Animal Farm is Brilliant (But Slightly Flawed)
A Review of Orwell’s “Fairy Story” for Totalitarianism
Why You Should Read Animal Farm (1945) — No Spoilers
In 1937, the USSR underwent a brutal event known as the “Great Purge.” Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Secretary-General of the Communist Party, the Soviet government persecuted political dissidents in a series of high-profile trials. “[T]he cases were fabricated by the secret police” and the dissidents ‘confessed’ their guilt to these fabricated crimes “under pressure of intensive torture and intimidation” (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020).
But the Great Purge did not end at the Soviet border. The manhunts precipitated in Spain where the Soviets had taken control of the government after a grueling civil war exemplified Stalin’s extensive influence. It was in this way that George Orwell learned about the true terror of totalitarianism. “We were very lucky to get out of Spain alive,” he recalled in his 1947 preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm (1947 preface). “Many of our friends were shot, and others spent a long time in prison or simply disappeared.”
Yet, it was not merely the commission of these atrocities that prompted Orwell to write Animal Farm (an allegory for the Russian Revolution), it was in fact the ignorance of the West regarding such atrocities. After experiencing the ruthlessness of totalitarianism first-hand, Orwell returned to England to find “numerous sensible and well-informed observers believing the most fantastic accounts of conspiracy, treachery and sabotage which the press reported from the Moscow trials” (1947 preface). According to Orwell, the democratic West could not see the USSR for the horror it really was “partly [because] they do not want to understand (i.e. they want to believe that, somewhere, a really Socialist country does actually exist), and partly [because], being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life, totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them” (1947 preface).
More than seven decades later, the West still does not want to understand, and totalitarianism is still incomprehensible to us.
Animal Farm is, therefore, a somber lesson for the free peoples of the earth at this crucial moment in history. It is a rather straightforward “fairy story” containing the indispensable truth that the centralization of government power and the abandonment of free speech are the first steps down the dark path to totalitarianism. And the conditions that give rise to totalitarianism are upon us: A global crisis, a polarized political climate, and a culture of silencing or shaming ideological dissidents erode the nutrients necessary for freedom and leave the soil perfectly composed for the spread of authority. Orwell’s novella warns us of the dangerous consequences of allowing that authority to spread unabated and unchecked — consequences which show no mercy for good intentions or naïveté.
While Animal Farm fits perfectly into the reading lists of Conservatives, Classical Liberals, and all advocates for liberty, it is an especially important book for Socialists. Indeed, I believe Socialists would benefit from reading more Conservative books in general; however, Animal Farm is of particular note because the author himself was a Socialist. Orwell wrote that “nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country . . . . I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement” (1947 preface).
And this so helpfully brings us to the next section:
Why Orwell Was Wrong About Socialism — Spoilers
As mentioned above, Animal Farm is an allegory, “the various episodes are taken from the actual history of the Russian Revolution” (1947 preface). The porcine dictator Napoleon is a representation of Stalin. Orwell properly characterizes this authoritarian — and the Socialism he proclaims — as unequivocally evil. But he wrongly preserves the idea that a better, “truer” form of Socialism is desirable.
The character of Snowball is based on Leon Trotsky, a communist leader during the Russian Revolution whom Stalin later exiled. Orwell portrays Snowball as the noble foil to Napoleon’s cold and calculated thirst for power; “in glowing sentences” (p. 52) he inspires an optimistic view of the future and he would champion the democratic Sunday-morning Meetings which Napoleon is quick to cease as soon as his dogs chase Snowball off the farm (p. 54). Orwell builds the sense that if only things had been different, if only Snowball beat Napoleon and became the rightful leader of Animal Farm, then the animals would have achieved their Utopia.
True, Animal Farm does seem to portray the path to Utopia as fraught with danger. There will doubtlessly be Napoleons to confront and the consequences of losing one of these confrontations are terrible indeed. However, as Orwell presents it, there is still the possibility that Snowball could win — that he could be smart enough to counter the Napoleons, to see them for what they really are and drive them off. It is on this possibility that Orwell hangs his hope.
But this hope is sorely misplaced and would in fact lead to ruin.
Championing democracy and inspiring hope in an optimistic future to work towards are some of Snowball’s noble qualities; but his support for the Socialist belief in central planning (pp. 32, 47–48) is not one of them. Beyond the immense inefficiencies of a centrally planned economy, it is fundamentally wrong to force morally autonomous individuals to commit their labor and resources to causes they do not personally support even if a majority of their fellow citizens want them to.
Sure, there is a narrow range of public goods the government must dutifully provide, e.g., defending Animal Farm against invasion and building the windmill both required authoritative organization to solve the coordination problems associated with those tasks. However, decisions such as which crops to plant, how to harvest and distribute them, and how long and hard individuals must labor to produce them are outside the legitimate domain of the government. Liberty is at the heart of the dignity of morally autonomous people. A system in which a person’s labor belongs to others, not to themselves, is a system of slavery, the antithesis of liberty.
Orwell, G. (1945/2020). Animal Farm (75th anniversary ed.). New York: Signet Classics.
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