Reviews and Comments

I borrowed this as an eBook through my local library. That way, I wouldn't have to pay for it, and no one on public transit would see me reading it. I was convinced to read this because of two reasons: 1. If you really want to criticize something, you should read it. Especially so that if someone accuses you of misrepresenting any aspect of it, you can assure them that you did, in fact, read the book. 2. It is short.

The biggest problem of the book is that it doesn't address the core issue beneath all of their lamentations about the decline in American manufacturing and 'progress'. That is: moneyed interest. Instead they claim that while there may be a common thread throughout all the deficits in American gumption they cite as examples, each case is really unique in as much as they cannot be addressed by a lack of spirit or an 'abundance' of red tape. Honestly, there's not much more to say about that. They just miss it, or choose to ignore it.

As for the actual writing and craft of the book: it reads as a precocious teen's essay. Long-winded stories used as examples to emphasize a point, repetition, jumping around. Thankfully it's not written with the intent to challenge, so like reading the transcript to a podcast, you could just zone out and let your eyes do the reading.

Don't make the same mistake I did. Don't bother reading this. Disengage from those who want to talk about this book with you, or if you really can't, watch/read/listen to a critique of this book instead.

As a piece of writing, it's engaging, easy to read, and well crafted. This is no surprise, as Orwell's a great writer that—though he lacks subtlety—is able to deliver his thoughts well without the reader feeling written down to.

I see a lot of reviews state that this book is "prescient"—much like they say about another of his: 1984—but this isn't in the way people think. Though Orwell died in the '50s, Animal Farm is less-prescient about our sudden turn to authoritarianism, and more prescient towards the fall of the Soviet Union. While Orwell intended Napoleon to be a caricature of Stalin, what we get instead is a composite image of all the leaders of the Soviet Union to some degree or another. I imagine the Napoleon of the last chapter to be more Yeltsin than Stalin, though there's no way Orwell could've known that.

This ties into my critiques of the book, mainly that it ignores the material conditions that went into the formation of the USSR, and indeed goes against the very core of the idea of Marxism. In the beginning, the rebellion is dreamed up by Major. Though this is clearly a Marx analog, it goes against Marx's theory of dialectical or historical materialism by literally attributing Major's theory to a dream (the realm of idealism). Moving further into the story we see that Napoleon's betrayal of the revolution is clearly Orwell's opinion on Stalinism, but similarly arising from the ideal. Napoleon conquers the revolution because he wants to, allies with the humans out of self-interest, and joins them out of a furthering of self-interest into hedonism (a wild comparison to make in 1944, when this was written).

While there are criticisms to be made of Stalin and Stalinism, the idea that the decisions he and the party made weren't due (or due in small amounts) to the fact that they had just made it out of a world war, a civil war, a violent revolution, had every imperialist nation arrayed against them, were trying to industrialize a feudal nation, and were trying to implement a philosophy and form of governance that had never been attempted at a national scale, is blinkered.

I can't help but think that much of what was behind this novel(la) was inspired by Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that would affect an idealist man in ways I can't fathom. Overall, it's an interesting read if you have nothing going on in an afternoon and it's on the shelf at a place you're staying at, but it's nothing to base an outlook on, political or philosophical.