“We The Living” Review – Rand’s Presentation of Life Under Communism

I think I read or heard that Rand wanted to write the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for Communism with “We The Living”. That is, a work of fiction that would convince people of the underlying irrationality and injustice of the system of Communism. This would be similar to how it’s said “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” moved people towards the abolitionist position and against slavery.

Ayn Rand certainly portrays the monstrousness of Communism with her novel, but there will always be a certain element of the left that will say that the Soviet Union was a perversion of “true communism”. (Rand had a great retort for that, from her later novel “Atlas Shrugged”. To paraphrase her: Leftists always say their gang will do it better.)

To what extent is what happens in “We The Living”, and what happened in the Soviet Union, a “feature” of Communism rather than a “bug”? In other words, to what extent are the social and personal tragedies that occur in the novel a logical consequence of Marxist/Communist ideas that would happen no matter who was in charge?

Marxist Psychology/Mindset

Throughout the novel, Rand illustrates the “Marxist mindset”. I’ll note two examples of that here. First is the tendency towards a sort of “inconsolable rage” that you often see on the left. An early scene from the novel really resonated with me. It is an attitude you see on college campuses and amongst black “civil rights activists”. It is an unquenchable rage that seems all consuming for these people. They can’t ever let something go, and everything is blown out of proportion:

“The woman in the red kerchief opened a package and produced a piece of dried fish, and said to the upper berth: ‘Kindly take your boots away, citizen. I’m eating.’

The boots did not move. A voice answered: ‘You don’t eat with your nose.’

       The woman bit into the fish and her elbow poked furiously into the fur coat of her neighbor, and she said: ‘Sure, no consideration for us proletarians. It’s not like as if I had a fur coat on. Only I wouldn’t be eating dried fish then. I’d be eating white bread.’

       ‘White bread?’ The lady in the fur coat was frightened.

       ‘Why citizen, who ever heard of white bread? Why, I have a nephew in the Red Army, citizen, and ….and, why, I wouldn’t dream of white bread!’

       ‘No? I bet you wouldn’t eat dry fish, though. Want a piece?’

       ‘Why…why, yes, thank you, citizen. I’m a little hungry and…’

       ‘So? You are? I know you bourgeois. You’re only too glad to get the last bite out of a toiler’s mouth. But not out of my mouth, you don’t!’” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 1, Part 1)

Notice how the woman with the fur coat could do nothing to console or placate the woman with the dried fish. First, her accoster criticizes the woman for having a fur coat. Then she says the woman in the fur coat is too good to eat dried fish like her. Then, when the woman in the fur coat says she will eat some of the dried fish, the proletarian woman becomes enraged for trying to take her dried fish. The lower-class woman is so filled with hatred and vitriol, she is inconsolable. Marxist thinking leaves people without the mental capacity to engage in logical thinking, with nothing but their rage remaining. I could imagine this scene playing out exactly the same between a black person berating a white person today on public transportation, after the left has imposed an egalitarian dictatorship on America -complete with reparations.

In fact, this sort of inconsolable rage is consistently excused and even promoted as a legal defense by the modern left. In 1993, Colin Ferguson, a black, boarded a subway train and killed 6 people and injured 19 with a handgun. His lawyers wanted to use a “black rage” defense, in which Ferguson was supposedly so traumatized by “racism” from society at large, that he was entitled to kill white people with impunity, or with a lesser degree of punishment than if he were white and murdered 6 people. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,980835,00.html

The scene on the train from “We The Living” reminds me of a recording I saw a few years back of Muslim and Marxist-thinking students who expressed the same inconsolable rage towards Chelsey Clinton after a shooting of Muslims in New Zealand. From 2:00 minutes to about 3:12 minutes, you can see this confrontation in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOkpBiINKRU

No matter what Miss Clinton tried to say in this video, the far-leftists berating her continued. Their rage was unquenchable. People like this in any sort of position of authority over the lives of white non-Muslims would be the worst sort of tyrants. Its why they’re willing to strap bombs on their chests and blow up innocent people in public spaces.

Prior to the shooting in New Zealand, Chelsea Clinton had criticized US Congress person Ilhan Omar for anti-Semitic remarks. The Muslim female in the video thought this meant Chelsea Clinton was somehow responsible for encouraging the shooting of Muslims that occurred in New Zealand. (Oddly, this Muslim female berating her doesn’t seem particularly devout. She’s not covering her head, which makes me think she’s more neo-Marxist than Muslim.)

I find this incident particularly notable because this was Chelsea Clinton, who presumably holds the same left-wing politics as her parents. The Clintons and their kind have done nothing but encourage the destruction of Western Civilization, but apparently not fast enough for the likes of the students in this video.

It’s not like these student activists were confronting someone like me. I actually think Muslims should stop being Muslim, and embrace secularism. I don’t view them as a racial group, since religion is chosen. Muslims merit discrimination by me for embracing an irrational philosophy. (Although I don’t advocate the use of physical force against someone merely for holding a particular set of ideas.)

Both the Muslim female verbally excoriating Chelsea Clinton and the proletarian woman eating the dried fish in “We The Living” harken back to the character of Madame Defarge from Charles Dicken’s novel “A Tale of Two Cities”.   It’s someone who has emptied their soul of anything but a sense of grievance and rage at the “oppressor class”, that supposedly has caused all the ills and problems of their life. All that is left for such a person is a desire for score-settling for, mostly-imagined, slights.

Another illustration of the “Marxist Mindset” illustrated in “We the Living” is the Marxist view of ideas and truth. Marxists do not believe in objectivity. “Objective thought” is just the thinking of those who are in power.

For Marx, at least when it comes to normative concepts like “law”, “morality” and “government”, there is no such thing as “objectivity” -of “true” and “false”.  All ideas are just a product of one’s “material conditions”:

“But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto; emphasis added.)

Recognizing this feature of communism, Rand included a subplot in which Marisha Lavrova comes and takes over one of the two rooms in Kira’s and Leo’s apartment. According to the law, since Kira and Leo aren’t married, they are each entitled to a room. However, Marisha is a member of the Communist Party, and her father was a factory worker before the revolution. When Kira and Leo take Marisha to court the following scene occurs:

“Kira and Leo appealed the case to the People’s Court. They sat in a bare room that smelt of sweat and of an unswept floor. Lenin and Karl Marx, without frames, bigger than life-size, looked at them from the wall….

              The president magistrate yawned and asked Kira: ‘What’s your social position, citizen?’

              ‘Student.’

              ‘Employed?’

              ‘No.’

              ‘Member of a Trade Union?’

              ‘No.’

              The Upravdom testified that although Citizen Argounova and Citizen Kovalensky were not in the state of legal matrimony, their relations were those of ‘sexual intimacy’…

              ‘Who was your father, Citizen Argounova?’

              ‘Alexandar Argounov.’

              ‘The former textile manufacturer and factory owner?’

              ‘Yes.’

              ‘I see. Who was your father, Citizen Kovalensky?’

              ‘Admiral Kovalensky.’

              ‘Executed for counter-revolutionary activities?’

              ‘Executed -yes.’

              ‘Who was your father, Citzen Lavrova?’ [Marisha’s father]

              ‘Factory worker, Comrade Judge. Exiled to Siberia by the Czar in 1913. My mother’s a peasant, from the plow.’

              ‘It is the verdict of the People’s Court that the room in question rightfully belongs to Citizen Lavrova.’

              ‘Is this a court of justice or a musical comedy?’ Leo asked.

              The presiding magistrate turned to him solemnly: ‘So-called impartial justice, citizen, is a bourgeois prejudice. This is a court of class justice. It is our official attitude and platform. Next case!’” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 14, Part 1)

Substitute “class justice” in the above quote with “social justice”, and I think this is where our own legal system is headed. It won’t be long now before being black, or gay, or a member of some other “oppressed group” is more important than any written law. (See my discussion of the use of “black rage” as a defense above.)

Rand had the judge in this scene acting strictly in accordance with the ideas of Marx, as discussed in the passage above from the “Communist Manifesto”.

Marx views the contents of the human mind, our ideas, as nothing but a sort of rationalization for advancing our class. For instance, when addressing some of the criticisms of communism, Marx notes that:

“The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto)

Why does Marx dismiss philosophical and “ideological” criticisms of his viewpoint? Because all philosophy and ideology is nothing but rationalization for him. There is no such thing as “objectivity” for Marx and Engels:

“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto)

The predominate ideas of a society are nothing but the “ideas of the ruling class”:

“What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto, emphasis added.)

Education of children is premised on the idea that some ideas are true, while others are false. It is also based in the belief that some concepts will help you to live your life better. You learn how to read because literacy is better than being illiterate. It allows for greater communication and easier learning. You learn arithmetic to keep a budget of your spending, and to determine quantities more quickly than you could through simple counting. You learn calculus to be able to determine the instantaneous velocity of a rocket to put satellites into orbit for tracking the weather. Etc., etc. But for Marx, all education is nothing but a perpetuation of the system of exploitation by the “bourgeoisie”:

“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.” (Communist Manifesto; https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/marx-manifesto; emphasis added.)

Rand recognized that the Soviets viewed education as nothing but another means of propaganda because “truth”, as such, does not exist. She includes a scene where the new, Soviet education system is discussed. Kira’s mother has begun working at a Soviet public school (which are the only schools). She discusses how children are being taught under the Soviets:

“…what did they do in the old days? The children had to memorize mechanically so many dry, disjointed subjects -history, physics, arithmetic -with no connection between them at all. What do we do now? We have the complex method. Take last week ,for instance. Our subject was Factory. So every teacher had to build his course around that central subject. In the history class they taught the growth and development of factories; in the physics class they taught all about machinery; the arithmetic teacher gave them problems about production and consumption; in the art class they drew factory interiors. And in my class -we made overalls and blouses. Don’t you see the advantage of the method? The indelible impression it will leave in the children’s minds? Overalls and blouses -practical, concrete, instead of teaching them a lot of dry, theoretical seams and stitches.” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 3, Part 2)

Schools under the control of Marxists no longer teach concepts and abstract thinking. The goal of education becomes the destruction of the “oppressor class”, however that is defined. Since all past thinking and ideas are “infected” with “counter-revolutionary” ideas to the Marxist, all thinking should stop.

Injustice To The Individual

The biggest injustice perpetrated by the Soviet state in the novel seems to be this: Attributing to children the status of their parents.

For instance, Kira and Leo were kicked out of school because of who their parents were. About halfway through the novel, all college students had to fill out a questionnaire:

“Newspapers roared over the country like trumpets: ‘Science is a weapon of the class struggle! Proletarian schools are for the Proletariat! We shall not educate our class enemies!’

There were those who were careful not to let these trumpets be heard too loudly across the border.

Kira received her questionnaire at the Institute, and Leo -his at the University. They sat silently at their dinner table, filling out the answers. They did not each [sic] much dinner that night. When they signed the questionnaires, they knew they had signed the death warrant of their future; but they did not say it aloud and they did not look at each other.

The main questions were:

Who were your parents?

What was your father’s occupation prior to the year 1917?

What was your father’s occupation from the year 1917 to the year 1921?

What is your father’s occupation now?

What is your mother’s occupation?

What did you do during the civil war?

What did your father do during the civil war?

Are you a Trade Union member?

Are you a member of the All-Union Communist Party?

Any attempt to give a false answer was futile: the answers were to be investigated by the Purging Committee and the G.P.U. A false answer was to be punished by arrest, imprisonment or any penalty up to the supreme one.” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 16, Part 1)

Let’s assume, just for a moment, and purely for the sake of argument, that the Communists were correct about needing to institute socialism in Russia. The children of former “class enemies” had nothing to do with the previous system. Children were being punished for nothing more than who their parents were. This “sins of the father visited on the son” attitude is at odds with fundamental concepts of justice in the Western world.

Discrimination against particular, individual, persons simply because they come from a particular class or group will strike almost everyone as unfair.

We see this again when it comes to Leo being unable to get medical treatment under socialized medicine in the novel. In response to Kira begging for medical treatment for Leo, a commissar responds with: “’One hundred thousand workers died in the civil war. Why -in the face of the Union of Socialists Soviet Republics- can’t one aristocrat die?’” (We The Living, Ayn Rand, Chapter 16, Part 1)

Some might respond that while this treatment of the children of the bourgeoisie was unfair under the Soviet Union, “their gang would do better”. I disagree. I think this is a necessary consequence of this system.

Specifically, I think the refusal to provide education or medical care under a Marxist/Communist state like the Soviet Union is a necessary consequence of a socialist economy. Basic Economic theory teaches that if all goods and services are made free, then demand will exceed supply. (Effectively, making medical care or education free is a price ceiling set at zero, which causes shortages. https://fee.org/articles/price-controls-and-shortages/)

Since demand exceeds supply, rationing is necessary. How would a Marxist/Communist state decide who gets what? For instance, there is limited medical care, so who would it make sense to give that medical care to, according to a Marxist? Obviously, supporters of the Marxist/Communist state would get preference. The people in whose name they fight, the proletariat, would get preference. Former aristocrats/bourgeois and their children would be left to die.

Another fundamental feature of a Marxist/Communist state illustrated in “We The Living” is the refusal to let dissenters leave. Why is this? Why not just let Kira and Leo leave, as they try to do at the beginning of the novel?

A mass exodus of their “class enemies” would also be unacceptable to the leaders of a Communist state because, at a minimum, they would say bad things about where they had left. This would undermine support and legitimacy abroad, at a minimum, and might even lead to invasion and military conflict.

So, the Marxist/Communist state cannot let their “class enemies” live within their system, because that would be a threat to the system, and they cannot let them leave, because that would also be a threat to the system. Slowly killing off dissenters through things like denying healthcare to the bourgeoisie would be the, not entirely intentional, but logical, solution. Turning the entire country into a death camp for those against the revolution becomes the Communist ‘final solution’, almost by default.

This can be seen a couple of times with actual historical events after revolutions. For instance, during the French revolution, the nobles had to be systematically murdered by guillotine en masse because they might lead a counter-revolution, whether from within France, or from abroad.

In July of 1918, the former Tsar and his family, including children, were murdered by Bolsheviks and members of the Soviet Secret Police. There is not 100% agreement on why the order to murder them was given, but some historians believe Soviet officials were concerned that if the Romanovs were allowed to go to England, as was suggested at one point, they might serve as a rallying point for counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks couldn’t let them stay in Russia for the same reasons. The only answer was to murder the Tsar and his whole family. That was a logical consequence of Marxist/Communist ideology.

Rand Believed The Soviet Union Would Ultimately Fail

For Rand, society is nothing but a number of individuals. Therefore, if the individual is destroyed under Communism, then that will mean any Communist society would ultimately fail.

Rand recognized at least as far back as when she wrote “We The Living” that the Soviet Union would not last. This is evident in several scenes in her novel. For instance, when Kira hears the “Internationale” being sung she says the following:

“Everyone had to rise when the ‘Internationale’ was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. ‘This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution.’ she said to her neighbor.

‘Be careful,’ the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, ‘someone will hear you.’

‘When this is all over,’ said Kira. ‘when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history -what a glorious funeral march this will make!‘” (We The Living, Ayn Rand)

Rand did not see the Soviet Union as a real threat to the West:

“‘They’re not very close, and they can’t see very well. They see a big shadow rising. They think it’s a huge beast. They’re too far to see that its soft and brownish and fuzzy. You know, fuzzy, a  glistening sort of fuzz. They don’t know that it’s made of cockroaches. Little, glossy, brown cockroaches, packed tight, one on the other, into a huge wall. Little cockroaches that keep silent and wiggle their whiskers….

’…don’t let them know that yours is not an army of heroes, nor even of fiends, but of shriveled bookkeepers with a rupture who’ve learned to be arrogant. Don’t let them know that you’re not to be shot, but to be disinfected. Don’t let them know that you’re not to be fought with cannons, but with carbolic acid!’” (Pg. 373, We The Living, Ayn Rand, Comrade Stepan Timoshenko.)

Did Ayn Rand See Her Escape From Russia as a “Fluke”?

Given how all of the protagonists from “We The Living” are ultimately killed, in one way or another, an interesting question has arisen in my mind.

Rand believed that fiction writing, and art in general, was a “…selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.” (“Art and Cognition”, The Romantic Manifesto, Rand http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/art.html)

When she showed Kira, Andrei, and Leo being killed either physically or spiritually in the novel, it reflects her belief that anyone who wants to live cannot do so under Communism. They will ultimately be destroyed. Kira has to die in the end of the novel because that is the logical end of communism.

However, Rand did, in fact, escape the Soviet Union. She applied for a visa, and was granted permission to leave Russia in her early twenties. She came to the United States, and never returned.

The conclusion I draw from what happened in her own personal life, versus what happens to the characters in her novel, is that Ayn Rand must have viewed her own escape as a pure fluke. Random luck that you cannot count on with any kind of regularity. Rand thought that the vast majority of people like her would die, either physically like Kira and Andrei, or “spiritually”, like Leo.

How did this affect Ayn Rand’s actions during the rest of her life in America? She was passionately, and tirelessly devoted to opposing collectivism throughout her life. Was this at least partly a function of wanting to speak for the countless others who were permanently silenced by the Soviet Union?

 

“The Crown”

I “officially” think the whole idea of monarchy and feudalism carried into modern times is silly. That said, it is a part of the societal fabric of Great Britain, and, like most social institutions, should be allowed to change gradually over time. I think revolutions almost always end in needless bloodshed for a reason. It is a metaphysical fact that the human mind doesn’t change its ideas quickly -people’s habits and customs have an “inertia” to them, that make gradual change more likely to lead to lasting and peaceful change.
That is all preface for me to say that I enjoy watching “The Crown” on Netflix. I know a lot of it is probably speculation on the part of the authors and creators of the show, so it is more like “historical fiction” or even “alternate history science fiction”.
I’m more fascinated by the customs and mores of this society, especially of the British nobility, than I probably want to admit, as someone who holds a radical political philosophy that would (gradually) sweep it all away.
My favorite season so far has been the Margaret Thatcher years. I enjoyed seeing Gillian Anderson from the X-files as Thatcher. I thought she really nailed that character, both in looks and attitude. The tension between the Iron Lady and the Queen really captured a genuine dynamic between capitalist modernity and the remnants of feudal collectivism and tribalism. Even if there was no actual animosity between the two women in real life, as art, it was perfect.

Stargate SG-1

I have been re-watching “Stargate SG-1” and was pleasantly surprised to realize I had missed a lot of episodes in the first four or five seasons. This was a 1990’s TV-adaption of a movie, staring Kurt Russell and James Spader. The creators of the show managed to take a great movie, and turn it into an even better TV show. After “Star Trek The Next Generation” ended, this picked up the mantle of best science fiction TV show, in my opinion. In some ways, it even surpassed TNG. The dialogue and chemistry between the main characters is excellent. The actors playing Jack O’Neil (Richard Dean Anderson) and Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) manage to pull off humor without becoming silly, or loosing the seriousness of the situation.

The underlying premise of present-day, wisecracking, Americans going on adventures to new worlds and meeting new civilizations seems more interesting to me than a “post-want”, “socialist utopia” society like the one in “Star Trek”. Plus, they manage to weave in the mythologies of ancient civilizations, as the aliens they encounter, quite effectively. (In this story, most of the ancient gods turn out to have been aliens of one sort or another.)

City of Dallas Attempts to Shut Down Poker Clubs

This article discusses efforts by the City of Dallas to shut down poker clubs.

This seems like an opportunity for the city to take a ‘harm reduction’ approach to an issue.

Instead of shutting down poker clubs, focus on working with these businesses to ensure the bad secondary consequences associated with them, such as robberies and gun fights, are reduced. Ensure there is sufficient police and security patrolling the area, enforce laws against public intoxication for drunk gamblers, etc.

I doubt that people are worried about the poker. It’s the crime around it.

This is how alcohol is approached. We focus on stopping drunk driving, rather than trying to stop people from drinking alcohol, which is an impossible task.

“Burnt” (2015)

A plotline mostly centered around redemption. Other themes included learning to live in the moment, and not being so obsessed with your ambitions to the point that you let it destroy your contentment and capacity to form meaningful relationships with others.

The protagonist is a gourmet chef who let his life spiral out of control with drugs and alcohol, and is now trying to rebuild his career. He finds new friends and forms new relationships along the way. I enjoyed seeing a movie with a leading man who is not a cop/fighter/military guy.

As an American, I found the London setting exotic and interesting.

The biggest problem I had with the movie was it moved at a pace that was far too clipped. It felt like scenes had been removed to reduce the overall length of the movie, but, in the process, they didn’t develop the relationships between the characters well enough.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2503944/

Election Day Angst For An Advocate of Freedom

November 8, 2022 is election day in the United States, and I must again make decisions that are like choosing between death by drowning and death by falling. At the Federal level, this election is particularly difficult. There are two major factors that would motivate me to vote in mutually contradictory ways. My level of ambivalence is so high that I am paralyzed by indecision at this point.

The first important issue is the Roe v. Wade overrule by the US Supreme Court. This decision effectively eliminated any Federal court protection of abortion freedom, leaving the issue up to the Federal Congress, state legislatures, and state courts to decide. This decision does not just return the issue to the state level. If it did, I’d be far less concerned about it. Furthermore, the theocratic base of the Republican Party, that is the wing of the Republican party that is driven primarily by a religious dogma they want to impose on the rest of the nation by force, will not be satisfied with leaving the issue up to the states to decide.

Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks for the theocratic wing of the Republican party on this issue:

“‘I welcome any and all efforts to advance the cause of life in state capitals or in the nation’s capital,’ Pence said of federal legislation to institute a national abortion ban.” https://www.yahoo.com/video/mike-pence-says-passing-abortion-141514707.html

Mike Pence, and his fellow theocratic Republicans will not rest until there is a nationwide-abortion ban, enforced by the FBI and other Federal law enforcement authorities.

Senator Lindsey Grahm, another major player within the theocratic branch of the Republican party also does not want to leave the issue up to the states. He has already introduced a bill in Congress to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.  I’m sure that in time, 15 weeks would be whittled down by subsequent Republican legislation.

If the Republicans ever gain sufficient control of both Houses of Congress and the White House, I believe they will move to enact Federal legislation banning abortion. I would be perfectly happy to let abortion be fought out on the state level. Some states would always have legalized abortion, and over time, I think we could educate the people of the more conservative states, and convince them to liberalize their abortion laws. But, the hardcore religious base of the Republican Party will never be satisfied with this, as revealed by Mike Pence  and Lindsey Grahm.

I believe the right to abortion is a fundamental right.  Until a Constitutional Amendment is passed guaranteeing that Congress will not interfere with state law when it comes to abortion, this issue has moved to the top of my priorities when I vote. I will be very hesitant to vote Republican at the Federal level if I think it will give them control of Congress and the Presidency at the same time.

If abortion were the only issue, my decision would be clear, but it is not the only issue. Inflation has come roaring back to life for the first time since the early 1980’s driven by profligate Federal government spending, and, most importantly, by extremely reckless monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/peter-schiff-nowhere-near-peak-inflation

However, general, across the board, rising prices is primarily a monetary phenomena, largely controlled by the Federal Reserve’s policies.  Biden and the Democrats are somewhat to blame for this by re-nominating Jerome Powell to the Federal Reserve Chairmanship, but I doubt Trump and the Republicans would have done any better.

Biden and the Democrats are not helping the situation with increased government spending, such as stimulus checks and student loan forgiveness, which is just, implicitly, more stimulus checks. Again, I don’t know that a Republican President and Congress would have done much different, though.

The one thing that a Republican Congress would do right now is act as a check on Biden. I concede that Republicans tend to forget about fiscal restraint when there is a Republican in the White House, but they do suddenly remember their principles when the President is a Democrat.

A Republican House and Senate will be very dangerous two to three years from now, however. Joe Biden’s age concerns me a great deal. I do not think Biden will have a second term as President. I think he will decline to run again based on his age, or he will simply die of natural causes between now and 2024. This means there will be no incumbent Democrat the Republicans have to run against in the 2024 Presidential elections. If Mike Pence, or someone like him, were to become President, and we had a Republican Congress going into the 2024 to 2026 legislative cycle, we could very well see a nationwide abortion ban by, say, 2025.

Based on these considerations, I am likely not going to vote at the Federal level in these midterm elections. I will not vote for people who will quite probably be involved in instituting a nationwide abortion ban a few years from now. Furthermore, when 2024 rolls around, if there is in fact a Republican majority in Congress, I will probably have to make some very hard decisions. That means voting for a Democratic presidential candidate. Even if that means I have to vote for Kamala Harris or (shudder) Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren.

Sex and Romance in “We The Living”

The sexual relationships in We The Living primarily revolve around those between Kira and Leo and Kira and Andrei. (Although there are subplots concerning sexual relationships with other characters, such as that between Irina and Sasha and Pavel Syerov and Comrade Sonia.) Here I will go over those two major relationships in the novel.

Kira meets Leo randomly after she left her cousin Victor on a park bench. Victor had made his own sexual advance on Kira in the park, which she had rebuffed. I’m assuming first cousin marriage was not considered incest or taboo in this time and place. Being from the Southern United States, this is also not unheard of in my own culture, although the science seems to indicate this is not a good idea. http://gap.med.miami.edu/learn-about-genetics/have-questions-about-genetics/if-cousins-get-married-are-they-at-risk-of-having-children-with-genetic-con

For no good reason that I can discern, Kira had gone on a carriage ride with Victor, even though she clearly dislikes him. I found this a little perplexing, since I don’t know what would motivate Kira to do this. She clearly doesn’t care about pleasing her family. All I can guess is that she went out of sheer boredom at spending another evening with her family. Kira and Victor eventually end up at a park.

Kira is making her way home after Victor’s failed romantic overture at the park when she accidentally wanders through the section of town where women in the local sex industry are on the street looking for customers. Leo has gone there looking to hire a sex worker, and mistakes Kira for one. Kira experiences “love at first sight” when she sees Leo. She goes with him, apparently intending to have sex with Leo:

“’Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked. But she did not answer. He said: ‘I’m afraid I’m not a very cheerful companion tonight.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘Well, that’s what you’re here for.’ He stopped suddenly. ‘What’s the price?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t much.’

Kira looked at him and understood why he had approached her. She stood looking silently into his eyes. When she spoke, her voice had lost its tremulous reverence; it was calm and firm. She said: ‘It won’t be much.’

‘Where do we go?’

‘I passed a little garden around the corner. Let’s go there first -for a while.’” (Pg. 61)

Sex for money, or for other reasons besides sexual pleasure, comes up several times in the novel. Later in the story, Kira offers herself to a random wealthy man for money to get Leo medical care. When she tells him how much she needs, he tells her other sex workers don’t make that much in an entire career. (Pg. 226) In the end, Leo becomes a gigolo. A major subplot is the relationship of Kira’s cousin Victor to Marisha, Kira’s communist neighbor. Marisha is in love with Victor because she was a lower-class person before the civil war, but remembers how her mother used to clean the house of an aristocrat with a good looking son that she fell in love with. Victor reminds her of that good looking aristocratic son. Victor pretends to be in love with Marisha so that he can marry her for status in the communist party. This is a sort of parallel to Kira pretending to love Andrei. In the case of Kira, her actions would generally be regarded as noble, or at least, excusable under the circumstances. In the case of Victor, his actions would generally be seen as ignoble.

Leo eventually realizes Kira is not a sex worker, but he is as fascinated by her as she is by him. They agree to meet again at the same location in a month. The month passes and they meet for the second time. Leo kisses the palm of her hand, and they agree to another meeting in a month. Leo then unexpectedly shows up at Kira’s school a few days or weeks later, and they have a more intimate encounter under a bridge, by a river. They agree to meet in a week, and when that rendezvous occurs, Leo tells Kira he is leaving the country by boat. Kira agrees to go with him, and they have sex for the first time on the boat. The boat is stopped by a military patrol led by Stepan Timoshenko, one of the good communists in the novel. Timoshenko lets Kira go, and also manages to get Leo released a few days later. Soon after that, Kira’s family finds out she’s been sleeping with a man out of wedlock and kicks her out of the house. (Although Kira intended to live with Leo, regardless.)

Around that time in the novel, background is given on Leo’s childhood and adolescence. We learn that his first sexual encounter was at sixteen with an older, married woman. Leo had numerous other sexual relations with women in his late teenage years. The end of the flashback to Leo’s backstory ends with what I thought was a rather curious description of him:

“The revolution found Admiral Kovalensky [Leo’s father] with black glasses over his unseeing eyes and St. George’s ribbon in his lapel; it found Leo Kovalensky with a slow, contemptuous smile, and a swift gait, and in his hand a lost whip he had been born to carry.”(Pg. 139)

In my previous blog entry on We The Living, I noted this “rulers and ruled” idea running through the novel, and this is another example of it. Rand does not seem to present this attitude of Leo in a negative light. She seems to present it as desirable or virtuous, which, again, seems incongruous  in comparison to her later works. Also note that this aspect of Leo’s personality plays into Kira’s earlier interest in a fictional young overseer in a play who is whipping the serfs. (Pg. 47-48) Kira likes men who use a certain level of physical force on others, and Leo is the type who likes to use that physical force.

At this point I will note my own evaluation of Leo, which is that I do not care for him. He sounds like he was a womanizer before he met Kira. He never asks Kira to marry him, while Andrei asks her to marry him the first time they have sex. In the end, he becomes a gigolo and gives up Kira for a life of being a male sex worker. The whole point of “We The Living” is that life is unbearable under Communism, but I don’t consider Leo’s way out of a corrupt system to be particularly noble. Andrei had the right idea when he put a bullet in his own brain.

If I knew a woman in real life who was in love with a guy like Leo, I’d have to ask the question: “Why?” What did he have going for him, other than his looks? He’s a womanizer, an alcoholic, and believes he has a right to order his social inferiors around. I have to think Leo would end up cheating on Kira under capitalism, as much as communism. Kira seemed to think she could “save” Leo, like he was her “project boyfriend”. Near the end, when it is clear that Leo is dead in spirit, if not in his actual physical body, Kira has the following thoughts:

“He had left home often and she had never asked him where he went. He had been drinking too often and too much, and she had not said whether she noticed it. When they had been alone together, they had sat silently, and the silence had spoken to her, louder than any words, of something which was an end. He had been spending the last of their money and she had not questioned him about the future. She had not questioned him about anything, for she had been afraid of the answer she knew: that her fight was lost.” (Pg 439)

Soon after that, during their breakup scene, Kira says the following:

“She turned and looked at him calmly, and answered: ‘Only this, Leo: it was I against a hundred and fifty million people. I lost.” (Pg. 443)

These scenes present strong evidence that Kira believed that her love could save Leo. The desire to fix men is a common attitude of women, especially young women. I also think it’s a mistake.  With that said, a reader needs to keep in mind that both of these people are about eighteen years old, so there is possibly a “maturity factor” at play here, for both of them. Although, even at eighteen, I was not a hard-drinking, womanizer with a desire to dominate others, so is it just a matter of immaturity?

The other major sexual relationship in the novel is between Kira and Andrei. With one exception, I like everything about Andrei, on a personal level. He lives in spartan living quarters. (I’m a fan of minimalism and living on as little money as possible.) He’s studying to be an engineer. He tries to eliminate “sentiment” and just be his work. (That can be taken too far, but it’s better than the hordes of teenagers who sit around playing X-Box and smoking pot all day.) To me, this character is a sort of “proto-Hank Reardon”.   Even though he has a somewhat “monkish” exterior, when Andrei falls for Kira, he falls hard. Unlike Leo, Andrei knows how much he loves Kira, and isn’t afraid to say it:

“‘Because, no matter what happens, I still have you. Because, no matter what human wreckage I see around me, I still have you. And -in you- I still know what a human being can be.’

‘Andrei,’ she whispered, ‘are you sure you know me?’

He whispered, his lips in her hand so that she heard the words as if she were gathering them, one by one, in the hollow of her palm: ‘Kira, the highest thing in a man is not his god. It’s that in him which knows the reverence due a god. And you, Kira, are my highest reverence…’” (Pg. 335)

This scene happens in the last third of the novel, when Andrei is beginning to doubt what he has believed. The doubt comes from what he sees as the corruption of the other communists around him, like Pavel Syerov, but it also comes from his affair with Kira. For the first time in his life, he is in love with a woman, and it is someone that he knows opposes communism. He is honest enough to express a level of vulnerability and doubt that most people would lack the self-confidence to do. Like I said, there is a lot to like here, but he’s also a communist and a member of the secret police. (That’s a pretty big “but”.)

Ayn Rand did everything she could to make this character sympathetic, and she succeeded for me. At one point, Rand describes the following scene, soon after Andrei and Kira have sex for the first time:

“The street light beyond the window made a white square and a black cross on the wall above the bed. Against the white square, she could see his [Andrei’s] face on the pillow; he did not move. Her arm, stretched limply against his naked body, felt no movement but the beating of his heart.” (Pg 233)

For Rand, nothing is an accident. The symbol of a cross on the wall above the bed seems like a reference to the crucifixion story in the Bible. Andrei is almost “Christ-like”. When I say that, I mean in the sense of total devotion to someone or something, even at great cost, which is what I think the story in the Bible means to the modern mind. Near the end, after Andrei learns why Kira was really with him, and he has saved Leo from being shot as an illegal speculator, Leo says he isn’t happy that Andrei saved him. Andrei asks “Why?”, and Leo says the following to Andrei:

“Do you suppose Lazarus was grateful when Christ brought him back from the grave -if He did? No more than I am to you, I think.” (Pg. 421)

Again, an explicit reference to Andrei as Christ in the Bible.

Andrei gives every penny he earns to Kira after they start their affair. (He believes she’s using it to support her family, but she’s actually using it for medical treatments for Leo. This is why Kira is pretending to be in love with Andrei.) Later in the novel, after Andrei learns the truth, he risks everything to save Leo out of love for Kira. This is reminiscent of Sydney Carton from “A Tale of Two Cities”, who goes to the guillotine during the French Revolution to save the husband of the woman he loves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Carton

Kira’s relationship with Andrei is interesting. She initially encounters him at her engineering school, where Andrei is a student, and also an officer of the branch of the GPU at the  university.  She is at a meeting of students to elect student council members. During the course of that, the “Internationale” is sung:

“For the first time in Petrograd, Kira heard the ‘Internationale.’ She tried not to listen to its words. The words spoke of the damned, the hungry, the slaves, of those who had been nothing and shall be all; in the magnificent goblet of the music, the words were not intoxicating as wine; they were not terrifying as blood; they were gray as dish water.

But the music was like the marching of thousands of feet measured and steady, like drums beaten by unvarying, unhurried hands. The music was like the feet of soldiers marching into the dawn that is to see their battle and their victory; as if the song rose from under the soldiers’ feet, with the dust of the road, as if the soldiers’ feet played it upon the earth.

The tune sang of a promise, calmly, with the calm of an immeasurable strength, and then, tense with a restrained, but uncontrollable ecstasy, the notes rose, trembling, repeating themselves, too rapt to be held still, like arms raised and waiving in the sweep of banners.

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of soldiers bearing sacred banners and of priests carrying swords. It was an anthem to the sanctity of strength.

Everyone had to rise when the ‘Internationale’ was played.

Kira stood smiling at the music. ‘This is the first beautiful thing I’ve noticed about the revolution.’ she said to her neighbor.

‘Be careful,’ the freckled girl whispered, glancing around nervously, ‘someone will hear you.’

‘When this is all over,’ said Kira. ‘when the traces of their republic are disinfected from history -what a glorious funeral march this will make!’

‘You little fool! What are you talking about?’

A young man’s hand grasped Kira’s wrist and wheeled her around.

She stared up into two gray eyes that looked like the eyes of a tamed tiger; but she was not quite sure whether it was tamed or not. There were four straight lines on his face: two eyebrows, a mouth, and a scar on his right temple.

For one short second, they looked at each other, silent, hostile, startled by each other’s eyes.

‘How much,’ asked Kira, ‘are you paid for snooping around?’

She tried to disengage her wrist. He held it: ‘Do you know the place for little girls like you?’

‘Yes -where men like you wouldn’t be let in through the back door.’

‘You must be new here. I’d advise you to be careful.’

‘Our stairs are slippery and there are four floors to climb, so be careful when you come to arrest me.’

He dropped her wrist. She looked at his silent mouth; it spoke of many past battles louder than the scar on his forehead; it also spoke of many more to come.

The ‘Internationale’ rang like soldiers’ feet beating the earth.

‘Are you exceedingly brave?’ he asked. ‘Or just stupid?’

‘I’ll let you find that out.’

He shrugged, turned and walked away. He was tall and young. He wore a cap and a leather jacket. He walked like a soldier, his steps deliberate and very confident.

Students sang the ‘Internationale,’ its ecstatic notes rising, trembling, repeating themselves.

‘Comrade,’ the freckled girl whispered, ‘what have you done?’” (Pg. 73-75)

Through the course of the novel, their friendship grows, then Andrei suddenly starts avoiding Kira, and she cannot figure out why. As she grows more desperate to obtain medical care for Leo, she eventually seeks out Andrei, with the intention of asking him for money for Leo. (Andrei is unaware of Kira’s involvement with Leo.) When she goes to his apartment, Andrei confesses his love for her, and tells her he had to stop seeing her because he knew he had the power to force her to have sex against her will. As a member of the secret police, Andrei knew he could go to Kira’s house with his men, take her away, and rape her with impunity.

This actually happened in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, head of Stalin’s Secret Police, would pick up women against their will, drive them to his house, and rape them. Women who refused were arrested and imprisoned. Women would also agree to sex to free family members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

Andrei also knew that Kira would despise him after that, which he couldn’t stand the thought of. To avoid the temptation, he decided to stop seeing her, and avoid her altogether. Andrei tells Kira he’d give her everything he has if he thought it would make Kira love him, but he knows she doesn’t because she hates everything he stands for. Kira realizes that if she pretends to be in love with Andrei she can get the money she needs to save Leo, so she lies and tells Andrei she is, in fact, in love with him, and they sleep together:

“’I can! I love you.’

She wondered how strange it was to feel a man’s lips that were not Leo’s.

She was saying: ‘Yes…for a long time…but I didn’t know that you, too…’ and she felt his hands and his mouth, and she wondered whether this was joy or torture to him and how strong his arms were. She hoped it would be quick.”(Pg. 233)

The exact nature of the relationship between Kira and Andrei eludes me in certain respects. She did feel affection and friendship for Andrei before she pretended to be in love with him. For instance, she worries about his welfare when he tells her he just got back from putting down a peasant rebellion in the countryside. Andrei says three Communists were killed by peasants, and Kira says:

“‘Andrei! I hope you got them!’

He could not restrain a smile: ‘Why, Kira! Are you saying that about men who fight Communism?’

‘But… but they could have done it to you.’” (Pg. 165)

It makes me wonder about how much she enjoyed sex with Andrei? Did she have orgasms with Andrei? There are scenes that seem to indicate she does not:

“His [Andrei’s] hands closed slowly, softly over her shoulders, so softly that she could not feel his hands, only their strength, their will holding her, bending her backward; but his lips on hers were brutal, uncontrollable. His eyes were closed; hers were open, looking indifferently up at the ceiling.” (Pg. 244)

But, later, when Kira is going to see Andrei, there is the implication that she likes the sex with him:

“…Her body felt pure and hallowed: her feet were slowing down to retard her progress toward that which seemed a sacrilege because she did desire it and did not wish to desire it tonight.” (Pg. 381)

What I got from this passage was that Kira did have orgasms from sex with Andrei, and even looked forward to it on occasion, but she felt guilty about it.

Also mixed in with Kira’s feelings towards Andrei appears to be a desire to punish him, or make him a sort of “stand-in” for the whole communist system that Kira, and those she loves, have suffered under. For instance, the first time Kira takes money from Andrei she seems to feel a bit of guilt:

“She wondered dimly how simple and easy it was to lie.

To Andrei, she had mentioned her starving family. She did not have to ask: he gave her his whole monthly salary and told her to leave him only what she could spare. She had expected it, but it was not an easy moment when she saw the bills in her hand…” (Pg. 235)

But, that moment of guilt quickly passes, as this passage goes on to say:

“…;then, she remembered the comrade commissar and why one aristocrat could die in the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics -and she kept most of the money, with a hard, bright smile.” (Pg. 235)

(The comrade commissar was an official in an earlier scene who refused to give Leo medical treatment, and mentioned something about how so many had died, so what was one aristocrat to the Soviet Union.)

In this scene, its like Kira felt momentary remorse at taking Andrei’s money under false pretenses, then she remembers that he has helped to bring about that system under which Leo and others would die, and she takes almost all of his money, as a sort of passive-aggressive punishment against him, as representative of the whole system.

It seems that Kira enjoys making Andrei suffer a little, as punishment, but it is a sort of cruelty, with occasional bursts of compassion. In one scene, Andrei is complaining about not being able to see Kira much. She has also told him never to come to her parent’s house, where he thinks that she lives, ostensibly because her family is uncomfortable with communists, but really so that he will not discover Leo:

“But he was smiling again: ‘Why don’t you want me to think of you? Remember last time you were here, you told me about that book you read with a hero called Andrei and you said you thought of me? I’ve been repeating it to myself ever since, and I bought the book. I know it isn’t much, Kira, but…well…you don’t say them often, things like that.’

She leaned back, her hands crossed behind her head, mocking and irresistible: ‘Oh, I think of you so seldom I’ve forgotten your last name. Hope I read it in a book. Why, I’ve even forgotten that scar, right there, over your eye.’ Her finger was following the line of the scar, sliding down his forehead, erasing his frown; she was laughing, ignoring the plea she had understood.”

Later in the same scene, Kira explains that she has come to see Andrei early because she cannot see him that night, as initially promised. Andrei is unhappy about it, thinking he will not get to have sex with her:

“ He was whispering, his lips on her breast: ‘Oh, Kira, Kira, I wanted you -here- tonight…’

She leaned back, her face dark, challenging, pitiless, her voice low: ‘I’m here -now.’

‘But…’

‘Why not?’

‘If you don’t…’

‘I do. That’s why I came.’

And as he tried to rise, her arms pulled him down imperiously. She whispered: ‘Don’t bother to undress. I haven’t the time.’” (Pg. 249)

A woman punishing a man with this sort of “passive aggressive behavior”, and/or cruel words that she knows will hurt him is fairly common in life. Women don’t typically use violence to get vengeance. They use manipulation combined with male sexual desire to give a man his comeuppance (real or perceived). For most men, there’s nothing more painful than a woman you’re in love with not responding to your love, or spurning your signs of affection with cruel words or actions. This behavior also shows up in a later novel of Ayn Rand’s very prominently. In “The Fountainhead”, the character of Dominique Francon pretty much makes a career out of using her beauty and the power of her sexuality to make men miserable, namely Peter Keeting and Gail Wynand, although they’ve both done things that merit disapproval. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fountainhead/character/dominique-francon/

Andrei and Kira’s sexual relationship is one of the few times I can think of that Rand shows sex from a male perspective. There are only two times that I can think of where she “gets in inside the head” of a male character, concerning sex. One time is Reardon in “Atlas Shrugged”. Reardon thinks about how he wanted to have sex with Dagny Taggart the first time he saw her on the train tracks. I think there were also some other times he thinks about sex with Dagny, but I cannot find the relevant passages now. (Something about how he felt when he would leave her body after an orgasm.) Andrei’s perspective on sex with Kira is also presented:

“He could forgive her the words, for he had forgotten them, when he saw her exhausted, breathing jerkily, her eyes closed, her head limp in the curve of his arm. He was grateful to her for the pleasure he had given her.” (Pg. 249)

In response to a papal declaration, “Humanae Vitae”, Rand delivered a speech called “Of Living Death”. The Pope’s encyclical concerned sex and procreation, and how good Catholics should view sex. During the course of the written version of her speech, Rand responded to a portion of the Pope’s encyclical that if a man viewed a woman as a mere instrument of his selfish enjoyment, instead of as a means for reproduction, then he would no longer love and respect her. In response to this, Rand said:

“I cannot conceive of a rational woman who does not want to be precisely an instrument of her husband’s selfish enjoyment. I cannot conceive of what would have to be the mental state of a woman who could desire or accept the position of having a husband who does not derive any selfish enjoyment from sleeping with her. I cannot conceive of anyone, male or female, capable of believing that sexual enjoyment would destroy a husband’s love and respect for his wife -but regarding her as a brood mare and himself as a stud, would cause him to love and respect her.” (“Of Living Death”, Ayn Rand, The Voice of Reason: Essays In Objectivist Thought)

I was curious about how Ayn Rand viewed the male perspective on this.  As a woman, it was going to be easier for Rand to present a female perspective, which is why I assume she usually did present sex from the female character’s viewpoint. Did she think that a rational man would want to be an instrument of his wife’s selfish enjoyment? Based on what is presented here about Andrei’s perspective on sex with Kira, specifically, his feeling grateful that he had given Kira pleasure, I think this must be what she thought was the rational male perspective. (This would make sense given her views on the “trader principle” of justice.)

The relationship between Kira and Leo and Kira and Andrei proved to be both entertaining, and enlightening. I recommend that you read the novel yourself, if you haven’t already.

On The Nature of A Shoehorn

Sometimes when reading Ayn Rand, I will read something that seems true, but fairly trivial or unimportant to my particular life. This was generally true when it came to her description of the law of identity. I first read the entry in the Ayn Rand Lexicon on the law of identity sometime in the 1990’s:

“To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. …A is A. A thing is itself.” (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, as found in “The Ayn Rand Lexicon”   http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/identity.html)

I didn’t see why saying “A is A” had any importance whatsoever. Of course a thing is itself. So what? How is it useful to go around stating the obvious?

About thirty years later, I have at least some inkling of why this formulation is important. The following true story from my life will hopefully give some concrete evidence for the practical benefits of keeping the law of identity in mind in one’s daily life.

I have three shoehorns. One of which I keep in my car, mainly so that I can change into a pair of wingtips I like to wear when I go dancing. (I also typically keep the wingtips in my car.) The shoes are narrow, and difficult to put on without a shoehorn. (I have narrow heels.)

I try to keep the shoehorn in a specific place in my car, so that I always know where it is, and don’t misplace it. Unfortunately, earlier this summer, my car had to go into the auto repair shop for quite an extended time. I have another, older vehicle,  a Chevy Trailblazer, which I have been driving in the meantime. When my car went in the shop, I put my wingtips in the Trailblazer, along with the shoehorn.

The layout of the Trailblazer is different from my regular car, causing everything to be out of place, including my shoehorn. Back around early to mid-June, I could not find the shoehorn one day. I searched everywhere I could think to look in that old Trailblazer for the shoehorn, but I could not find it.

I finally gave up on my search and was starting to think I’d have to buy another shoehorn. I usually keep two in my regular vehicle, but the other one was still with that car, which was in the shop. I keep my third shoehorn in my home so that I can put my work shoes on. Since I was busy with other things, I never got around to buying another shoehorn. (I just made do with almost completely unlacing my shoes to be able to fit my feet into them, which is rather time consuming and inconvenient.) A couple of weeks later, I looked down in the front passenger side floorboard of the Trailblazer, and there was my shoehorn. I had searched that area, as well as under the passenger seat, even getting out a flashlight to illuminate dark areas. I had not seen the shoehorn, and yet there it was, lying in plain sight.

I joked to myself that this shoehorn was like the “ring of power” from “The Lord of the Rings”.

This reference may take some explanation for those who are not familiar with those books. In the Tolkien series, an evil magical ring that gives people invisibility and various other powers, is described as having a sort of “will of its own”:

“Gandalf explains that a Ring of Power is self-serving and can ‘look after itself’: the One Ring in particular, can ‘slip off treacherously’ to return to its master Sauron, betraying its bearer when an opportunity arrives.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Power#Powers

In other words, the ring of power has its own agenda, and you will lose it, and someone else will find it when it so chooses. In the novels, Bilbo Baggins finds the ring after another character, Gollum, loses it. Basically, the ring decided it was time for Gollum to lose it, and for Bilbo to find it.

A few weeks later, I went on a vacation, and packed the same shoehorn in my suitcase. Guess what happened when I got back from my trip? I could not find the shoehorn again. I had only taken one suitcase, so if I had brought it back with me, the shoehorn had to be there. I gave the suitcase what I thought was a pretty thorough search, but I could not find it. Thinking again of the ring of power, I started to give up on my search for the shoehorn. Then I explicitly thought:

“Of course, I’m just joking with myself. The shoehorn has a specific nature. It’s not magical, because everything is what it is, and nothing more.”

Explicitly thinking this way led me to the following additional thoughts: “What is the identity of the shoehorn?” I started naming its characteristics or attributes in my mind. I thought: “It’s small, and it’s dark. Both of which make it easily misplaced and easy not to see, given the nature of the human eye.”

I also thought: “What is the identity of my suitcase?” I then started thinking about its attributes. It has one main compartment, and it has two smaller, pouch-like compartments with zippers on the outside. I had checked all three of those locations, and the shoehorn wasn’t there. Then I remembered one other thing about the nature of my suitcase: It has a detachable, somewhat clear, zipper pouch about 10 inches by 5 inches in size. This pouch attaches on the inside main compartment of the suitcase, at the top, by a pair of snaps. I use it to hold toiletries, like my toothbrush. I also keep items in there that I always need, even when I’m not on a trip, like a toothbrush and toothpaste. In other words, there is always some stuff in this small plastic pouch that could obscure something like a shoehorn from my vision on a cursory inspection. I didn’t think I would have put the shoehorn in there because it isn’t a toiletry item. But, I decided I should check it out, and guess what I found?

I believe that this rather mundane example illustrates an important point. Sometimes you have to mentally summon the law of identity, expressly, in order to banish incorrect thinking. In my simple example here, I had “half-jokingly” thought the shoehorn had some magical or mystical properties that made it incapable of being located by me. As a result, I think I started to give up on my search for the shoehorn. It’s like that mystical thinking demotivated me to look for the shoehorn, because I was falling into a pattern of thinking that the shoehorn was somehow intrinsically incapable of being found.

It wasn’t until I willfully re-asserted a “mental framework” that was more rational, with the law of identity, that I was able to think clearly about where the shoehorn could be.

Just like everything else, the human mind has a specific identity, or nature. Part of that identity is that it can develop incorrect thinking patterns or habits, that are detached from reality. In this case, I was falling into the thinking habit of believing my shoehorn was somehow inherently without identity, and therefore unlocatable by me. By mentally summoning the law of identity in my mind, and rededicating my mental attitude to that principle, I was able to develop a specific methodology or plan for locating a lost item. Adhering to the law of identity led to my eventual success in finding the shoehorn.

I would add that adhering to the law of identity doesn’t guarantee success. Sometimes you can do everything right, and factors beyond your control make victory impossible. It might have been the case that I had somehow lost the shoehorn in my hotel room, and left it there. In that case, it would have been unrecoverable. But, by thinking of its specific nature, I was able to better exhaust the possible scenarios under which it was still in my possession in the sense of being lost in some other item of property of mine, like my suitcase. Adhering to the law of identity allowed me to banish any “mystical based” thinking, which thereby maximized my chance of success, even if that chance of success wasn’t 100%.

The law of identity is more than a mere tautology. It can be the difference between victory and defeat. (Or, between putting on my shoes and going barefoot.)

 

First Review Post For Ayn Rand’s “We The Living”

Earlier in 2022, I re-read Ayn Rand’s novel, “We the Living”. I was motivated, in part, by the war in Ukraine. I thought the novel might provide some insight into the Russian mind.

While reading it, I took fairly extensive notes on my phone, and by writing in the margins of the paper-back copy of the novel. Over time, I’d like to write a series of blog posts on various topics about it.

This first blog post is about several things that seemed slightly incongruous with Ayn Rand’s later writing and novels. Whether these can be reconciled with her later writing is an open question in my mind. Certainly, someone can change their mind on various issues, and I do not consider these things to be glaring contradictions with the fundamentals of her philosophy. It’s more like, when I re-read these things in “We The Living” this year, my “eyebrows went up” a bit.

Before I begin the current post, I want to put in a bit of a disclaimer: It’s entirely possible I’m misinterpreting what she is saying in various parts of the novel. In the context of a work of fiction or art, I believe “artistic license” can be proper, and that can explain some, or all, of this.

Any References to page numbers are to The Signet paper back, 1996 edition of “We The Living”, ISBN number 0-451-18784-9

“Rulers and Ruled”

At points in “We The Living”, I got the impression that Rand almost thought that there were “rulers” and “ruled” in the world. In other words, the sort of idea that there are people who are there to initiate physical force in order to keep other people in line. This would certainly be contrary to her later writings, especially in “Atlas Shrugged”, but also in such essays as “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government”.

The best example of this is early in the novel, when some background information about the female protagonist, Kira is being given. There is some narrative and brief flashbacks giving an explanation of how Kira would have reactions to things and situations that her family regarded as “strange” or “abnormal”. For instance, it says that she “…seldom visited museums…” (Pg. 47), but when she would see construction, particularly of bridges she “…was certain to stop and stand watching, for hours…”(Pg. 47) Another such “incongruous feeling” Kira had is the following:

“When Galina Petrovna took her children to see a sad play depicting the sorrow of the serfs whom Czar Alexander II had magnanimously freed, Lydia [Kira’s very religious sister] sobbed over the plight of the humble kindly peasants cringing under a whip, while Kira sat tense, erect, eyes dark in ecstasy, watching the whip cracking expertly in the hand of a tall, young overseer.” (Pg. 47-48)

The scene involves Kira going with her family to see a play about the suffering of the serfs. These were people tied to the land, and required to work. They were little better than slaves. The only real difference being that the serfs could not be sold to another master, they belonged to whoever owned the land. Russia was one of the last countries to free the serfs, in 1861 under Tsar Alexander II.  https://www.historytoday.com/archive/emancipation-russian-serfs-1861

Kira seems to have a sexual reaction to seeing this scene in the play. First, it’s noted that the person handling the whip is a “…tall, young overseer…”, who is presumably male. Additionally, Rand uses the word “ecstasy” to describe Kira’s reaction to this scene. Technically, I think “ecstasy” just means great happiness, but the use of that word combined with the fact that we are talking about a teenage girl watching a tall, young man, suggests sexual attraction to me. More specifically, it seems like she is sexually attracted to not just the young man, but his actions -in watching the whip crack expertly.

I think this scene could be interpreted in one of two ways. First, it could be seen as Kira likes the idea that the serfs were being kept in line with physical force, the whip, by a good-looking young man. Second, it could just be that she is sexually attracted to the display of skill by the young man, in using the whip, not necessarily what he is using the whip on. (In this case, people.) This second interpretation takes into account the early scenes described just before it, in which Kira liked to watch road and bridge construction, and (presumably) liked watching the men displaying skill at construction, too. This second interpretation lines up better with Rand’s overall views on the role of productivity in life, as shown in her later writing.  That said, I’m not 100% sure from the context that Ayn Rand didn’t mean my first interpretation: that Kira seems to believe that the serfs were not capable of following rules or law without being kept in line without some physical force being initiated against them, such as a whip. That is, that there are some people who are meant to be ruled.

Another example of this “rulers and ruled” attitude is when Rand describes Kira’s attitude about physical labor:

“From somewhere in the aristocratic Middle Ages, Kira had inherited the conviction that labor and effort were ignoble.” (Pg. 49)

First, I thought this was an interesting way to phrase this. How, exactly, does one “inherit” a conviction? Does Rand mean she got this idea from her parents? It doesn’t seem so, because the earlier discussion of Kira’s background seems to show that she is very different from her family, and misunderstood by them. Is Rand speaking of genetic determinism here? Did Kira somehow get this attitude or idea from her genes? Or, is this just a way of saying Kira had, at some point, adopted an attitude from the Middle Ages that was still common, especially in Russia at that time? Second, how, exactly, does Kira think that labor and effort are “ignoble”, and how does that comport with Rand’s later views on productivity? I think what is meant here is that Kira thought that manual labor is ignoble, since the novel goes on from that scene to say that “…she had chosen a future of the hardest work and most demanding effort…” by choosing to be an engineer. (Pg. 50)  Clearly, this idea, as understood by Rand’s later writings, would not be correct. Even very intellectually simplistic labor requires some degree of mental effort.

This attitude on work seems almost “Platonic” to me:

“…the ideally just city outlined in the Republic, Plato proposed a system of labor specialization, according to which individuals are assigned to one of three economic strata, based on their inborn abilities: the laboring or mercantile class, a class of auxiliaries charged with keeping the peace and defending the city, or the ruling class of ‘philosopher-kings’.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/work-labor/

My understanding of Plato, and the Ancient Greeks in general, is they believed that there were some people born to do the manual labor, usually slaves, while there were others who were born to do the thinking. These are Plato’s “philosopher-kings”. Rand clearly and explicitly repudiated this notion in her later writings. See, for instance, the story of Robert Stadler, in Atlas Shrugged.    This is why, like I said earlier, my “eyebrows went up”, metaphorically speaking , when I read this.

Abortion in “We The Living”

Perhaps because of what was going on in the courts and politically in 2022, I noted that the subject of abortion comes up a couple of times in “We The Living”. As far as I can remember, the topic never comes up in either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. The context in which she brought it up in “We The Living” left me wondering why Ayn Rand included this in the novel. For Ayn Rand, nothing in her fiction is an accident:

“Since art is a selective re-creation and since events are the building blocks of a novel, a writer who fails to exercise selectivity in regard to events defaults on the most important aspect of his art.

…A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax. The word ‘purposeful’ in this definition has two applications: it applies to the author and to the characters of a novel. It demands that the author devise a logical structure of events….a sequence in which nothing is irrelevant, arbitrary or accidental…” (“Basic Principles of Literature”, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand)

Operating on the above quote, I assume that having abortion come up in the novel is not “arbitrary” or “accidental” on the part of Rand. She had a purpose there.

There are two ways abortion comes into the novel. (I’m not sure which occurs first now.) First, Kira and Leo get a neighbor living in their house assigned to them. This is a girl about Kira’s age, who is attending another local university. Her name is Marina Lavrova, and she is introduced at Page 177 in the book I was reading. (Signet paperback, 1996 edition of “We The Living”, ISBN number 0-451-18784-9 )

Marina Lavrova’s nickname is “Marisha”, and that is how she is described throughout the rest of the book. She would go on to marry Kira’s cousin, Victor. Marisha is a card-carrying member of the Communist youth group, the Komsomol.   Furthermore, her father has good “working class credentials”, having been a factory worker before the revolution, and having served time in the Tsar’s prison system for political agitation. Victor, Kira’s cousin had noticed that Kira and Leo had two rooms, and had told Marisha about it. At that time, Victor is trying to get into the Communist Party, and uses Marisha as a stepping-stone to that end. (Which is also why he marries her.) Although the law allowed Kira and Leo to have two rooms because they are not married, Marisha uses her Communist party card to overrule the law, and moves into the extra room.

Since they are living in such close proximity to one another, Kira knows some fairly intimate details about Marisha’s life. For instance, Kira notes that young men are staying overnight with Marisha, and that she is presumably sleeping with them. After some time passes, Marisha comes to Kira and asks her about how to get an abortion:

“Marisha came in when Kira was alone. Her little pouting mouth was swollen: ‘Citizen Argounova, what do you use to keep from having children?’

Kira looked at her, startled.

‘I’m afraid I’m in trouble,’ Marisha wailed. ‘It’s that damn louse Aleshka Ralenko. Said I’d be bourgeois if I didn’t let him…Said he’d be careful. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?’

Kira said she didn’t know.” (Pg. 183)

A couple of pages later, a scene occurs in which Kira tells a sick Marisha to clean the bathroom, indicating that she must have taken some sort of medication to induce abortion, or has otherwise obtained an abortion:

“’Citizen Lavrova, will you please clean the bathroom? There’s blood all over the floor.’

‘Leave me alone. I’m sick. Clean it yourself, if you’re so damn bourgeois about your bathroom.’

Marisha slammed the door, then opened it again, cautiously: ‘Citizen Argounova, you won’t tell your cousin [Victor] on me, will you? He doesn’t know about…my trouble. He’s -a gentleman.” (Pg. 185)

The second way abortion is brought up in “We The Living” is through the character of Vava Milovskaia, specifically, her father. Vava is introduced at Page 79, when she comes to visit Kira’s cousins and their parents, Vasili Ivanovich Dunaev and Maria Petrova. (Kira’s Aunt and Uncle, by way of her mother, who is the sister of Maria.) Kira is also visiting the Dunaev’s when Vava arrives to see Victor, who she is in love with. Unlike everyone else, Vava is wearing expensive clothing, and jewelry. Although Vava’s family is not in the Communist Party, her father is a medical doctor. It is explained in the book that, at that time, Doctors were still allowed to operate privately, and make money because a doctor was not viewed as “exploiting labor”. Basically, doctors can do their work without the need of any employees, and they are making money only through their own labor, and not by directing the work of others. (Don’t bother trying to make sense out of Marxist ideas.)

At Chapter 12, starting on Page 151, Kira goes to a party thrown by Vava at her parent’s house. During the course of the party, it is noted that Vava lives in (comparative) opulence. How was this possible?

“He was a doctor who specialized in gynecology. He had not been successful before the revolution; after the revolution, two facts had helped his rise: the fact that, as a doctor, he belonged to the ‘Free Professions’ and was not considered an exploiter, and the fact that he performed certain not strictly legal operations. Within a couple of years he had found himself suddenly the most prosperous member of his former circle and of many circles above.” (Pg. 158)

Since he’s a gynecologist, I’m certain the “not strictly legal operations” are abortions. Abortions were legalized in 1920 in Russia. The novel starts in 1922, so abortion was legal by then. However, Stalin again made abortion illegal in 1936.  (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-01-04/stalins-abortion-ban-soviet-union )  I would assume that Rand meant that Vava’s father had performed the “not strictly legal” abortions prior to legalization in 1920. This makes sense in light of the last sentence in the above quote, which implies that at least “a couple of years” had passed since he started performing illegal abortions, and that he had passed other people in wealth, over the years, as a result.

In both of these situations, abortion seems to be presented in a somewhat negative light.

Take the story of Marisha and her abortion. For Rand, all choices in a work of art have a purpose. Nothing is without a reason in a novel. So what was her reason for having Marisha get pregnant accidentally and then have to get an abortion? She didn’t have Kira, the protagonist, get pregnant, although Kira was also living with and having sex with Leo by this point on, presumably, a regular basis.

Was Rand saying here that communism encourages abortion/promiscuity? This seems like a possibility, since Marisha was pressured into having sex when she wasn’t ready. Aleshka Ralenko, the guy Marisha was sleeping with, said she’d be “bourgeois” if she didn’t let him penetrate her vaginally. Maybe Rand just wanted to show how someone uses Marxist rhetoric to rationalize getting what they want, such as convincing a girl to have sex when she isn’t ready?

I would assume the difference between Kira and Marisha is that the former was ready for sex and took responsibility for it. (This also raises another interesting question. There was no birth control pill at that time, so what were Kira and Leo using for birth control? Condoms? Diaphragm? Pull out method?) Marisha, on the other hand, was not ready for sex, and wasn’t using anything to prevent Aleshka from ejaculating into her.

It’s also possible Ayn Rand included the story of Marisha’s abortion to give some background information on her, since she eventually marries Victor, who doesn’t really love her, and she has an unhappy marriage.  I could also see the scene between Kira and Marisha as just a way to have the two women grow closer together. Initially they do not like each other, but after this, Marisha and Kira seem on friendlier terms. By page 250 (Chapter 1 of Part II), the two young women smoke cigarettes together and enjoy friendly chit-chat.  Marisha is one of only three Communists in the novel that Ayn Rand portrays in a fairly sympathetic manner -the other two being Andrei and Stepan Timoshinko. Also, interestingly, all three are either dead or miserable by the end. (Marisha survives, but is in a loveless marriage and very unhappy.)

I cannot help but get the impression that Ayn Rand is saying with the story of Marisha and the story of Vava’s gynecologist father that communism causes abortion. Given her later, express views on abortion, this seems incongruous.   Is it possible Ayn Rand changed her view on abortion from the time that she wrote “We The Living?” The situations in which abortion come up in the novel seem to me, morally ambiguous at best. For instance, Vava’s father seems to take a certain joy in being able to “lord it over” the people who used to be wealthier and of a better social status than him. At the party Kira attends at Vava’s house, the point of view switches to the doctor’s perspective:

“…he relished the feeling of a patron and benefactor to the children of those before whom he had bowed in the old days, the children of the industrial magnate Argounov [Kira’s father], of Admiral Kovalensky [Leo’s father]. He made a mental note to donate some more to the Red Air Fleet in the morning.” (Pg. 158)

These are not good or admirable feelings he is having. (Or, at least, they are very mixed.) He isn’t just enjoying his success. He’s enjoying the fact that people that were once above him are now below him. Furthermore, he is going to donate money to the Soviet state, which he regards as having brought him into his new position and power. He not only benefited from the Bolshevik revolution, but he is glad it happened, and supports the system.

In summary, the way this issue is presented in “We The Living” leaves a “question mark” in my mind, that I do not currently know the answer to.

Kira’s Speech About Andrei, Life, and Atheism

The final “incongruity” that I noted in “We the Living” was Kira’s speech to Andrei about atheism and life:

“Do you believe in God, Andrei?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do -then, I know they don’t believe in life.”

“Why?”

“Because, you see, God -whatever anyone chooses to call God -is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”

“You’re a strange girl.”

“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die -for life. I only want to live it.” (Pg. 117)

Most of this quote is “spot on” with the rest of Ayn Rand’s later, express philosophy. The last two sentences seem more difficult to reconcile. Here, Kira is speaking of Andrei, who is the “good communist” in the novel. (Incidentally, Andrei is my favorite character from the novel. I can completely relate to the unrequited love he suffers from, as most men probably can.) Rand thought communism, and the people who preached it, were anti-life:

“‘You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder—the mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life, and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend to themselves that they desire to live, but their swinish indulgence in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape.’ …‘You who’ve never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as ‘misguided idealists’—may the God you invented forgive you!—they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.’… ‘Death is the premise at the root of their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice….’” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)

I heard a recording of Ayn Rand where she said there was no such thing as an “honest communist”, and in answering a follow up question, that she “stretched the truth” with Andrei in “We The Living” for purposes of fiction. (I think this is fine, since I believe in “artistic license”, as I said.)  She said something about Andrei growing up poor and in a backwards country, which somewhat excused it, but basically didn’t think such a person could exist in real life.

It’s possible Kira was just talking about Andrei, in particular, and not communists in general, but that could be misconstrued, pretty easily, to seem to say something positive about communism. I will say that in the wider context of the novel, that is not what was meant. For instance, Rand also has the following earlier exchange between Kira and Andrei:

“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods.” (Andrei)

“I loathe your ideals.” (Kira) (Pg. 89)

Ayn Rand already had deep, philosophical, disagreements with the fundamental morality of communism, and not just with some of its nastier practices. She clearly already understood that the issue was deeper than politics, and reached down to morality. Nonetheless, given Rand’s staunch anticommunism, I wonder if she ever regretted including a description of a communist as “believing in life”, as Kira claimed in the above quote?

These were the three things that raised questions in my mind because they are not obviously reconcilable, to me, with some things that Rand wrote later. But, keep in mind that I’m just some guy on the Internet, with no special knowledge of literature, Ayn Rand, or of fiction writing, so I’d love to hear from someone else who has thought about any of this.

Excellent Article Connecting Rising Prices to Government Regulation

This Business Insider article is a terrific piece of journalism linking rising prices to governmental interference in the economy.

The article notes that babysitters are in high demand. In some areas of the country they are making as much as $35 per hour.  (To put this in perspective, I’ve seen temporary jobs for attorneys paying less than that.)

The problem? Government shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. These shutdowns included daycare centers, many of which closed for good.

The government shutdown of businesses in 2020, combined with the inflation of the money supply by the Federal Reserve, has resulted in the greatest increase in the Consumer Price Index in over 40 years.

It is good to see journalists who seem to get it, and are recognizing the cause of these price increases.