Introduction: "Anthem" by Ayn Rand

Overview:  Ayn Rand came of age during the ascendancy of collectivism across the globe — not only in communist Russia, from which she escaped in 1926, but also in fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and to an alarming degree in her adopted homeland, America. Rand identified collectivism — the idea that individuals should be subjugated to the group and sacrificed for the common good — not only as a moral evil but as the essential cause of the political evils then engulfing the civilized world.

In the summer of 1937, Rand took a break from working on The Fountainhead to write the novelette called Anthem, a short, highly stylized tale of a future dystopia so saturated in collectivism that the word “I” has disappeared from the language.

First published in England in 1938, Anthem was rejected by collectivist-dominated American publishers in the 1930s — an American edition (slightly revised by Rand) did not appear until 1946.