Ayn Rand in her own words: the contradiction of antitrust

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote this dialog for Dr. Simon Pritchett, a philosopher villain, who was talking with a party guest:

“Oh, that?” said Dr. Pritchett [referring to a bill being considered by the legislature]. “But I believe I made it clear that I am in favor of it, because I am in favor of a free economy. A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free.”

“But, look . . . isn’t that sort of a contradiction?”

“Not in the higher philosophical sense. You must learn to see beyond the static definitions of old-fashioned thinking. Nothing is static in the universe. Everything is fluid.”

In her non-fiction, Rand wrote repeatedly about why it isn’t “sort of” a contradiction to “force [men] to be free,” it is a contradiction. Here’s a passage from a much longer presentation:

The tragic irony . . . is the fact that the antitrust laws were created and, to this day, are supported by the so-called “conservatives,” by the alleged defenders of free enterprise. This is a grim proof of the fact that capitalism has never had any proper, philosophical defenders—and a measure of the extent to which its alleged champions lacked any political principles, any knowledge of economics, and any understanding of the nature of political power. The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. It means: forcing people to be free at the point of a gun. It means: protecting people’s freedom by the arbitrary rule of unanswerable bureaucratic edicts.

This excerpt is from a talk called “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” (audio available free online) in which Rand analyzed antitrust law from the perspective of her political philosophy. She later turned that talk into an article by the same name and included it in her compilation Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

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