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RADICALS FOR CAPITALISM 211
he renewed his subscription to Rand’s magazine. 53 Cerf had wandered
into a danger zone with Rand, who never reacted well to criticism. Even
Nathan could not budge her on this point. He argued against her replacement
title, The Virtue of Selfi shness, claiming that it would obscure her
meaning and alienate readers, but Rand disagreed.
When it appeared in 1964 The Virtue of Selfi shness brought the political
and philosophical ideas expressed in Rand’s newsletter to a much
wider audience. Most of the book reprinted articles that had already
been published, but it did include one signifi cant new essay, “The
Objectivist Ethics,” fi rst delivered to a symposium at the University of
Wisconsin. The piece refl ected Rand’s new understanding of herself as
an innovative philosopher. Much of the essay was heavy slogging, with
Rand carefully defi ning such key terms as “percept,” “concept,” and
“abstraction.” From there she quickly translated her ideas into a common
idiom: “The principle of trade is the only rational ethical principle
for all human relationships, personal and social, private and public,
spiritual and material. It is the principle of justice.” 54 Her elevation of
the trader echoed the older libertarian idea of the contract society, in
which individuals were fi nally liberated from feudal hierarchies. As she
had in the 1940s, Rand was revitalizing the inherited wisdom of libertarian
theory for a new generation.
Two other chapters, “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government,”
outlined Rand’s political philosophy and helped situate her relative to
the rapidly evolving right wing. In “Man’s Rights” she began by linking
capitalism, private property, and individual rights, which each
depended on the other. She then drew a careful distinction between
economic and political rights. According to Rand, all rights were political
rights, because rights pertained to actions, not results. “A right does
not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it
includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own
effort.” Looking at the 1960 Democratic platform, which listed rights to
housing, a job, education, and so forth, she asked, “At whose expense?” 55
The Democrats were attempting to redefi ne rights in economic terms,
a move Rand rejected. She argued that the United States had thrived
because it recognized the supremacy of individual rights, which served
to limit and constrain government, the most dangerous threat. Shifting
to economic rights would empower the state to seize the private property
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