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?