“I call it objectivism — meaning, a philosophy based on objective reality.”
The Mike Wallace Interview with Ayn Rand (1959)
MIKE WALLACE: This is Mike Wallace with another television portrait from our gallery of colorful people.
Throughout the United States, small pockets of intellectuals have become involved in a new and unusual philosophy which would seem to strike at the very roots of our society.
The fountainhead of this philosophy is a novelist — Ayn Rand — whose two major works,The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have been best-sellers.
We’ll try to find out more about her revolutionary creed, and about Miss Rand herself. […]
Down through history, various political and philosophical movements have sprung up. But most of them have died.
Some, however, like democracy, or communism, take hold and affect the entire world.
Here in the United States, perhaps the most challenging and unusual philosophy has been forged by a novelist, Ayn Rand.
Miss Rand’s point of view is still, comparatively, unknown in America, but if it ever did take hold, it would revolutionize our lives.
Ayn, to begin with, I wonder if I could ask you to capsulize your philosophy? What is Randism?
[1:45]
AYN RAND: I do not call it Randism, and I don’t like that name.
WALLACE: All right.
RAND: I call it objectivism — meaning, a philosophy based on objective reality.
Now, let me explain it as briefly as I can.
First, my philosophy is based on the concept that reality exists as a concrete absolute. That man’s mind — reason — is his means of perceiving it, and that man needs a rational morality.
I am primarily the creator of a new code of morality which has, so far, been believed impossible. Namely, a morality not based on faith. Not on arbitrary whim. Not on emotion, not on arbitrary edict, mystical or social, but on reason. A morality which can be proved by means of logic, which can be demonstrated to be true and necessary.
[2:44]
Now, may I define what my morality is? Because this is merely an introduction.
My morality is based on man’s life as a standard of value. And since man’s mind is his basic means of survival, I hold that if man wants to live on earth — and to live as a human being — he has to hold reason as an absolute.
By which, I mean that he has to hold reason as his only guide to action, and that he must lead by the independent judgment of his own mind. That his highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness. And that he must not force other people, nor accept their right to force him.
That each must live as an end, in himself, and follow his own rational self-interest.
[3:40]
MIKE WALLACE: You put this philosophy to work in your novel, Atlas Shrugged. You demonstrate it, in human terms, in your novel.
Let me start by quoting from a review of Atlas Shrugged that appeared in Newsweek.
It said that you are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life. Our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified, government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will.
Other reviews have said that you scorn churches and the concept of God.
Are these accurate criticisms?
[4:16]
RAND: Yes. I agree with the facts, but not with the estimate of this criticism. Namely, if I am challenging the base of all of these institutions, I am challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man’s moral duty is to live for others, that man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
WALLACE: What do you mean by, “sacrifice himself”?
RAND: One moment.
WALLACE: Now we’re getting to the point.
RAND: Since I’m challenging the base, I would necessarily be challenging the institutions you name, which are the result of that morality.
And now, what is self-sacrifice?
WALLACE: Yes, what is self-sacrifice? You say that you don’t like tha altruism by which we live. You like a certain kind of Ayn Randish selfishness.
[5:05]
RAND: To say that I “don’t like” [altruism] is too weak a word. I consider it evil. And self-sacrifice is the precept that man needs to serve others in order to justify his existence. That his moral duty is to serve others. That is what most people believe today.
WALLACE: Well, yes. We’re taught to feel concern for our fellow man, to feel responsible for his welfare. To feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible, one for the other. Now why would you rebel? What’s wrong with this philosophy?
[5:39]
RAND: But that is what, in fact, makes man a sacrificial animal. That man must work for others, concern himself with others, or be responsible for them. That is the role of a sacrificial object.
I say that man is entitled to his own happiness, and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. Nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others.
I hold that man should have self-esteem.
WALLACE: And cannot man have self-esteem if he loves his fellow man? What’s wrong with loving your fellow man? Christ, every important moral man in history has taught us that we should love one another. Why, then, is this kind of love, in your mind, immoral?
[6:31]
RAND: It is immoral if it is a love placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it is impossible. Because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately — that is, to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.
WALLACE: But in a sense, in your book, you talk about love as if it were a business deal of some kind. Isn’t the essence of love that it is above self-interest?
[7:04]
RAND: Well, let me make it complete for you. What would it mean to have love above self-interest? It would mean, for instance, that a husband would tell his wife — if he were moral, according to the conventional morality — that I am marrying you just for your own sake. I have no personal interest in it. That I am so unselfish, that I am marrying you only for your own good.
WALLACE: Should husbands and wives —
RAND: Would any woman like that?
WALLACE: Should husbands and wives, Ayn, tally up at the end of the day? And say, now wait a minute, I love her if she’s done enough for me, today, or she loves me if I have properly performed my functions? Is that —
[7:42]
RAND: Oh, no. You’ve misunderstood me. That is not how love should be treated.
My view is that it should be treated like a business deal, but every business has to have its own terms, and its own kind of currency.
And in love, the currency is virtue.
You should love people not for what you do to them, or what they do for you. You love them for their values, their virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.
You don’t love causes. You don’t love everybody indiscriminately. You love only those who deserve it.
[8:18]
WALLACE: And then, if a man is weak, or a woman is weak, then she is beyond, he is beyond love?
RAND: He certainly does not deserve it. He certainly is beyond. He can always correct it. Man has free will. If a man wants love, he should correct his weakness, or his flaws, he may deserve it.
But he cannot expect the unearned. Neither in love, nor in money. Neither in matter nor spirit.
WALLACE: You have lived in our world, and you realize, recognize, the fallibility of human beings. There are very few of us in the world, by your standards who are worthy of love.
[8:49]
RAND: Unfortunately, yes. Very few. But it is open to everybody to make themselves worthy of it. And that is all that my morality offers them. A way to make themselves worthy of love. Although that is not the primary motive.
WALLACE: Let’s move ahead. How does your philosophy translate itself into the world of politics?
Now, one of the principle achievements of this country in the past twenty years particularly — I think most people would agree — is the gradual growth of social protective legislation based on the principle that we are our brothers’ keepers.
How do you feel about the political trends of the United States? The Western world?
[9:39]
RAND: The way everybody feels, except more consciously. I think it is terrible, you see destruction all around you.
And that you are moving toward disaster until and unless all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected.
It is precisely these trends that are bringing the world to disaster.
Because we are now moving toward complete collectivism, or socialism. A system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody.
And we are moving that way only because of our altruist morality.
WALLACE: You say everybody is enslaved to everybody. Yet this came about democratically, Ayn. People in a free country voted for this kind of government, wanted this kind of legislation. Do you object to the democratic process?
[10:20]
RAND: I object to the idea that people have the right to vote on everything. The traditional American system was a system based on the idea that majority will prevailed only in public, or political, affairs.
And that it was limited by inalienable individual rights. I do not believe that a majority can vote a man’s life, or liberty, or property away from him.
Therefore, I do not believe that if a majority votes on any issue that this makes the issue right. It doesn’t.
WALLACE: Then how do we arrive at action? How should we arrive at action?
RAND: By voluntary consent, voluntary cooperation of free men. Unforced.
WALLACE: And how do we arrive at our leadership? Who elects? Who appoints?
[11:13]
RAND: The whole people elect. There is nothing wrong with the democratic process in politics. We arrive at it the way we arrived, by the American Constitution, as it used to be.
By the Constitutional process, as we had it. People elect officials, but the powers of those people, the powers of government, were strictly limited.
They will have no right to initiate force, or compulsion, against any citizen except a criminal.
Those who have initiated force will be punished by force. And that is the only proper function of government.
What we will not permit is the government to initiate force against people who have hurt no one, who have not forced anyone. We will not give the government, or the majority or any minority the right to take the life, or the property of others. That was the original American system.
[12:12]
WALLACE: When you say, take the property of others. I imagine that you’re talking now about taxes.
RAND: Yes I am.
WALLACE: And you believe that there should be no right, by the government, to tax. You believe that there should be no such thing as welfare legislation. Unemployment compensation. Regulation during times of stress. Certain kinds of controls and things like that.
[12:35]
RAND: That’s right. I’m opposed to all forms of control. 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 the 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.
[13:12]
WALLACE: You are certainly enough of a political scientist to know that certain movements spring up in reaction to other movements. The labor movement, for instance. Certain social welfare legislation. This did not spring up full-blown from somebody’s head, out of a vacuum.
This was a reaction to certain abuses that were going on. Isn’t that true, Ayn?
[13:35]
RAND: Not always. It actually sprang up from the same source as the abuses. If, by abuses, you mean the legislation which originally had been established to help industries. Which was already a breach of complete free enterprise.
If then, in reaction, labor leaders get together to initiate legislation to help labor, that is only acting on the same principle. Namely, all parties agreeing that it is proper for the state to legislate in favor of one economic group or another.
What I am saying is that nobody should have the right — neither employers, nor employees — to use state compulsion and force for their own interests.
[14:20]
WALLACE: When you advocate completely unregulated economic life, in which each man works for his own profit, you are asking, in a sense, for a devil-take-the-hindmost, dog-eat-dog society.
And one of the main reasons for the growth of government controls was to fight the robber barons, to fight laissez-faire — in which the very people you admire the most, Ayn, the hard-headed industrialists, the successful men, perverted the use of their power. Is that not true?
RAND: No, it isn’t.
WALLACE: Oh.
[14:55]
RAND: This country was made not by robber barons but by independent men, by industrialists who succeeded on sheer ability.
By ability, I mean without political force, help or compulsion.
But, at the same time, there were men, industrialists, who did use government power as a club to help them against competitors. They were the original collectivists.
Today, the liberals believe that that same compulsion should be used against industrialists for the sake of workers. But the basic principle, there, is — should there be any compulsion?
And the regulations are creating robber barons! They are creating capitalists with government help, which is the worst of all economic phenomena.
[15:48]
WALLACE: Ayn, I think that you will agree with me when I say that you do not have a good deal of respect for the society in which you and I currently live. You think that we’re going downhill fairly fast. […]
Do you predict dictatorship and economic disaster for the United States if we continue on our present course? […] Since you describe it in your novel, Atlas Shrugged, do you actually predict dictatorship and economic disaster for the United States?
[16:40]
RAND: If the present collectivist trend continues, if the present anti-reason philosophy continues, yes. That is the way the country is going.
But I do not believe in historical determinism, and I do not believe men have to go that way. Men have the free will to choose and to think. If they change their thinking, we do not have to go into dictatorship.
WALLACE: Yes, but how can you expect to reverse this trend when, as we’ve said, the country is run through majority rule, through the ballot. And that majority seems to prefer to vote for this modified welfare state.
[17:14]
RAND: Oh, I don’t believe that. You know as well as I do that the majority today has no choice.
WALLACE: What do you mean?
RAND: The majority has never been offered a choice between controls and freedom.
[17:25]
WALLACE: How do you account for the fact that an almost overwhelming majority of the people who are regarded as our leading intellectuals and our leading industrialists — the men who you seem to admire the most, the men with the muscle and the money — favor the modified capitalism that we have today?
[17:40]
RAND: Because it is an intellectual issue. Since they all believe in collectivism, they do favor it.
But the majority of the people has never been given a choice.
You know that both parties today are for socialism, in effect, for controls. And there is no party, there are no voices to offer an actual pro-capitalist, laissez-faire economic freedom and individualism. That is what this country needs today.
WALLACE: Isn’t it possible that they all, we all believe in it because we are all basically lonely people, and we all understand that we are, basically, our brothers’ keepers?
[18:22]
RAND: You couldn’t say that you really understand it. Because there is no way in which you could justify it. No one has ever given a reason why men should be their brothers’ keepers.
And you’ve had every example — and you see examples around you — of men perishing because of the attempt to be their brothers’ keepers.
WALLACE. You have no faith in anything.
[18:45]
RAND: Faith? […] I have no faith at all, I only hold convictions.
WALLACE: Who are you, Ayn Rand? I’d like to know just a little bit of your vital statistics. You have an accent which is?
RAND: Russian.
WALLACE: You were born in Russia?
RAND: Yes.
WALLACE: Came here?
RAND: Oh, about thirty years ago.
WALLACE: From where did this philosophy of yours come?
RAND: Out of my own mind. With the sole acknowledgement of a debt to Aristotle who is the only philosopher who has ever influenced me. I devised the rest of my philosophy myself.
WALLACE: Did they die in Russia, or did they come to the United States?
RAND: No, I came here alone, and I don’t know. I have no way of finding out whether they died or not.
WALLACE: You are married?
RAND: Yes.
WALLACE: To an industrialist?
RAND: No, to an artist. His name is Frank O’Connor. He paints.
WALLACE: Not the writer?
RAND: No, not the writer.
WALLACE: Does he live from his painting?
RAND: He’s just beginning to study painting. He was a designer before.
WALLACE: Is he supported, in his efforts, by the state?
RAND: Most certainly not.
WALLACE: Is he supported by you, for the time being?
RAND: No, by his own work, actually, in the past. By me if necessary, but it isn’t quite necessary.
WALLACE: And there is no contradiction, here, in that you help him?
[20:15]
RAND: No. Because I am in love with him, selfishly. It is in my self-interest to help him, if he ever needed it. I would not call that a sacrifice. Because I take selfish pleasure in it.
WALLACE: Let me put one specific case to you. Suppose, under your system of self-sufficiency, one single corporation were to get a stranglehold on a vital product, or a raw material — uranium, for instance. Which might be vital for the national defense. And then would refuse to sell it to the government. Then what?
[20:45]
RAND: Under a free system, no one could acquire a monopoly on anything. If you look at economics, and economic history, you will discover that all monopolies have been established with government help.
With the help of franchises, subsidies, or any kind of government privileges. In free competition, no one could corner the market on a needed product. History will support me.
[21:12]
WALLACE: Let’s say there is a deposit of uranium in Nevada. It’s the only one in the United States. And that’s our only access to that. And for our self-defense we need this.
Whereas, let’s say, in the Soviet Union, the state is able to command that.
And kind of a strange man, of strange beliefs, got hold of this uranium, and said, “I will not sell this uranium to the government.”
He should not be forced by the government, according to your philosophy, to sell that uranium.
[21:38]
RAND: But you realize, you are setting up an impossible fantasy. If you are talking of any natural resource, that is vitally needed, it could not become vitally needed if it were that scarce. Scarce to the point that one man could control all of it.
I’m using your example. If a natural resource exists in more than one place in the world, no one man is going to control it.
[22:05]
WALLACE: All right, let’s take another. How do we build roads, sanitation facilities, hospitals, schools? If the government is not permitted to force, if you will, by vote, taxation — we have to depend upon the trickle-down theory? Upon the noblesse oblige? The largesse?
[22:28]
RAND: I will answer you by asking you a question: Who pays for all those things?
WALLACE: All of us pay for those things.
RAND: When you admit that you want to take money, by force, from someone, and ask me how are we going to build hospitals or roads, you admit that someone is producing the money, the wealth, that would make those roads possible.
Now, you have no right to tell the man who produced the wealth in what way you want him to spend it.
If you need his money, you obtain it only by his voluntary consent.
[23:08]
WALLACE: You believe in the eventual goodwill of all human beings — or at least that top echelon of human beings — whom you believe will give willingly?
RAND: No goodwill is necessary. Only self-interest. I believe in private roads, private post offices, private schools.
WALLACE: When industry breaks down, momentarily, and there is unemployment, mass unemployment — we should not be permitted to get unemployment insurance? Social security we do not need? We’ll depend upon the self-interests of these enlightened industrialists, whom you so admire, to take care of things when the economy needs a little lubrication? And there are millions of people out of work?
[23:45]
RAND: Study economics. A free economy will not break down. All depressions are caused by government interference. And the cure always offered, so far, is to take more of the poison that caused the disaster.
Depressions are not the result of a free economy.
WALLACE: Ayn, one last question. How many Randists, you don’t like the word, I beg your pardon —
RAND: Objectivists.
WALLACE: — objectivists would you say there are in the United States?
[24:15]
RAND: It’s hard to estimate, but I can tell you some figures. My best intellectual heir, Nathanial Brandon, a young psychologist, is giving a series of lectures on my philosophy in New York. He has received 600 letters of inquiry within the month of January.
He is giving these lectures, and attendance is growing in dramatical proportion.
WALLACE: Ayn, I’m sure that you have stimulated a good many people — more people than already have — to read your book, Atlas Shrugged. And The Fountainhead. And I’m equally sure they will be stimulated for the reading, indeed, if they do not agree.
RAND: Thank you.
[24:54]
WALLACE: Thank you, very much. […] As we said at the outset, if Ayn Rand’s ideas were ever to take hold, they would revolutionize the world.
And to those who would reject her philosophy, Ms. Rand hurls this challenge — she has said, for the past 2,000 years the world has been dominated by other philosophies. Look around you. Consider the results.
We thank Ayn Rand for adding her portrait to our gallery. One of the people other people are interested in.