Ayn Rand - Final Paper

Philosophy 102, 5/07

It is said that We The Living is the closest thing to an autobiography that Ayn Rand has ever written. The book is a scorching remark on Communism, talking about it being an inherently flawed idea when one decides to give themselves (and others) over to the state; it is obvious she has some personal experience with the subject. Also the target of her anger is the idea of idealistic relativism, the notion that all ideas should be considered equally because they exist outside of our authority to make judgment calls about their worth, which is why she presents her beliefs under the label of objectivism – the belief that we can truly make objective calls about something, be it an object or belief.
The story itself is an emotional drama about a free-spirited girl who finds her life crushed under the red boot of Communism – an ideal for creating a perfect, fair and just world, supposedly. As we see through the eyes of Kira, food rations meant to provide an equal amount for all, work books and union cards meant to restrict “each to his or her own” and placing the needs of the state before the needs of the individual all create a fractured and corrupt world where millions of people go starving, listless and dying because the state does not allow for a system which entitles people to the basic necessities of personal, both physical and spiritual, growth. In the end, the deaths of the two main characters are meant to show the abject living conditions of Communism, and how interference from the state has no authority to impede the growth of the human life, something that Ayn Rand spends the book giving us her opinion of.
Some of the best quotes in this book are between Andrei and Kira, where they both agree on the value of human life, but differ on what that actually means. Kira, who is meant to symbolize Rand, at one point says:

“Don’t you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: ‘This is mine’? Don’t you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don’t you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any satte, by any collective, by any number of millions?”

So, in this quote, she is not only talking about the sanctity of life, but she is also talking about what it has to have an ‘activated’ life – to truly be alive. Additionally, she uses the term ‘state’ with a very charged definition, meaning more than the government; instead, carrying with it the connotation of something that is physical, not living, making it ‘imperfect’ and ‘impure’ compared to life.
Later in the novel, after Andrei has had his change of heart, he relates Kira’s view to his own knowledge of the Party after Kira asks him if he thinks people became speculators out of desperation:

“I know it… We were to raise men to our own level. But they don’t rise, the men we’re ruling, they don’t grow, they’re shrinking. They’re shrinking to a level no human creatures ever reached before. And we’re sliding slowly down into their ranks. We’re crumbling, like a wall, one by one. Kira, I’ve never been afraid. I’m afraid, now. It’s a strange feeling. I’m afraid to think. Because…because I think, at times, that perhaps our ideals have had no other result.”
[Kira] “That’s true! The fault was not in men, but in the nature of your ideals.”

As Andrei points out, the true effect of Communism is not one singular, strong country but a million overworked, lifeless individuals – a conundrum there is no way around due to the clash of the ideals vs. the possibilities of human nature. One last thing about the story before I get to analysis, is that I found it very appropriate the speed and strength of Kira’s impact on Andrei. It is fitting that two people could meet and change each other, alter the course of their lives completely, because that is just it about human nature and what makes it beautiful; we are not static characters either, as this book has shown, we are affected by actions, and we ebb and we flow in according to the situation we are presented with, be it Communism or love.

Now that the book has been summarized, I would like to get into my reaction to her views. From what is said in this book, and from what I have surmised she says in her other books, Rand’s point is that any interfering of the state on the natural rights to life of man is completely unacceptable, due to our existence as complex, spiritual creatures. She, and other people like her, would say things such as the state is a physical creation that does not compare to the divinity of our lives (I would say though we are not immortal, Rand would still refer to our lives as divine as a marker of importance) – and that any attempt to impede on the divinity of life is an unacceptable breach of class divisions, in the same vein as shunning the Tower of Babel.
Their arguments allow for no middle ground, no compromise since they speak in purely theoretical terms. The true extension of Ayn Rand’s belief would be true anarchy: rejecting any attempt at order imposed onto divine, spiritual beings, since truly any order can be interpreted as an outside influence and no order can be truly self created; even that which we design for ourselves will then be transferred to our children, or to immigrants, which she would argue we have no right to impose such a measure on those who do not ask for it. In reality, there is no way to achieve order while at the same time allowing for the self-construction in the most explicit sense of one’s life. There is no way that we could function as a society, or even have the same quality of life (if that is at all relevant to her) under her pretenses for a system of government.

Her problem is that she is dealing with this problem entirely in theory, taking what could be called a naturalist view; the fact that we are physical, imperfect beings is both the defining factor in her appreciation of human naturalism AND the reason why her theory would not work. In order to construct a functioning way of life, we must combine theory with a measure of pragmatism – seeing what can actually work and what cannot. It is the same traits and characteristics of humans that help us both appreciate human life for all its divinity and define our limitations, seeing what systems of government or attitudes thereof can truly be effective, lest we create a integrity-adherent, abstract and nonexistent government resulting in an even worse quality of life.
However, I am not saying that we should lose all theory in face of this necessary pragmatism. If we were to do that, we would become completely corporatized, losing the value of human life as we turn newborns into machines grinding away to achieve a goal that is either an unholy manifestation of some dark human potential or something similar; all as unreal and out of this world as Ayn Rand’s suggestions.
Instead, what we should be striving for is something absolutely un-archetypal and non-abstract: a compromise. A balance between the theoretical and the applicable to put a check on both is contradictory to [what I see as] the basic human drive to find a workable utopia, as well as it is generally any philosophy, save utilitarianism, that strives to keep a broad and consistent theory. Once again, the reasons for this being absolute Rand (absolute non-interference of human life) leads to either “return to nature” or no law at all, whereas absolute pragmatism leads to enslavement