Many American leaders admired the Fascists and Communists for their undeviating commitment to the belief that an individual exists solely to serve society. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though certainly not an advocate of totalitarianism, implemented, in the New Deal, a myriad of programs that were loosely based on the premise that moral virtue resides exclusively in selfless service to others. Before the war, moral support existed in the United States for both the Communists and the Nazis; even after the war, support for Communism persisted among the intellectuals, as it does to this day. Ayn Rand wrote Anthem in the 1930s as a warning to Western civilization about the horrors of collectivism, whether of the Nazi or Communist variety.
Without doubt, the most strikingly original feature of the book is its use of language. In the society depicted in the story, the process of collectivization has been completed at a level far deeper than the political. This society has successfully brainwashed its citizens to believe that only toil for others is good, and that they should exist utterly bereft of a personal life. The collectivist masters have also succeeded in radically altering the thought patterns of its citizens. Leaders have obliterated all concepts of individuality from human minds. Concepts such as “I,” “me,” or any other individualistic, first-person references have been extirpated from language and from human thinking. Only collectivist thought and speech is are permitted. Individuals think and speak of themselves only as “we.”
The state has succeeded in collectivizing society not only in political practice but also at the deepest level of thought. The situation is reminiscent of Hitler’s claim that National Socialism was more effectively collectivist than Communism because, as he put it, “The Communists nationalize banks and industries, whereas we [the Nazis] nationalize bankers and industrialists,” that is, humans.
Another memorable aspect of this story is the depiction of a collectivist society as regressing into scientific, technological, and industrial collapse. In Anthem, Ayn Rand portrays a Dark Age of the future. Her vision of a collectivized society stands in sharp contrast to that of George Orwell as presented in his novel, 1984. Orwell and Rand agree about the moral horrors of such a society—the utter lack of individual rights, the slave labor, the indoctrination, the inability to think or speak freely, the terror, and the oppressive sense of futility under these conditions. But Orwell projects a totalitarian state of scientific and technological advance. In 1984, spectacular progress in the hard sciences has created the ability to engage in thought control. Anthem, on the other hand, shows that a prohibition of freedom results in a decline into primitive subsistence. What is the fundamental philosophical conviction that leads Rand to the belief that a collectivist society is doomed to Dark Age backwardness? Her theory that progress and scientific knowledge are products of independent minds.
Observe the unflagging curiosity of Equality 7-2521’s intellect. Though forbidden, he dissects animals, melts metals, mixes acids, and raises a lightning rod. He explores and experiments, until finally, he discovers the “power of the sky.” Although he explicitly accepts the social judgment that to think and act alone is evil—and though he realizes that, if caught, he will be executed—his desire to understand the laws of nature supersedes all of this. “[It] was our curse,” he says, “which drove us to our crime. We had been a good Street Sweeper and like all our brother Street Sweepers, save for our cursed wish to know. We looked too long at the stars at night, and at the trees and the earth.” Despite everything a hostile society might do to him, Equality 7-2521 is driven by one all-consuming passion: he He must know. He possesses the soul, as well as the intellect, of a great scientist.
By virtue of this kind of unshakeable independence, Rand argues, humankind forges ahead, moving from ignorance to enlightenment. Many of society’s great thinkers and innovators were persecuted in much the same way that Equality 7-2521 is. For example, Socrates was executed for the originality of his moral principles. Galileo was threatened with torture by the Inquisition for daring to defend Copernicus, and his contemporary, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake. Charles Darwin was damned for originating, and John Scopes jailed for teaching, the theory of evolution. Robert Fulton was scorned, Henry Ford mocked, and Louis Pasteur reviled because of their inventions or new ideas.
The court of social opinion has generally convicted freethinkers. But by being freethinkers, the Equality 7-2521s of the world are unconcerned about the evaluations of others. Free thought and action continues. But when an innovator like Equality 7-2521 is caught in a political dictatorship that physically prevents him from researching, experimenting, or studying, then the creative mind is stifled.
