{"id":44057,"date":"2025-08-09T07:58:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T03:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=44057"},"modified":"2025-08-09T07:58:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T03:58:18","slug":"animal-farm-at-80-george-orwells-enduring-commitment-to-socialist-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/animal-farm-at-80-george-orwells-enduring-commitment-to-socialist-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Farm at 80: George Orwell\u2019s enduring commitment to socialist revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Animal Farm, in contrast, is a melancholy reflection on the corruption of revolution, and the need to keep looking for a better one<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

During the early years of the second world war, George Orwell believed that England\u2019s revolutionary moment had arrived. The defeat at Dunkirk had discredited the country\u2019s ruling elite. Their bungling had left England on the verge of invasion and defeat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Animal Farm. P – Vocal Media<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To win the war and defeat fascism, a social revolution was needed, as Orwell explained in his socialist manifesto, The Lion and the Unicorn (1941). Now was the time, he argued, to turn \u201cthis war into a revolutionary war and England into a socialist democracy\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orwell believed this revolution, though likely to be violent, would also conserve much, setting free \u201cthe native genius of the English people\u201d. England\u2019s long liberal tradition would be retained and enhanced, and the revolution would be more patriotic than class-based:<\/span><\/p>\n

From the English-speaking culture \u2026 a society of free and equal human beings will ultimately arise.<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

However, while Orwell never overtly abandoned his commitment to socialist revolution, he quickly came to lose heart in its imminence. He came to think that the war would defeat fascism but not totalitarianism, and that real socialism still lay a long way in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this mood, he wrote Animal Farm<\/em> in the last months of 1943 and first half of 1944 \u2013 with much support and possibly substantial input from his first wife, Eileen O\u2019Shaughnessy. August 17 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the novel\u2019s publication.<\/span><\/p>\n

In September 1944, just after completing Animal Farm<\/em> (it wouldn\u2019t be published for another year), Orwell explained some of his wider purposes in a letter to the American intellectual and fellow liberal socialist, Dwight Macdonald.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Soviet Union, Orwell thought, really did provide people with hope in a socialist future, and for that reason it would not be good to see it destroyed. But at the same time, working people in the west needed \u201cto become disillusioned about it and to realise that they must build their own Socialist movement without Russian interference\u201d. The success of this might then have a \u201cregenerative influence upon Russia\u201d itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orwell, Zamyatin and Animal Farm<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was while writing Animal Farm<\/em> that Orwell first learned something of substance about the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin and his dystopian satire, We, published in 1924.<\/span><\/p>\n

That book became a significant influence for Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em> (1949). Though Orwell did not read We in full<\/em> until late 1945, he knew a little about the book from Gleb Struve\u2019s anthology 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature <\/em>in early 1944 and wrote to Struve to tell him it had whetted his appetite to know more about Zamyatin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Struve\u2019s anthology quotes a passage that Orwell would pick out as important. In it, one character declares that \u201cour revolution was the last and there can never be another\u201d. To which his interlocutor responds: \u201cJust like numbers, revolutions are infinite and there can never be a final one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When he adapted Animal Farm<\/em> for the radio in 1946, Orwell had Napoleon the pig say: \u201cWhen there has been one rebellion, there can never be another.\u201d But he must surely have had in mind the reply: \u201cThere can always be another.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was again to Macdonald that Orwell spelled out the implications of Animal Farm<\/em> in December 1946. Though \u201cprimarily\u201d a \u201csatire on the Russian revolution\u201d, Orwell was clear it had \u201cwider application\u201d as a denunciation of \u201cthat kind of revolution (violent, conspiratorial) that can only lead to a change of masters\u201d. Revolutions can improve things, he wrote, but only when \u201cthe masses \u2026 know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as \u2026 they have done their job\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Orwell had earlier written in September 1944 that \u201call revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure\u201d. They all fail because perfection is beyond human grasp \u2013 the challenge is to fail better and in ways that improve things, as he told Macdonald:<\/span><\/p>\n

If people think I am defending the status quo [in Animal Farm<\/em>], that is \u2026 because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship and or laissez faire capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Animal Farm<\/em> is one of those very short and very accessible books that defy easy interpretation. Classic examples are Niccolo Machiavelli\u2019s The Prince<\/em> (1532) and Thomas More\u2019s Utopia<\/em> (1516). Though political, they are not manifestos, unlike Orwell\u2019s The Lion and the Unicorn<\/em> \u2013 that book sought to mobilise people behind a clear vision of an attainable better future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Animal Farm<\/em>, in contrast, is a melancholy reflection on the corruption of revolution, and the need to keep looking for a better one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Glenn Burgess<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Professor of Early Modern History,
\nUniversity of Hull<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 8 August 2025<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Animal Farm, in contrast, is a melancholy reflection on the corruption of revolution, and the need to keep looking for a better one<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":44058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[7066,5052],"class_list":["post-44057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-animal-farm","tag-george-orwell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Animal-Farm.-P-Vocal-Media.jpg?fit=1200%2C815&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-bsB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44059,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44057\/revisions\/44059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}