Necessarily? Achieving money, productivity, and fine character traits is often good by a rational standard of value. But people who achieve these things can be miserable while those who are much more indolent and unproductive are--like it or not!--are frequently happier.
3. "Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love--because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. People who do not value themselves cannot value anything or anyone," (Rand, 1961a). Only the rationally selfish? Since when? I would say that literally millions of men--and women--who had little self-esteem and who continually held infirm, inconsistent, compromising values were at times able to love dearly. Let me remind the religious objectivists that some of the greatest lovers of history--including Heloise and Abelard and the Portuguese nun, Marianna Alcoforado--were hardly consistently rational! It is easy to contend, of course, that people who do not fully and sanely accept themselves do not really love others, no matter how much they think they do. But to do so is merely to define "real" love as an aspect of self-acceptance; and, although this kind of definitional truth discovering is a favorite trick of Rand and her objectivism, its "truth" is fanatically religious, not factual.
4. Ayn Rand: "What kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society?" Answer: Only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society, (1961a).
Her unrealistic extremism reveals itself since it follows that since (by Rand's objectivist standard) no rational, productive, free society has ever existed, no person in all of human history has been of value to another! It might even follow that no one in the future will be of value to another, since a purely free, capitalistic, "rational" fanatical religious-objectivist society may never exist.
Ayn Rand: "Reason is the only means of communication among men," (Rand, 1966a).
Do not people who are madly in love with or terribly angry with each other communicate anything? And do not highly unreasonable men at least communicate that they are unreasonable? What about the objectivists themselves, who to my (and many other people's) way of thinking are hardly supremely rational? Do they, at their worst, not communicate their less than rational fanatically religious views? I certainly think they do!
6. Said Nathaniel Branden: "Man must choose his values and actions exclusively by reason," 1965b). Does this mean that a man cannot legitimately choose a girlfriend because he happens, by whim, to like the color of her eyes, the way she smells, the feel of her thighs, or even the unreasonable way in which she delights in his smacking her on the behind? Does it mean that he can only legitimately enjoy a hamburger or a beer because his reason tells him that it is healthful to partake of such foods? We all know better!
Notice the extreme imperative and fanatical religiosity in this objectivist declaration. Branden does not say "It is usually desirable for a man to choose his values and actions largely by reason." He insists that people must choose, and presumably must always choose, their values and actions exclusively by reason. How much more one-sided and demanding can one get than to insist on such universality and exclusivity? Where hundreds of thinkers have shown how reason is, almost by definition, non-dogmatic and not religious, Branden makes it exclusive, dogmatic, and devoutly religious.
7. "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil," (Rand, 1957). According to this inexorable dictum, every major compromise that was ever made in the course of human history was wrong and evil. Here is pure, unadulterated all-or-nothingism and deep religiosity. Take it or leave it. But if you decide to compromise, and to believe something along the line of, "Maybe Rand is partly right; maybe it is generally better to pick one side or another of every issue; but occasionally it is better to take the middle ground rather than stick rigidly to either extreme," you are then (obviously!) making an evil compromise and selling your soul to the devil. Moreover, she absurdly asserts that there are only two side's when in reality there are always many sides and variations in each side, to every issue.
8. "The only good thing which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is--Hands off!" (Rand, 1943). If this were true, why would a wise person ever try to help a foolish one? Why would objectivists try to contradict and change the presumably foolish thinking and actions of Marxists, Freudians, Rooseveltians, and Ellisonians? If benighted or downtrodden individuals want you to keep your hands off, in spite of their plight, by all means oblige them. Even if they calmly insist on committing suicide, perhaps you'd better let them rather than try to dissuade them. But why should you not try to persuade others to accept help from you at times? Why should you not offer some aid (but not to the point so self-destruction, pain, or significant loss to yourself), in the hope that they might accept it and then they and the whole world, of which you are a part, would improve? Would that be too great an imposition on them? Is any cost however small too much?
9. "There may be "gray' men, but there can be no "gray' moral principles. Morality is a code of black and white" (Rand, 1964). Rigid objectivist morality is a code of black and white; but reasonable moralities appear to have many in-between codes of gray. First of all, it is inconceivable that there would be a sane code of morality, which did not include many borderline cases due to the infinite nature of the universe, and myriads of possible behaviors. Secondly, the principles of morality themselves normally have to be formulated, when they are sensible, in terms of "usually" rather than "always," and for "most" rather than for "all" people.
This is probably particularly true if people are to base their morality on pure self-interest, as the objectivists demand that they do. For if all people are at least somewhat different from others, how could their self-interests always be identical? If a man is highly promiscuous sexually and meets a woman who he knows is also promiscuous, he will hardly be unethical if he quickly tries to go to bed with her. If the same man meets a woman who is interested only in having sex relations with a man who is monogamously devoted to her, then he will be unethical unless he makes clear to her what his intentions are and how promiscuous he is. His "moral" behavior with the first woman may be quite "immoral" if acted out with the second woman. What is "white" in the first case may be "black" in the second instance. Men easily and naturally get themselves into trouble because of their tendency to over-generalize, (Ellis, 1962, 2001a, 2001b; Korzybski, 1933, 1951). If they carry this tendency over into morality, things become indeed grim!
10. "Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others; society--as an organized political system--has no rights in the matter at all" (Rand, 1964). Does this mean that no government or legislature has the right to appropriate funds to help the disaster-stricken people of its own jurisdiction or the suffering individuals in other communities? Does it mean that local, state, and federal governments have no right to beautify parks for the benefit of their citizens? If society, as an organized political system, has no rights to help others, why should such an organized political system exist? It is probably wise, as the Constitution of the United States tends to do, to restrict the rights of governmental agencies in many respects and to ensure that they do not impinge too much on the rights of citizens. But to restrict governmental rights completely means to decide, in effect, that there shall be little or no government. That, essentially, is what fanatical religious objectivists seem to want. Like Lenin, they want the state to wither away; and they seem to be just as impractical about this goal as he was. More so, since he expected that the state would eventually wither away, while they seem to have some notion that it can do so in the near future, he was more reasonable than they. The fact is that when lives in a society one has chosen to give that society the right to impose things. Anyway, the idea that society has no right to decide when or whether it should help its individual members is a typical fanatical declaration of Ayn Rand and her objectivism.
11. "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," (Rand, 1964).
We would have to assume, from this commandment that in a collectivist or even a semi-collectivist society (such as now exists in the United States), no one has the right to love, to get an education, to play the piano, or to defecate.
As noted previously in this book, even the right to life is hardly inalienable. I have the right to live because (a) I think I do and (b) other members of my society allow me to live. If most of the members of my social group do not agree with me that I have the right to live, there is a good chance that they will let me die, or even kill me; and my "right" to exist then becomes meaningless. Once my social group grants me the right to live, they can implement this right in various ways--of which granting me the right to hold property is hardly the only one.
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