The Journals of Ayn Rand (73 page)

Miss Rand:
What do you achieve by that?

Mr. Wood:
Do you think it would have had as good an effect upon the morale of the American people to preach a doctrine to them that Russia was on the verge of collapse?

Miss Rand:
I don’t believe that the morale of anybody can be built up by a lie. If there was nothing good that we could truthfully say about Russia, then it would have been better not to say anything at all.

Mr. Wood:
Well—

Miss Rand:
You don’t have to come out and denounce Russia during the war; no. You can keep quiet. There is no moral guilt in not saying something if you can’t say it, but there is in saying the opposite of what is true.

Mr. Wood:
Thank you. That is all.

The Chairman:
Mr. McDowell.
[John McDowell was a Republican congressman from
Pennsylvania.]

Mr.
McDowell:
You paint a very dismal picture of Russia. You made a great point about the number of children who were unhappy. Doesn’t anybody smile in Russia any more?

Miss Rand:
Well, if you ask me literally, pretty much no.

Mr.
McDowell:
They don’t smile?

Miss Rand:
Not quite that way; no. If they do, it is privately and accidentally. Certainly, it is not social. They don’t smile in approval of their system.
Mr. McDowell:
Well, all they do is talk about food.

Miss Rand:
That is right.

Mr. McDowell:
That is a great change from the Russians I have always known, and I have known a lot of them. Don’t they do things at all like Americans? Don’t they walk across town to visit their mother-in-law or somebody?

Miss Rand:
Look, it is very hard to explain. It is almost impossible to convey to a free people what it is like to live in a totalitarian dictatorship. I can tell you a lot of details. I can never completely convince you, because you are free. It is in a way good that you can’t even conceive of what it is like. Certainly they have friends and mothers-in-law. They try to live a human life, but you understand it is totally inhuman. Try to imagine what it is like if you are in constant terror from morning till night and at night you are waiting for the doorbell to ring, where you are afraid of anything and everybody, living in a country where human life is nothing, less than nothing, and you know it. You don’t know who is going to do what to you because you may have friends who spy on you, and there is no law or rights of any kind.

Mr. McDowell:
You came here in 1926, I believe you said. Did you escape
from Russia?

Miss Rand:
No.

Mr. McDowell:
Did you have a passport?

Miss Rand:
No. Strangely enough, they gave me a passport to come out here as a visitor.

Mr. McDowell:
As a visitor?

Miss Rand:
It was at a time when they relaxed their orders a little bit. Quite a few people got out. I had some relatives here and I was permitted to come here for a year. I never went back.

Mr. McDowell:
I see.

The Chairman:
Mr. Nixon.
[Richard Milhous Nixon was a Republican congressman and future U.S. president from California.]

Mr. Nixon:
No questions.

The Chairman:
All right.

The first witness tomorrow morning will be Adolphe Menjou. (Whereupon, at 4:20 p.m., an adjournment was taken until 10:30 a.m. of the following day.)

[AR planned to testify further on
The Best Years of Our Lives,
as well as on the wider issues discussed in her Screen Guide. However, she was never given the opportunity. Later, she recalled:
“The Best Years of Our Lives
was the big hit of the period and the movie I particularly wanted to denounce.... It was much more important to show the serious propaganda about America
—
not some musical about Soviet Russia that would not fool anybody, and that had failed at the box-office.... But the Congressmen told me that they would not dare come out against a movie about an armless veteran
—
there would be a public furor against them.
”]

 

 

The whole conception of civil rights (of free speech, free assembly, free political organization) applies to and belongs in the realm of ideas—that is, a realm which precludes the use of physical violence. These rights are based on and pertain to the peaceful activity of spreading or preaching ideas, of dealing with men by intellectual persuasion. Therefore, one cannot invoke these rights to protect an organization such as the Communist Party, which not merely preaches, but actually engages in acts of violence, murder, sabotage, and spying in the interests of a foreign government. This takes the Communist Party out of the realm of civil law and puts it into the realm of criminal law. And the fact that Communists are directed and financed by a foreign power puts them into the realm of treason and military law.

The Thomas Committee was inquiring, not into a question of opinion, but into a question of fact, the fact being membership in the Communist Party.

The Thomas Committee did not ask anyone whether he believed in Communism, but asked only whether he had joined the Communist Party. Membership in the Communist Party does not consist merely of sharing the ideas of that Party. That Party is a formal, closed, and secret organization. Joining it involves more than a matter of ideas. It involves an agreement to take orders to commit actions—criminal and treasonable actions.

The Communists have been trying to claim that belonging to the Communist Party is the same as belonging to the Republican or Democratic Party. But membership in the Republican or Democratic Party is an open, public matter. It involves no initiation, no acceptance of an applicant by the party, and no card-bearing. It involves nothing but a voluntary and open declaration by a citizen that he wishes to be registered as a Republican or a Democrat for the next primary election. It is a membership which cannot be refused to him and which he is free to abandon any time he chooses. It commits him to nothing but an expression of his ideas at the ballot box, and he is free to change his mind even about that. Thus, it is truly a matter of a citizen’s personal ideas and convictions, nothing more.

Membership in the Communist Party is a formal act of joining a formal organization whose aims, by its own admission, include acts of criminal violence. Congress has no right to inquire into ideas or opinions, but has every right to inquire into criminal activities. Belonging to a secret organization that advocates criminal actions comes into the sphere of the criminal, not the ideological.

It is extremely important to differentiate between the American conception of law and the European-totalitarian concept. Under the American law, there is no such thing as a political crime; a man’s ideas do not constitute a crime, no matter what they are. And precisely by the same principle, a man’s ideas—no matter what they are—cannot serve as a justification for a criminal action and do not give him freedom to commit such actions on the ground that they represent his personal belief.

Under most systems of European law a citizen’s beliefs, if contrary to those of the government in power, are considered to be a crime punishable by law. Consequently, an act of violence or a murder committed for a political motive is treated differently from an act of violence or murder committed for a plain criminal motive. Incidentally, prior to World War I, most European governments treated crimes committed for political motives much more leniently and almost honorably in comparison with the same crimes committed for criminal motives. In America, no man can be sent to jail for holding any sort of ideas. And no man is allowed to demand a consideration of his ideas as a mitigating circumstance when and if he has committed an act of violence.

The entire conception of American law is based on the principle of inalienable individual rights. This principle precludes the right of one citizen to do violence to others—no matter what ideas or convictions he may hold. Therefore, any man may preach or advocate anything he wishes, but if he undertakes acts of violence in pursuit of his beliefs, then he is treated as a common criminal. American law is not asked to share his conviction—his idea that his rights include the right to use force against other men. (As an example: American citizens have freedom of religion; but if some sect attempted to practice human sacrifices, its members would be prosecuted by law—not for their religious beliefs, but for murder; their beliefs would not be considered or recognized as pertinent to the case.)

Therefore, it is totally irrelevant to Congress whether a man enters a criminal conspiracy for criminal reasons or for reasons he considers political or ideological. This is precisely where his ideas do not concern Congress at all and do not enter the question. When Congress investigates the Communist Party, it is investigating a factual matter, a criminal conspiracy, and not a matter of ideas.

If it is asked why the Communist Party may be objectively classified as a criminal conspiracy—the answer lies in the factual record of the Party, which is a record of proven criminal activities, in its own professed aims, methods, and intentions, and in the fact of its secrecy. Congress was not inquiring who believes in Communism. It was inquiring who belongs to an organization that has defined itself, by its own acts and statements, as criminal.

If the Communist Party were a purely national American organization, the above points would be sufficient to give Congress the right to inquire into its activities. But when we add to it the fact that the Communist Party is an organization which owes allegiance to a foreign power, then it becomes not only a matter of crime, but also of treason. A party which is the agent of a foreign power cannot claim the same rights as an American party—just as a foreign subject cannot claim all the rights and privileges of an American citizen, nor a voice in the conduct of America’s internal affairs. An investigation into a man’s or an organization’s allegiance to a foreign power is not an ideological matter, but a military one.

It is extremely important not to let this whole issue be considered as an issue of the freedom of speech. Nobody has interfered with the right of the Hollywood Ten to their freedom of speech; quite the opposite: they raised a howl because they were asked to speak. No legal penalties of any kind were to be imposed on them for their admission of membership in the Communist Party, if they had chosen to admit it. Yet they are screaming that they were asked to incriminate themselves. To incriminate themselves in what manner?

The Communists claim that the Congressional investigation caused them personal and professional damage, by revealing their political ideas to the public when such ideas are unpopular. Freedom of speech means precisely that a citizen has the right to hold and advocate his own ideas, even when they are unpopular, and that no legal penalty (no restraint by force) will be imposed upon him for it. Freedom of speech is the protection of his right to be an unpopular dissenter, if he wishes, without becoming the subject of any violence by any popular majority. But that same freedom of speech grants other citizens the right to agree or disagree with his ideas.

This is exactly why any man’s freedom of speech is no threat or danger to other men: they are free to consider his ideas and not to cooperate with him, if they do not agree. They cannot use force against him, but neither are they forced to assist him in his activities against their own interests, ideas, or convictions.

Now if the Hollywood Ten claim that a public revelation of their Communist ideas damages them because it will cost them their Hollywood jobs—then this means that they are holding these jobs by fraud, that their employers, their co-workers and their public do not know the nature of their ideas and would not want to deal with them if such knowledge were made available. If so, then the Communists, in effect, are asking that the government protect them in the perpetration of a fraud. They are demanding protection for their right to practice deceit upon others. They are saying, in effect: I am cheating those with whom I am dealing and if you reveal this, you will cause me to lose my racket—which is an interference with my freedom of speech and belief.

It is not the duty of Congress to inquire into anyone’s ideas—but neither is it the duty of Congress to protect deceit by withholding from the public any information which may involve someone’s ideas. If, in the course of an inquiry into criminal and treasonable activities, Congress reveals the nature of the political beliefs of certain men—their freedom of speech or belief has not been infringed in any manner. If, as a consequence, their employers—who had been foolish, ignorant, or negligent before—now decide to fire these men, that is the employers’ inalienable right. It is also the inalienable right of the public not to buy the product of these men—in this particular case, not to attend the movies written or directed by the Hollywood Ten. The damage which the Ten claim to have suffered in this case is a private damage, not a legal one, a damage which consists of the refusal of private citizens to deal with a Communist, if they learn that he is a Communist.

And this is another instance where the Communists are attempting to foist a totalitarian conception upon our courts of law, in place of the American conception. They are attempting to claim that there is no difference between private action and government action—that a citizen’s refusal to deal with a Communist is equivalent to a government order forbidding him to be a Communist—that a citizen’s refusal to employ a Communist is equivalent to a policeman’s arresting him—that the disagreement of his fellow-citizens with his views and his consequent unpopularity are equivalent to a concentration camp and a firing squad—that the refusal of his victims to cooperate with their own self-admitted murderer, expropriator, and enslaver is an infringement of his freedom and his rights.