Two Giants of the 20th Century
Ideas — both when they are correct and when they're wrong, both their presence and their absence, both when held explicitly and when held implicitly — determine the course of history.
Two intellectual giants of the 20th century spent their lives making explicit a correct understanding of man and how he could best flourish in the world he lives in. Though they worked in significantly different fields, their conclusions are congruent and can form the basis for a peaceful and prosperous 21st century — and beyond.
The first of these giants was Ludwig von Mises. Mises was born in Austria in 1881. He came to the U.S. in 1940 when he fled the Nazis and died in 1973 at the age of 92. His field was economics.
In 1920 he published his most controversial and most prophetic idea — that socialism was doomed to failure, that it could not work because it made economic calculation impossible. In other words, under socialism, planners have no way of knowing how much to produce of what goods nor the most economical way of producing whatever goods they decide to produce. Inefficiencies multiply until the whole system collapses.
Many economists tried to prove Mises wrong. Even when the couldn't they still refused to accept his conclusion. Finally, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, some have acknowledged the correctness of Mises' ideas. Nonetheless, they still try to evade the knowledge.
The second intellectual giant of the 20th century was Ayn Rand. Rand was born in St Petersburg, Russia in 1905, emigrated to the U.S. in 1925 and died in 1982 at the age of 77. She considered herself primarily a novelist but discovered that she had to become a philosopher in order to fully realize the vision she wanted to convey in her novels.
In 1943 Rand published her first successful novel, The Fountainhead. In 1947 it was made into a movie starring Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper. It has long been available on VHS tape and will soon be available on DVD. The Fountainhead is the story of an architect who would not compromise his principles, neither in his personal nor his professional life, and of his eventual triumph in both.
On October 10, 1957, Rand published her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. It is the story of the man who vowed to stop the "motor of the world" and the consequences when the "men of the mind", the producers, go on strike. It is written as a mystery story, a philosophical detective story, in which the villains are known by the ideas they espouse.
After the publication of Atlas Shrugged, Rand turned her attention to creating a rich legacy of essays and speeches filled with provocative and insightful ideas.
What did these two intellectual giants have in common? Or more precisely, what did their ideas have in common?
The primary common factor was their emphasis on the importance of the individual, both as the source and the purpose of all values.
Most of economics has been concerned with the well-being of groups, of the economy as a whole. Starting with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and continuing to the present time, most economists treat the individual as an interchangeable and dispensable cog in the wheel of the economy.
Mises, on the other hand, recognized that it was the individual who acted, the individual who valued and that therefore the proper role of economics was to explain how the individual could achieve the greatest value for his actions.
In a similar way, the history of ethical and political philosophy has consisted of countless theories of how the group (however defined) or perhaps some mythical god was the source and the purpose of all values.
Ayn Rand's philosophy, which she called Objectivism, demonstrates that ethical egoism is the only rational foundation for ethics and thus for politics.
If you want to succeed in life; if you want to flourish; if you want to live in a society that tolerates neither masters nor slaves; if you want a world of peace and prosperity — then I urge you to investigate the ideas, the individualism, of these two under-appreciated giants of the 20th Century: Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand.
Presented by Rick Pasotto on 2006-10-16
