Pocket Guide to Self Interest

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Pocket Guide to Self-Interest

Robert Tracinski

The Atlas Society Press

© Copyright 2023 Published by The Atlas Society 22001 Northpark Drive, Ste 250 | Kingwood, TX 77339

Cover design by Matthew Holdridge Book layout by Lorence Olivo & Erin Redding Proof editing by Donna Paris

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this booklet or portions thereof in any form. Manufactured in the United States of America.

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Our Mission

The Atlas Society’s mission is to inspire people to embrace reason, achievement, benevolence and ethical self- interest as the moral foundation for political liberty, personal happiness and a flourishing society. We build on Ayn Rand’s works and ideas, and use artistic and other creative means to reach and inspire new audiences. We promote an open and empowering brand of Objectivism; we welcome engagement with all who honestly seek to understand the philosophy, and we use reason, facts and open debate in the search for truth above all else; we do not appeal to authority or conflate personalities with ideas. We resist moral judgment without adequate facts, and believe disagreement does not necessarily imply evasion. 3

A Pocket Guide to Self-Interest Why Selfishness? Ayn Rand’s defense of “the virtue of selfishness” is probably the most famous, even notorious part of her philosophy. It flies in the face of the dominant outlook in today’s culture—accepted by the left, right, and middle—that altruism and self-sacrifice are the very essence of morality. She did not merely defend self-interest on pragmatic or economic grounds, on the theory that businessmen pursuing wealth will indirectly benefit others—the idea that “private vice makes for public virtue.” 1 She argued that selfishness is a private virtue, one as necessary in the realms of love, friendship, and family as it is in the marketplace.

Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, 1714.

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This theory may seem radical, even outlandish, but it is vitally important to your life. Most of us do, in fact, pursue our selfish interests. Our whole society is built on and driven by a form of rational self-interest—yet most people pursue their interests without either sanction or guidance, with no clear standard for determining what is actually in their interests or the legitimate means for achieving it. That is exactly what Ayn Rand set out to fix. What Is Self-Interest? Ayn Rand was born in Russia in 1905. In the early years of Soviet totalitarianism, she witnessed the consistent implementation of a morality of self-sacrifice and sought to capture its full destructiveness in her first novel, We the Living (1936). In a foreword to a later edition, she recounted, “When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the communist principle that man must 2

exist for the sake of the state, I perceived that this was the essential issue.” 2 In 1926, Ayn Rand escaped to America and experienced life in a nation founded on the opposite moral ideal: the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” In an early work where she set out to articulate the principles of “Americanism,” she wrote: “The right to the pursuit of happiness means man’s right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others.” 3 Notice that this vision of selfishness involves work, achievement, and respect for the rights of others. Ayn Rand’s defense of self-interest includes rescuing it from the common caricature of selfishness: If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the 2 3

Ayn Rand, We The Living, Foreword, 1959. Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism. 3

worst indictments of altruism: It means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, selfsupporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. 4 Ayn Rand was an advocate of rational selfinterest—selfishness defined not as the hedonistic pursuit of immediate urges, but as adherence to rational principles that guide the achievement of long-term goals. What Is Morality? Selfishness is not the central issue in Ayn Rand’s theory of morality: The choice of a beneficiary of moral values is merely a preliminary or introductory issue in the field of morality. It is not a substitute for

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction. 4

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morality nor a criterion of moral value. 5 We have to know what morality is in the first place, its grounding in the facts, and why we need it. Many philosophers have wondered how an “ought” can be grounded in an “is.” 6 How can a rational grasp of the conditions of existence tell us what we “must” do? Ayn Rand answered that the requirements of human life provide the “musts”: Reality confronts man with a great many "musts".... You must eat, if you want to survive. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must look at reality, if you want to think—if you want to know what to do—if you want

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction. 6 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part I, Section I. 5

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to know what goals to choose—if you want to know how to achieve them. 7 All of these “musts” are grounded in the biological requirements of human life: The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not; it depends on a specific course of action…. Life is a process of selfsustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of “Life” that makes the concept of “Value” possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil. 8

Ayn Rand, “Causality Versus Duty,” Philosophy: Who Needs it. 8 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech. 7

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For humans, there is one extra biological requirement: For man, the basic means of survival is reason. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as “hunger”), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food, and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. Ayn Rand extends this principle from our simplest physical needs to more complex ones. Humans had to learn “how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic

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tube.” 9 (An electronic tube was the leading edge of computer technology at the time.) If morality is necessary to provide guidance for human survival and flourishing, then this goal is achieved by “thinking and productive work”:9 Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being—not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement—not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason. 10 This is also achieved through trade with others. The moral man, Ayn Rand wrote, is “a trader,” who “deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced

Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness. 10 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech. 9

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exchange—an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment.” What Does a Selfish Person Actually Look Like? If the goal of morality is survival, prosperity, flourishing, happiness—these are all selfish goals. Ayn Rand once summed up her approach to morality in the words of a Spanish proverb: “Take what you want and pay for it.” This is a reversal of the conventional view, in which morality is primarily about rules, limits, punishments, and restrictions. In this view, morality begins with going out and getting what you want. Morality is a form of selfassertion. But both parts of the proverb apply. To get what you want, you have to pay for it. She hastened to add, “But to know one’s own desires, their meaning, and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.” To get 9

the things you want out of life, you have to do the work that makes those things possible. What this means in practice is projected most powerfully in Ayn Rand’s novels, where the heroes are creative thinkers, innovators, and builders. In The Fountainhead, her hero is an architect who is driven by the originality of his artistic vision. In Atlas Shrugged, her heroes run railroads and mines, invent new metal alloys and motors, and discover new scientific laws and philosophical truths. The title of The Fountainhead conveys her message: It is the self, the “I,” that is the source of thinking, creativity, and the motivation to build. Here is how her hero, Howard Roark, describes the creative individual: His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man’s spirit, however, is his self…. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

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The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Ayn Rand’s case for selfishness depends on her view of the self. Many previous philosophers have regarded the self as consisting of brutish, irrational, and evershifting appetites and destructive urges. Ayn Rand saw the self as the rational mind and its power to conceive of new ideas and build new things. Who could possibly defend selfishness? An argument for selfishness may seem shocking, and Ayn Rand was attempting to overturn widely accepted conventional views. 11

But she was also building on precedents from previous philosophers. Aristotle, the greatest of the Ancient Greek philosophers, argued that individual happiness is the highest good and ultimate aim of morality. 11 Aristotle even addressed the question of whether one ought to love oneself or another person most and concluded that love of others is only possible as an extension of love for oneself. 12 The 17th-Century English philosopher John Locke followed Aristotle in declaring that the “pursuit of happiness…is our greatest good,” 13 a phrase that directly inspired the words of the Declaration of Independence. Visiting America in 1831, the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville reported that this idea was commonplace and uncontroversial. “The Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book I. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book IX, Chapter 8. 13 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXI. 11 12

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doctrine of self-interest properly understood is not new, but it is among the Americans of our time that it has come to be universally accepted…. You hear it as much from the poor as from the rich.” 14 Ayn Rand’s version of rational self-interest is more consistent, and she names more precisely the means by which self-interest is “properly understood.” But a morality of rational self-interest is not as unprecedented as most people believe. It only seems radical and unthinkable because of the rise of its opposite, altruism, as a universally accepted moral philosophy. Don’t we need altruism? Ayn Rand warned against the common misunderstanding of altruism: “Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will, or respect for the rights of others.” In reality, “The basic principle of altruism is that man Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book II, Chapter 8, 1840. 14

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has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.” 15 As a word and as a consistent theory, altruism is relatively recent. It was coined in 1830 by the French philosopher Auguste Comte to encapsulate the motto of his ethics: vivre pour autrui, “to live for others.” 16 John Stuart Mill summed up his ideas: M. Comte infers that the good of others is the only inducement on which we should allow ourselves to act; and that we should endeavor to starve the whole of the desires which point to our personal satisfaction, by denying them all gratification not strictly required by physical necessities. The golden rule of morality, in M. Comte's religion, is to Ayn Rand, Philosophy Who Needs It, “Faith and Force”. 16 Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity: Volume 1, 1851. 15

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live for others, "vivre pour autrui." To do as we would be done by, and to love our neighbor as ourself, are not sufficient for him: they partake, he thinks, of the nature of personal calculations. We should endeavor not to love ourselves at all. 17 Mill described this as "a despotism of society over the individual." It is no surprise, then, that Comte was also a popularizer of another new term, “socialism,” and he rejected “any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality.” 18 Ayn Rand argued that this theory actually makes benevolence and goodwill among men impossible. She pointed out the basic contradiction of altruism: Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 1865. 18 Auguste Comte, Le Catéchisme Positiviste, 1852. 17

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enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? 19 How can you wish other people well when you are opposed on principle to human happiness? Ayn Rand’s most poignant portrayal of the destructive impact of altruism is the toxic relationship between Peter Keating and his mother in The Fountainhead. Peter originally wanted to be a painter, but Mrs. Keating pushed him into architecture as a more respectable profession. Throughout his life, she nags him into giving up everything he

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Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech. 16

really wants for her sake—but she tells herself she is doing this for his sake. Late in the novel, she asks: “You’re happy, Petey? Aren’t you?” He looked at her and saw that she was not laughing at him; her eyes were wide and frightened. And as he could not answer, she cried: “But you’ve got to be happy! Petey, you’ve got to! Else what have I lived for?” 20 This is the real-life implementation of Comte’s motto, “to live for others.” Mrs. Keating has been sacrificing everything for Peter’s happiness, while he has sacrificed everything for her happiness, and they both end up miserable. The novel’s villain, Ellsworth Toohey, provides Ayn Rand’s summation of the actual meaning of altruism: A world where no man will hold a desire for himself, but will direct all his efforts to satisfy the desires of his 20

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

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neighbor who’ll have no desires except to satisfy the desires of the next neighbor who’ll have no desires—around the globe, Peter. Since all must serve all…. Let all live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy.20 Most people do not advocate altruism in such a fully consistent form. But remember that Ayn Rand began by encountering in the Soviet Union the doctrine that “man must exist for the sake of the state.” Altruism in a consistent form enslaved hundreds of millions of people and had a credible chance of dominating the whole world. Starting with John Stuart Mill, many have advocated altruism in a watered-down form. But if an idea is disastrous when implemented all the way, why would it suddenly become a good idea if you take it halfway?

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Why use the word “selfishness”? When asked this question, Ayn Rand replied, “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.” 21 She wanted to make it clear she was not apologizing for self-interest or making concessions to the altruist viewpoint. She pointed out that there is no real difference in meaning between “selfishness” and selfinterest—just the negative connotation, which is what she wanted to challenge. She set out to reclaim “selfishness,” both by defending the morality of self-interest and by properly defining what it means. As she observed, when people “believe that moral laws bear no relation to the job of living, except as an impediment and threat,” they will “come to believe that actual evils are the practical means of existence.” If we believe that selfishness is evil, we will believe that evil is in our self-interest.

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction.

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That’s what she meant by proclaiming “the virtue of selfishness”: not just to support selfinterest, but to show that it requires virtue. What about charity? If total sacrifice of one’s interests is going too far, isn’t charity still necessary to help people who have suffered from misfortune? Selfishness is compatible with charity, generosity, or good will. If you believe that life and happiness are legitimate human goals, you will be more likely to sympathize with other people’s attempts to reach those goals. But self-interest implies that while you wish other people well in their pursuit of happiness, their happiness does not take precedence over your own. Thus, the selfish person provides charity only “as an act of good-will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part), and when it is offered in response to the receiver’s virtues, 20

not in response to his flaws, weaknesses, or moral failure.” 22 For example, to contribute to medical treatment for a sick child is not a sacrifice, if it is an amount that one can afford without giving up a crucial value of one’s own. It is a tribute to the shared value of life itself. By contrast, to repeatedly bail out an alcoholic relative is a widely recognized example of “pathological altruism.” 23 By enabling your relative’s addiction, you sacrifice your own time and effort and end up providing no benefit for anyone. The fundamental issue, Ayn Rand argued, is not “whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar”:

Ayn Rand, “The Question of Scholarships,” The Objectivist, June 1996. 23 Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, and David Sloan Wilson, editors, Pathological Altruism, 2012. 22

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The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. 24 Charity can be selfish, when it is a choice made in harmony with the giver’s own personal goals. Ayn Rand pointed to the widespread misuse of the term “sacrifice.” “If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice,” and thus, “If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice.” For the same reason, “If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.” 25 It is an assertion of your interests, not a sacrifice, to give time or money you can afford to support something you personally value. Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, “Faith and Force”. 25 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech 24

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What about emergencies? Shouldn’t we help people in emergencies? And would a selfish person choose to take on a risky job like firefighter, police officer, or soldier? Those who volunteer for these jobs recognize they have a strong personal interest in living in a safe, lawful, and free society, and that someone has to sign up to protect these values. Moreover, many who volunteer do so because they personally enjoy the sense of adventure in taking on difficult and dangerous tasks, and they take pride in their ability to do them successfully. But notice that we also go to great lengths to provide these people with training, equipment, and support to minimize the risks they face, and often we compensate them with higher pay, better benefits, and public expressions of gratitude. The consistent altruist position, by contrast, would be to take those people for granted, on the grounds that everyone has a duty to 23

sacrifice for the good of others. Dictatorships, for example, are notorious for treating soldiers as cannon fodder. In the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Soviets sent military conscripts without proper protective gear to clean up radioactive waste—callously sacrificing their lives and health to the service of the state. A society based on self-interest recognizes that people have to choose to take on the difficult and dangerous jobs that make civilized life possible, that they deserve to be rewarded for it, and that they should never be asked to take on unnecessary risks. Ayn Rand also pointed out that while all life requires some risk, emergencies like natural disasters and war are the exception rather than the rule. Altruism is based on the assumption “that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm” of human life. Instead, she argued, any help we give our fellow man is “an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and

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incidental—as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence.” 26 Helping others in an emergency is a temporary exception, while the normal activity of human life is to produce the things you need to thrive in your own life. What about friendship and love? People are most willing to take risks or show generosity to help the people they love. Does this imply that love and friendship are altruistic? Take a moment to project what it would really mean to have an altruistic friendship. It would mean that you find no personal pleasure in spending time with the other person and do it purely as a duty or chore. Imagine saying to someone, “I find your conversation boring, I hate your taste in music and movies, and I would really rather be somewhere else—but Ayn Rand, “Ethics of Emergencies,” The Virtue of Selfishness.

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we’re friends, right?” No one would regard that as “friendship.” Worse yet, imagine an altruistic romantic relationship. Try telling a spouse or lover that you find them unattractive and think they have no redeeming qualities—but you love them. It’s not something you’re likely to find on a Valentine’s Day card. Perhaps the clearest example is a sexual relationship. Altruism would imply that you regard the other person’s sexual attentions with indifference or revulsion, but you force yourself to tolerate them anyway, purely for the other person’s sake. This is an absurdity—for any healthy relationship. It is, however, a description of what we would call an abusive or exploitative relationship. The battered woman who stays with a violent husband because he proclaims that he needs her is altruism in practice. Any relationship in which one person provides everything of value while the other never contributes anything is one-sided and parasitical. 26

Put in positive terms, we value love and friendship for the selfish enjoyment we experience from the other person’s company. What about family? The kind of one-sided relationship described above is a dilemma that is often faced by people who grew up with abusive parents. They would rather have nothing to do with their abusers but are often told that they have a duty to love the person who made their childhoods miserable. A healthy family relationship is based on the exact opposite: It is based on shared memories of mutual help and enjoyment. If you ask a normal person why he loves his parents, there is no reason you would have to resort to telling him that he has to love his parents. He would love them because he remembers all the good parts about growing up: mom making a favorite meal, going with dad to baseball games, the work his parents went through to send him through school, and so on. 27

The same goes for the parents. Asking whether it is selfish to have children is like asking whether it is selfish to have friends or get married. It is a particularly close form of companionship: choosing to share your life with someone created (or adopted) by your own choice. This means committing to a lot of work and expense—but so does a career or a hobby. Rational self-interest is not the same as short-term hedonism. It does not mean doing whatever feels good at any given moment. It often means taking on work and responsibility in the pursuit of a long-range goal. The fact that something requires work, effort, and forgoing immediate pleasure in the pursuit of a long-term goal does not make it “unselfish”—so long as you really are gaining more in the long term. Is selfishness “materialistic”? The hedonistic conception of selfishness is often based on the assumption that selfinterest can only be defined in strictly 28

materialist terms: the pursuit of money, goods, food, sex—anything that can be consumed or enjoyed on the purely physical level. Selfishness certainly includes the pursuit of material well-being. Humans are physical beings with physical needs. But we also have mental and psychological needs. The human mind is powerful enough to invent new ideas and new ways of satisfying our material needs that take us far beyond the bare minimum of subsistence. That power makes our minds highly complex and creates a whole range of psychological needs. Our power to reason and form abstractions makes it possible for us to have a worldview, an abstract idea about the nature of the universe and our place in it. This is what allows us to create science and technology and make our lives longer and more comfortable. It also means that we need to seek out a concretization and validation for our view of the world, which we find in art and philosophy. We also find it in friendship and love. By sharing with a companion our enjoyment of the things we love, we amplify 29

and validate our own values and view of the world. The principle of trade, Ayn Rand argued, should be applied to every aspect of life. In the realm of love and friendship, trade takes the form of “spiritual payment,” 27 a mutual exchange of emotional and psychological values, not just economic ones. So is everyone selfish? If we are willing to help other people because it makes us happy, then isn’t everyone selfish? Doesn’t a sense of psychological satisfaction provided by doing something altruistic make it self-interested? Selfishness is not the same thing as hedonism. Rational self-interest means, not just whatever you happen to feel like doing at the moment, but “the terms, methods, conditions, and goals required for the survival of a rational being Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness.

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through the whole of his lifespan.” 28 An addict, for example, may experience a momentary high, but at the expense of longterm mental and physical decay. Similarly, it is possible to feel satisfaction in giving up something you really want in order to help someone else, but to habitually subordinate one’s own desire to others will hollow out your soul. Ayn Rand dramatized this in The Fountainhead in the character of the conformist people-pleaser Peter Keating. After decades of doing only what is expected of him by other people, putting their demands above his own desires, Keating realizes too late that “It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.” 29 Keating is her cautionary tale about the need to define one’s goals and interests independently, not just to seek the approval of others.

Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness. 29 Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead 28

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Can a selfish person be virtuous? Ayn Rand didn’t just defend selfishness as a virtue; she explained why moral virtues are selfish. If achieving one’s interests requires thought, discipline, and adherence to a longterm course of action, then it requires principles and the habit of acting on those principles. Ayn Rand defined and defended seven main virtues: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride, arguing that each of these is the recognition of a basic requirement of human life.30 We have already described the role of some of these virtues, particularly rationality, but let’s look at a few of the others, especially honesty and productiveness.

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Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech 32

Aren’t criminals and dictators selfish? A criminal might enjoy ill-gotten gains, and a dictator might live in luxury at the expense of his people. But this is at best a crudely materialist, short-term conception of selfinterest. Such men are actually working against their wider, long-term interests, which would be best served by living in a peaceful, lawful society where everyone’s rights are secure. The petty criminal depends on the assumption that his exploitation of others is the exception rather than the rule; the only reason there is money in the bank, and goods to buy with that money, is because bank robberies are rare. The criminal hopes for a contradiction: that the laws will be enforced on everyone except him. Lawless countries without a functioning government, where no one’s person or property is secure are extremely poor, and any gain a criminal gets is undercut by the risk of losing it all (or his life) to some other criminal. Similarly, every dictator lives in constant fear of having someone do to him 33

what he has spent his whole career doing to others. Moreover, criminals and dictators are not known for carefully weighing their interests in strictly rational terms. They are impulsive and irrational, launching destructive internal purges or ill-considered wars out of resentment, envy, insecurity, and power lust. Dictators are particularly revealing examples. In attempting to gain power over a whole nation, they must appeal, not to self-interest, but to some form of altruism. They must convince their subjects to sacrifice themselves for religion, for nationalism, for racial identity, or for a socialist utopia. In the 20th Century, Communists and Nazis both preached consistent versions of altruism. They fought each other in devastating wars, but they were in total agreement on the moral idea that the individual exists to serve the state. Ayn Rand’s villain in The Fountainhead explained the connection: “The man who speaks to you

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of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.” 31 Far from being examples of selfishness, dictators are a product of the moral code of altruism. Don’t people need to cooperate? Selfishness is not the opposite of cooperation. It defines how you cooperate with others. You would not need the concept of selfinterest if you lived alone on a remote island. There would be no other alternative than to do everything for yourself—and by yourself. It is precisely because we live and work with others that we need to define the proper rules for cooperation. Ayn Rand argued that the benefits of living in society include the transmission of knowledge and the division of labor:

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Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

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This form of cooperation allows all men who take part in it to achieve a greater knowledge, skill, and productive return on their effort than they could achieve if each had to produce everything he needs, on a desert island or on a self-sustaining farm. But these very benefits indicate, delimit, and define what kind of men can be of value to one another and in what kind of society: only rational, productive, independent men in a rational, productive, free society. This explains, for example, why honesty is selfish. Telling a lie can’t change the underlying reality. All it can do is to hide it, making it harder for people to make rational decisions. It undermines the value you can get from cooperating with others by blinding them to the facts they need to know. Selfishness is not the opposite of cooperation; it is what separates cooperation from exploitation. The rule of selfish cooperation is 36

the “trader principle”: cooperation by mutual consent and to mutual advantage. This enables cooperation on a vast scale, with large multinational corporations and a global trade network. By contrast, societies that embrace altruism tend to replace cooperation with coercion. Consider the history of a capitalist country like the United States of America versus a socialist country like the Soviet Union. Ayn Rand described this first kind of society as a “utopia of greed” 32 where everyone benefits from the new ideas and new products created by other people pursuing their own interests. In the second kind of society, other people are discouraged from pursuing their interests, and so are you—and Ellsworth Toohey’s prediction comes true: All suffer and none enjoy.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part Three, Chapter II.

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What if my rational self-interest conflicts with yours? In a free society, people certainly compete for specific goods they want. But in a wider sense, they have an interest in the competition itself. Two athletes may both want to win the title, but they have a wider interest in having a fair competition run on the principle of “may the best man win”—as opposed to a system in which every competition is rigged. Similarly, two people applying for the same job have a wider interest in living in a free society with a vibrant economy, where there are many different job openings, many different people with the skills to compete for them, and employers are free to choose among them. Living in a society that embraces selfishness means you will sometimes have to compete with others who are pursuing their interests, but this is the precondition for having the right to pursue your own happiness.

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Just as altruism assumes a constant state of disaster, it also assumes a state of permanent scarcity. But a dynamic and innovative society powered by self-interest produces a growing quantity of goods and of economic opportunities. Competition is not “dog-eatdog” but rather a race to the top in which everyone is capable of rising. Ayn Rand concretized this issue most vividly in addressing whether there are conflicts of interest in matters of love. In Atlas Shrugged, the heroine finds herself in a love triangle, and she projects what would happen if the man she loves were to stop pursuing her in order to avoid hurting his rival’s feelings. Everyone, she realizes, would lose—including the supposed beneficiary, who would only enjoy her affections as a “resented substitute.” If you are pursuing a romantic partner, you want to be their voluntary first choice, their selfish choice, not an object of pity.

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Is it good to have an “ego”? In popular usage, when you describe someone as having a “big ego,” this conveys the opposite of its literal meaning. It describes someone who is thin-skinned, touchy about criticism, and needs constant reassurance of his own importance. It describes someone with a fragile sense of self. But the literal meaning of “ego” is “I”—one’s self. To have an “ego” in the literal sense is to have a strong sense of self, to have selfconfidence and self-esteem. Ayn Rand championed the importance of selfesteem, a belief in your own value as a person, but she pointed out that genuine self-esteem has to be earned. “To live requires a sense of self-value,” she wrote, “but man…must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice.” 33

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Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s Speech 40

Contrary to its contemporary usage, “selfesteem” is not reinforced by the repetition of positive affirmations from others, but only by genuine achievement. Can a selfish life be meaningful? “Achievement” is the word that sums up the substance of what it actually means to be selfish. To be selfish requires a self—an active, creative mind engaged in the pursuit of long-term goals. It means having the drive and self-discipline to work for these goals by building and creating. In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s hero describes this as the meaning of life: Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. “Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the 41

meaning of life…. Your work.” He tossed the branch aside. “The material the earth offers you and what you make of it.” 34 This is how most people actually live or try to live: finding a career they enjoy and working to provide for themselves and the people they love, starting with the material the world offers them and making what they want of it. Yet we are told to accept a view of morality in which we are supposed to feel guilty for wanting to live. Rather than dismissing the self and its interests, we should seek to understand selfishness, to define it properly, and to reclaim it.

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Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

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About the Author

Rob Tracinski studied philosophy at the University of Chicago and has been a writer, lecturer, and commentator for more than 25 years. He is the editor of Symposium, a journal of political liberalism, is a columnist for Discourse magazine, and writes The Tracinski Letter. He is the author of So Who Is John Galt Anyway? A Reader’s Guide to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

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