Published in 1936, We the Living is the first novel from philosopher Ayn Rand, and is a dramatic love story that takes place in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. While Ms. Rand experienced the Revolution while growing up in St. Petersburg, it is not about Russia. Closer to being a philosophical autobiography, We the Living is about the nobility of human life.

In particular, the novel champions the individual reverence one must hold tight for their own life, dramatizes what it takes to be truly alive in a totalitarian hell-hole, and how rare it is. To that end, the lead character, Kira Argounova, is the centerpiece of Ms. Rand’s benevolent universe premise, as Ayn Rand Institute philosopher Onkar Ghate explains,

You must have a clear and sacred devotion to your own mind, life, and requirements of reality. Heroine Kira Argounova depicts the nature of this metaphysical conviction. In an ending of astonishing beauty and power, the story shows what it looks like to remain untouched by the evil of one’s surroundings.

Kira is also the antidote for the malevolent universe premise that defined 19th century Russia, led to the 1917 Revolution, and defines 21st century American multiculturalism. Essentially, it says that life is a series of catastrophes that individuals are not equipped to manage. As a result, our survival depends on group identity and expert leaders to declare losers in their staged tribal feuds. Sound familiar?

Yet, this epic was written by a late twenty-something Ms. Rand – a millennial in today’s terms. But instead of coming of age during the Great Recession and its high unemployment, it was the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Yet, both were caused by government force applied to human economic interaction, and share the same individual vs. the collective conflict as Soviet “justice.” So does the 1960’s New Left and it latest manifestation, 2020’s BLM Democrats. In We the Living, Ms. Rand demonstrates the moral dichotomy,

I explain the philosophical, psychological and moral meaning of the men who value their own lives and of the men who don’t. I show the first are prime movers of mankind, and the second are metaphysical killers, working for an opportunity to become physical ones. In We the Living I show they are motivated by a life premise or a death premise.

The novel introduces us to Kira at once, and Rand masterfully illustrates their life premise marching into a malevolent society, “She had a calm mouth and slightly widened eyes with the defiant, enraptured, solemnly and fearfully expectant look of a warrior entering a strange city and is not quite sure whether he is entering as a conqueror or a captive. She was 18 years of age – Gen Z in today’s terms. Instead of digital technology and its social media dominance, she grew up with the new electrification of homes and telephones.

We the Living begins in 1922, and the Argounov family was returning to their home city after a four-year forced exile to the Crimea. In reality, 1926 is the year Ayn Rand left her family in St. Petersburg to emigrate to the United States. In the introduction to the 60th anniversary edition, philosopher and Ms. Rand’s intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, relates the genesis of the novel,

Her husband Frank O’Connor, and his brother Nick were horrified by her experiences in Russia, and they convinced her that Americans had no idea of the truth. A young Russian had said to her at a party in 1926, just before she left for America: “When you get there, tell them that Russia is a huge cemetery and that we are all dying.” We the Living told them.

More specifically, the novel tells us what happens to individuals when government bypasses its only morally defensible role – protecting individual rights, and abuses legal force. It quickly devolves into a protection racket while brandishing the ideals of the “common good.” Universal health care is a 2020 American example of runaway government’s crime syndicate. Not only was US Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barret grilled by Democratic Senators over “Obamacare,” her Republican defenders were no better. They refused to condemn Obamacare for its immoral premise: rights derived by force.

We the Living also told us about Kira’s love for a man; love that is rooted in reverence for her own life and her fight for her own future. Recognizing our highest values in the person of another is the nature of love. Love is of individual ethics. Conversely, Ms. Rand explains the metaphysics, “Peoples know nothing of the spirit of man, for peoples are only nature, and man is a word that has no plural.”

Love’s prerequisite is self-esteem. Lives that matter belong to people who have reverence for their own lives first, will fight relentlessly for their futures, and do the same for those who choose to live.

However, the dominant philosophy of 2020 America teaches there are no absolutes, values are subjective, and your life’s value is measured by self-sacrifice, either for your tribe or the “goodness of humanity.” Its likely consequence was a spike in Soviet Russian suicides and opioid abuse in 2020 America. But no one can explain the shared philosophy of Soviet Russia and Progressive America better than did Ayn Rand in the 1960’s,

The rapid degeneration of our present age, when men are brought to the level of concrete-bound animals, incapable of perceiving abstractions; when men are taught they must look at trees, but never at forests, makes it necessary for me to warn: do not be misled by those who tell you that We the Living is no longer relevant.

Following Frederic Bastiat’s admonition to “Pick Up The Torch of Say’s Law,” I and my colleagues at the Center for Individualism are keeping We the Living relevant. For example, the third chapter of the new eBook, Reliving Ayn Rand’s We the Living begins, “When political force controls the economic decisions of daily life, a society decivilizes. Muscle cancels minds as the means for creating value, money diminishes as the tool for trading them, prices become perverted, and markets atrophy.”

In addition, the Reliving We The Living project combines a Facebook forum called We the Living Study Group, cultivating questions and comments that help today’s young people relate the characters and circumstances of the novel with current events, and a weekly blog post series that summarizes the plot and underlying principles for living.

Please click Reliving Ayn Rand’s We the Living a free download and Reliving We the Living for the most recent articles.