Ayn Rand's Anthem

Ayn Rand’s Anthem takes a look at a future in an unknown time that focuses on collectivism in order to run a society. Individuals are placed in separate divisions and are taught that it is a sin to want to  move out of the divisions that they are born in. The main character that we focus on is Equality 7-2521. He commits a sin by wanting to move from being a Street Sweeper to being placed at the House of Scholars. This then brings up a question, is rational egoism better than collectivism?  

Is rational egoism better than collectivism? Within Anthem, collectivism is not a choice, it is a requirement and lifestyle that every single person must follow. If you do not follow collectivism you are put to death. When breaking it down to its simplest form collectivism is where all people work for the good of the entire group. On the other hand when you break down rational egoism to it simplest form, you get an individual prioritizing themselves over the good of the group. Since they are polar opposites of each other they cannot both fully exist within a single society. This being said I do not think that rational egoism is a possible cure for collectivism. A major problem of collectivism includes that in the real world it is simply not possible. There may be some people that would not mind having their necessities met and not getting the chance to move from where they are now, but most people will want to challenge themselves to do better and advance themselves in their own life. In the real world people need to move forward and try to better themselves in order to thrive in their current situation. I have been making rational egoism seem pretty good and that people need to put some work in next be able to  succeed. Just like collectivism, rational egoism also has it problems. A major one would be that if a person does not try to advance themselves fast enough , they may end up being left behind and possibly lose everything that they have worked for. This is not right because, they may not be advancing as fast as they were before but, for all we know in the past they were working as hard as possibly could. Does this mean that they should still be punished? No, they still put in their work and got what they worked for, so it should not be taken away form them.

This is why rational egoism is better than collectivism are both necessary in a continuously advancing world that we actually live in.

            Within our world we would need both. They may be polar opposites and cannot have both completely coexist with one another in a single society. They can instead take some ideas of both types of society and put them together. By doing this you would end up in the kind of society that we are living in. It uses some parts of collectivism because, families and some friends will help each other in different situations and it also uses some parts of rational egoism because, people seek further education  and promotions in their job in order to better themselves thus diving themselves towards their own goals. This is why I do not think that either rational egoism or collectives I better than one another but, instead the because solution would be to take parts of both and combine them in order for everyone to do what they feel would be best suited for themselves.