it concretely, if you preached co-operation as a general rule of conduct, as a conscious policy to be adopted by every man? If the community in which I live needs me and wants me to be a night watchman for them, and I want to be a writerâdo I have to co-operate?Â
Co-operation is not and cannot be a conscious, deliberate
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consideration, or a rule of conduct, or a set policy. Itâs a consequenceâcall it a natural result, if you wishâof voluntary association among men, each acting in his own interest. The over-all result of each pursuing his own interest will be a society of peaceful, harmonious co-operationâsuch as a capitalist society. But itâs not done through any âwill to co-operateââonly through pursuing oneâs own interests, while respecting the same right in those with whom we deal.Â
Of course, Individualism doesnât mean isolation, aloofness or escaping to a desert island. In fact, only true Individualists are fit to associate with other men. But they do it only on the basis of the recognition of each manâs essential independence: each man lives primarily for, by and through himself, and recognizes the same right in others; all relations among men are secondary; men are legally and morally free to associate together or not, on any particular occasion, as their personal interests dictate. There is the pattern of a free, moral society, of human co-operation, and of benevolence among men.Â
3. Now, about self-sufficiency. It is true that if I were born alone, in pre-civilization days, I would not have radios or typewriters. But all the wonderful things around me now, which are the products of civilization, are not mine and are not available to meâunless I produce, by my own effort, some material equivalent which I can exchange for the radios, typewriters or any other object I may want. If I donât produce it, I canât have it. Neither morally, nor in factâI have no right to demand it and nobody is going to produce any material objects for me.
Each man actually produces only that which he producesâand no more. Yet we do see that the total material wealth of mankind grows greater, as civilization advances, and the average material wealth grows greater. Why is that? The personal qualities or abilities of men in general are not improving, not growing greaterâand in some periods, like now, they are actually deteriorating. Then where does that extra wealth and production come from?Â
There is only one great debt that men owe to othersâand itâs not a material one (though its results are material). The only real benefit we receive from others is the benefit of the accumulated thinking of the men who preceeded us, or of our own contemporaries who have superior intelligence. If I were born alone on a desert island, I could work as hard as I do now, with the same abilityâand I would not achieve a material return equivalent to the one I get now. It is the accumulated thought, knowledge and discoveries of the past that make my efforts produce more (materially) than if I were starting alone from scratch and had to spend my life inventing the wheel (if I were even able to invent it.) The fact that billions of human beings are working at something and producing something around me does not actually add to my material welfare. What they produce, they keep for
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themselvesâor, to be exact, they keep its material equivalent, in the process of exchange. The something extra I get from men, the thing that raises the material efficiency of my own efforts is not the anonymous hordes of the âcommon man.â Itâs the thinking, the ingenuity of the exceptional men who discovered and showed me better ways of doing things, which I would not have discovered by myself. The great advantages of an exchange societyâof a division of labor and specializationâwere made possible only by these thinkers and discoverers. Now the degree to which I profit from this accumulated intelligence depends upon my own intellgience, upon my ability to understand great thinking, to grasp it and to apply it. If my ability is greatâthen to carry it forward. If my ability is of the lowest orderâthen I still get a benefit from the intelligence around me, only in this case almost totally underserved, completely âextraâ.Â
No, the food in my cupboard and the typewriter I use do not come from the âless competent men,â who feed me while I write. They donât feed me. Iâve paid them for it. It is only themselves that they feed. If I were alone, Iâd grow my own foodâand I would grow more than they would, if they were left alone. But what I havenât paidâand canât payâis the man who invented the telephone or the typewriter. The material comfort which I now have and couldnât have if left on my ownâcomes from him.Â
A good mechanic may earn his own living by his own honest effort. But a great part of the material return which his effort brings him is due to the engineering genius who designed the engine or the scientist who discovered the necessary knowledgeâachievements which the mechanic could neither equal nor grasp. Now suppose the genius and the mechanic are each born alone in the jungle, separately, starting from scratch. The genius will discover fire. The mechanic will perish. It is in this sense that the best brains of mankind carry the rest. The geniuses do not need the mechanics in order to survive. The mechanics do need the geniuses. (There is no harm in this relationship, no literal parasitismâso long as men are left free to work as they will or can. The genius exchanges his material product with the lesser man in a fair and proper exchange. The only point is that the exchange is equal materiallyâbut not spiritually. The lesser man gives the genius only a material product; the genius gives him a material productâplus the knowledge of a discovery that adds to his, the lesser manâs, effort. The genius could have produced what the lesser man gives him; the lesser man could not have produced what the genius gives him. This is quite all rightâand the genius is not robbed in this processâso long as he is left free to function. But his part in this process must be recognized and acknowledged for what it is.)Â
But, youâll say, what about the lesser jobs? Arenât mechanics necessary in our industrial civilization or our mass production? And I will answer that without the mechanics, no mass production would be necessary. The geniuses would satisfy their own needs through a different form of production on a smaller scale and would receive for it materially as much as they do now (if not more).Â
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I believe you are extremely wrong when you say: âI think that you have only to decide not to buy a can of salmon, or fail by your efforts to obtain money to buy it, and the welfare of every one of them will be adversely affected.â Here, I think, you have unwittingly accepted a collectivist view of economics. The canners of salmon do not actually produce a can intended for meâand I do not let them down if I fail to buy it. A capitalist exchange economyâin essence and principle, though not in formâis an economy of independent, self-sustaining production. The salmon canner produces for himselfâin the same sense as if he were operating a self-sustaining farm. If I am there to offer him something he wants, he gives me a can of salmon in exchange. If Iâm notâhe doesnât make that extra can, but spends his labor on something else.Â
This applies to any production for a free market. Any producer produces only as much as he can exchange profitably (or as near as he can gauge the market). This means: only as much as he can convert into products for his own use. If men fail to provide him with a market, if they have nothing to give him in exchangeâhe doesnât continue producing for them; his effort goes into another endeavor. So whatever he owns is the result of his own productionâthough it may have gone through many stages of exchangeâa material equivalent of the material wealth he has produced.Â
Would we all get more if all men on earth were free to work productively? In proportion to the actual count of added nosesâno. But to the extent to which there would be chained geniuses released to functionâah, yes!Â
No man produces any extra material value for another manâexcept the man of superior intelligence and to the degree of that intelligence. Most men just carry their own weight. Some do not even do that. And some give an inestimable extra benefitâfreeâto all mankind: the thinkers, the new discoverers. (Freeâbecause whatever material return they get, it is never an equivalent of what they give.) They can exist and survive anywhere, by their own effortâexcept in a collectivist society, under compulsion; in that case, they are first to perish. And that is the chief reason why a collectivist society perishes, why it cannot prosper, produce or even exist for long.Â
You ask, what happens to my supply of food if all the stevedores stop working? Why, nothing whateverâin a free society. I will have to pay a little more for stevedoringâand ten men will rush to take each vacated job. (Itâs only in a controlled societyâlike nowâthat we are at the mercy of anyone and everyone.) What if nobody wants to do stevedoring? Then Iâand the rest of societyâadjust our productive labor accordingly. The decision of the stevedores (or of any other group or man) affects us only superficially and temporarilyânot essentially. And that, precisely, is the essence and advantage of a free economyâthat nobody depends on anybody. Any man is free to change his mind about his workâand the rest are free to count him out and adjust their own production accordingly, without any material loss to themselves (or, at worst, only with a temporary loss.)Â
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I know that I am profoundly indebted to Aristotle, to Thomas Edison, to Henry Ford. But to the Malayans and Cambodians?âhell, no!Â
(Do you know what Iâve written to you here? Itâs the theme of my next novel. This is only a brief, partial statementâthe subject is extremely complex. If I havenât stated it clearly enoughâyouâll see me do better when I present it completely in the novel.)Â
(This is the kind of letter-writer I amâeither silence for months, or a whole treatise. Youâll wish I hadnât become regular in my correspondence. So Iâd better stop now.)Â
Now to answer your last letter, which I received yesterday. Yes, of course you may quote me from the Vigil, any time you wish.Â
I think you have undoubtedly analyzed Leonard Read correctlyâand that makes me feel very sad. But itâs true. I was surprised to hear that he has repeatedly ignored your advice and offers of help (though in view of the general course his activities have taken, I shouldnât be surprised). But he has always spoken to me about you with the greatest enthusiasm and respect, and he quotes you very often. I suppose, as you say, he just doesnât understand the nature of application of principlesâand he may not even know when he has contradicted your advice or mine. Or does he know? Anyway, I shall not attempt to help him or âenlightenâ him any more.Â
It was interesting for me to read that you find it difficult to understand people. So do I, and always have. Only I donât believe they understand one another, either. Look at the world right now, or listen to any conversation. Itâs all meaningless gibberish and double-talk. I donât think that âto understandâ means to them the same thing as it does to us. What their equivalent for it is, I canât imagine. Somebody once told me that the most cruel thing one can do to people, is ask them: âWhat do you mean?â
Report from a faithful reader: Have bought âMr. Adamâ on your recommendationâand enjoyed it immensely. Have sent for âLabor Unionsâor Freedom?â, but havenât read it yet. Have subscribed to âPlain Talk.âÂ
With my exhausted, âphilosophicalâ regards,
Sincerely,