Animal Farm

[Redhead]

So i recently watched Animal Farm (the 1954 version). While discussing communism with a liberal he recommended it to me as a proof of why communism doesnt work.

Personally i liked the film, and if anything it strenghtened my beliefs. The animal farm worked perfectly until the pigs, the elite, took over. But this is from a non-vanguard point of view.
Any other thoughts?

[DOOM]

So i recently watched Animal Farm (the 1954 version). While discussing communism with a liberal he recommended it to me as a proof of why communism doesnt work.

Personally i liked the film, and if anything it strenghtened my beliefs. The animal farm worked perfectly until the pigs, the elite, took over. But this is from a non-vanguard point of view.
Any other thoughts?

This was kinda Orwell's point. Funny how liberals use the work of a communist to discredit communism :laugh:

[(A)]

I have to many books I want to read and this one is near the top of my list.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

This was kinda Orwell's point. Funny how liberals use the work of a communist to discredit communism :laugh:

the communist who spied for the British state? Yeah right.

[CaptainCool309]

How'd you like the ending to the 1954 animated version? I thought it was a nice little twist. I thought it was going to be depressing like it was in the book, but nope, it ended on a more optimistic note, which was probably put in to appease the younger audience watching the film. I couldn't stand the ending to the Live-Action 1999 version though. That was just pro-imperialist trash.

If Director Andy Serkis goes through with his latest up-coming remake of the book, it'll be interesting to see what his spin on the tale will be. He says he wants, "A Family Film," but he also states that, "First and foremost, we are not making a film about Communism and Stalinism because if Orwell was writing the story today, he would be talking about other relevant topics like globalization and corporate greed." (I got the second quote from a right wing website and they are not happy he said that :laugh:)

But yeah there are a lot of people who feel that Animal farm is anti-communist and it proves that "it's a nice idea, but not applicable in reality." (Believe me I used to be one of those people ignorant people) But over time and research I realized that the main message of the book wasn't anti-communism, but anti-totalitarianism. I realized that Stalin's regime (which of course Orwell was satirizing) wasn't actually communism, just a bureaucratic perversion of it. And that the "true" communism that was preached by Old Major is an applicable reality worth fighting for.

[consuming negativity]

Isaac Asimov gave a very good critique of it. I like the Floyd album based on it, Animals, but the book itself is sorta boring. I didn't get much from it intellectually. Orwell later went on to sell out his comrades to the British government.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

But yeah there are a lot of people who feel that Animal farm is anti-communist and it proves that "it's a nice idea, but not applicable in reality." (Believe me I used to be one of those people ignorant people) But over time and research I realized that the main message of the book wasn't anti-communism, but anti-totalitarianism. I realized that Stalin's regime (which of course Orwell was satirizing) wasn't actually communism, just a bureaucratic perversion of it. And that the "true" communism that was preached by Old Major is an applicable reality worth fighting for.

That's your own interpretation. It's obvious, as you say, that it's a firm critique of the 'state socialism' that existed in the USSR. It strikes me as close to what many Trotskyists today analyse the Soviet Union as - a degenerated workers' state, i.e. the initial revolution was a genuine success but that it degenerated because of the group in power led by Stalin.

To me both interpretations - the Trotskyist one and the one Orwell seeks to display in Animal Form - are a bit utopian and idealistic, and don't really present any positive thinking. They merely negatively oppose Stalinism (fair enough), but their only answer seems to be 'if only we had a different leader/leadership group/style of leadership things would have been different'. I'm not so sure there is any positive analysis in that sort of thinking, nor any real evidence that it is a viable strategy beyond mere belief and hope.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's your own interpretation. It's obvious, as you say, that it's a firm critique of the 'state socialism' that existed in the USSR. It strikes me as close to what many Trotskyists today analyse the Soviet Union as - a degenerated workers' state, i.e. the initial revolution was a genuine success but that it degenerated because of the group in power led by Stalin.

Orwell obviously did not think the Soviet Union was a workers' state of any sort. In fact the only theory about the Soviet Union he references, albeit obliquely, is Shachtman's and Burnham's theory that the Soviet Union was a new form of class society, "bureaucratic collectivism".


To me both interpretations - the Trotskyist one and the one Orwell seeks to display in Animal Form - are a bit utopian and idealistic, and don't really present any positive thinking. They merely negatively oppose Stalinism (fair enough), but their only answer seems to be 'if only we had a different leader/leadership group/style of leadership things would have been different'. I'm not so sure there is any positive analysis in that sort of thinking, nor any real evidence that it is a viable strategy beyond mere belief and hope.

Honest question - have you read "The Revolution Betrayed" or any similar work? Because a lot of people seem to think this was Trotsky's position without actually having read his works (this is probably not helped by a lot of Trotskyists who themselves don't understand the theory). Trotsky analysed the social causes of the rise of the bureaucracy in the USSR - and his recommendation wasn't "a different leadership group" but a political revolution and the spreading of the revolution to the more advanced capitalist countries, without which the revolution would be endangered again.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Honest question - have you read "The Revolution Betrayed" or any similar work? Because a lot of people seem to think this was Trotsky's position without actually having read his works (this is probably not helped by a lot of Trotskyists who themselves don't understand the theory). Trotsky analysed the social causes of the rise of the bureaucracy in the USSR - and his recommendation wasn't "a different leadership group" but a political revolution and the spreading of the revolution to the more advanced capitalist countries, without which the revolution would be endangered again.

I haven't read it. I said the 'Trotskyist' position because I was referring to the modern-day Trotskyism. I understand that it may or may not be a bastardised versions of Trotsky's own politics, but this is the movement that his politics spawned, and the one that currently exists with his name.

But anyway, what is a 'political revolution' if it is not the advocating of a change in the political leadership of the country? A political revolution tends to be far more self-contained and limited than a genuine social revolution, or even an 'economic revolution' within capitalism (for example the ascendancy of neo-liberalism in Western Europe in the 1970s).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I haven't read it. I said the 'Trotskyist' position because I was referring to the modern-day Trotskyism. I understand that it may or may not be a bastardised versions of Trotsky's own politics, but this is the movement that his politics spawned, and the one that currently exists with his name.

But anyway, what is a 'political revolution' if it is not the advocating of a change in the political leadership of the country? A political revolution tends to be far more self-contained and limited than a genuine social revolution, or even an 'economic revolution' within capitalism (for example the ascendancy of neo-liberalism in Western Europe in the 1970s).

The thing is, most of these groups - and I agree that a lot of them have horrible politics - still claim to uphold the perspective outlined in "the Revolution Betrayed", at least for some period of Soviet history. I would genuinely recommend the book - I found it extremely useful.

As for the political revolution, it means not simply a change of leadership, but increased workers' democracy - the formation of workers' and soldiers' soviets - the abolition of bureaucratic privilege, the curtailment of market mechanisms and so on. Hungary in 1956 is the classic example of an incipient political revolution. Spartacists would say the Tienanmen protests were like that as well.

[human strike]

It's pretty clear really that the book is inspired by Orwell's experience of Stalinism during the Spanish Civil War. An interesting aside about the 1954 film is that its production was funded by the CIA.

[ralfy]

From what I remember, the book is critical not of Communism but of fascism and imperialism.

[Futility Personified]

It's a critique without any real solution, but it gave me that inward cringe of defeat that normally can only be delivered by the comical ineptitude of human actors in sitcoms.

Perhaps if it had more to offer aside from "if only trotsky hadn't been hounded off, or Lenin / Marx was still here today" then Liberals would find it harder to abuse the book as an all encompassing critique of socialism.

[human strike]

It's a critique without any real solution, but it gave me that inward cringe of defeat that normally can only be delivered by the comical ineptitude of human actors in sitcoms.

Perhaps if it had more to offer aside from "if only trotsky hadn't been hounded off, or Lenin / Marx was still here today" then Liberals would find it harder to abuse the book as an all encompassing critique of socialism.

When put into context though it's hardly surprising that it's pessimistic; its writing followed the crushing defeat of the Spanish Revolution and the rise and advance into Eastern Europe of Stalin's USSR at the end of the Second World War. I don't suppose Orwell did feel very optimistic at that state of affairs (he went on to write 1984 a few years later).

[Futility Personified]

Homage to Catalonia funnily enough gives me a bit of hope in the sense that there the anti-statist types were at least in a position to do things at the beginning of the conflict, i've only read this, that and 1984 out of what he's done but I feel it is annoying as fuck that the establishment is happy to let discussion of 1984 and Animal Farm go on but neglect Homage. I don't blame him for being pessimistic at all, though I wouldn't be surprised if that pessimism led him to dob the people in that he did in the end, not that i'm endorsing that.

If he felt hopeless then, I wonder how many different types of suicide he'd have attempted if he lived up to this point and was, for the sake of winding up the analogy, functionally immortal.

[Invader Zim]

the communist who spied for the British state? Yeah right.

Orwell didn't spy for the British state. While Orwell's list to the IRD was a grevious error of judgement on his part, conflating it with spying is ludicrous to the point that it invalidates your criticism.