June 2014: "We the Living" Speaks Compellingly and Prophetically

VERBALIZE the Core Contradiction in Collectivist Thinking I first read this close to 50 years ago. I was too young, naive, and ignorant to appreciate it as I do now. This 'stirring to the bone' fictional depiction of 30's Soviet Russia rings dead true to what we see, hear, and feel around us today... Ever longed for the words and situation that would expose the fatal contradiction in the infatuation with Statist Morality? Ayn Rand set it up in her novel, "We the Living", which is of interest today not only for its historical context of individualism vs. collectivism, but also it's insight into the nature of the system for State Medicine which eventuates from nationalizing the medical industry in the very fashion "Obamacare" proffers... The following is a reprint of a reprint. Originally from Ayn Rand's 1936 novel, "We the Living", this segment was reprinted in Rand's book, "For the New Intellectual", published 1959. ---jg--- ---This novel was published in 1936 and reissued in 1959. Its theme is: the individual versus the state; the supreme value of a human life and the evil of a totalitarian state that claims the right to sacrifice it. The story takes place in (1930's) Soviet Russia. The excerpt is from a speech of Kira Argounova to Andrei Taganov, in the following context: "Kira had been having a love affair with Andrei to obtain money to save the life of Leo Kovalensky(ed. note, he was dying of tuberculosis) the man she loves; Andrei, an idealistic young Communist, who is profoundly in love with her, was beginning to discover the importance of personal values, when, in the course of arresting Leo for a political crime, he learns the truth about Kira's relationship to both of them.--- "No, you didn't know. But it was very simple. And not very unusual. Go through the garrets and basements where men live in your Red cities and see how many cases like this you can find. He wanted to live. You think everything that breathes can live? You've learned differently, I know. But he was one who could have lived. There aren't many of them, so they don't count with you. The doctor said he was going to die. And I loved him. You've learned what that means too, haven't you? He didn't need much. Only rest, and fresh air, and food. He had no right to that, had he? Your State said so. We tried to beg. We begged humbly. Do you know what they said? There was a doctor in a hospital and he said he had hundreds on his waiting list... "You see, you must understand this thoroughly. No one does. No one sees it, but I do, I can't help it, I see it, you must see it, too. You understand? Hundreds, Thousands. Millions of what? Stomachs, and heads, and legs, and tongues, and souls. And it doesn't even matter if they fit together. Just millions. Just flesh. Human flesh. And they---it---had been registered and numbered, you know, like tin cases on a store shelf. I wonder if they're registered by the person or by the pound? And they had a chance to go on living. But not Leo. He was only a man. All stones are cobblestones to you. And diamonds---they're useless, because they sparkle too brightly in the sun, and it's too hard on the eyes, and it's too hard under the hoofs marching into the proletarian future. You don't pave roads with diamonds. They may have other uses in the world, but of those you've never learned. That is why you had him sentenced to death, and others like him, an execution without a firing squad. There was a big commissar and I went to see him. He told me that a hundred thousand workers had died in the civil war and why couldn't one aristocrat die---in the face of the Union of soviet Socialist Republics? And what is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the face of one man? But that is a question for you not to answer. I'm grateful to that commissar. He gave me permission to do what I have done. I don't hate him. You should hate him. What I'm doing to you---he did it first!... "That's the question, you know, don't you? Why can't one aristocrat die in the face of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? You don't understand that, do you? You and your commissar, and a million others like you, like him, that's what you brought to the world, that question and your answer to it! A great gift, isn't it? But one of you has been paid. I paid it. In you and to you. For all the sorrow your comrades brought to a living world. How do you like it, Comrade Andrei Taganov of the All-Union Communist Party? If you taught us that our life is nothing before that of the State---well then, are you really suffering? If I brought you to the last hell of despair---well then, why don't you say that one's life doesn't really matter?...You loved a woman and she threw your love in your face? But the proletarian mines in the Don Basin have produced a hundred tons of coal last month! You had two altars and you saw suddenly that a harlot stood on one of them and Citizen Morozov on the other? But the Proletarian State has exported ten thousand bushels of wheat last month! You had every beam knocked from under your life? But the Proletarian Republic is building a new electric plant on the Volga! Why don't you smile and sing hymns to the Collective? It's still there, your Collective. Go and join it. Did anything really happen to you? It's nothing but a personal problem of a private life, the kind that only the dead old world could worry about, isn't it? Don't you have something greater---greater is the words your comrades use---left to live for? Or do you comrade Taganov? ... "Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want---isn't that life itself? And who---in this damned universe---who can tell me why I should live for anything but that which I want? Who can answer that in human sounds that speak for human reason?...But you've tried to tell us what we should want. You came as a solemn army to bring a new life to men. You tore that life that you knew nothing about, out of their guts---and you told them what it had to be. You took their every hour, every minute, every nerve, every thought in the farthest corners of their souls---and you told them what it had to be. You came and you forbade life to the living. You've driven us all into an iron cellar and you've closed all doors, and you've locked us airtight, airtight till the blood vessels of our spirits burst! Then you stare and wonder what it's doing to us. Well then, look! All of you who have eyes left---look!"