Altruism as Obligation, cont.page 2
“Altruism demands the initiation of physical force. When the representatives of the needy use coercion, they regularly explain that it is obligatory: it is their only means of ensuring that some recalcitrant individual, whose duty is self-sacrifice, carries out his moral obligations—of ensuring that he gives to the poor the unearned funds he is born owing them, but is trying wrongfully to withhold.” (Rand, OPAR, p. 320)
In the philosophy of Objectivism, altruism is the belief that any person owes any sacrifice to any other person. Of course, anyone who’s had to deal with parasitic relatives would dispute this.
The moral code of altruism is that need is primary, “that need gives one a right to the ability and effort of others,” that “one person’s need is an absolute claim on others, a claim that overrides their interests and rights” (Kelley).
Auguste Comte coined the term, altruism, and defined it as placing others’ interests above one’s own, where others may be society at large, a small subgroup, or a single person.
According to Objectivist philosophy, society and the legal community have bastardized the original meaning of altruism as it applies to humans so that people can be forced by law to help people who either aren’t able to help themselves, or choose not to help themselves, thereby representing a need, regardless of type or urgency. People who claim an inability to support themselves are, in most cases, simply unwilling to support themselves.
“Predominantly, the issue of need is an issue of unwillingness to carry one’s own weight and the desire to get an unearned share of somebody else’s effort.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 147) “The alleged right to a minimum sustenance means that a man, with no effort on his part, is entitled to sustain his life” by the efforts of others. (Rand, OSARI, p. 153)
According to Ayn Rand, founder of the Objectivist philosophy, “Altruism does not claim that you should help others when and if you can. It claims that you should subordinate your own interests to the interests of others and that others should take first place in your life as a moral duty. In this case, kindness is impossible.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 143) “Altruism entails other contradictions. There is no reason you should consider the benefit of others a value, if you do not consider your own benefit a value. Altruism demands that you regard everybody as a value except yourself. According to an altruist, no human being has any right to any happiness or any existence of his own; he has only the duty to serve others. Altruism regards men as objects of sacrifice for others. That is not a theory of benevolence. There can be no benevolence among men unless we recognize man’s basic moral and political right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself—which is precisely what altruism denies.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 144))
“By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others–that to value another means to sacrifice oneself–that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones” (Rand, LEX, pp. 10-11)
Rand takes the concept of altruism to an extreme of absolutes and sets up extreme cases to argue against, so that she may put forward Objectivism’s main philosophical points. However, Rand spoke and wrote at length on altruism, a word which more properly should be substituted with the word, extortion-aid, in Ayn’s writings.
Need, “pain, failure and disaster are made into the leading purpose and value in life,” according to Rand. “In other words, altruism amounts to the following principle, which you can see being adopted in politics today: If a man fails for any reason, whether through his own fault or through accident, that failure gives him a mortgage on the lives, the earnings, the property and the services of those who have not failed. The result is a hierarchy of values in which the zero is the dominant standard. To the extent to which a man lacks any values at all—material, spiritual or intellectual—he has a claim on his betters.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 145) “But second, and more important, is the fact that altruism makes him feel that somebody will take care of him. He feels that it is not necessary for him to be productive or to take an interest in his own career. To the extent that he fails, he will become a first mortgage on the life of everybody else, which gives him an incentive not to succeed. Without altruism, many more people would realize that there is no escape from the responsibility of carrying one’s own weight, of providing for one’s own survival and of being productive.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 149)
The psychological effect of being dependent on others for support can be demoralizing. When asked in an interview about what we can conclude about the implicit self-estimate of those who follow the morality of altruism, Ayn Rand responded: “The basic consequence is a total lack of self-esteem–or as near to total as a man can come and still remain sane and alive. A man who accepts the theory of altruism has to regard himself as being of no value. It is his self-esteem that he has to renounce on every issue, intellectually and spiritually. He must give up the desire to make something of his own life and to achieve happiness. The very idea of looking at oneself as merely a means to the ends of somebody else…implies a lack of self-esteem.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 146)
Lacking self-esteem, people dependent on handouts must also seek handouts of esteem through others. They twist their rationalizations into knots not to feel inferior. They often interpret the motives of those from whom they receive support as emanating from disgust rather than kindness so that they won’t feel bad for taking repeated advantage of a kind man. Understanding that there are people like himself in need of a handout, the dependent person develops a lack of respect of others “since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone’s help” (Rand, LEX, p. 10)
In an interview, Ayn Rand was asked whether the happiness a giver feels when executing voluntary acts of altruism, and making others happy, qualifies as a supporting rationale for altruism. She answered: “To begin with, whether or not people feel comfortable in a certain situation is not a moral criterion. I’m sure that cannibals feel very comfortable after eating a meal, but that would not be grounds to say: ‘You see, this is how happiness is achieved, so follow their example.’ Feeling a state of comfort is irrelevant to the question of whether that state is moral or immoral. That question must be answered cognitively, not emotionally.
“But more than that, the fact that man wants the company of others is not a proof that man is fundamentally a social animal. It is not a proof that the primary in your existence is your relationship with others, which should then determine your view of yourself and your morality. Social relations are a consequence of your own premises and values—they are not a primary.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 148)
To increase or maintain others’ happiness should not be the motivating or deciding factor in taking an action, until others become willing to pay for the happiness you provide.
“A self-made rich man who is anxious to be an altruist by giving away his wealth is seeking unearned admiration from others [for the wrong reasons, not for his productivity]. He is a man who lacks self-esteem and believes…that he can derive a sense of his personal value from the gratitude or praise of others.” (Rand, OSARI, p. 150)
“Altruists want [businessmen] to pay financial tributes, not as kindness, but as atonement for the guilt of having succeeded” (Rand, FTNI, p. 54)
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