4. DON’T SMEAR WEALTH.
In a free society — such as America — wealth is achieved through production, and through the voluntary exchange of one’s goods or services. You cannot hold production as evil — nor can you hold as evil a man’s right to keep the result of his own effort.
Only savages and Communists get rich by force — that is, by looting the property of others. It is a basic American principle that each man is free to work for his own benefit and to go as far as his ability will carry him; and his property is his — whether he has made one dollar or one million dollars.
If the villain in your story happens to be rich — don’t permit lines of dialogue suggesting that he is the typical representative of a whole social class, the symbol of all the rich. Keep it clear in your mind and in your script that his villainy is due to his own personal character — not to his wealth or class.
If you do not see the difference between wealth honestly produced and wealth looted — you are preaching the ideas of Communism. You are implying that all property and all human labor should belong to the State. And you are inciting men to crime: If all wealth is evil, no matter how acquired, why should a man bother to earn it? He might as well seize it by robbery or expropriation.
It is the proper wish of every decent American to stand on his own feet, earn his own living, and be as good at it as he can — that is, get as rich as he can by honest exchange.
Stop insulting him and stop defaming his proper ambition. Stop giving him — and yourself — a guilt complex by spreading unthinkingly the slogans of Communism. Put an end to that pernicious modern hypocrisy: everybody wants to get rich and almost everybody feels that he must apologize for it.
5. DON’T SMEAR THE PROFIT MOTIVE.
If you denounce the profit motive, what is it that you wish men to do? Work without reward, like slaves, for the benefit of the State?
An industrialist has to be interested in profit. In a free economy, he can make a profit only if he makes a good product which people are willing to buy. What do you want him to do? Should he sell his product at a loss? If so, how long is he to remain in business? And at whose expense?
Don’t give to your characters — as a sign of villainy, as a damning characteristic — a desire to make money. Nobody wants to, or should, work without payment, and nobody does — except a slave. There is nothing dishonorable about a pursuit of money in a free economy, because money can be earned only by productive effort.
If what you mean, when you denounce it, is a desire to make money dishonestly or immorally — then say so. Make it clear that what you denounce is dishonesty, not money-making. Make it clear that you are denouncing evil-doers, not capitalists. Don’t toss out careless generalities which imply that there is no difference between the two. That is what the Communists want you to imply.
6. DON’T SMEAR SUCCESS.
America was made by the idea that personal achievement and personal success are each man’s proper and moral goal.
There are many forms of success: spiritual, artistic, industrial, financial. All these forms, in any field of honest endeavor, are good, desirable and admirable. Treat them as such.
Don’t permit any disparagement or defamation of personal success. It is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful.
It is the Communists’ aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State.
America is based on the ideal of man’s dignity and self-respect. Dignity and self-respect are impossible without a sense of personal achievement. When you defame success, you defame human dignity.
America is the land of the self-made man. Say so on the screen.
7. DON’T GLORIFY FAILURE.
Failure, in itself, is not admirable. And while every man meets with failure somewhere in his life, the admirable thing is his courage in overcoming it — not the fact that he failed.
Failure is no disgrace — but it is certainly no brand of virtue or nobility, either.
It is the Communists’ intention to make men accept misery, depravity and degradation as their natural lot in life. This is done by presenting every kind of failure as sympathetic, as a sign of goodness and virtue — while every kind of success is presented as a sign of evil. This implies that only the evil can succeed under our American system — while the good are to be found in the gutter.
Don’t present all the poor as good and all the rich as evil. In judging a man’s character, poverty is no disgrace — but it is no virtue, either; wealth is no virtue — but it is certainly no disgrace.
8. DON’T GLORIFY DEPRAVITY.
Don’t present sympathetic studies of depravity. Go easy on stories about murderers, perverts and all the rest of that sordid stuff. If you use such stories, don’t place yourself and the audience on the side of the criminal, don’t create sympathy for him, don’t give him excuses and justifications, don’t imply that he “couldn’t help it”.
If you preach that a depraved person “couldn’t help it”, you are destroying the basis of all morality. You are implying that men cannot be held responsible for their evil acts, because man has no power to choose between good and evil; if so. then all moral precepts are futile, and men must resign themselves to the idea that they are helpless, irresponsible animals. Don’t help to spread such an idea.
When you pick these stories for their purely sensational value, you do not realize that you are dealing with one of the most crucial philosophical issues. These stories represent a profoundly insidious attack on all moral principles and all religious precepts. It is a basic tenet of Marxism that man has no freedom of moral or intellectual choice; that he is only a soulless, witless collection of meat and glands, open to any sort of “conditioning” by anybody. The Communists intend to become the “conditioners.”
There is too much horror and depravity in the world at present. If people see nothing but horror and depravity on the screen, you will merely add to their despair by driving in the impression that nothing better is possible to men or can be expected of life, which is what the Communists want people to think. Communism thrives on despair. Men without hope are easily ruled.
Don’t excuse depravity. Don’t drool over weaklings as conditioned “victims of circumstances” (or of “background” or of “society”) who “couldn’t help it”. You are actually providing an excuse and an alibi for the worst instincts in the weakest members of your audiences.
Don’t tell people that man is a helpless, twisted, drooling, sniveling, neurotic weakling. Show the world an American kind of man, for a change.
9. DON’T DEIFY “THE COMMON MAN”.
“The common man” is one of the worst slogans of Communism — and too many of us have fallen for it, without thinking.
It is only in Europe — under social caste systems where men are divided into “aristocrats” and “commoners” — that one can talk about defending the “common man”. What does the word “common” mean in America?