Ayn Rand Communism Quotes

When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you – you know your nation is doomed.

People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.

Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims—as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force—he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious; reason, to him, is a means of deception; he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason—and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism—and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy—that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug.

Ayn was startled by the fact that while everyone complained indignantely about the physical hardships created by the communists, no one seemed equally indignant about their ideology. When — at the age of twelve — she first heard the communist slogan that man must live for the state, she knew, consciously and clearly, that this was the horror at at the root of all the other horrors taking place around her. Her feeling was one of incredulous contempt: incredulity that such a statement could be uttered in human society, and a cold, unforgiving contempt for anyone who could accept it. She saw, in that slogan, the vision of a hero on a sacrificial altar, immolated in the name of mediocrity — she heard the statement that the purpose of her life was not her own to choose, that her life must be given in selfless servitude to others — she saw the life of any man of intelligence, of ambition, of independence, claimed as the property of some shapeless mob. It was the demand for sacrifice of the best among men, and for the enshrinement of the commonplace — who were granted all rights because they were commonplace — that she held as the unspeakable evil of communism. Her answer to the slogan was that nothing could be higher or more important than an individual's right to his own life, that it was a right beyond the claim of any individual or group or collective or state or the whole population of the globe.

Observe also that an honest theoretician does not try to present his ideas in the guise of their opposites. But Kant’s philosophy is presented as “pure reason”—altruism is presented as a doctrine of “love”—communism is presented as “liberation”—and egalitarianism is presented as “justice.

Je ne considère pas les collectivistes comme des « idéalistes sincères mais abusés ». La suggestion de réduire en esclavage certains hommes pour le bien d'autres n'est pas un idéal ; la brutalité n'est pas « idéaliste », peu importe son but.

[T]heir work was not backward-looking. They saw themselves as resolutely modern. And it was not primarily about politics or economics. Instead, they sought to advance a principled case for individualism as a moral and cultural phenomenon - a value they thought precious and rare, and that they saw threatened both by the stifling traditionalism that Lewis's literature satirized and by the collectivist trends of fascism and communism around the world and in America.

Nozick thinks the mistake utopians make is to assume that their idealised society will work for everyone. No matter how it works or who designs it, some people are bound to loathe it. Instead we should recognise that the best society would be one in which different human types can find their own way to live. Communism would only be utopia for the people who prefer things this way;for others it would be hell. The same is true for Gandhi's asceticism, for Emma Goldman's anarchism and even Ayn Rand's version of libertarianism, which trumpets the virtues of the free market. Nozick thinks a true utopia would need to have a room for all these things, and to allow them to be freely chosen by the different people who lived there.

We are not allowed to say that a communist revolution has begun. We are not allowed to say that Marxist groups are engaged in a power grab; that they are using racial issues as camouflage, “extending the domain of egalitarianism”; that looting stores, beating white citizens and police officers has everything to do with communist supremacy (and nothing to do with good race relations). For those who have studied communism, who have sat in communist meetings, the situation is perfectly obvious. Yet the mainstream media pretends there are no communists. They pretend the left is blameless. Our generals wink at the rioters. The President is opposed or mocked by governors and mayors. The communists are immune to counterattack because they have seized the egalitarian high ground of American politics. They have followed Gramsci’s method.

A State without Statism In crypto circles, communism often figures as everything crypto is not: statist, centralizing, planned and totalitarian, where crypto sees itself as decentralized, liberal and emancipatory. But who was the first person to ask how one could do without the state and its representatives, before Satoshi Nakamoto, Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek? None other than Karl Marx.

When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious platitudes. This was the reason for my opposition to Communism then—and it is my reason now. I am still a little astonished, at times, that too many adult Americans do not understand the nature of the fight against Communism as clearly as I understood it at the age of twelve: they continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are noble. All the victories of Communism since the year 1917 are due to that particular belief among the men who are still free.