The Playboy interview with Ayn Rand..........

In March of 1964, Alvin Toffler interviewed Ayn Rand.  Some excerpts:

PLAYBOY:  Throughout your work you argue that the way in which the contemporary world is organized, even in the capitalist countries, submerges the individual and stifles initiative.  In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt leads a strike of the men of the mind - which results in the collapse of the collectivist society around them.  Do you thing the time has come for the artists, intellectuals, and creative businessmen of today to withdraw their talents from society in this way?

RAND:  No, not yet.  But before I explain, I must correct one part of your question.  What we have today is not a capitalist society, but a mixed economy - that is, a mixture of freedom and controls, which, by the dominant trend, is moving toward dictatorship.  The action in Atlas Shrugged takes place at a time when society has reached the stage of dictatorship.  When and if this happens, that will be the time to go on strike, but not until then.

PLAYBOY:  What do you mean by dictatorship?  How would you define it?

RAND:  A dictatorship is a country that does not recognize individual rights, whose government holds total, unlimited power over men.

PLAYBOY:  What is the dividing line, by your definition, between a mixed economy and a dictatorship?

RAND:  A dictatorship has four characteristics:  one-party rule, executions without trial for political offenses, expropriation or nationalization of private property, and censorship.  Above all, this last.  So long as men can speak and write freely, so long as there is no censorship, they still have a chance to reform their society or to put it on a better road.  When censorship is imposed, that is the sign that men should go on a strike intellectually, by which I mean, should not cooperate with the social system in any way whatever.

PLAYBOY:  Short of such a strike, what do you believe ought to be done to bring about the societal changes you deem desirable?

RAND:  It is ideas that determine social trends, that create or destroy social systems.  Therefore, the right ideas, the right philosophy, should be advocated and spread.  The disasters of the modern world, including the destruction of capitalism, were caused by the altruist-collectivist philosophy.  It is altruism that men should reject.

PLAYBOY:  And how would you define altruism?

RAND:  It is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value, and virtue.  This is the moral basis of collectivism, of all dictatorships.  In order to seek freedom and capitalism, men need a nonmystical, not altruistic, rational code of ethics - a mortality which holds that man is not a sacrificial animal, that he has the right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others, nor others to himself.