The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights …
Tag: Ayn Rand
(1905 – 1982) Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter.
There can be no compromise
There can be no compromise on basic principles.
There can be no compromise on moral issues.
There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
The nature of socialism
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 … is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.
No compromise with evil
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
There is no ‘we’ without ‘I’
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.
Rejecting ‘equality of outcome’
I refuse to apologize for my ability —
I refuse to apologize for my success —
I refuse to apologize for my money.
If this is evil, make the most of it.
Government altruism
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.
Authority without responsibility
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
Immoral morality of the elites
It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government’s right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases. This time, it was not in the name of the ‘divine right of kings,’ but in the name of the divine right of the masses. The basic principle was the same: The right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government.
Difference between socialism and fascism
The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.