Capitalism’s greatest salesman — VOICES for REASON

Here’s an unpublished letter ARC’s Yaron Brook sent to the Wall Street Journal in response to an op-ed by Heather Wilhelm:

Dear Editor,

After indulging in a truly dazzling series of ad hominem attacks on philosopher Ayn Rand, Heather Wilhelm does manage to raise one important issue: she asserts that Rand, whose books continue to sell in the hundreds of thousands a year, is not an effective salesman for capitalism. Whereas Rand is allegedly “elitist, cold and laser-focused on the supermen and superwomen of the world,” Wilhelm claims that what capitalism truly needs is an explanation of “how everyone, especially society’s neediest” benefit from economic liberty. That claim betrays an appalling ignorance of history.

Capitalism’s defenders have appealed to its beneficent effects since its inception. Accepting the conventional view that service to the needy is the essence of morality, they have downplayed and denied the essence of capitalism: the profit motive and the unrestricted pursuit of rational self-interest. This approach hasn’t worked. So long as even the free market’s defenders feel guilty and embarrassed by capitalism’s selfish nature, any attempt to reverse the anticapitalist trend is hopeless. Who is going to believe that vice is the path to the good?

What Rand offers is a radical alternative—a proper, moral defense of capitalism’s essence.

Rand argued that the proper standard of morality is the objective requirements of human life. She argued that human life requires productive achievement, and that the noblest act of moral virtue is using one’s mind to create life-sustaining values. She argued that profit is moral because it enriches the individual who achieves it—that someone like Bill Gates deserves the highest moral praise, not for giving away his wealth, but for creating it. Thus Rand advocated capitalism precisely because it is the only system that rewards the profit motive and respects the individual’s right to act on his own judgment in the pursuit of his own life and happiness. And yes, that includes not only the most intelligent and successful, but every individual committed to making his life the best life it can be. Capitalism is good, Rand argued, because selfishness, correctly understood, is a virtue.

Wilhelm’s views aside, Rand continues to be the greatest salesman capitalism has ever had. It’s not hard to discern why: whereas the rest of the world looked at capitalism and saw the hollow pursuit of material gain, Rand saw man the hero free to seek his highest values.

Yaron addresses some of these issues in more detail in his talk Capitalism Without Guilt: The Moral Case for Freedom.

I want to make one further point about Wilhelm’s article. Wilhelm charges that Rand is not a good marketer for capitalism because she isn’t concerned with “society’s neediest” but is instead “elitist, cold and laser-focused on the supermen and superwomen of the world.” This is a revealing statement, although not because of what it says about Rand.

In Atlas Shrugged Rand shows how every rational person, on every level of ability, benefits from capitalism: from the top minds (e.g., Hank Rearden) to the hard working every-man (e.g., Eddie Willers)—to the lowliest blue collar worker. Moreover, she shows how most of the benefits the average man receives from capitalism come from the productive actions of the top minds. As one of the novel’s heroes argues:

[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.

What Wilhelm’s view means in the end is that the Hank Reardens must justify their freedom by its effects on the needy. As Yaron argues in his letter, making that the basis of capitalism is hopeless—and what’s more, it’s morally warped.