October 26, 1949

  “Being True-to-Truth ”

  Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

  The essence of consciousness is identification. Our senses give us information about physical reality. Our mind grasps it, organizes it, identifies it, establishes conceptions—ideas. Our ideas about reality establish our emotions, desires, purposes, motives. The “spiritual” duty of our mind is to identify our ideas and all their consequences, all the functions and aspects of our consciousness as strictly as we identify the facts of physical reality. Here, too, our first and foremost (and probably only) duty is: non-contradictory identification. This establishes our moral character as a person—this is probably the whole essence of morality. (“A broken person is one who dares not admit to himself the nature of what he is doing.”)

  Since existence cannot be contradictory, this rule of consciousness is the rule of morality—the life-serving principle. A contradiction, being impossible, has to lead to destruction—therefore, a philosophy containing paradoxes (particularly the intentional, conscious acceptance of paradoxes) has to have destruction as its ultimate result. (This is an important clue for the distinction between the “life” and “death” philosophies.)

  To think over in this connection: the example of the certainty of a sleep-walker. Define the exact relation of how to set your abstractions in such a way that the concrete action follows automatically and correctly. This is both for general thinking and particularly for the process of writing.

  November 5, 1949

  For Speech on Money

  There are only two possible societies: where men work for reward or where men work from fear—the incentive of joy or the incentive of suffering. These are basic, because man has, essentially, only the two sensations: pleasure and pain. Now, which of these two societies do you want?

  If man is to work, not for his own pleasure, but for the pleasure of others, then others have to take care of him, of providing his pleasure. Then man in relation to his brothers is simultaneously a sucker and a beggar. Is that what you consider good? Is that the rule of a moral society? That—as against a society where the relationship of men is that of self-respecting, self-supporting, responsible equals.

  Money is the tool of intelligence and of freedom. It requires judgment, in order to be produced and to be spent. When a man pays you in money, he leaves to you the choice of how to spend it. You are the judge of what you want to get in exchange for your effort. What would you prefer—that your employer decide what you should have and what he will give you?

  The men who hate their work “because they have to work for money” are immoral. The fault is theirs—they are the kind who hate work or the kind who want others to support them in a work for which those others get nothing.

  December 13, 1949

  Main Points of Galt’s Cause

  Man exists for his own happiness; he is an end in himself and does not exist for the sake of others.

  If any man is asked to sacrifice himself for others, it means that he has something of value, some virtue, which they lack. Therefore, it means that the worthless is given a claim of priority over the valuable, the unvirtuous over the virtuous, the miserable over the happy. It means—whatever the standard of values, since it is only a value that can be sacrinced—that the good must be sacrificed to the evil.

  Men of virtue, do you value your virtues as little as that? Are you willing to make them serve, feed and preserve those who are evil? Are you willing to support your own enemies? You are your own destroyers.

  If the inferiors base their entire claim on the fact that they need the superior—then how can they enforce their claim and their exploitation, unless it’s the superior who permits it, accepts it, and works for his own destruction? It is the superior who makes possible his own torture, enslavement, exploitation, and ruin.

  If they need you, while you do not need them—it is you who must dictate the terms. (There is no question of sacrifice between equals, or between any two men who have something to offer to each other; there is only a trade—a just, honorable exchange. Whenever sacrifice is [demanded], it means that one party wants something from the other but has nothing to offer in return.)

  The great, primary error of the superior men has been the fact that they have accepted the morality of their own exploiters.

  What morality is and why it is the cardinal need of man’s existence: man is a being of free will, he has to survive by conscious choice and effort, he has to choose his purpose and the means to achieve it. The choice of the means depends on the purpose, and the choice of the purpose depends on his code of values. A being of free will cannot choose, act, or exist without a standard of values. His standard must be himself-man’s nature. His basic, primary, essential purpose must be to live. He can live only in the manner proper to his nature—proper to man. He must understand his nature, define it—and that will give him his standard of values.

  Man’s essence and sole means of survival is his mind—his capacity to think—his rational [faculty]. Any departure from it or denial of it is a destruction of his consciousness. A morality or standard of values not based on his reason is impossible for him to practice and can lead only to his destruction. He cannot live against and in contradiction to his consciousness. He cannot be good, if the “good” is that which is contrary to his nature, that which is impossible to him. Nor can he exist if he accepts himself as essentially evil: then his life, too, is evil—and he can have no desire to struggle for the continuation of the evil existence of an evil being. It is thus that he is set against himself.

  The cardinal crime in morality has been the placing of the standard of values outside and beyond man. This was done by chopping man into two contradictory parts, set to war against each other: body and soul. Then the standard of values was placed in the alleged realm of this alleged soul, as an enemy of the realm of his body. This left man’s existence on earth without any morality; man had no code of values for this earth; in fact, to exist at all, he had to be immoral.

  Man’s consciousness is not material—but neither is it an element opposed to matter. It is the element by which man controls matter—but the two are part of one entity and one universe—man cannot change matter, he can control it only by understanding it and shaping it to his purpose. (The distinction between “entity” and “action”—between noun and verb. The essence of being.)

  Man’s soul or spirit is his consciousness—here, now, on earth. The ruling element, the control, the free-will element of his consciousness is his reason. The rest—his emotions, his memory, his desires, his instincts—all are determined by his thinking, by the kind of conclusions he has made and the kind of premises he has accepted.

  The man of spirit is the man of the mind. He is the man who is not the slave, but the ruler of matter. He is the man who makes it possible for mankind to survive. He is the creative man.

  The morality of the mind—to be true to truth. The great courage, integrity and responsibility that it requires. The only cardinal sin is the denial or suspension of one’s reason—the refusal to face reality, identify it and make rational connections. No man can go against his own mind—and that is why he cannot submit to force. The greatest field where this morality is needed and expressed is the field of material production.

  All material production is an achievement of the spirit—of the mind. Every human creation has to start in the mind and be given form in matter—whether it’s a work of art or a commercial gadget. Every spiritual value of man has to be expressed in material form or action. What is a virtue, if man does not practice it or act upon it? The great courage and virtue of the producers.

  The hatred for the producers is the hatred for man, for life and for this earth. Those who despise material producers are motivated by the desire for man’s destruction. They are the men of death.

  The desire for the unearned in matter is only a consequence and an expression of a deeper, more vicious aim: the desire for the unearned in spirit. Those who want to seize the material wealth produced by others actually want the virtues of the producers, and they want to obtain them unearned and undeserved: unearned respect, unearned love, unearned admiration. They hope to obtain it by reversing man’s standard of values, by regarding all the virtues of life and of this earth as sins, and their opposites—the qualities based on and leading to death—as virtues.

  The victims—the producers, the men of this earth—have accepted this monstrously evil reversal for too long. It has always been supported by force—the brute force of the organized destroyers—but the producers have submitted and obeyed, because they were disarmed morally; they had accepted the destroyers’ morality and never found their own.

  The power of the “moral sanction.” It is not enough to be neutral about one’s productive talent; one must hold it as one’s highest, proudest virtue.

  The free enterprise system—the system based on the morality of the producers—is now being destroyed because the producers have never [identified] their proper morality.

  America versus India: which country [represents] the triumph of spirit over matter?

  The present struggle is a conspiracy against the mind, a conspiracy against ability.

  The men of production must set themselves free of the guilt which has been attached to them for centuries. Do not accept the destroyers’ morality. Do not submit to force. You do not need your exploiters. They need you. Let them try to get along without you. Do not give them that which they cannot force out of you, which they cannot obtain without your consent: your living power—the power of your love for life—your mind. Put an end to the use of your virtues for your own torture—and of your love of life as a tool of destruction and death. We are on strike against the morality of death. We are fighting for the morality of man, of life and of this earth.

  December 19, 1949

  [AR seems to have prepared the following for a conversation with Earl Reynolds, an employee of Kaiser Steel. She notes down some of his answers. ]

  Questions Regarding Furnace Accident

  1. The exact nature, cause, appearance and progression of accident? “Charge hangs up” in a blast furnace (can be from wrong ore).

  2. The exact action needed to prevent disaster and the danger to the rescuers?

  3. When alarm rings—who is supposed to answer it? Who should have taken care of accident, instead of Rearden?

  4. Would coke ovens be operated late in the evening—about 8 p.m.? Yes. Do you call it a “door”? Yes.

  5. Is it “structural shapes” that Danagger would get for his coal mines? If so, how much? Or is there a more essential thing which he could get direct from Rearden?

  6. Is 500 tons of Rearden Metal (equivalent to 1,000 tons of steel) about right for the “quota”?

  7. For Mr. Ward’s harvesters: how many would a modest sized plant put out in a year? How much steel would he need? 2,000-3,000 harvesters at about 1-2 tons per unit.

  8. Is it “Purchasing Manager” of steel mills? Is line correct: “We’ll make it up on volume”? Tonnage.

  January 28, 1950

  Notes for Rearden’s Trial

  The overall point: the sanction of the victim.

  The looters try (e.g., through Bertram Scudder) to use the trial to discredit Rearden in the eyes of the public, to destroy his popularity, which is due to Rearden Metal. The looters are worried over the fact that the public, in gloomy silence, realizes the value and the productivity of the industrialists—as exemplified in the history of Rearden Metal.

  The looters have tried to counteract it by a barrage of screaming about “greed, selfishness, the profit motive.” It has not worked. The public attitude is a glum, impassive silence. People say obediently: “Yeah, Rearden was after nothing but his own proiit”—but there is no condemnation in it, no anger or indignation; they say it without conviction—they have begun to doubt that that’s evil—they have no conviction about anything, neither in approval nor disapproval—they feel nothing but a gray, hopeless apathy. This worries the looters. They try—by means of the trial—to whip up hatred for the industrialists, for the rich, to make men like Rearden the goats and blame the national emergency on them—“they prevent the national plans from working, they break the regulations and thus stand in the way of the prosperity that the plans would certainly have given us otherwise.”

  It does not work. Rearden’s attitude blows it up completely. They want Rearden’s admission that the “planning” and the controls are good, but that he selfishly ignored them. They want him to apologize for his action. He doesn’t. They wanted an industrialist’s endorsement of the public value of controls. They wanted it to be a debate over the “public good.” If he claimed that his action was for the “public good”—they would have had him, because nobody would believe it. They would have had the moral sanction. This is what he doesn’t do.

  Dagny says: “Hank, that we should have come to do business like criminals!” He answers: “The real evil is our accepting it as being criminal. Ask yourself why plain highwaymen and robbers have never been a grave problem to mankind, but legal looters have made the whole of human history into a tragedy and a procession of horrors.”

  [AR copied the following quote from Will Cuppy, critic and humorist for the New York Herald Tribune:] “If the insects do win and set up a government, how will they manage, without us to raise crops for them? Do they intend to exterminate mankind or will they let a few of us remain in some minor capacity, such as planting apple trees for the Codling Moth and cotton for the Boll Weevil?”

  For Rearden: He is asked to contribute Rearden Metal for a slum playground. He asks: “What is more important—to give the slum a playground or to give Ellis Wyatt his pipeline?”

  February 16, 1950

  Notes for Government Encroachments on Railroads

  Regulations are imposed in the name of safety “for passengers and employees.” First, the miserable condition of the equipment—which is due to lack of money, rising costs and wages, no permission to raise rates, low profits—causes accidents. Then, the accidents are used as an excuse for “safety” controls.

  The purpose of controls is to eliminate the necessity of judgment (!) and to eliminate the competition, for the parasites, of the men capable of judgment. (The “freezing” of judgment. This is for “the moratorium on brains.”)

  For the tunnel catastrophe: Government Board reinstates employees (with back pay!) who have been discharged for serious infractions of basic safety rules. (See p. 9 of Union Pacific Pamphlet.) Here—the pull of the labor leader who keeps “his men,” in exchange for control of union’s votes, etc.

  April 24, 1950

  [AR made the following notes for the scene in which the parasites discuss Directive 10-289.]

  Elements for Parasites’ Scene

  Stress the fact that the parasites lean on need, weakness, incompetence as the base and justification for all of their schemes. Show the “death principle” in practical application. [...]

  Above all—show the hatred of ability and of the mind. The conspiracy against ability. The attempt to eliminate the necessity of judgment. The “freezing” of judgment. The attempt to substitute a mechanical security, an automatic routine, for the risk and responsibility of exercising one’s own judgment. The attempt to seize “the motions” of the able, to copy them, and to forbid the able to advance, forbid them to make any new “motions” which would destroy the “security” of the aping robots.

  The directive is known as “Directive No. 289.” It requires Mr. Thompson to declare a state of total emergency—in the name of “total stability.”

  In the scene: Mr. Thompson, Wesley Mouch, Eugene Lawson, Mr. Weatherby, James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Dr. Ferris, and the labor leader (Fred Kinnan).

  Main points of “Moratorium on Brains ”:

  1. Everybody is attached to their jobs—cannot quit or be fired. (Freedom from worry.)

  2. The industrialists are forbidden to quit—if they do, their property will be nationalized. (Freedom from risk.)

  3. No more inventions and new products for the duration of the emergency. (Freedom from speculation.)

  4. All patents and copyrights are taken over—to be used equally by everybody “for the public good.” Patents and copyrights are to be signed over to the nation “voluntarily” as a patriotic emergency gift. (Freedom from greed.)

  5. Everybody is to produce the same amount as in the “basic year”—no more and no less. Over- or under-production is to be fined. (Freedom from exploitation.)

  6. Everybody has to spend as much as they did in the “basic year.” (Freedom from privation.)

  7. All wages, prices, dividends and interest rates are frozen as in the “basic year.” (Freedom from future.)

  Their main cry is to “end instability”—to “achieve security.”

  This will end “wasteful competition”—“we’ll close all research departments, we won’t have to worry about new inventions upsetting the market, we won’t have to waste money just to keep up with over-ambitious competitors.”

  Their attitude is, in effect: things are getting worse and worse, to hell with progress if we can only remain as we are; we can exist now, but we won’t be able to if things continue going down, so let’s hold still. They are rolling down the slope of an abyss—and want to [stop] themselves by hanging on to a branch on the way.

  Wesley Mouch acts like a cornered rat—his sole recourse is to get angry, with the petulant anger of an offended tyrant, as if the country’s troubles are an affront to him and people better do something, since he’s angry. He’s become used to the fact that people seeking favors are afraid of his anger—and he’s beginning to feel that his anger is the solution to everything, his anger is omnipotent, all he has to do is get angry. But the basic element in his anger is a rat’s fear. He keeps screaming “I’ve got to have wider powers! ... I’ve got to have power!” like an injured party, as if the guilt for everything is on those who haven’t given him the power. Wesley Mouch is the zero at the meeting point of opposing forces. (He is resentful of Mr. Thompson—he knows that Thompson has the power to kick him out, but won’t because Mouch has balanced the forces skillfully and Thompson is too dumb and too busy to break through the mesh.)