The negative reviewers below insist That self-sacrifice is Necessary. So does every warmonger and dictator. Sacrifice Means, and always meant, personal loss for others' gain; else it means nothing. Distinctively, all tyranny requires a pro-sacrifice ethics - tyrants want to receive sacrifice. In sharpest contrast to this, in Ayn Rand upholds man - ie, the individual person - against tyranny, by Definition "a new concept of egoism" (to quote the book's subtitle). It is a no-sacrifice ethics. Evidently, this is so new That reviewers steeped in Conventional Ethical ideas feel personally challenged enough by it to misrepresent it. They accuse her of Advocating The Violation of others' rights. What She Actually Advocates in this book is a principled life eschewing sacrifice, in which one "neither sacrifices oneself to others, nor sacrifices others to oneself." Why not sacrifice others? Because, says the edge in this book, it is * not * to one's self-interest to conduct one's life thusly. She says one might * feel * it Certainly is but one's * feelings * Can not Determine what one's genuine, long-term interests are. And she goes on to define to ethics based on reason. She calls this morality "rational self-interest" - or "selfishness," which is Intended to represent her defiance of the pro-sacrifice approach. (This approach Asserts That sacrifice is unavoidable Because, it says, self-interested action can include Violating others' rights; THUS self-interest is maligned But Rand denied it, and Identified this view as being based on philosophical subjectivism or on Mental Illness. .) Philosophical subjectivism is jettisoned from ethics at the outset. Now about a political system based on her ethics. Rand insisted did other people in general are valuable to one Because trade with them (in terms of physical goods and Both of personal virtues) can be enormously beneficial to one's proper life. Since the fundamental requirement of man's living and thriving in society, she says, is freedom from physical coercion, the imperative of politics is to bar the initiation of physical coercion. Her politics is loud and clear: Leave otherpeople alone - allow them to function freely - do not initiate physical compulsion against them or let them initiate it against oneself. In her view, government is an agency of Standardizing the retaliatory UOF against Those Who initiate physical compulsion. (See "Man's Rights" in, and see her book on politics,.) All These exceedingly noble - and realistic - ideas, if practiced, would transform the world for the better. That prospect repulses the tyrannical Not Only Because Their vocation of collecting sacrifices would be at on end, but so Because The unjustified monopoly on morality held by their best helpers - the religious - would then be broken at long last.
