The Journals of Ayn Rand (67 page)

The first Totalitarian dictatorship happened in Russia. People said: well, Russia was a dark, backward, primitive nation where anything could happen—but it could not happen in any civilized country.

The next Totalitarian dictatorship happened in Italy—one of the oldest civilized countries of Europe and the mother of European culture. People said: well, the Italians hadn’t had much experience in democratic self-government, but it couldn’t happen anywhere else.

The next Totalitarian dictatorship happened in Germany—the country of philosophers and scientists, with a long record of the highest cultural achievements. People said: well, Germany was accustomed to autocracy, and besides there’s the Prussian character, and the last war, etc.—but it could not happen in any country with a strong democratic tradition.

Could it happen in France? People would have laughed at you had you asked such a question a year ago.
Well, it has happened in France—
France
,
the mother of freedom and of democracy, France, the most independent-minded nation on earth.

What price your smug self-confidence? In the face of the millions of foreign money and foreign agents pouring into our country, in the face of one step after another by which our country is [moving] closer to Totalitarianism—you do nothing except say: “It can’t happen here.” Do you hear the Totalitarians answering you—“Oh, yeah?”

Don’t delude yourself with slogans and meaningless historical generalizations. It
can
happen here. It can happen anywhere. And a country’s past history has nothing to do with it. Totalitarianism is not a new product of historical evolution. It is older than history. It is the attempt of the worthless and the criminal to seize control of society. That element is always there, in any country. But a healthy society gives it no chance. It is when the majority in a country becomes weak, indifferent and confused that a criminal minority, beautifully organized like all gangs, seizes the power. And once that power is seized it cannot be taken back for generations. Fantastic as it may seem to think of a dictatorship in the United States, it is much easier to establish such a dictatorship than to overthrow it. With modem technique and modern weapons at its disposal, a ruthless minority can hold millions in slavery indefinitely. What can one thousand unorganized, unarmed men do against one man with a machine gun?

And the tragedy of today is that by remaining unorganized and mentally unarmed we are helping to bring that slavery upon ourselves. By being indifferent and confused, we are serving as innocent Fifth Columnists of our own destruction.

Repeat that and scream that to yourself. In all great issues there are only two sides—and no middle. You are alive or you are dead, but you can’t be “neither” or “in between.” You are honest or you are not—and there is no neutral “half-honest.” And so, you are against Totalitarianism—or you are for it. There is no intellectual neutrality.

The Totalitarians do not want your active support.
They do not need it. They have their small, compact, well-organized minority and it is sufficient to carry out their aims. All they want from you is your
indifference.
The Communists and the Nazis have stated repeatedly that the indifference of the majority is their best ally. Just sit at home, pursue your private affairs, shrug about world problems—and you are the most effective Fifth Columnist that can be devised. You’re doing your part as well as if you took orders consciously from Hitler or from Stalin. And so, you’re in it, whether you want to be or not, you’re helping the world towards destruction, while moaning and wondering what makes the world such as it is today.
You do.

The Totalitarians have said: “Who is not against us, is for us.”
There is no personal neutrality.

And since you are involved, and have to be, what do you prefer? To do what you’re doing and help the Totalitarians? Or to fight them?

But in order to fight, you must understand. You must know exactly what you believe and you must hold to your faith honestly, consistently and
all the time.
A faith assumed occasionally, like Sunday clothes, is of no value. Communism and Nazism are a faith. Yours must be as strong and clear as theirs. They know what they want. We don’t. But let us see now, before it is too late, whether we have a faith, what it is and how we can fight for it.

First and above all: what is Totalitarianism? We all hear so much about it, but we don’t understand it. What is the most important point, the base, the whole heart of both Communism and Nazism? It is not the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” nor the nationalization of private property, nor the supremacy of the “Aryan” race, nor anti-Semitism. These things are secondary symptoms, surface details, the effects and not the cause. What is the primary cause, common to both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and all other dictators, past, present and future? One idea—and one only:
That the State is superior to the individual.
That the Collective holds all rights and the individual has none.

Stop here. This is the crucial point. What you think of this will determine whether you are a mental Fifth Columnist or not.
This
is the point which allows no compromise. You must choose one or the other. There is no middle. Either you believe that each individual man has value, dignity and certain inalienable rights which cannot be sacrificed for any cause, for any purpose, for any collective, for any number of other men whatsoever. Or else you believe that a number of men—it doesn’t matter what you call it: a collective, a class, a race or a State—hold all rights, and any individual man can be sacrificed if some collective good—it doesn’t matter what you call it: better distribution of wealth, racial purity or the Millennium—demands it. Don’t fool yourself. Be honest about this. Names don’t matter. Only the basic principle matters, and there is no middle choice. Either each man has individual, inalienable rights—or he hasn’t.

Your intentions don’t count. If you are willing to believe that men should be deprived of
all
rights for a
good
cause—you are a Totalitarian. Don’t forget, Stalin and Hitler sincerely believe that their causes are
good.
Stalin thinks that he is helping the downtrodden, and Hitler thinks that he is serving his country as a patriot. They are good causes, both of them, aren’t they? Then what creates the horrors of Russia and of Germany? What is destroying all civilization? Just this one idea—that to a good cause
everything
can be sacrificed; that individual men have no rights which must be respected; that what one person believes to be good can be put over on the others
by force.

And if you—in the privacy of your own mind—believe so strongly in some particular
good
of yours that you would be willing to deprive men of all rights for the sake of this good, then you are as guilty of all the horrors of today as Hitler and Stalin. These horrors are made possible
only
by men who have lost all respect for single, individual human beings, who accept the idea that classes, races and nations matter, but single persons do not, that a majority is sacred, but a minority is dirt, that herds count, but Man is nothing.

Where do you stand on this? There is no middle ground.

If you accept the Totalitarian idea, if the words “State” or “Collective” are sacred to you, but the word “Individual” is not—stop right here. You don’t have to read further. What we have to say is not for you—and you are not for us. Let’s part here—but be honest, admit that you are a Totalitarian and go join the Communist Party or the German-American Bund, because they are the logical end of the road you have chosen, and you will end up with one or the other, whether you know it now or not.

But if you are a Humanitarian and a Liberal—in the real, not the prostituted sense of these words—you will say with us that Man, each
single, solitary, individual Man,
has a sacred value which you respect, and sacred, inalienable rights which
nothing
must take away from him.

You believe this? You agree with us
that this
is the heart of true Americanism, the basic principle upon which America was founded and which made it great—the Rights of Man and the Freedom of Man? But do you hear many voices saying this today?

Do you read many books saying this? Do you see many prominent men preaching this? Do you know a single publication devoted to this belief or a single organization representing it? You do not. Instead, you find a flood of words, of books, of preachers, publications, and organizations which, under very clever “Fronts,” work tirelessly to sell you Totalitarianism. All of them are camouflaged under very appealing slogans: they scream to you that they are defenders of “Democracy,” of “Americanism,” of “Civil Liberties,” etc. Everybody and anybody uses these words—and they have no meaning left. They are empty generalities and boob-catchers. There is only one real test that you can apply to all these organizations: ask yourself
what is the actual result of their work under the glittering bromides?
What are they really selling you, what are they driving at? If you ask this, you will see that they are selling you Collectivism in one form or another.

They preach “Democracy” and then make a little addition—“
Economic
Democracy” or a
“Broader
Democracy” or a
“True
Democracy,” and demand that we turn all property over to the Government; “all property” means also “all rights”; let everybody hold all rights together—and nobody have any right of any kind individually. Is
that
Democracy or is it Totalitarianism? You know of a prominent woman commentator who wants us all to die for Democracy—and then defines
“true
” Democracy as State Socialism
[probably a reference to Dorothy Thompson
]
.
You have heard Secretary [Harold] Ickes define a
“true
” freedom of the press as the freedom to express the views of the majority. You have read in a highly respectable national monthly the claim that the Bill of Rights, as taught in our schools, is “selfish”; that a
“true
” Bill of Rights means not demanding any rights for
yourself,
but your giving these rights to
“others.”
God help us, fellow-Americans, are we blind? Do you see what this means? Do you see the implications?

And this is the picture wherever you look. They “oppose” Totalitarianism and they “defend” Democracy—by preaching their own version of Totalitarianism, some form of “collective good,” “collective rights,” “collective will,” etc. And the one thing which is never said, never preached, never upheld in our public life, the one thing all these “defenders of Democracy” hate, denounce and tear down subtly, gradually, systematically—is the principle of
Individual Rights, Individual Freedom, Individual Value. That
is the principle against which the present great world conspiracy is directed.
That
is the heart of the whole world question.
That
is the only opposite of Totalitarianism and our only defense against it. Drop
that
—and what difference will it make what name you give to the resulting society? It will be Totalitarianism—and all Totalitarianisms are alike, all come to the same methods, the same slavery, the same bloodshed, the same horrors, no matter what noble slogan they start under, as witness Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.

Principles are much more consistent than men. A basic principle, once accepted, has a way of working itself out to its logical conclusion—even against the will and to the great surprise of those who accepted it. Just accept the idea that there are no inalienable individual rights—and firing squads, executions without trial, and a Gestapo or a G.P.U. will follow automatically—
no matter who holds the power, no matter how noble and benevolent his intentions. That
is a law of history. You can find any number of examples. Can you name one [counter-example]? Can you name one instance where absolute power—in any hands—did not end in absolute horror? And—for God’s sake, fellow-Americans, let’s not be utter morons, let’s give our intelligence a small chance to function and let’s recognize the obvious—
what
is absolute power? It’s a power which holds all rights and has to respect none. Does it matter whether such a power is held by a self-appointed dictator or by an elected representative body? The power is the same and its results will be the same. Look through all of history. Look at Europe. Don’t forget, they still hold “elections” in Europe. Don’t forget, Hitler was
elected.

Now, if you see how completely intellectual Totalitarianism is already in control of our country, if you see that there is no action and no organization to defend the only true anti-Totalitarian principle, the principle of
individual rights,
you will realize that there is only one thing for us to do: to take such action and to form such an organization. If you are really opposed to Totalitarianism, to all of it, in any shape, form or color—you will join us. We propose to unite all men of good will who believe that Freedom is our most precious possession, that it is greater than any other consideration whatsoever, that no good has ever been accomplished by force, that Freedom must not be sacrificed to any other ideal, and that
Freedom is an individual, not a collective entity.

We do not know how many of us there are left in the world. But we think there are many more than the Totalitarians suspect. We are the majority, but we are scattered, unorganized, silenced and helpless. The Totalitarians are an efficient, organized and very noisy minority. They have seized key positions in our intellectual life and they make it appear as if they are the voice of America. They can, if left unchecked, highjack America into dictatorship. Are we going to let them get away with it? They are not the voice of America. We are. But let us be heard.

To be heard, however, we must be organized. This is not a paradox. Individualists have always been reluctant to form any sort of organization. The best, the most independent, the hardest working, the most productive members of society have always lived and worked alone. But the incompetent and the unscrupulous have organized. The world today shows how well they have organized. And so, we shall attempt what has never been attempted before—
an organization against organization.
That is—an organization to defend us all from the coming compulsory organization which will swallow all of society; an organization to defend our rights, including the right not to belong to any forced organization; an organization, not to impose our ideology upon anyone, but to prevent anyone from imposing his ideology upon us by physical or social violence.