Anthem By Ayn Rand Through Marxist Lens

You are lucky. You live in a country with plenty of freedom. Not everyone is as lucky as you, though. Some people can’t even choose their religion or be able to speak what they want. Communism is a political theory created by Karl Marx. It says that “all property is publicly owned [owned by the government] and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs”.

The government controls the lives of the citizens, just like in the novella Anthem by Ayn Rand. This novella is about a man named Equality 7-2521 who lives in a dystopia that contains limited technology and laws that forbid things such as writing a book. Equality 7-2521 is made a street sweeper, even though he believed that he had the mind of a scholar. It’s also illegal for him to be a scholar, so he is stuck with his occupation until he retires. My thesis statement based on this story that applies the Marxist lens is that the government in Anthem has stripped away the rights of the people and has taken away any individualizing traits and personalities. Their laws even bar them from writing and thinking freely. In Anthem, one of the laws was to take your teacher’s advice. Equality didn’t follow this law, though. His teacher said he cannot choose a career because the Council chooses it. This law takes away Equality’s individualizing trait of being a science-loving person, proving that the government controls his life. In the text, it states, “We were guilty and we confess it here: we were guilty of the great Transgression of Preference. We preferred some work and some lessons to the others. We did not listen well to the history of all the Councils elected since the Great Rebirth. But we loved the Science of Things. We wished to know. We wished to know about all the things which make the earth around us. We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade it”.

In other words, it is a sin to like something more than another. He cannot enjoy the science of things more than the history of the Councils. He must enjoy them equally. Equality ignored this, though. He wanted knowledge over the history of the government. He had a preference. The laws of the government forbid him from choice, a key part of a person’s personality. This government is stripping away Equality’s self and making him become the same as everyone else. He has no control because he is not a Council, which represents the upper class. They have unlimited freedom since they get to make the laws how they like.