In Ayn Rand's 1938 short story Anthem, Rand explores the life of a young man named Equality 7-2521 in a communist-style state of the dark era that takes place somewhere in the distant future. The novella follows Equality's struggle to find her identity and purpose in a society that has rejected individualism in favor of collectivism. On March 19, 1944, Ayn Rand wrote a letter declaring: “Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme: collectivism. » Rand's anti-collectivist, pro-individual view is not only moral, but right. Throughout the last century, we have witnessed the rise and fall of many collectivist states and the atrocities that followed them, such as: the stripping of the individual in the USSR, the importance of the collective in Korea North and the loss of freedom in China. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe Anthem to Soviet Russia has many parallels when Rand fled his native country (Russia) in 1926, a few years only after the founding of the Soviet Union. USSR. The goal of Anthem's Unknown City is to focus on the needs of the collective rather than the individual, which is the same initial principle on which the Soviet Union was founded. When we strip man of his individuality and make him a pawn of the collective, we find ourselves faced with a moral dilemma and begin to ask ourselves difficult questions, such as: Why should the individual be more important than the collective ? Is individual life really more important than collective life? In chapter 11, Prometheus proclaims: “For the word “We” must never be spoken except by choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first in a man's soul, otherwise it becomes a monster, the root of all evil on earth, the root of man's torture by men and an unspeakable lie. We see that after Prometheus freed himself from the chains of man and understood the value of himself, he asked this: "I wonder, for it is difficult for me to conceive how men who knew the word “I” could give it up and I now know what they have lost. Prometheus knew that we must never value the collective more than the individual because that is when evil triumphs. When we become so desensitized to altruism that we neglect our own needs and desires, we lose the essence of what it means to be human. In Anthem, people learn that their only goal is to serve the collective because they know what is best. People don't really have a choice about what they can do with their lives because they are all working to achieve the government's goal. An example of this is work: while still living in the unknown city, Prometheus was a street sweeper. He had no choice, because that's what he was taught to believe. Prometheus also had virtually no interaction with anyone aside from the other street sweepers besides Gaea, showing that the "government" doesn't want any interaction between people outside of their mutual service. The Unknown City models a communist-style state in which the “government” has taken over the means of production so that all goods and services are designed for the collective and their stagnation. The inhabitants of the city live only to serve one another, this is emphasized to us in chapter 7 when the similarity 5-0306 says: “And if this should lighten the labor of men, then it is a great evil, because theMen have no reason to exist except to work for other men. There can never be true progression in a collectivist state, because those who progress will be better than their peers. Similarities of this style of government are present in North Korea. The only goal of the North Korean people (in their eyes) is to serve the collective because that is all they know. Those who do not follow this mentality are thrown into prisons deemed to be as bad as Nazi concentration camps. North Korea's dictators have brainwashed people and fed them lies for decades, leading them to believe that the collective is more important than the individual. Over the years, as the eyes of the world have been opened to the atrocities happening on the Korean Peninsula today, people continue to suffer in silence, because that is the best for all. the world. One of the critical themes of Anthem is the loss of freedom, and a perfect example of this would be the suppression of civil liberties by the Chinese government. The Chinese Communist Party has been the ruling political party since its establishment in 1921 and is responsible for some of the greatest atrocities in human history, such as the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) and the Massacre of the Tiananmen Square (1989). Mao Zedong is the most infamous chairman of the Communist Party because he led the socio-economic campaign, the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the deaths of 45 million people in a span of four years. It was also the social and economic state of post-Mao China that led to the infamous Tiananmen Square protests, in which at least 10,000 people were killed by Chinese soldiers. In China, these crucial parts of history are erased because the government controls what the people can and cannot see. The Chinese people's freedom of speech and press are completely suppressed and those who speak out or try to break the law are systematically punished. Here in modern Western civilization, we can all agree that the Chinese people are treated terribly by their government, as most people would believe. that the government should not have this kind of power over its citizens. This belief is imitated by the quote from Prometheus in chapter 12 in which he states: “In the beginning, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his relatives, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that man has rights which neither God, nor the king, nor other men can take away from him, whatever their number, because it is the right of man, and it cannot there is no right on earth above this right. "The Chinese government, like the "government" in Anthem, are oppressors who have stripped the people of their God-given rights to speech, thought, and expression, and we are seeing this more and more more today as protests in Hong Kong rage. The protesters know that once China takes full possession of Hong Kong, they will lose many of their freedoms. In the last century, we have seen how collectivist ideologies such as communism and socialism have plagued the world in countries such as Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Nazi Germany and many more. others still. In these countries, we have seen the rise of tyrants and dictators who oppress the masses, eliminate opposition, and wreak havoc under the guise of “what is best for their people.” Ayn Rand's warnings about the dangers of collectivism are more relevant than ever/