“The Sanction of the Victims” Now Available Online

Who is the greatest enemy of American business?

In Ayn Rand’s last public lecture, delivered before an audience of businessmen in 1981, she answered: businessmen themselves are their own worst enemy. Previously available in print as an article in Ayn Rand’s anthology The Voice of Reason, “The Sanction of the Victims” has now been published online by ARI for the first time.

Rand calls businessmen out for their perpetual apology for their success and for the appeasement of their exploiters. Having accepted the morality of altruism, they are unwilling to say outright that they deserve to be rewarded for what they create. Instead, they try to justify themselves as humanitarians fulfilling their “corporate social responsibility.”

In a world where CEOs sign pledges to give away their fortunes, where energy companies bow to pressure to “go green” and tech companies agree to open more-expensive onshore production facilities to create domestic jobs, the essay is as relevant as ever.

Rand shows how this posture of guilt is not a minor PR mistake but the root of capitalism’s vulnerability. The moment the productive concede that profit must be justified by service to others, they concede the premise their freedom depends on. Worst of all, they bankroll the very universities and programs that teach ideas that are hostile to capitalism.

The essay is required reading for anyone in the business world, or anyone seeking to defend it. Read the full speech here.

Since the subject of these seminars is investment, I must start by stating that I am not an economist and have no purely economic advice to give you. But what I am anxious to discuss with you are the preconditions that make it possible for you to gain and to keep the money which you can then invest.

I shall start by asking a question on a borrowed premise: What human occupation is the most useful socially?

The borrowed premise is the concept of social usefulness. It is not part of my philosophy to evaluate things by a social standard. But this is the predominant standard of value today. And sometimes it can be very enlightening to adopt the enemy’s standard.

Image Credit: Leonard Peikoff (Ayn Rand Archives)