Orwell & Marx
Animalism vs. Marxism
Orwell & Marx
Animalism vs. Marxism
Here we can find an interesting essay where there is a comparison between Orwell writings and Marx ones. You can find some similarities and some interesting points between these two authors, everything will be compared with book´s citations and examples:
"Every line I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or
indirectly, against totalitarianism," quotes George Orwell in the preface
to the 1956 Signet Classic edition of Animal Farm. The edition, which sold
several millions copies, however, omitted the rest of the sentence: "and
for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.² It is in Animal Farm,
written in 1944 but not published until after World War Two in 1945, which
Orwell offers a political and social doctrine whose ideas and ideols can
be seen in all of his proceeding works. In an essay published in the summer
of 1946 entitled "Why I Write," Orwell claimed to have been motivated over
the preceding ten years by a desire to "make political writing into an
art." In the essay, he states that "in Animal Farm he had for the first
time in his writing career consciously tried to achieve this goal ‹ to
harmonize political concerns with artistry" (Twayne, 17). Orwell, however,
for reasons such as the omitted portion of his preface and misreadings
of his novels, has been mislabeled a traitor of Socialism or a hero to
the right wing by theorists and critics. His book, besides a parody of
Stalinist Russia, intends to show that Russia was not a true democratic
Socialist country. Looked at carefully, Animal Farm is a criticism of Karl
Marx as well as a novel perpetuating his convictions of democratic Socialism;
these are other inherent less discussed qualities in Animal Farm besides
the more commonly read harsh criticism of totalitarianism. Orwell and Marx
differed in their views on Socialism and its effects on religion and nationalism
as well as Socialism's effects on society and its leaders. Orwell shared
many of Marx's viewpoints, but he did not share with Marx the same vision
of a utopian future, only the prospects of a worldwide revolution. "Orwell's
work indicates that he had read Marx with care and understanding. That
he remained unconvinced and highly critical does not mean he did could
not follow Marx's arguments; or rather, it could mean that only to a Marxist"
(Zwerdling, 20). It is in Animal Farm, lesser talked about for the author's
social theories than Nineteen Eighty-Four, that Orwell's criticisms of
Marxism can be seen as well as Orwell's social theory, which can be seen
through a careful reading of what the animals refer to as Animalism. Animalism,
as we will see, has its faults and inaccuracies, but Orwell's use of it
is to put forth his own political and social doctrine based on remedying
those faults. Orwell's Animalism, what I believe to be his moderately Marxist-Leninist
ideology, is different from the animals', but it is Orwell's Animalism
that can best be compared to Marxism.
Animalism, based on the theories of old Major, a prized-boar of Mr.
Jones, is born early on in Animal Farm. The fact that old Major, himself,
is a boar implies that political theory to the masses or a theorist proposing
radical change and revolution are, themselves, bores, in the eyes of the
proletariate more prone to worrying about work and survival. Old Major,
however, is able to gather all the animals on the farm except the sleeping
Moses, the tame raven, for a speech about a dream he had the previous night.
In his talk, old Major tries to explain the animals' place in nature and
how they can get out of it, very much like Marx's writing on the social
consciousness of the proletariate in A Contribution to the Political Economy
and the evil practices of bourgeois-controlled capitalism in The Communist
Manifesto. "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being,"
wrote Marx, "but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness" (preface to A Contribution..., 363). He also called for
revolution by the proletariate in The Communist Manifesto to change the
social structure of the state and its distribution of wealth. Orwell agreed
with Marx's social arguments, but as we will later see, disagreed on many
of his other beliefs. In Animal Farm, we can see his depictions as man
as a social animal and his Socialist ideologies through old Major's very
Marxist speech in the barn: "Why... do we continue in this miserable condition?
Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us
by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems: It
is summed up in a single word ‹ Man. "Man is the only creature that consumes
without producing... He sets [the animals] to work, he gives back to them
the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he
keeps for himself... "Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour
would be our own... That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion! (18-20)"
Old Major, sanctified by the animals after his talk, is the visionary
the animals needed to lead them out of their state of nature. But old Major,
who dies three days after his speech is not a prophet nor is he representative
of the nature of religion in Orwell's view of the state, only as the visionary
philosopher responsible for perpetuating social change. It is Moses, the
lone animal who slept through the speech, that represents religion. Though
his name alone invokes an underlying religious meaning, when we look at
the character and his interactions with the animals do we see his role
as representative of the Church. Moses does no work; he only sits on a
pole and tells tales of a mysterious country called Sugarland Mountain,
where all animals go when they die. Moses, like Marx's view of religious
institutions, is a tool of the state. Feeding off crusts of bread soaked
in beer (an allegory for the body and blood of the ruling bourgeois) left
by Mr. Jones, Moses is his especial pet, feeding lies and stories to the
animals to give them something to live for. After old Major's speech was
heard by the animals and his school of thought, to be known as Animalism,
began to spread across the farm, only Moses was too stubborn to listen
or pay any attention. Interestingly, after the animals successfully revolt,
Moses disappears, only to return a little while later, after Napoleon,
the eventual totalitarian leader of the animals, uses him as a tool just
as Mr. Jones did. He begins to tell his stories again and gets paid in
beer, just as he did before with the animals' leader. Orwell, unlike Marx,
believed religion would not fade away after revolution because there would
always be a people hard on their luck and looking for answers to questions
and places they can go after they die where life is easier. Later, we will
see Orwell's views on revolutions themselves. Orwell believed in a society
that would always have a class of people who would always turn to religion.
Not a dystopian theorist, as many believed after Nineteen Eighty-Four,
Orwell was a theorist who was not in favor of any orthodox theories that
were naive enough to believe such a class of people would not exist. His
books might depict dystopian societies with ruthless leaders, but he did
so to convince people how to stave off the ascension of such leaders. His
reasons were simple ‹ He favored no society where a leader like Josef Stalin,
Big Brother, Napoleon the pig or Napoleon the emperor could emerge to destroy
what could be a suitable society based on democratic Socialism. If such
a society existed, as it does in Animal Farm, the same problems and social
consciousness are still existent. "To accept an orthodoxy,² wrote
Orwell in one of his later essays, "is always to inherit unresolved contradictions²
(Collected Essays..., 411). It is a belief not unlike Leon Trotsky's view
on revolution. "Revolution is full of contradictions,² wrote Trotsky.
"It unfolds only by taking one step back after taking two steps forward²
(Trotsky, xxxviii). The paradox, however, is that Orwell wanted to show
that capitalism was not the only social injustice nor the only cause for
dystopian societies while Trotsky wanted to use the revolutionary process
to overthrow a government.
Orwell believed that a nation would always exist where there are people,
thereby allowing for nationalism, something Marx said, just like religion,
would fade away after the Revolution. The Revolution in Animal Farm, clearly
based on the Russian Revolution, did not keep nationalism from disappearing,
a point Orwell makes clear early on. The animals, after revolting, are
so proud of their newly formed state, that they take a green tablecloth
and paint a white hoof and a horn on it similar to the hammer and sickle
of the former Soviet Union. It is a flag that flies over the newly-named
Animal Farm and at whose base lies a gun taken from a helper of Mr. Jones
and later, the disinterred skull of the old Major.
Looking deeper at Animal Farm, we can see that Orwell's criticism of
Marx through Animalism goes way beyond religion and the nationalism ‹ to
revolution and the nature of man. The gun that sits at the foot of the
flagstaff, besides being a reminder of the Battle of Cowshed, it is also
a criticism on the method behind the Rebellion, thereby a criticism on
Trotsky's methods of revolution as well. Whereas old Major's Animalism
preached revolution through working "day and night, body and soul, for
the overthrow of the human race² (20), the animals revolted with war
and bloodshed, symbolized by the gun and the war cry of Snowball (Trotsky)
at The Battle of Cowshed ‹ "The only good human being is a dead one". A
serious objection by Orwell on Marxism and Trotskyism is their conviction
of Socialism's victory by any means necessary. Though hard-working proletarian
Boxer, after a subsequent attempt at taking over the farm by the humans,
says, "I have no wish to take life, not even human life" (49), his damage
has already been done, having killed a man. Boxer, representative of the
anti-capitalistic Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in China, may speak of pacifism,
but his words are coming from the mouth of a horse who has killed. To Orwell,
Socialism through warring was just as decadent as what Socialism was supposed
to overthrow ‹ capitalism. Orwell did not want war because it would put
Socialism on the same scale as its enemy because, as Vladimir Lenin wrote,
capitalism led to war ‹ not Socialism. Where Animalism stresses a long
process and some sort of mechanism, "classical Marxism misses the essential
nature of revolution as a complex and extended process. It offers no conception
of the natural sequence of stages in the revolution" (Daniels, 12).
Another criticism Orwell had of Marx was the idea that one man could
foresee the future and predict the actions of men, as Marx had done in
many of writings. Orwell the novelist could write fictional political tales
about the future as he did in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but he believed no
man could accurately understand the nature by which man acts. "The main
weakness of Marxism,² wrote Orwell: "is the failure of human motives...
As it is, a ŒMarxist analysis' of any historical event tends to be a hurried
snap-judgement based on the principle of ciu bono?... Along these lines,
it is impossible to have an intuitive understanding of men's motives, and
therefore impossible to predict their actions² (The English..., 193).
It is a criticism evident after the rebellion in Animal Farm, as each animal's
heart driven motivations drives them to individually try and make life
better for themselves and leads the pigs towards greediness and the eventual
assertion of power. The pigs go through the Jones's farm house and eventually
come away with all its clothing, excess food and alcohol ‹ three things
that eventually set them apart from the rest of the animals. We can see
this lead to the argument, inherent in the episode, that man will always
be driven towards such things as private property ‹ another evident criticism
of Marxist belief. The materialistic understanding of society, however,
is a nod to Marxist analysis, though the notion that men are so different
that can not fully be understood is but another criticism.
Orwell did, however, want the tendencies that lead some men to guide
societies and other men to obey them, to fade away; in effect, he wanted
to change the state of nature that led to hierarchal social structures.
As critic Alex Zwerdling eloquently puts it in Orwell and the Left: "The
born victim and the born ruler; each acts his part in an almost predestined
way. The victim's humility and shame become reflex responses; the ruler
shifts uneasily between arbitrary assertion of power and the guilty gestures
of charity. Orwell suggests that no amount of good will on either side
can make this fundamental property of power tolerable. The task is to shatter
the molds from which such men are made² (18).
Orwell's disgust of the social structure that separated men and economic
classes from one another can clearly be see in an episode from Down and
Out in Paris, where, as a dishwasher, Orwell noticed how social hierarchies
developed everywhere. Referring to the fact that no workers in the hotel
where he washed dishes could wear moustaches, he writes: "This gives some
idea of the elaborate caste system existing in a hotel. Our staff, amounting
to about a hundred and ten, had their prestige graded as accurately as
that of soldiers, and a cook or a waiter was as much above a plongeur as
a captain above a private² (Pages From..., 22). Calling the set-up
of the hotel staff a "caste system,² Orwell implies that there is
very little chance for upward mobility where one is employed as well the
implicit nature of contentment within that system. Those at the bottom,
like the horses in Animal Farm change very little when there are changes
at the top of the system because they just want to do their job; maybe
they want to do their job a little harder now, but nothing else changes
‹ especially their place in society after realizing Napoleon is just another
Mr. Jones.
They are the proletariat, like the plongeur in the hotel who only worries
about keeping his job to keep his children fed and his days filled. It
is a proletariate quite different than Marx's; it is a proletariate unaware
of a lot going on around them and preoccupied with the notion of bringing
home the bacon. Orwell's critique of Marx is that Marx believed too much
in a rationalized, educated proletariate that ‹ asserts Orwell ‹ can never
exist. To Orwell, the proletariate is too easily swayed by its leaders
as well as its guiding ideologies. As mentioned previously, it are the
leaders which Orwell detests just as much as a society that allows them
to emerge.
In Animal Farm, the proletariate is not very swift in recognizing its
situations. The animals, indoctrinated by a discourse of revolution put
forth by the pigs and perpetuated by the Seven Commandments painted on
the barn wall and the song of the revolution ‹ "Beasts of England²
‹ do not realize that as the state of their society changes every time
the discourse gets molded by a leader, it stays the same. The Seven Commandments,
by the end of the novel, eventually become one commandment and "Beasts
of England,² a song taught to the animals by old Major, is replaced
by "Animal Farm," a song taught by Minimus, the poet. "The replacement
of ŒBeasts of England'... Marks the crucial change from collective longing
for a freer existence to a government-enforced enthusiasm for a utopia
officially proclaimed as now achieved" (Twayne, 37). It is the replacement
of "Beasts of England" where Old Major's (Marx's) Animalism, represented
by its lyrics, graphically fails ‹ succumbing to a simple song such as
"Animal Farm". In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell points out the eventual
dystopian drawbacks of governmental control of the social discourse to
a much further extent. In Animal Farm, it is Boxer, the hard-working horse
who gives his life to the cause, who pledges his allegiance to Napoleon;
his speech is indicative of the discourse fed to him day in and day out.
"What Ignazio Silone's Œrank-and-file-Fascist thinks' ‹ ŒIf my leader acts
in this manner, it must be right!' ‹ Boxer says aloud. "Napoleon is always
right,' intones the horse at just the crucial moment when a sign of his
disapproval or even doubt might have stalled, if not thwarted, Napoleon's
bid for sole power" (Twayne, 94-95).
Boxer's trust in his leader is faulty because it is a trust in an orthodox
philosophy of society such as Marxism, according to Orwell. Orwell's view
on society is that of moderate Marxist. It is true that many faults are
found in old Major's (Marx's) Animalism, but they are exploited so much
so as to learn from them and further Orwell's own Animalism based on Marxist
ideologies. Their lessons ‹ Orwell's lessons ‹ are that utopias such as
old Major's might never exist and that an extremist ideology such as Marxism
can never accomplish what it is intended to accomplish. We can see this
if we look to the fact that, "Animalism, obviously communism, is significantly
not instituted according to plan. The rebellion occurs spontaneously: once
again Jones neglects to feed the animals, who break into the barn for food
when Œthey can stand it no longer' (21)² (Lee, 43). The revolution
occurred not because of Marxist theory, but from a natural need ‹ hunger.
This is not to say though, that Orwell did not want change in the system.
Orwell did, like Marx, want revolutionary change to occur and agreed
with the Marxist principle that rebellions would spread and hoped that
they would eventually lead to new democratically Socialist societies. Orwell
did not, though, believe that revolution would be successful. We see this
in Animal Farm when Animalism is suppressed by farmers after word of the
Rebellion and its apparent success spreads and animals turn rebellious.
Though we hear little of these other societies, the idea that revolutionary
social change is bound to occur in them comes in the form of what the farmers
think when they listen to their animals singing Animalism's hymn, "Beasts
of England": "Rumours of a wonderful farm, where the human beings had been
turned out and the animals managed their own affairs, continued to circulate
in vague and distorted forms, and throughout that year a wave of rebelliousness
ran through the countryside. Bulls which had always been tractable suddenly
turned savage, sheep broke down hedges and devoured the clover... The human
beings could not contain their rage when they heard [ŒBeasts of England']...
Any animal caught singing it was given a flogging on the spot... And when
the human beings listened to it, they secretly trembled, hearing in it
a prophecy of their future doom" (45-46). The question emerging from this
scene is how long can these farmers vent their anger on rebellious animals
before those animals are driven so far as to rise up and rebel as Manor
Farm's animals did, if they can at all. When a revolution does occur, however,
as it does on Manor Farm, it eventually shatters and forms a whole new
society in need of another, as it does on Manor Farm, a microcosm of revolutionary
societies. It is a comment on the ever-increasing gap in the distribution
of wealth and its affects on the proletariate as well as a criticism on
Marxist theory of revolutions and dialectic materialism. Combined with
Orwell's theories on man, "Orwell is opposing here more than the Soviet
or Stalinist experience. Both the consciousness of the workers and the
possibility of an authentic revolution are denied" (Williams, 73).
In Animal Farm, Orwell, like Marx in many of writings, wrote for the
common man whose place in society was of utmost importance but of little
recognition. Orwell's use of satire in the form of a "fairy story," as
he calls it on its title page, to get his point across shows his indignation
for hard-core ideological doctrines whose purposes are to lead to the eventual
destruction of a society. Another "general aim of Animal Farm as a satire
is to offer itself as an example of temperate, responsible criticism ‹
in no way a rancorous verbal assault" (Twayne, 106). It is a generally
sympathetic criticism of Marxism that offers to ease many of Marx's statements
about man, revolution, religion and society. It is a moderate Marxism whose
definitive ideas are not really stated, but whose ideology surely exists
throughout the novel.
Orwell's Animalism shares many of the same beliefs as Marxism, but
its political goals are not as extreme, its trust in revolution is not
as confident and its (Orwell's) forecast of the future is not as utopian
as Marx's. Successful Animalism is the political and social doctrine George
Orwell waited years to write; often misconstrued and rarely considered
more than a criticism of totalitarianism, its natural tendency to be compared
with Marxism has been too often overlooked.
Selected Bibliography: Daniels,
Robert V. Trotsky, Stalin and Socialism. Boulder: Westview Press. 1991.
Lee, Robert A. "The Uses of Form: A Reading of Animal Farm," Critical Essays
on George Orwell, by Bernard Oldsley and Joseph Browne. Boston: G.K. Hall
& Co. 1986. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Preface. "A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy,² reprinted in Selected Works
in Two Volumes, Volume One Moscow. 1962. ---. The Communist Manifesto.
New York: Pathfinder Press. 1987. ---. On Britain. Moscow. 1962. Orwell,
George. Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, Inc. 1946. ---.
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, Volume Four. Orwell, Sonia
and Ian Angus, eds. London: Secker and Warbug. 1968. ---. "The English
Civil War," New Statesman and Nation. 24 August 1940. ---. Pages from a
Scullion's Diary: An Extract from "Down and Out in Paris and London". London:
Penguin Books. 1995. ---. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt, Brace
and Company. 1949. Rai, Alok. Orwell and the Politics of Despair. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1988. Schaff, Adam. Marxism and the Human Individual.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1970. Smyer, Richard I. Animal Farm:
Pastoralism and Politics. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1988. Symons, Julian.
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K. Socialist Management: The Leninist Concept. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
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Yale University Press. 1974.