Genuinely curious how you see Orwell criticizing capitalism in Animal Farm? That would be a level of nuance that I didn’t take away from it when reading it as a kid, and certainly not one I have ever seen from anyone who considers it an important work. It has always been presented to me as a pretty straightforward critique of the Stalinist USSR.
The allegory gets dicey when you consider the distinction between Capitalism and Feudalism but: the story begins with the revolution against the Farmer Mr. Jones who obviously is a symbolic stand-in for the ruling class. The story ends with the pigs under napoleon playing cards and drinking with the local human farmers from the surrounding areas and the other animals watching them and finding human and pig being literally and figuratively indistinguishable from one another. The essence of the story is a cautionary tale about how revolutionary politics can end with the same systems of oppression and class being replicated and reinstated. Orwell I think was pretty explicit in his critique of the USSR and Stalin, but the entire reason why Napoleon and the Pigs in Animal farm are the villains is that they ultimately betray the spirit of the revolution and choose to enrich themselves and effectively become no different than the ruling class they overthrew.
That makes sense, I guess. I think it’s generous to Orwell to read this as any kind of meaningful criticism of capitalism, when his focus is so clearly on those who betray the revolution, rather than what came before the revolution. But I guess this reading does track with Orwell being a favourite read of Trots and other purity-obssesed western leftists who would rather support a capitalist system (or even outright fascism) rather than an imperfect socialist one. It’s essentially a cautionary tale that revolutions aren’t worth it, because they’re corruptible.
Genuinely curious how you see Orwell criticizing capitalism in Animal Farm? That would be a level of nuance that I didn’t take away from it when reading it as a kid, and certainly not one I have ever seen from anyone who considers it an important work. It has always been presented to me as a pretty straightforward critique of the Stalinist USSR.
The allegory gets dicey when you consider the distinction between Capitalism and Feudalism but: the story begins with the revolution against the Farmer Mr. Jones who obviously is a symbolic stand-in for the ruling class. The story ends with the pigs under napoleon playing cards and drinking with the local human farmers from the surrounding areas and the other animals watching them and finding human and pig being literally and figuratively indistinguishable from one another. The essence of the story is a cautionary tale about how revolutionary politics can end with the same systems of oppression and class being replicated and reinstated. Orwell I think was pretty explicit in his critique of the USSR and Stalin, but the entire reason why Napoleon and the Pigs in Animal farm are the villains is that they ultimately betray the spirit of the revolution and choose to enrich themselves and effectively become no different than the ruling class they overthrew.
That makes sense, I guess. I think it’s generous to Orwell to read this as any kind of meaningful criticism of capitalism, when his focus is so clearly on those who betray the revolution, rather than what came before the revolution. But I guess this reading does track with Orwell being a favourite read of Trots and other purity-obssesed western leftists who would rather support a capitalist system (or even outright fascism) rather than an imperfect socialist one. It’s essentially a cautionary tale that revolutions aren’t worth it, because they’re corruptible.