Anthem and ‘The Individualist Manifesto’

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Speaking through the voice of Prometheus in the final chapter of Anthem, Ayn Rand writes:

When I shall have read all the books and learned my new way, when my home will be ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day, for the last time, into the cursed City of my birth. . . . I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers. . . . And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the first chapter in the new history of man. (100–101)

Had Prometheus returned to the “cursed City” of his birth, in what form would his “new way” have been presented to those still living there? Anthem does not say. However, Ayn Rand’s personal papers allow us to speculate. An obscure 1941 essay called “The Individualist Manifesto” suggests a possible form. With certain adjustments, one can imagine Prometheus slipping into the City and distributing this essay among his “fellow-builders.” Apparently, Ayn Rand conceived the manifesto with a similar end in mind; only her audience lay in twentieth century America.

“The Individualist Manifesto” was Ayn Rand’s first extended nonfiction essay in English. Its theme is the political philosophy presented in Anthem. Interestingly, there are traces of the manifesto and thus of Anthem in The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand nowhere states that these three works are linked as a group. Yet, evidence encompassing the years 1937 through 1946 in her personal papers suggests that these works are linked and that Anthem is their intellectual source. Ayn Rand once referred to The Fountainhead as the child of Anthem. If so, the manifesto might be best described as Anthem’s nonfiction twin brother.¹

“The Individualist Manifesto” was written in 1941, approximately two and one-half years after the publication of Anthem and two years before the publication of The Fountainhead. The essay was intended as the mission statement for a conservative intellectual union proposed by Ayn Rand and Channing Pollock, a playwright and conservative activist.² Rand wrote the manifesto in order to rouse the post–Wendell Willkie, anti–New Deal conservatives of the time with a moral defense of capitalism. The document, she writes, would “present the whole groundwork of our ‘Party Line’ and be a basic document, such as the Communist Manifesto was on the other side.” In a letter to Pollock, she writes: “Evasion and compromise have killed all pro-capitalist movements so far. I think the tragedy of Capitalism from the beginning has been the lack of a consistent ideology of its own.” Referring to the pre-existing “hodgepodge” of “Collectivist-Christian-Equalitarian-Humanitarian concepts,” she asked: “Are we to be the ones who will clear it up?”³

By 1943 The Fountainhead was the most complete statement in print of Rand’s moral philosophy and its detailed application to human life. However, it was not the first statement of her moral philosophy. In 1938, five years before the publication of The Fountainhead, she writes in a letter that Anthem is “in a way, my manifesto, my profession of faith, the essence of my entire philosophy.”⁴ She expresses this view again eight years later in a 1946 letter to Leonard Read, publisher of the American edition of Anthem: “my whole theory of ethics is contained in Anthem. That was my first statement of it on paper. Everything I said in The Fountainhead is in Anthem, though a briefer, less detailed form, but there explicitly, for all to see who are interested in ideas.”⁵

Inserting a “whole theory of ethics” in a literary work is a new development for Rand. Anthem is her first attempt to do so. And as we shall see, “The Individualist Manifesto” expands upon the political implications of her ethics.

Anthem is a major intellectual turning point. It presents a “whole theory.” By contrast, the philosophical content of pre-Anthem fiction is indirect and unsystematic. We the Living, Ideal, the screenplays, scenarios, and short stories apply individualism, a morality assumed to be true. The stories dramatize how individualism is enacted and expressed—or show what happens to people and to their societies in its absence. But they do not define a moral code. They are not concerned with good and evil per se.⁶ By contrast, Anthem makes the re-defining of good and evil an integral part of the story’s structure.

Anthem is a chronicle of good and evil. The story is told, initially, in the first person plural and is set in a world that has lost its memory of the concept “I.” An aspiring young scientist, assigned by the state to become a street sweeper, recounts in his journal his discovery of the electric light. According to the world’s moral code—one that holds the collective as the standard of the good—both his diary and his discovery are sins. By thinking independently and by affirming personal preference, he has defied the ethics of collectivism. Conscientiously, he admits his “sin.” However, he is unable to deny his love and pursuit of knowledge. Thus, he is unable to reconcile his pursuit with a moral code that regards it as evil. The hero faces a dilemma. He aspires to act morally. (He is not amoral.) Yet, his effort to act morally only further unravels his connection to the world and its collectivist code. The final break occurs when, as an act of absolution, he brings his invention to the attention of the governing “World Council.” In doing so, he believes he acts to benefit the collective. However, the Council recoils and seeks to destroy him. He escapes with his life—a value his existing moral concepts do not recognize and, therefore, cannot defend or uphold. Later, in the relative solitude of the final two chapters, the hero rediscovers the missing component of a proper morality: the concept of the thinking, willing “ego” or “I.” In doing so, he answers the world of collectivism and discovers the philosophical foundation of political individualism.

In a letter to Lorine Pruette, Ayn Rand writes that “[t]he last two chapters are the actual anthem.”⁷ In these final chapters, she presents her “whole theory of ethics” and its political consequences. The presentation involves two steps:

First, in the penultimate chapter, Rand presents the philosophic foundation of her ethics (94–97). Here the hero discovers three crucial facts: the “primacy” of his existence, the fact that he thinks, and that he is capable of personal preference and judgment. (“I am. I think. I will.”) Thereafter, he describes man’s approach to truth and happiness. “Truth” is not an impersonal, detached realm; nor is “happiness” subjective and cut off from truth. As the kind of being that he is—the existing, thinking and judging being that he knows himself to be—he must seek truth, if he is to live. And he is able to pursue happiness, which motivates his continued living.

Second, in the final chapter, Rand presents the social consequences of her ethics (98–105). Here the hero explains that a proper society requires the concept of inalienable, individual rights. As the events in Anthem demonstrate, the concept of “rights” enables man to preserve his life in a social setting. His thought, his judgment, his independence—and their enactment in a productive life—has only one social requirement: that his rights remain inviolable. If these rights are spelled out and their protection delegated to the state, man’s freedom to act is protected from the threat of force. He can pursue his own life without the fear that force initiated by others will imperil him without recourse.

Ayn Rand elaborates the political implications of Anthem at length in “The Individualist Manifesto.” The manifesto advocates the primacy of the individual over the collective. And it defends capitalism as a moral ideal.⁸

The manifesto opens with a one-page platform of principles followed by a thirty-two-page analysis of the “the basic issue of the world today.” “In the name of Man’s dignity, Man’s honor and the integrity of Man’s spirit,” the manifesto affirms the principle of “inalienable individual rights” and its various forms: “the right of life,” “the right of liberty,” “the right to the pursuit of happiness.” The “unconditional” possession of these rights by the individual “precede and limit” any claims by any “collective” of men: “these rights are granted to Man not by the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective; that these rights are Man’s protection against all other men.” “That the State exists for Man and not Man for the State.”

Following this credo is an analysis of totalitarianism (“the greatest threat to mankind and civilization”) and how not to fight this trend (“Once men have accepted the enemy’s faith—it is bankrupt”). The essay identifies the proper weapon (“a positive credo”) embodied by “individualism.” After several pages on the fallacy of “the common good” (“a holy absolute without limitations that made all tyrants possible”), the manifesto proposes a two-part division of proper human activity. There is “the Creative” sphere which embraces every productive activity, including the creation of culture. There is “the Political” sphere which concerns men and their relations with other men. Properly defined, these two spheres are complementary. The Individual, as the source of wealth and production is the active force which the political sphere encourages by allowing the individual to function. Government is a limited instrument designed to protect individual rights: “States and Governments have never contributed anything to civilization—except in a negative manner, in allowing the Individual to function.” And the source of the great productive burst in the West during the past 150 years, the development of “Capitalism,” confirms that the source of man’s well-being is civilization: “every page of history screams to us that there is and ever has been but one source of civilization: Individual Man in Individual Freedom.”

The middle section of the manifesto identifies two conflicting principles from history. They are the “Active Man” versus the “Passive Man”: The “Active Man” principle “is the desire for independence, for responsibility, for personal achievement, and a hatred of all compulsion. The second [“Passive Man” principle] is the desire to rest, to be safe, to be told by a kind father and to submit. The degree to which we follow the first and submerge the second is the degree of our worth as human beings.” A society geared to the requirements of the Passive Man destroys not only the Active Man, but Passive Man as well. However, a society geared towards the Active Man raises everyone, including the Passive Man. “The basic requirement of the Active Man is freedom.” After a look at the societies that result from each principle, the manifesto asks: “What, then, is the best and highest system of society? Let us have the courage to say it: THE HIGHEST SYSTEM OF SOCIETY IS THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.”

What follows is a moral analysis of the elements of capitalism. Interestingly, it shows that profit, personal choice, prices and wages, wealth and its creation, physical and mental labor, capital, production, private property are not merely economic considerations. They are tied to the requirements of human life:

And one of the greatest achievements of the Capitalist system is the manner in which a man’s natural, healthy egoism is made to profit both him and society. Capitalism does not demand a preposterous reversal of all human instincts, which is not possible and would not be desirable if it were possible. It does not require a miracle to be performed upon human nature. It takes this nature as it is and offers it a fair, sane, decent way of functioning. It does not attempt to emasculate the human spirit. Selfishness is a magnificent force. A system which makes use of it, which allows us to exercise it without injury to our brothers is a noble system.

The next section discusses the alleged improvements proposed by collectivist planning and the actual impact of such planning on civil rights, security, and the management of industry—as well as their ultimate impact upon human beings.⁹ The section concludes with a refutation of the collectivist charge of capitalism’s alleged abuses: poverty, waste and duplication, unemployment.

The final section of the manifesto analyzes the reasons why capitalism has been eroded and why its defenders are in a state of self-doubt, despite capitalism’s unmatched record of producing material abundance. The manifesto argues that capitalism’s alleged abuses are flaws made possible by an encroaching collectivism. Even a false ideal such as “the common good” shows the power of morality, which is why a moral defense of a truth like capitalism is necessary: “Collectivism is not new. It is the principle of the Dark Ages and of primitive barbarism. Capitalism is new and very young. . . . The Collectivist developments within the Capitalist System were not an inherent necessity of the system. They were merely the backward pull, the resistance of the old, the reversal to the easier, habitual methods of the Passive type of humanity.” “Capitalism has never found its ‘ideology.’ It has been rushing along, too busy to think. But the time has come for it to speak, to formulate its own faith and its own ideal.” The manifesto’s final pages return to the basic choice: individualism versus collectivism, which includes the invitation: “Individualists of the World, Unite!”

The similarities between Anthem and the manifesto are numerous. Both works view man as a solitary, thinking individual. Both state that proper social relations require respect for rights. Neither of the works objects to human society as long as it is a proper one. The hero in Anthem affirms the benefits of living among other individuals. He even speaks of returning to the world he has fled in order to save his friends, that they might join him in creating a society that respects individual rights. Likewise, the manifesto affirms, in the name of man’s “spirit” or ego, the same “inalienable, individual rights” referred to in Anthem, rights which are the moral basis of a proper defense of capitalism.

But the similarities do not end here. They extend to The Fountainhead as well.

In a letter to Samuel B. Pettengill, former congressman and the head of the Transportation Association of America, Ayn Rand writes:

I shall be eager to hear your opinion of The Fountainhead. It is actually an illustrated message, in fiction form, of my “Individualist Manifesto.” I have taken the basic principles of the “Manifesto” and shown them in concrete action and in human terms, how they work, what they do to people, what are their psychological roots and their practical consequences.¹⁰

Anthem, “The Individualist Manifesto” and The Fountainhead, while stand-alone works, do share proximity of creation. The planning of one (or more) work precedes or follows the completion of another.¹¹ Therefore, one can read in two different directions: either from Anthem to the manifesto (and The Fountainhead) or from The Fountainhead back to the manifesto (and Anthem). These connections reveal Rand’s intellectual focus on egoism and its political implications. Even so, their order of publication affirms more than a coincidental relationship. It suggests an order of development. Ideas originated in Anthem are developed further by its twin brother, the manifesto. Then they reach their culmination in Anthem’s son, The Fountainhead.¹²

The literary and philosophic similarities among these three works are striking. There are reoccurring concepts such as the “dark ages,” “light,” “truth,” “legends,” the “individual,” “spirit,” “happiness,” “the Collective.” There is also similarity of style. Within sections of each work, the writing is in the form of an appeal—as a credo, a manifesto, a defense. Certain situations are expressed and re-expressed from work to work: there is the lone inventor in Anthem; the “Creative Man” of the manifesto; Howard Roark, the first-hander of The Fountainhead. In opposition are philosophical antagonists, respectively: “The Collective” in Anthem; the “Passive Man” in the manifesto; Ellsworth Toohey, the “second hander” of The Fountainhead.

Numerous passages appear to flow uninterrupted from one work to the other.

In Anthem, the hero reinvents the electric light and brings it before the elected World Council. The manifesto refers to a “Final Planning Board, the Economic ruler of the World,” which

is elected by a free and general vote of all men and that it is composed of the greatest specialists and the best minds of mankind. Let us suppose that a new invention is offered to this Board. It is startling and revolutionary, as all great innovations have always been. The Board has to decide by collective judgment—by a majority vote.¹³

In Anthem, the World Council rejects the light as evil and the hero escapes with his life. The manifesto ponders a similar situation:

But what happens if the Planning Board of a Collectivist society rejects an invention? That is the end. The inventor has no place to go, no action to take, no help to find. He is alone—and utterly helpless—against the will of the majority.

The manifesto draws the point to its ultimate consequences:

What if such a Board had rejected just one innovator—Pasteur? Ask the millions who would have died by now but for his discoveries.¹⁴

On the issue of happiness, Anthem states:

My joy is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is the reason of reasons. This earth is mine. This earth exists but as a field for my desires and for the choice of my will. I am upon this earth but for the joy I wrest from it. What blind vanity, what folly can command me to live for pain? But there is no joy unless it be my joy. (236)

Similarly, in the manifesto, Rand writes about happiness:

A man’s happiness is not anti-social, but un-social; it is a private domain which society has no right to touch. A general happiness cannot be created out of general suffering and self-sacrifice. The only happy society is a society of happy Individuals.¹⁵

Regarding the mythic figure of Prometheus in Anthem, Rand writes:

I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and he brought it to men. . . . And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of light must suffer. His name was Prometheus. (243)

In The Fountainhead, Prometheus reappears:

That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has told about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures each day—because he had stolen the light of the gods.¹⁶

Passages concerning martyrs and truth also link Anthem, the manifesto, and The Fountainhead.

On martyrs, Anthem states:

Now I look ahead. My future is clear before me. The Saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth. (244)

Likewise the manifesto states:

The Collective has contributed nothing to Man’s progress—save the impediments. The history of mankind’s benefactors is the history of martyrs. Most of them were fought, opposed and ridiculed for years before they won their battle.¹⁷

This theme appears in The Fountainhead as follows:

It is an algebraic formula. History will give you the specific figures to insert. The history of mankinds [sic] benefactors is the history of martyrs. In all the centuries that followed there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals and their truths were different, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed and the response they received—hatred.¹⁸

On “truth,” several statements link all three works. From Anthem:

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. All things come to my judgment, and I weigh all things, and I seal upon them my “Yes” or my “No.” Thus is Truth born. (234)

From the manifesto:

Not a single great genius has ever been actuated by the motive of “service.” Not one of them was moved by a selfless devotion to his fellow-men. Every genius is motivated by a profoundly selfish devotion to his own convictions, to the integrity of his own thought, to his own truth.¹⁹

And, finally, from The Fountainhead:

This truth was his only concern and his only motive. His own truth as he saw it, and his own work to achieve it his own way. A symphony, a book, an engine, a philosophy, an airplane or a building—that was his goal and his life.²⁰

If Anthem defined a “whole new theory of ethics,” then in “The Individualist Manifesto,” Ayn Rand elaborated a view of politics on the basis of which she could defend capitalism as a moral ideal. Although her manifesto did not rally conservatives as she had hoped, this nonfiction twin brother of Anthem was not completely unrealized. In a highly condensed form, the manifesto was eventually published for a mass audience.²¹ In 1945, Burt MacBride, senior editor of Reader’s Digest, wrote to Ayn Rand, soliciting from her a short essay for the magazine’s column, “Drama in Everyday Life.”²² After sending her several samples to provide the “dope” on the column, Rand responded in March of 1946, apologizing for the delay and expressing her interest in doing articles for the magazine: “I have several ideas in mind which, I think, would interest you. . . .” She asked to leave the matter open due to a pressing work schedule.²³

In July 1946 she wrote to MacBride suggesting Anthem in lieu of a new article. MacBride’s response was mixed: he praised Anthem but indicated that something more factual in the way of a critique of communism was needed. Rand’s response, interestingly, recapitulates issues raised in “The Individualist Manifesto.” She writes:

Thank you for your very interesting letter. One paragraph in it startled me as an instance that belongs in the “thought transference” or “funny coincidence” department. In case you have not kept a copy of your letter. I quote:

‘What is needed is an abecedarian, primer-like question-and-answer pamphlet that is absolutely clear, straight to the point, and hard-hitting because it presents facts. Who is there who will write that sort of eye-opener for Joe Zilch and his wife?’

Well, you will find the answer enclosed [referring to the content of her letter].

Ayn Rand continues her letter, pointing out the need for new ideas:

That is why true and factual books about the horrors of Soviet Russia are and will continue to be ineffectual. That is why they will not cure Americans of sympathy for the Kremlin, nor check the trend toward collectivism in America. Facts alone won’t do it. Only the proper philosophy derived from the facts, will.”²⁴

Although MacBride did not accept Rand’s offer of Anthem, he did, at an earlier point, accept a revision of “The Individualist Manifesto.” After Rand submitted a shortened draft renamed “The Individualist Credo,” the essay was ultimately published by the Reader’s Digest in 1944 as “The Only Path to Tomorrow.”

In Anthem, Ayn Rand asks how “men who knew the word ‘I,’ could give it up and not know what they lost.” Perhaps, she writes, men of “clear sight and clean soul” had “cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no heed to their warning” (103). Perhaps. Or maybe these protestors knew the facts “I” and “ego” but not the “proper philosophy derived from the facts.” By contrast, Ayn Rand published Anthem and “The Individualist Manifesto” in her own “cursed City” of twentieth century politics. She offered “fellow-builders” (those whose spirits have “not been killed”) a “proper philosophy” based on man’s ego and, therefore, the promise of human life.²⁵

Reprinted from the English Language edition of Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” edited by Robert Mayhew and originally published by Lexington Books, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., Lanham, MD, USA. Copyright © by the author. Published in the English language by arrangement with Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, reprinting, or on any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.

1. Ayn Rand, “The Individualist Manifesto,” c. 1941: 23, version ARP 32-06-90-A, Ayn Rand Archives. This essay was privately circulated in 1941 and has not been republished. For The Fountainhead as the “child” of Anthem, see Ayn Rand to Henry Blanke, September 5, 1946. Michael S. Berliner, ed., Letters of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton, 1995), 315.

   I would like to thank Robert Mayhew for his valuable editorial suggestions, Shoshana Milgram for her historic insight, as well as Michael S. Berliner, Marc Baer, and Donna Montrezza for their helpful comments.

2. Ayn Rand wrote “The Individualist Manifesto” in April 1941, thirteen months after the last dated entry in the first draft of The Fountainhead (May 11, 1940, The Fountainhead, first draft, Ayn Rand Papers at the Library of Congress, Reel 12, Part A (223), Special Collections, Ayn Rand Archives). Work on The Fountainhead would not resume until December 11, 1941, a work stoppage of almost 19 months. After resuming the novel, the first draft of Roark’s speech is dated November 14, 1942, a scant two months before her contracted delivery date of the entire manuscript—over one and one-half years after completing “The Individualist Manifesto.” The manifesto was composed when The Fountainhead lay unfinished. The philosophy in The Fountainhead had yet to be stated explicitly, while the philosophy in Anthem had been stated.
3. Ayn Rand to Channing Pollock, May 1, 1941. Berliner, Letters, 46.
4. Ayn Rand to Newman Flower, January 2, 1938, ARP 86-18-15, Ayn Rand Archives.
5. Ayn Rand to Leonard Read, May 18, 1946. Berliner, Letters, 275.
6. I am indebted to Shoshana Milgram for this observation.
7. Ayn Rand to Lorine Pruette, October 28, 1946. Berliner, Letters, 336.
8. Rand, “Manifesto,” 1–33. This endnote encompasses the six-paragraph summary that follows.
9. In a cogent example, she writes: “Three million peasants died of starvation in the great Soviet famine. We know that the famine was deliberately planned. But the Communists claim that it was due merely to a mistake of the government. Let us accept their explanation. It is more horrible. A ruling authority whose single mistake can take three million lives is a monster unequaled in history.” Rand, “Manifesto,” 26.
10. Ayn Rand to Samuel B. Pettengill, June 13, 1943. Berliner, Letters, 76.
11. This overlap is true of a considerable portion of Ayn Rand’s work preceding Atlas Shrugged.
12. A word about a separate unfinished work: “The Moral Basis of Individualism.” (See David Harriman, ed., Journals of Ayn Rand [New York: Dutton, 1997], 244–310.) “The Moral Basis” concerns ethical egoism and its foundations.

    The Fountainhead’s publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, suggested a companion book which would present the novel’s moral and political ideas in nonfiction form. Ayn Rand’s working title was “The Moral Basis of Individualism.” Work on the book began in 1943 and continued, alongside other projects, until 1946. It was never finished. As recounted by David Harriman:

    There seem to be two reasons why she lost interest in writing [The Moral Basis of Individualism]. Years later, she recalled that in the early stages of planning she had concluded that “it was useless to present a morality without a metaphysics and epistemology.” Second, her primary interest was fiction writing.

    She explained that

    the idea of writing a philosophical nonfiction book bored me; in such a book, the purpose would actually be to teach others, to present my ideas to them. In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, if, and to the extent that, they can. (Harriman, Journals, 243)

    The unfinished “Moral Basis” is a transitional work and it likely clarified the need to address metaphysics and epistemology, subjects later taken up by “Galt’s speech” in Atlas Shrugged. Her final novel, Atlas Shrugged, can be viewed as the systematic fulfillment of the (moral) philosophy first presented in Anthem. Only now, by introducing metaphysics and epistemology, the literary and artistic scope of her novel increased accordingly and necessarily.

13. Rand, “Manifesto,” 22.
14. Rand, “Manifesto,” 23.
15. Rand, “Manifesto,” 21.
16. The excerpts cited here and in notes 18 and 20 are from the earliest draft of Roark’s speech because they are the closest to “The Individualist Manifesto” in the order of creation. (See note 2.) Rand, The Fountainhead, Library of Congress, Reel 14, Part A (569). Cf. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943; Signet fiftieth anniversary paperback edition, 1993), 679.
17. Rand, “Manifesto,” 7.
18. Rand, The Fountainhead,Library of Congress, Reel 14, Part A (569). Cf. Rand, Fountainhead, 679.
19. Rand, “Manifesto,” 7 (emphasis added).
20. Rand, The Fountainhead, Library of Congress, Reel 14, Part A (571). Cf. Rand, Fountainhead, 680.
21. The failure of the “The Individualist Manifesto” to rally conservatives is best explained by the incoherence of the conservatives’ philosophical views. Capitalism requires a philosophical base of reason and ethical egoism, not religious faith and altruism. For Rand’s view of the conservative movement, see “Conservatism: An Obituary,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library, 1966; Signet expanded paperback edition, 1967).
22. Burt MacBride to Ayn Rand, December 20, 1945, ARP 149-33-M-A, Ayn Rand Archives.
23. Ayn Rand to Burt MacBride, March 23, 1946, ARP 149-33-M-A, Ayn Rand Archives.
24. Ayn Rand to Burt MacBride, July 30, 1946, ARP 149-33-M-A, Ayn Rand Archives (emphasis added).
25. Ayn Rand, “The Only Path to Tomorrow,” in The Ayn Rand Column, ed. Peter Schwartz (New Milford, CT: Second Renaissance Books, 1991), 114. I would like to thank Shoshana Milgram for her suggestion to situate “The Individualist Manifesto” into the narrative of Anthem, which I have done in the opening and closing paragraphs of this essay.