Capitalism and the Moral High Ground

Advocates of capitalism must come to see that self-sacrifice is not moral but evil—evil because it is irrational and anti-life. Man’s life does not require that he give up the values on which his life depends. It requires the opposite. It requires that he pursue and protect his life-serving values. And it requires a social system that enables him to do so. Human life requires capitalism: the social system of universal selfishness and prosperity. And if we are to defend capitalism, we must repudiate the morality of self-sacrifice and embrace the morality of self-interest: rational egoism.

Rational egoism calls not for self-sacrifice but for rational self-interest (the only kind of self-interest there is). It calls for everyone to pursue his life-serving values while respecting the rights of others to do the same.

Egoism does not call for “doing whatever one pleases” or “doing whatever one feels like doing” or “stabbing others in the back to get what one wants.” Those are caricatures of egoism perpetrated by pushers of altruism who seek to equate egoism with hedonism and subjectivism. Egoism does not hold pleasure or feelings as the standard of value. It holds man’s life as the standard of value—and reason as man’s basic means of living.

According to rational egoism, that which promotes man’s life is good, and that which harms or destroys man’s life is evil. There are several highly developed principles involved in this morality—including the supreme value of reason; the crucial need of purposeful goals and self-esteem; and the virtues of productiveness, independence, honesty, integrity, justice, and pride. But the key political principle of rational egoism is the principle of individual rights.

Whereas egoism identifies the fact that people must think rationally and act accordingly in order to live and prosper, the principle of individual rights identifies the fact that if people are to act in accordance with their judgment, they must be free to do so. Whereas altruism underlies and supports statism, egoism underlies and supports capitalism.

As the politics of self-interest, capitalism cannot be defended with the ethics of self-sacrifice—nor can it be defended apart from a moral foundation (e.g., via libertarianism or mere economics). We who wish to advocate capitalism must advocate it explicitly on moral grounds. We must unabashedly explain to our allies and potential allies (i.e., people who are willing to think) that human life requires rationally self-interested action; that each individual has a moral right to act on his own judgment for his own sake, so long as he does not violate the same rights of others; that capitalism is moral because it enables everyone to act in a rationally self-interested manner; and that a mixed economy—in which no one’s rights are fully protected, and everyone’s rights are partially violated—is immoral because it precludes people from acting fully as human life requires.

We who wish to advocate capitalism must take the moral high ground—which is ours by logical right—and we must never cede an inch to those who claim that self-sacrifice is a virtue. It is not. Self-interest is a virtue. Indeed, acting in one’s rational self-interest while respecting the rights of others to do the same is the basic requirement of human life. And capitalism is the only social system that fully legalizes it. Grounds do not get more moral than that.