I read this short book in one night after a friend lent it as a curiosity. He is reading Ayn Rand's novels and thought I'd find "Anthem" intellectually stimulating, as it is one of the super-famous Rand's first works and lays the foundation for her later writings on her philosophy of Objectivism. For a brief explanation of Objectivism by Rand herself, check out this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

I had never read a word Rand wrote (and didn't know much about her, either) until plowing through "Anthem." I expected Rand's atheism, embrace of reason, and exaltation of individualism over collectivism would make her appealing to me. But, as we say, the devil is in the details. Philosophies in the abstract make for good debates and make us feel good about believing in some enlightened principles, but philosophies don't always go down so smoothly when they have to be applied to the real world or -- even worse -- applied to ourselves. Rand, who called programs like Social Security "evil," collected Social Security benefits. Digression over. Now to "Anthem."

As a novel, "Anthem" is mediocre. It is set in a nondescript, future world where individualism has been eliminated from every aspect of society as well as from the collective memory of the population. In its place, people live in a collectivist society where all men work for the whole. An individual refers to himself as "we." If someone utters the word "I," he has his tongue cut out and is burned at the stake. No one has a real name; instead they have names like Equality 7-2521, to use the moniker of Rand's protagonist. Children are herded into schools where they are taught a bland curriculum. At age 15 the students go before a council that decides which job each person will have for the rest of their life; Equality 7-2521 is sent off to be a street sweeper. All workers get up at the exact same time every day to the ring of a bell, work all day for the supposed benefit of all no matter how mundane their "profession," and then are marched into their nightly entertainment that amounts to nothing more than indoctrination in collectivist ideology. There are no mirrors, preventing people from seeing themselves as individual beings; they only exist as part of a whole. Society is ruled by collectivist councils, i.e. World Council and Council of Scholars, where the few make incontrovertible judgments that affect the masses. The Councils have ruled since the Great Rebirth. No one can really remember what life was like before.

If all this sounds like an allegorical broadside against the Soviet Union and Stalinism, you are correct. However, Rand said that she did not write "Anthem" to repudiate her homeland's tragic descent into totalitarianism, although she did despise communism. Written in 1937 (Stalin's era), "Anthem" is an attack on all collective thinking. It is an exaltation of the self and the ego.

So Equality 7-2521 does the forbidden: he thinks independently. He manages to discover electricity. When he presents his discovery to a council, Equality 7-2521 is horrified that they reject his work solely because it does not conform. It was a product of his individual thinking, thus forbidden. He worked on it alone, thus a crime. And his discovery will ruin the central plan to produce so many candles, simultaneously ruining the "careers" of all the candle makers. Equality 7-2521 escapes and eventually finds hidden deep in a forbidden forest a home that predates the Great Rebirth. In the home he finds books that were written before society sank into collectivist hell. And for the first time Equality 7-2521 sees the word "I." "Anthem" ends as Equality 7-2521 discovers the beauty of the self. This takes about 100 pages to accomplish so you can see why I read this in one night.

In her preface, Ayn Rand says the "greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting..."

She continues: "Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face... the full, exact meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, and... the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead." In Rand's view, the horror of Communism is one end.

But one wonders whether Rand seriously considered whether her own vision of an absolute meritocracy, a world without charity or altruism, a world where ANY government action is condemned as a step toward slavery and totalitarianism, would also lead to destructive results.

Moreover, my fear of becoming a victim of collectivism on par with Rand's ominous vision is tempered by what my eyes have shown me in "individualist" America, the greed-driven, to-hell-with-the-consequences financial practices that brought the economy to near collapse -- if not for the aggressive intervention of the government, which Rand's disciples refer to as "socialism."

Should we be free to destroy ourselves?