Philosophy, General: Objectivism, part 1

Glyn Hughes has done an excellent job of condensing the various tenants of Objectivist thought (as first promulgated by Ayn Rand). Here is an excellent critique of socialism:

THE MONUMENT BUILDERS
What had once been an alleged ideal is now a ragged skeleton rattling like a scarecrow in the wind over the whole world, but men lack the courage to glance up and to discover the grinning skull under the bloody rags. That skeleton is socialism.

Fifty (seventy now) years ago, there might have been some excuse (though not justification) for the widespread belief that socialism is a political theory aimed at the achievement of men's well-being. Today, that belief can no longer be regarded as an innocent error. Socialism may be established by force, as in the USSR - or by vote, as in Nazi Germany. The socialization may be total, as in Russia - or partial, as in England. But the results have always been a terrifying failure - terrifying, that is, if one's motive is men's welfare.

England, once the freest and proudest nation of Europe, has been reduced to the status of a second-rate power and is perishing slowly from hemophilia, losing the best of her economic blood: the middle class and the professions. They are escaping from the reign of mediocrity, from the mawkish poorhouse where, having sold their rights in exchange for free dentures.

Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement led and controlled by the intellectuals, out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs. What is the motive of such intellectuals? Power-lust - as a manifestation of helplessness, of self-loathing and of the desire for the unearned. "The public interest," "service to the public" are the means. Since there is no such entity as "the public," since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of "the public interest" with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others.

Greatness is achieved by the productive effort of a man's mind in the pursuit of clearly defined, rational goals. But a delusion of grandeur can be served only by the switching, undefinable chimera of a public monument. America's greatness lies in the fact that her monuments are not public. The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers kept raising the people's standard of living- including the inhabitants of the slums, who lead a life of luxury compared to the life of an ancient Egyptian slave or of a modern Soviet Socialist worker.

When you consider the global devastation perpetrated by socialism, the sea of blood and the millions of victims, remember that they were sacrificed, not for "the good of mankind" nor for any "noble ideal," but for the festering vanity of some scared brute or some pretentious mediocrity who craved a mantle of unearned "greatness" - and that the monument to socialism is a pyramid of public factories, public theaters and public parks, erected on a foundation of human corpses, with the figure of the ruler posturing on top, beating his chest and screaming his plea for "prestige" to the starless void above him.