readthebook (110)

Ayn Rand used objective concepts in rational explanations, not marketing ploys.

This is what Ayn Rand wrote, correctly, about alturism:

"What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.

"Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

"Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: 'No.' Altruism says: 'Yes.'”

from “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” in the anthology Philosophy: Who Needs It

and

"There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one 'package-deal': (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance."

"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes."

from “Introduction”, The Virtue of Selfishness

There are more excerpts at http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altrui...

"The Virtue of Selfishness is a collection of essays presenting Ayn Rand’s radical moral code of rational selfishness and its opposition to the prevailing morality of altruism—i.e., to the duty to sacrifice for the sake of others."

And noting that Comte explicitly sought to wipe causality out of philosophy, it is important to understand Ayn Rand's explanation of the role of causality and rejection of duty in ethics: “Causality Versus Duty,” in her anthology Philosophy: Who Needs It. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/duty.h...

This is what Comte himself wrote about his concept of altruism as an ethical standard in his Catechisme Positiviste (Catechism of Positivism), 1852:

"Positivism alone holds at once both a noble and true language when it urges us to live for others. This, the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. Implicitly and indirectly it sanctions our personal instincts, as the necessary conditions of our existence, with the proviso that they must be subordinate to those of altruism. With this limitation, we are even ordered to gratify our personal instincts, with the view of fitting ourselves to be better servants of Humanity, whose we are entirely." p313

"Positivism recognizes no right in anybody but the right to do his duty. To speak more accurately, our religion imposes on all the obligation to help every one to discharge his peculiar function. In politics we must eliminate Rights, as in philosophy we eliminate causes... All honest and sensible men, of whatever party, should agree, by a common consent, to eliminate the doctrin of rights. Positivism only recognizes duties, duties of all to all. Placing itself, as it does, at the social point of view, it cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate..." p331-2

from translation by R. Congreve, London: Kegan Paul, 1891
https://archive.org/details/catechismpos...

You are right that Ayn Rand used the full philosophical concept of altruism as formulated and popularized by Comte (1798-1857). Contrary to the falsehoods of Robbie53024's snide denuncations, it is not a "tortured definition", she did not "leave out the motivation", altruism does not mean "charity", and she did not "confuse it with slavery". Slavery is only one of the consequences of the altruist ethical standard that demands duty to live for others as the fundamental principle, in direct opposition to egoism.

From Webster's Dictionary Unabridged, 2nd ed, 1979:

Altruism, n. [Fr. altuisme, from It. altrui, of or to others, from L. alter, another. A term first emplyed by the Positivists, or followers of the French philosopher Comte.] unselfish concern for the welfare of others: opposed to egoism.

From the Dictionary of Philosophy, Runes, ed, 1962 edition:

Altruism: (Alter: other) In general, the cult of benevolence; the opposite of egoism. Term coined by Comte and adopted in Britain by H. Spencer.

For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradiction of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and evotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious oppostion not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology.

It's not the first book by an immigrant with credibility who knows the difference between freedom and serfdom, and what kinds of ideas lead to each. It was made into a movie, too. Atlas Shrugged.

If you have heard it denied before you should be concerned that the list is circulating in different forms with no source. Are you implying that you have read Alinsky and everyone who rejects the source as him have not? If you think he said it then where?

Not in Rules for radicals linked above and not in his 1946 Rules for Reveille that Rules for Radicals expanded and updated http://www.historyofsocialwork.org/1946_...

He ran his own training center for agitators, made a lot of public speeches of mostly demagoguery, and gave interviews, at least two major ones in Harper's and Playboy http://harpers.org/archive/1965/06/the-p..., but there is no evidence of the list in any of that either.

The list is not Alinsky's style and not the kind of tactics for here and now nihilistic chaos he emphasized. As bad as the list mostly is it is too long-term and abstract for the scope of Alinsky's typical interests of short term agitation through promoting hatred and resentment. He was a precursor to the 1960s violent New Left and was influential on their street tactics. He did practice #8 in the form of short term agitation manipulating everyone in sight including his own allies but with no plans for future permanent goals. He wanted heavy taxes on "haves" but didn't plan for how to get it beyond "somehow" from constant chaos. If he didn't want religion in schools and government he isn't alone and didn't promote it for socialism, which is unrelated.

If you don't have a source for him giving that list it should not be recirculated with credit to him.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/8...
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/al...

Whatever Alinsky believed on those topics there is no evidence that he wrote that. It's another myth circulating on the web.

To see what he actually wrote, which was mostly about tactics to further his nihilism, read his Rules for Radicals in this free pdf download: http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gb...

And read Hilary Clinton's fawning college thesis on Alinsky, "''There is only the fight...' An Analysis of the Alinsky Model" https://nukegingrich.files.wordpress.com...

"'The world is crashing faster than we expected," said Hugh Akston. "Men are stopping and giving up. Your frozen trains, the gangs of raiders, the deserters, they're men who've never heard of us, and they're not part of our strike, they are acting on their own—it's the natural response of whatever rationality is still left in them—it's the same kind of protest as ours.'

"'We started with no time limit in view,' said Galt. 'We did not know whether we'd live to see the liberation of the world or whether we'd have to leave our battle and our secret to the next generations. We knew only that this was the only way we cared to live. But now we think that we will see, and soon, the day of our victory and of our return.'"

"'When?' she whispered.

"'When the code of the looters has collapsed.'

"He saw her looking at him, her glance half-question, half-hope, and he added, 'When the creed of self-immolation has run, for once, its undisguised course—when men find no victims ready to obstruct the path of justice and to deflect the fall of retribution on themselves—when the preachers of self-sacrifice discover that those who are willing to practice it, have nothing to sacrifice, and those who have, are not willing any longer—when men see that neither their hearts nor their muscles can save them, but the mind they damned is not there to answer their screams for help—when they collapse as they must, as men without minds—when they have no pretense of authority left, no remnant of law, no trace of morality, no hope, no food and no way to obtain it—when they collapse and the road is clear—then we'll come back to rebuild the world.'"

"'Oregon is overrun by gangs of deserters,' said Clem Weatherby cautiously. 'They murdered two tax collectors within the last three months.'"

"'The police have been arresting them for leaving their jobs—they're called deserters—but there's too many of them and no food to feed them in jail, so nobody gives a damn any more, one way or another. I heard the deserters are just wandering about, doing odd jobs or worse—who's got any odd jobs to offer these days?… It's our best men that we're losing, the kind who've been with the company for twenty years or more. Why did they have to chain them to their jobs? Those men never intended to quit—but now they're quitting at the slightest disagreement, just dropping their tools and walking off, any hour of the day or night, leaving us in all sorts of jams—the men who used to leap out of bed and come running if the railroad needed them.… You should see the kind of human driftwood we're getting to fill the vacancies. Some of them mean well, but they're scared of their own shadows. Others are the kind of scum I didn't think existed—they get the jobs and they know that we can't throw them out once they're in, so they make it clear that they don't intend to work for their pay and never did intend. They're the kind of men who like it—who like the way things are now. Can you imagine that there are human beings who like it? Well, there are.…'

"'You know, I don't think that I really believe it—all that's happening to us these days. It's happening all right, but I don't believe it. keep thinking that insanity is a state where a person can't tell what's real. Well, what's real now is insane—and if I accepted it as real, I'd have to lose my mind, wouldn't I?...'"

"'Deserting, the bastards! Deserting us, in spite of all the penalties we've set up! He's quit and the rest are quitting and those mills are just left there, standing still! Do you understand what that means?'

"'Do you?' she asked.

"He had thrown his story at her, sentence by sentence, as if trying to knock the smile off her face, an odd, unmoving smile of bitterness and triumph; he had failed. 'It's a national catastrophe! What's the matter with you? Don't you see that it's a fatal blow? It will break the last of the country's morale and economy! We can't let him vanish! You've got to bring him back!'"

"... went out of business last week, without reason or warning, so now I'm stuck. Those bastards seem to be vanishing somewhere. Something will have to be done about it.'

"'The picture now is this,' said Wesley Mouch. 'The economic condition of the country was better the year before last than it was last year, and last year it was better than it is at present. It's obvious that we would not be able to survive another year of the same progression. Therefore, our sole objective must now be to hold the line. To stand still in order to catch our stride. To achieve total stability. Freedom has been given a chance and has failed. Therefore, more stringent controls are necessary. Since men are unable and unwilling to solve their problems voluntarily, they must be forced to do it.' He paused, picked up the sheet of paper, then added in a less formal tone of voice, 'Hell, what it comes down to is that we can manage to exist as and where we are, but we can't afford to move! So we've got to stand still. We've got to stand still. We've got to make those bastards stand still!'"

"Some remarks on science, pseudoscience, and learning how to not fool yourself. Caltech's 1974 commencement address"

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/...
http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/car...

Brooks, The Mythical Man Month, 1975, 2nd ed 1995. http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-M...

From the book, The Earl Ayn Rand - dates of works already written before Ideal, written as a novelette 1934, revised as stage play probably 1935 or 36:

The Husband I Bought - c1926
The Night King - c1926
Good Copy - c1927
Escort - c1929
Her Second Career - c1929
Red Pawn - c1931-32
We the Living - 1930-33 (seeking publisher while writing Ideal)
Night of January 16th (seeking producer while writing Ideal)

But it was well before the mature novels were published.

This is the quote in context, beginning with Dagny reproaching Francisco:

"I didn't know which side you belonged on. It didn't seem possible—but it's the side of Orren Boyle and Bertram Scudder and your old teacher."
"My old teacher?" he asked sharply.
"Dr. Robert Stadler."
He chuckled, relieved. "Oh, that one? He's the looter who thinks that his end justifies his seizure of my means." He added, "You know, Dagny, I'd like you to remember which side you said I'm on. Some day, I'll remind you of it and ask you whether you'll want to repeat it."

According to the extensive Editor's Preface in Leonard Peikoff's The Early Ayn Rang (1984), which includes the script for the play, "Ideal was written in 1934, at a time when Ayn Rand had cause to be unhappy with the world... The story was written originally as a novelette and then, probably within a year or two, was extensively revised and turned into a stage play..."
...
"Emotionally, Ideal is unique among Ayn Rand's works. It is the polar opposite of 'Good Copy'. 'Good Copy' was based on the premise of the impotence and insignificance of evil. But ideal focuses almost exclusively on evil or mediocrity (in a way that even We the Living did not); it is pervaded by Kay Gonda's feeling of alienation from mankind, the feeling, tinged by bitterness, that the true idealist is in a minuscule minority amid an earthful of value-betrayers with whom no communication is possible. In accordance with this perspective, the hero, Johnny Dawes, is not a characteristic Ayn Rand figure, but a misfit utterly estranged from the world, a man whose virtue is that he does not know how to live today (and often wanted to die). If Leo feels this in Soviet Russia, the explanation is political, not metaphysical. But Johnny feels it in the United States."

"In her other works, Ayn Rand herself gave the answer to such a 'malevolent universe' viewpoint, as she called it. Dominque Francon in The Fountainhead, for instance, strikingly resembles Kay and Johny in her idealistic alienation from the world, yet she eventually discovers how to reconcile evil with the 'benevolent universe' approach... Dominique does learn it; but Kay and Johnny do not, or at least not fully. The effect is untypical Ayn Rand: a story written APPROVINGLY from Dominique's initial viewpoint."
...
"Despite its somber essence, however, Ideal is not entirely a malevolent story.... The ending, moreover, however unhappy, is certainly not intended as tragedy or defeat. Johny's final action is ACTION -- that is the whole point -- action to protect the ideal, as against empty words or dreams..."

Much more commentary accompanies the play in The Early Ayn Rand.

Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (colonial America up to the Constitution, but watch for weird interpretations)

Blumenfeld, Is Public Education Necessary (history of early state control of education through mid 19th century, title is misleading)

Hacker, The World of Andrew Carnegie (last half of the 19th century, includes Supreme Court, education, economics, industry, etc.)

Ekirch, The Decline of American Liberalism (meaning the real "liberalism", pre-revolution to 1950s, good emphasis on philosophical pragmatism in progressivism)

Martin, Fabian Freeway (detailed influence of British Fabian Society in US)

Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (domestic New Deal history)

Lasky, JFK: The Man and the Myth (history of JFK's quest for power as head of the family clan and the resulting policies in Congress and presidency into 1963, published before the assassination)

Excerpt from Ayn Rand's 1946 response to an inquiry from Kelsey Guilfoil of the Chicago Tribune's Magazine of Books asking if she would be interested in writing book reviews, quoted in The Letters of Ayn Rand, Michael Berliner, editor:

"I would have liked to review Animal Farm—though I consider it a very bad book; but it has great historical significance—as an eloquent and frightening revelation of the mind of a modern socialist. (l mean, the author. The book is not anti-Communist, you know. It's merely anti-Stalin, but pro-Communist. This should have been said in reviews, but wasn't.)"

Orwell was a Fabian socialist.

An interesting 1946 letter on Animal Farm from Ayn Rand to Leonard Read (founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, publishers of The Freeman) quoted in Letters of Ayn Rand, Michael Berliner, editor:

"As an advance warning, for God's sake DON'T recommend Animal Farm. You have probably heard about it — it's a little booklet that has just come out and is being whooped up as a lesson against Communism, which it is not. I have read it. It made me sick. It is a book against Stalin, not against Communism. In fact, it is the mushiest and most maudlin preachment of Communism (I suppose the author would call it Socialism, but there is no difference), that I have seen in a long time. The moral of the book is not: 'Communism is evil,' but: 'Stalin's Communism is just as evil as Capitalism.' Don't let's help to preach that idea."

An excerpt from Leonard Peikoff's book, Objectivism:The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, contrasting Anthem with Animal Farm:

"Ayn Rand is more realistic than the panicky anti-communists of the Cold War era, who trembled before the alleged practicality of dictatorship. The best symbol of this issue is the contrast between two projections of a collectivist future: George Orwell's 1984 vs. Ayn Rand's Anthem (which was published more than a decade earlier, in 1938). Orwell regards freedom as a luxury; he believes that one can wipe out every vestige of free thought, yet still maintain an industrial civilization. Whose mind is maintaining it? Blank out. Anthem, by contrast, shows us "social cogs" who have retrogressed, both spiritually and materially, to the condition of primitives. When men lose the freedom to think, Ayn Rand understands, they lose the products of thought as well."

It's a lot deeper than initiation of force or someones feelings about what they want to do or not do. Those aren't primaries. If someone thinks you have a duty to serve others, nothing you say about initiation of force or what you want to do will make any difference to him. On the other side of it, your responsibility for your own children is not an altruistic duty.

In today's world, thanks to the destruction of those who think in terms of progressive education, unchosen duties and control over education, the need to deal with "special needs" students has become much greater. See Ayn Rand's essay "The Comprachicos" in her anthology Return of the Primitive. Anyone genuinely concerned with special needs children should look here first.

Maybe he read the notorious Whittaker "to-the-gas-chambers-go" Chambers' hatchet review in Buckley's National Review. See http://capitalismmagazine.com/2007/11/wh... from Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” ed. by Robert Mayhew.

On the contrary, anyone can and should strive to formulate his own concepts and their definitions rather than passively accept what others say. Correct concepts and definitions, which are how we classify in terms of essentials, are critical to rational understanding. Rational people agree on correct concepts. Dictionary definitions are contemporary patterns of word usage, conceptually correct or not, which are subject to change, for better or worse, and rarely definitions of concepts.

Telling anyone that he is forbidden to make his own definitions means a prohibition, on behalf of collectivist group think, of original thought, new knowledge including all of science, and correction of errors. That is precisely why Ayn Rand did and should have formulated and explained in depth a proper concept of selfishness as essential to moral standards.

Read Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.