Little White Lie Essays - Literature, Fiction, Politics,

Little White Lie Orwell & Marx Animalism vs. Marxism ?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.? 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 a nd 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 arg uments; 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 Cont ribution..., 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