Rating: 
Summary: 'Mr. A' is in error
Review: ... nothing wrong with benefiting oneself. There is also nothing wrong with benefiting others. But Rand says that morally, each person 'must be' the beneficiary of his own actions. This is ludicrous if, as she elsewhere writes, our true interests are not at odds with one another. We benefit ourselves *by* benefiting others. Indeed this is how the free market works, is it not?As for my allegedly 'devout belief in altruism's equation of self and evil', my critic is exercising more imagination than sense. I do not think the self is evil. On the contrary, I think the self - each and every human self - is made in the very image of G-d and should be treated with the utmost respect. It is 'Objectivism' which provides no foundation for this high view of the self. According to 'Objectivism', the self - that is, consciousness - is merely a natural fact, a by-product of the material universe. Rand maintained that each person is 'metaphysically' an end in himself, but she was not logically entitled to this view: at most she could hold that each person is an end-in-himself *to* himself, but not to others. 'Objectivist' has ever given a remotely plausible reason why a businessman should not cut corners even when there is little risk of getting caught," this is just ignorance. For example, see _Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand_ by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, pp. 270-274 and _passim_.' I have already seen _Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand_ by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, pp. 270-274 and _passim_ , as well as the rest of his very poor book. Perhaps 'Mr. A' did not read my review of that book. Or perhaps he failed to grasp the meaning of the words 'remotely plausible' in my statement. As for the passage to which 'Mr. A' refers me, it does not at all provide a 'remotely plausible reason why a businessman should not cut corners even when there is little risk of getting caught'. Much of Peikoff's explanation has to do with the *high* risk of getting caught. Beyond this, all that Peikoff 'explains' is that a self-respecting person will behave honestly for his *own* sake, for the sake of his *own* integrity. What he does not explain - and what he must explain if he is to meet my criticism - is why honesty should contribute to one's self-respect and integrity in the first place. (This view makes perhaps some sense as regards 'honesty with oneself'. It is absurd as applied to honesty with *other* people, unless we assume - as Rand and Peikoff both illicitly do - that the way we treat other people is part of the basis for our self-respect.) Nor does Rand explain this, nor has any 'Objectivist' ever explained it - in this book or anywhere else. Rand merely *asserted* it, in the hope that she would be able to retain traditional other-regarding virtues on a foundation of 'egoism'. I am afraid this aim has not become any less nonsensical in the half-century or so since she first made the attempt. Also: if religion is all so terrible and unnecessary, why is it that in the very passage to which 'Mr. A' has referred me, Peikoff favorably quotes Jesus? He remarks on p. 273 that Jesus' question, 'What shall it profit a m
Rating: 
Summary: Let's keep in mind that...
Review: ...Ayn Rand had never said that personal success, if that simply means making a fortune, is the purpose of life. Happiness is the purpose of life, and achieving a happy life requires the practice of independence, productivity, honesty, integrity, and the like. Wouldn't you want all the would-be Bill Gates of the world to accept such an ethic? Or would you rather they think that success is measured solely in terms of the size of their stock portfolios? Just something to ponder.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book That Is An Accolade to Efficacious Businessmen
Review: A productive modern businessman at his most efficacious should consciously hold as much pride for organizing his sphere of business as for the profits he earns as a result of that organization. Should he ever observe an intellectual's insistence that unregulated business development is the cause for economic ills--e.g., the unfairness of using private information about the market to make profits, when competitors cannot thus prosper since they lack this information. . .or the intellectual's insistence that foreign competition is bad for the American economy . . .or the insistence that any motive for the businessman's activity other than his delight in production and in the self-serving use of his wealth, Why Businessmen Need Philosophy will both inspire the listener and galvanize him to follow the right political and economic direction.
The book is also valuable to an honest, reality focused intellectual (even if he has grasped the essential truths of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which contains Rand's articles about basic economic issues). Why Businessmen Need Philosophy offers the truth about some technical, "abstruse" business methods, using historic examples to make them clear. (Several such methods are not covered in CUI.)
The style of the book's authors is simple and straightforward, which makes their articles accessible to every literate reader.
Why Businessmen Need Philosophy is an excellent companion work to CUI, because it applies economic principles in the latter to some highly specialized areas of the business world. If you read one article in this collection, read any of "Why Businessmen Need Philosophy" by Leonard Peikoff, "Wall Street Under Siege" by Richard Salsman, "'Buy American' is Un-American" by Harry Binswanger, "The Philosophical Origins of Antitrust" by John Ridpath, and "Antitrust 'Returns' With a Vengeance" by Richard Salsman--a suggestion based on the standards of lucidity, excellent grammar, and emotional impact.
Rating:
Summary: A Book That Is An Accolade to Efficacious Businessmen
Review: A productive modern businessman at his most efficacious should consciously hold as much pride for organizing his sphere of business as for the profits he earns as a result of that organization. Should he ever observe an intellectual's insistence that unregulated business development is the cause for economic ills--e.g., the unfairness of using private information about the market to make profits, when competitors cannot thus prosper since they lack this information. . .or the intellectual's insistence that foreign competition is bad for the American economy . . .or the insistence that any motive for the businessman's activity other than his delight in production and in the self-serving use of his wealth, Why Businessmen Need Philosophy will both inspire the listener and galvanize him to follow the right political and economic direction.
The book is also valuable to an honest, reality focused intellectual (even if he has grasped the essential truths of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which contains Rand's articles about basic economic issues). Why Businessmen Need Philosophy offers the truth about some technical, "abstruse" business methods, using historic examples to make them clear. (Several such methods are not covered in CUI.)
The style of the book's authors is simple and straightforward, which makes their articles accessible to every literate reader.
Why Businessmen Need Philosophy is an excellent companion work to CUI, because it applies economic principles in the latter to some highly specialized areas of the business world. If you read one article in this collection, read any of "Why Businessmen Need Philosophy" by Leonard Peikoff, "Wall Street Under Siege" by Richard Salsman, "'Buy American' is Un-American" by Harry Binswanger, "The Philosophical Origins of Antitrust" by John Ridpath, and "Antitrust 'Returns' With a Vengeance" by Richard Salsman--a suggestion based on the standards of lucidity, excellent grammar, and emotional impact.
Rating: 
Summary: Its not by Ayn Rand!
Review: Ayn Rand claimed that the individual must be the beneficiary of his actions and that this approach to ethics evaporates interpersonal conflicts (primarily, because people would renounce seeking the unearned.) Ben Mordecai calls this ludicious. In reality, it is true. The individual must be the beneficiary of his actions or else there is no reason (or long-term capacity) for him to act at all. A farmer who did not benefit from his farming would starve. The farmer must benefit from his actions for him to live and farm again next year. He must benefit if he is to survive. He must benefit from his actions if he is to have any values at all. And he must benefit if we are to eat! Further, if everyone, including the farmer, respected property rights, there would be no moral conflicts between men because there would be no unjust claims, (except those that arise from geniune misunderstandings.) Those who selfishly respect the principle of property rights get fed in abundance. The opposite principle is collectivism, wherein, the individual is cruxified on the collectivist altar. The individual must give away his privacy, his property, his liberty, his life in communism. A society based on selflessness creates the conditions of human destruction and mass murder because values are intentionally renounced-as in the medieval era, Nazi Germany, and the Communist Block. Surely, if it is better to have a society based on voluntary contract for mutual benefit than to have a society glued together by force and terror, we must acknowledge the truth that moral values proceed from the principle that the individual is and must be the beneficiary of his actions. The attempt to have altruism serve as the foundation of the free market is the attempt to expand a business by giving away the store. That wide-spread conservative anti-capitalist smear is a vice this book works hard to stop.
Rating:
Summary: Businessmen Need Philosophy but Don't Know It
Review: Business people find themselves under continual assault from government regulations, threats of lawsuits and under-appreciation of their positive role. The media, activists, politicians and even many religious officials cling to the cliché of business people as greedy, selfish or operating at the expense of others. The positive virtues of business people-self-sufficiency, responsibility and investment in the future--often are ignored by those who see business people as exploiters, cash cows for the government, or guinea pigs for government social policies. Those suffering under the weight of such attacks will find encouragement and articulate arguments on their behalf in Why Businessmen Need Philosophy, a book-collection of essays that champions the free market and individual rights. Published by the Ayn Rand Institute, a free market and individualism advocacy group, the book lays a solid foundation of reasoned argument of how business people in a free economy exemplify the positive principles on which this country was founded. "Some critics point to the homeless and blame their poverty on greedy private businessmen who exploit the public. Others, such as [economist] John Kenneth Galbraith, say that American are too affluent and too materialistic, and blame greedy private businessmen...," says philosopher and commentator Leonard Peikoff, who forcefully argues against this negative attitude. "Who are the most denounced and vilified men in the country? You are-you, the businessmen." The book is an exuberant, enthusiastic reaffirmation of the business person as providing the moral and economic foundation to the country. It provides a spirited defense of small and large business, argues the necessity of a foundation of honesty and fair dealing as growing from a free market economy and states the philosophical basis of why no one has a right to take the earnings of another. The book argues against the welfare state that relies on the false premise that the desire for another's property creates a right to take it. "The (American) system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want-not to be given it without effort by somebody else," Peikoff says. "We are seeing a total abandonment by the intellectuals and the politicians of the moral principles on which the U.S. was founded. The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents-rights...." For those weary of overflowing government regulations and laws dictating their professional lives and businesses, and for those working people who need reaffirmation of their vital role in society, this book serves them well.
Rating:
Summary: Why businessmen need religion
Review: Despite some helpful guidance as regards 'why businessmen need philosophy', this volume of 'Objectivist' propaganda reverses the proper order of things. In Jewish thought (and I mean Jewish *religious* thought, not the secularist/antireligious musings of people who regard their Jewish birth as a mere historical 'accident'), prosperity *follows from* the pursuit of justice. It is a consequence, not a cause. One's *primary* purpose in business activity is to be honest, just, and upright in one's dealings with one's fellow bearers of the Divine image. In 'Objectivist' thought, this is reversed; personal success becomes one's purpose, and justice merely a means necessary to its achievement. And I say 'necessary' advisedly: no 'Objectivist' has ever given a remotely plausible reason why a businessman should not cut corners even when there is little risk of getting caught. Whatever the contributors to this volume may say to the contrary, the preservation of one's 'integrity' is not such a reason: if one follows a strict policy of cheating only when it is to one's advantage, there should be no reason for a true 'egoist' to feel guilty. If 'egoists' feel guilty anyway, it is because they already know full well there are other moral reasons not to cheat. Those moral reasons stem from one's obligation to one's Creator to treat one's fellows in a just fashion, according to the Law revealed at Sinai (the relevant portions of which were applied to all of mankind in the Noahide covenant). But of course Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and the other 'Objectivists' who have contributed to this volume are quite unable to provide any basis for such an obligation - which is why their poor analyses begin instead, and quite wrongly, with 'rights'. What this volume really shows, then, is why businessmen need religion.
Rating:
Summary: One cannot succeed in practice without a good theory.
Review: Or: The moral is the pracitical. An excellent collection of essays including two glorious diamonds by Ayn Rand (that have been in limited print/availability). Thanks to ARI for making these essays available, and Rand's other unpublished works available--as she wished. This is an excellent book to use to introduce your business friends to the importance of philosophy--and why businessmen need it. It is the second book you should give them--right after Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As Atlas Shrugged was ridiculed and misrepresented, so is this book to be despised and smeared by all the lice out there--all the more reason to buy several copies of it!
Rating:
Summary: A blow to Ayn Rand's enemies
Review: Some who claim to represent Objectivism simply don't know, or care to know, what the philosophy really means. This book will tell them - if they bother to read it and perform the volitional act of focusing their minds. It is because there are so many with *unfocused* minds that the philosophy of Objectivism has been watered down and compromised by those who have chosen to follow certain leaders who were expelled from the movement. Some of them think it just isn't *nice* to point out that when non-Objectivists travel the path to death, they are getting just exactly what they deserve. This book has the power to set them straight. Peikoff and several other *true* followers of Rand make the connections between the choice to live and the morality proper to Man (honesty, productivity, self-esteem, etc.). None of these virtues have any meaning apart from the volitional choice to live; if anyone chooses to operate on a premise of death, then as Rand said, "Nature will take its course." The "nice" pseudo-Objectivists may not like it, but Rand wrote a lot about the deaths of second-handers, parasites and other subhuman lice. But she showed the way for such lice to become fully *human* - in her novels, in her nonfiction, and in the two essays reprinted here. Yes, Objectivists may and will enjoy the collapse of second-hander civilization and the deaths of its proponents. Now that Rand has written, they no longer have any excuse - if they ever had one before. I suggest that everyone who wants to understand *real* Objectivism buy this book and read it carefully. And beware the "crafty smears" of people who *call* themselves Objectivists - but are afraid to stand by its principles.
Rating:
Summary: An deep examination of objectivist philosophy
Review: This book contains a number of well and passionately argued articles on the philosophy of objectivism, as formulated by Ayn Rand, with particular reference to the world of business. Even though one may not agree with the philosophy itself, this book is clearly written and deserves to be treated as a serious piece of philosophical exploration of the theory of objectivism. Unfortunately, despite its lucidity, it fails to answer critics who have argued that the theory of objectivism has not been objectively justified (see Nozick's article in "Socratic Puzzles"). Neverthless, even as a subjective piece of work, it contains much to commend itself and provides further learned material both philosophical and practical in nature.
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