We The Living By Ayn Rand

[Nell Barreto]

Thisreport documents the challenges associated with not paying workers in the homeless response sector a living wage. It highlights the potential impacts of higher pay for these workers, such as improved productivity, morale, and retention, which could, in turn, improve the quality and continuity of client care.

Rising costs of living are a top concern across the country. This is particularly important for organizations that seek to support vulnerable populations. This report explores what constitutes a living wage in Los Angeles County and the barriers preventing workers in the homeless response sector from receiving such a wage. The authors examined what a living wage is in Los Angeles County using fair market rents for various unit sizes and several family configurations. They then collected data on wages listed in job postings within Los Angeles County for frontline and management occupations in the homeless response sector to assess earning potential. They find that workers at nonprofit organizations, particularly frontline staff, often do not earn a living wage, which contributes to the financial, emotional, and health burdens that these workers face. This is likely to affect employee productivity and retention as well as the quality and continuity of client care.

RAND is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.

We the Living is the debut novel of the Russian American novelist Ayn Rand. It is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia and was Rand's first statement against communism. Rand observes in the foreword that We the Living was the closest she would ever come to writing an autobiography. Rand finished writing the novel in 1934, but it was rejected by several publishers before being released by Macmillan Publishing in 1936.[1] It has since sold more than three million copies.[2]

The story takes place from 1922 to 1925, in post-revolutionary Russia. Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois family. An independent spirit with a will to match, she rejects any attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet state to cast her into a mold. At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the Bolshevik revolutionaries. Kira's father had been the owner of a textile factory, which was seized and nationalized. Having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the victories of the Red Army, the family returns to the city in search of livelihood. They find that their home has also been seized and converted to living quarters for several families.

Kira's family eventually manages to find living quarters, and Kira's father gets a license to open a textile shop, an establishment that is but a shadow of his old firm. Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times; living standards are poor, and weary citizens wait in long queues for meager rations of food and fuel. With some effort, Kira manages to obtain her Labor Book, which permits her to study and work. Kira also manages to enroll in the Technological Institute, where she aspires to fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer. At the Institute, Kira meets fellow student Andrei Taganov, an idealistic Communist and an officer in the GPU (the Soviet secret police). The two share a mutual respect and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political beliefs, and become friends.

In a chance encounter, Kira meets Leo Kovalensky, an attractive man with a free spirit. It is love at first sight for Kira, and she throws herself at Leo, who initially takes her to be a prostitute. He is also strongly attracted to her and promises to meet her again. Kira and Leo are shown to be united by their desperate lives and their beliefs that run counter to what is being thrust on them by the state. After a couple of meetings, when they share their deep contempt for the state of their lives, the two plan to escape the country together.

Kira and Leo are caught while attempting to flee the country, but escape imprisonment with the help of a GPU officer who knew Leo's father before the revolution. Kira leaves her parents' apartment and moves into Leo's. She is expelled from the Technological Institute as the result of a purge of all students connected to the bourgeoisie, and she loses her job as well. The relationship between Kira and Leo, intense and passionate in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the weight of their hardships and their different reactions. Kira keeps her ideas and aspirations alive, but decides to go along with the system until she feels powerful enough to challenge it. Leo, in contrast, sinks slowly into indifference and depression. He contracts tuberculosis and is prescribed treatment in a sanatorium. Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her appeals to the authorities to get state help fall on deaf ears.

As Kira's relationship with Leo evolves, so does her relationship with Andrei. Despite their political differences, she finds Andrei to be the one person with whom she can discuss her most intimate thoughts and views. Andrei's affection and respect for Kira slowly turns into love. When he confesses his love to Kira, she is dismayed but also desperate, so she feigns love for Andrei and agrees to become his mistress. She uses money from Andrei to fund Leo's treatment.

Leo returns cured of tuberculosis and healthy, but a changed man. He opens a food store that is a front for black market trade, bribing a GPU officer to look the other way. Andrei, who is concerned that corruption is damaging the communist state, starts investigating the store. He arrests Leo and in the process discovers that Kira has secretly been living with Leo. Disillusioned about both his personal relationship and his political ideals, Andrei secures Leo's release and shortly thereafter commits suicide. Kira, perhaps the only genuine mourner at his state funeral, wonders if she has killed him. Having lost any moral sense that he may have left, Leo leaves Kira to begin a new life as a gigolo. After Leo's departure, Kira makes a final attempt to cross the border. Almost in sight of freedom, she is shot by a border guard and dies.

Ayn Rand was born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, then capital of the Russian Empire, to a bourgeois family whose property was expropriated by the Bolshevik government after the 1917 Russian Revolution.[3] Concerned about her safety due to her strong anti-communist views, Rand's family helped her emigrate to the United States in 1926.[4] She moved to Hollywood, where she obtained a job as a junior screenwriter and also worked on other writing projects.[5] In 1929 she began a novel under the working title Airtight: A Novel of Red Russia; it drew on her experiences to depict life in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and criticize the Soviet government and communist ideology.[6]

The novel was first completed in 1934. Despite support from H. L. Mencken, who deemed it "a really excellent piece of work",[7][8] it was rejected by several publishers until September 1935, when George Platt Brett of Macmillan Publishing agreed to publish it. Brett's decision was not without controversy within Macmillan. Associate editor Granville Hicks, then a member of the Communist Party USA, was strongly opposed to publishing Rand's novel. Rand later said that Brett was unsure whether the novel would turn a profit, but he thought it was a book that ought to be published. The first edition was issued on April 7, 1936.[1][9]

The initial American publication of We the Living was not a commercial success. Macmillan did not expect the novel to sell and did little marketing.[10] Initial sales were slow and although they picked up later, Macmillan destroyed the plates before the first printing of 3000 copies sold out. Eighteen months after its release, the novel was out of print.[11] Rand's royalties from the first American edition amounted to $100.[12]

There was also a British publication by Cassell in January 1937, and editions were published in Denmark and Italy. These did considerably better than the American release, remaining in print into the 1940s.[13]

In 1957, Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged became a best-seller for Random House. Its success motivated them to republish We the Living in 1959. In preparation for the new edition, Rand made some changes to the text. In her foreword to the revised edition, Rand declared that "In brief, all the changes are merely editorial line changes."[14] Rand's description notwithstanding, some of the changes have been taken to have philosophical significance. In the first edition,[15] Kira said to Andrei, "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods." In the second edition, this became simply "I loathe your ideals." A few pages later, Kira said to Andrei, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"[16] Rand's revision deleted this sentence.[17]

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