The Sanction of the Victims

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand defected from the U.S.S.R. and came to the the U.S., where her anti-​collectivist writings formed the intellectual basis for Objectivism.

Ayn Rand defected from the U.S.S.R. and came to the the U.S., where her anti-​collectivist writings formed the intellectual basis for the philosophy she called Objectivism. She is the celebrated author of many books and essays including We the Living (1936), The Fountainhead (1943), Atlas Shrugged (1957), and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).

This video is of Rand’s last public lecture at a 1981 National Committee for Monetary Reform conference in New Orleans. The text of this lecture, which is titled “The Sanction of the Victims,” would later be published in a collection of her works called The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1990).

In the lecture, Rand admonishes American businessmen for apologizing for capitalism and for, in some cases, directly funding detractors of the free market. Notably, she says that “It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers.” She also answers audience questions after the lecture.