I always learnt that Old Major was a mixture of Marx and Lenin and Lenin didn't apply to Snowball or Napoleon but I guess it's all about interpretation
@@Viki1999 Trotsky was the leader of the Red Army, that's why he's always shown at the forefront whenever there's fighting. Also, Lenin was never chased off the USSR by Stalin, Trotsky was. Snowball is clearly a stand-in for Trotsky, while Old Major stands for both Marx and Lenin.
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." ~George Orwell
@@JoshuaGonzalez-sr7xy to be fair being a demsoc had a different connotation that it does today. He was not a fan of planned economies or the vanguard, if that’s something you’re really attached to then, fair enough. Not sone kind of irreconcilable difference for me- but the rogue socialists he fought among side were essentially fighting for what we today would more or less consider Ancoms
@@JoshuaGonzalez-sr7xy Yeah, he reported gay people to the British Secret police and accused them of being communist. He was also antisemitic. He generally was not a good person.
@@texasswade8453 that makes no sense from an Orwellian stand point. Orwell was a socialist in the traditional sense, he wanted to establish an idealistic society. He believed in communism, but he despised Stalinism after encountering what it does to people in Spain.
When you realize that when Susan became the CEO of TH-cam, TH-cam is slowly becoming like television media All content creators are equal but some content creators are more equal than others.
Yep, they are the same people who took over Russia in 1917, and lead today the racist anti-white, anti-christian, anti-western, SJW totalitarian, pro-censorship "all animals are equal but we are more equal, now shut up or be cancelled" movements. Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Yuri Bezmenov and others warned us, but we didn't listen. The American population was dumbed down gradually, decade by decade to the 1917 Russian level, and you can see nowadays the neo-bolsheviks taking over, in the disguise of protectors of human rights and equality.
Napoleon = Stalin Snowball = Trotsky Old Major = Marx, lil bit of Lenin Dogs = NKVD Crow = Orthodox Church The other farmers = Germany and the U.S. (I think?) I think that's most of the characters (that make a difference in the plot anyway). Ironically, while the CIA and filmmakers wanted this to be a "socialism BAD" movie, they didn't seem to realize that the book was saying "Stalin and the USSR were bad because they came to resemble capitalists". The moral of the story is still "capitalism is bad, arbitrary authority is bad, classist relations are bad". The ending of the psy-op movie is also really ironic, because it implies that there should be a second *socialist* revolution to put power back into the.... hooves of the animals. A liberal "revolution" would've ended in them finding a human to topple the pigs and appropriate the entire farm again.
A lot of right wing "libertarians" think George Orwells art was anti-socialist since it pulled so much inspiration from the USSR. It wasn't. Orwells art was anti-authoritarian. He himself was a libertarian socialist who fought for the anarchists in the spanish civil war. He even wrote this article called "towards european unity" where that became pretty clear.
I hate him He's antisemitic, homophobic, and racist. Specifically, he snitched out Jews, Black people, Homosexuals, and communists to British Intelligence. His list includes him writing: 8 variations of “Jewish?” (Charlie Chaplin), “Polish Jew, (Tom Driberg)” “English Jew,” or “Jewess.” Paul Robeson - "ROBESON, Paul (US Negro) ...Very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter." Paul Robeson wasn't anti-white, just look at the welsh coal miners for whom Robeson Campaigned. The testimony of Paul Robeson (one of the people Orwell snitched on), to HUAC (House of Unamerican activities committee) during the red scare. Stephen Spender - "Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality" Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish nationalist poet, and anti-imperialist. George Padmore, Trinidadian journalist and anti-imperialist campaigner. His books Animal Farm and 1984 are used widely as anti-communist propaganda in schools in the US and UK. So much so that his animated animal farm film was funded by the CIA. There's a reason they teach George Orwell in schools and not Franz Fanon, Che, Huey P Newton, Malcolm X, Lenin, CLR James, etc. Orwell, anti-communist: A criticism of Orwell and his Work - By Isaac Asimov. Orwell worked as a British imperial cop in Burma for 5 years. His short story, Shooting an Elephant, uses ethnic slurs and denigrates burmese people.
Arsenal123 Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn’t mean dictatorship in the more recognizable sense, it means the state should be run by the proletariat. This is not incompatible with democracy. A government built bottom-up not top-down
@@LL-vj5yp most medical research is funded by government grants, not private funding. The profit incentive of discovering new treatments is a bad faith argument against adopting universal healthcare.
You probably are. Just don't know it. May not be the typical monarchist with an overt king, but you probably have no problem with someone even more powerful than a king, a billionaire or their Sauron sized smaller cousins hundies (hundred billionaires).
Little mistake: you said Lenin overthrew the tsar. However, the tsar was put out of power by a temporary democracy in February. Lenin took power in October because the war was continuing, so not only because of famines. Great video BTW.
Russia didn't have "temporary democracy"... The provisional government were members of duma that were appointed members. Russia didn't have any democracy until Yeltsin and then Medvedev briefly.
@@mikhailv67tv lmao imagine believing that read up on the 1993 constitution crisis or on yeltsin 8% approval prior to his landslide victory in 96 and medvedev is Putin’s puppet
@@personbob8691 He's ended up that way, by the looks if things quite currupted but i dont believe he started that way. He had an agenda of social and government reform . He made substancial police reforms for instance, sacking many corrupt officers and professionalise the ranks. I remember the optomism when i visited
@@mikhailv67tv the manufactured optimism u mean the lies that were made to support yeltsin as I said he had 8% approval rating before his landslide victory in 96 the economy was trash under him and most people had wanted to keep the ussr but he destroyed it and he gave money to allow for the modern oligarchy and he had immense corruption He truly was great lol
Orwell was a socialist. For example he wrote a book called homage to Catalonia where in many parts he praises the anarchist uprising in Catalonia. He even was a supporter of the Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist party.
@@babyblooddistilleriesinc3131 Orwell was born in the British Raj, and served as a cop in what is now Myanmar. He later about how Imperialism and Colonialism make one believe they're doing the right thing when they are really just oppressing the natives.
The United States had at least anti-communist education in the school. I went to school in Sweden, we did not learn anything about the evils of communism. I learned that on my own.
I love how they got you to read 1984 where he explicitly says that “thus they destroyed the very principle Socialism used to stand for” - he literally says Ingsoc is not Socialist, just socialist in name
@@gerardbuttigieg I've noticed the people who try and claim Orwell was anti-Socialist perfectly demonstrate what Orwell meant when he said facts don't matter in politics.
@Anne Marie d'Avis how do you make it work? How do you make things equal without incredible amounts of force? And this is not capitalism, all capitalism is is free exchange between two or more parties. This is something else.
Yeah, but when the CIA bought the movie rights and produced the adaptation, they exercised their creative control to change a bunch of details from the book specifically for propaganda purposes.
@@MrSafer I think the most important and relevant lesson from Animal Farm is the "recidivism of tyranny" -- the idea that revolutions against oppressive systems can be corrupted from within, becoming just as if not more oppressive than the regimes they overthrow.
sunyavadin I watched the movie and honestly it’s awful at being propaganda. It never states that the revolution was a mistake and instead calls for a second revolution to replace those of the first. It never says the farmer was right. I think the CIA fucked up xD
I was in a stage adaptation of Animal Farm with my local youth theatre when I was like 15 (I played Snowball, if anyone was wondering). I'd kill to do it again, since now I have such a deeper understanding of class struggle and Marxism, also especially after seeing this video!
Who in their right mind analyses Animal Farm and gets that conclusion. The book very clearly isnt against the idea of socialism but against the authoritarian turn it took in the USSR. At least thats how i interpreted it as a kid when i read it
The 80's Wolf yeah cause the Marxist-Leninists did a great job uniting the global proletariat and creating a socialist world. Oh wait those State Capitalists just scared off the workers into the arms of Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism. The reason Marxist-Leninists fail is because they are too Statist and for centralized bureaucracy. Remember Kronstadt. When ever workers wanted a decentralized more localized commune, as in the Paris Commune they were suppressed as “counterrevolutionaries.” Even Marx who was libertarian at heart thought the heavily Proudhonian Paris Commune was the workers social revolution he was advocating for his whole career. And he also supported Democratic Socialism as a viable revolutionary methods in the most industrialized worlds. Leninists and the other State Socialists are revisionists of Marxism. Just ask Rosa Luxemburg. Socialism is from below and decentralized.
Indeed, he literally fought on the side of the elected government against an illegal military coup that, quite sadly, did a much better job in creating a successful coalition of reactionary elements. It’s the Spanish Civl War, not the Spanish Revolution(s). I don’t know if you and the attendant likes are aware of this distinction, but Orwell’s opinion with regard to the Civil War has nothing to do with his participation. In fact, it is due to his involvement in the Civil War that Orwell had a terrifying look at Spanish/Popular Front/Comintern fratricide behind Republican lines. Soviet military support was especially contingent on the Republicans handing over their entire treasury and, to every non-Stalinist’s horror, allowing for the ideological purging of the entire Republican military (and sanctioning the same on allied non-Republican formations.)
@@wafflepoet5437 Except for the part where he praises the collectivisation done in Catalonia in his book Homage to Catalonia, going so far as to say in "Why I Write" that "The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." He was not a die-hard hyper-revolutionary, to the contrast he seemed to be only slightly more socialist than patriot (to the point of being willing to keep the monarchy around as a figurehead- see "Socialism and the English Genius") but I would still say he broadly was in favor of revolution- of the "self made" kind, as he would have put it, as opposed to revolution by strong-men, as he saw the Bolsheviks to be. I sometimes find the jumps fellow libertarians make in regards to Orwell's opinions tiring (as in sometimes ridiculous/untrue/unproven and just kind of silly) but it's even more of a lie to claim he was not in support of libertarian socialism and on some level revolution.
I don't think Orwell was anti-revolutionary (at least not always he may have changed over time idk). He was a Trotskyist and fought in the Spanish Civil War with the POUM a Marxist organization and loved the way Barcelona became proletarian in the early years of it. But towards the end of that war the Spanish Communist Party (who were being supported by Stalin) called for the POUM's arrest and expulsion from Spain. This may have been the start of him being salty against the USSR under Stalin. Also I've generally seen most people interpret Snowball as Trotsky, at least that's how my teacher in school talked about it when we covered the book in school.
@@alexr6705 he fought with the POUM, a Trotskyist organization in Spain and was a member or the Trotskyist Independent Labour Party in Britain, weird things for an anarchist and not a Trotskyist to do. He might have like what he saw of the anarchists in Spain and expressed that in Homage to Catalonia as well as elsewhere, but to my knowledge he was never himself an anarchist.
Actually, correction: in the 1930s it had many Trotskyists join it but the ILP was not itself an inherently Trotskyist organization, being more just generically Marxist throughout its time existing, it had several different kinds of Marxists involved in it throughout that period from 1900-ish to the 70s when it disbanded to become instead a leftist pressure group in the larger Labour Party.
@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot Orwell first attempted to join the International Brigades, but the leader of the British Communist Party disliked him so he contacted the ILP instead.
I think it is important to consider Orwell's experience in the Spanish civil war. In Homage to Catalonia it's gets pretty clear that he felt like the Soviets had betrayed the workers revolution. He thought that the Soviets were more concerned about their influence in Europe than helping the Spanish working class. In Orwell's opinion the Soviets fought against the advance of the revolution, for example the collectivisation of Land, and sided with the old capitalist republic and the bourgeois. I think with that in mind it's gets pretty clear why Rrwell thought the Soviet Union was counterrevolutionary and betrayed the working class. Also i think the introduction to the Ukraine version of the animal farm sumarizes very well how he saw the Soviet Union.
yeah it might be that, the soviets did damage the spanish republic, the soviets actually charged the republicans for supplies, guns, ammo...etc and eventually actually forced the republic to move its reserve of gold, which was the 4th or 5th largesrt in the world to moscow, ( under the excuse that trade would be more efficient)after that, they overcharged the republicans for everything and basically stole the gold. This course of action might have been caused for many factors, like the fact that within the popular front there where anarchists, socialists, and even social democrats, which of course put the soviets off, as they did not want the civil war to end with an anarchist state or any other system fundamentally diferent to the soviet one.
@@thomdrolet2624 lol fr, oh btw, he is a transgender, so clearly he feels weak and he wants to belong to a powerful group and he wants others to solve his problems for him
Just because a film is animated doesn't mean it's for children. Many of the early cartoons had adult themes. Parents make this mistake over and over again. In the book, Snowball wasn't killed, he was just driven away. When Napoleon is looking for traitors for his show trial, four of the pigs who opposed a longer working day are executed along with the rebellious hens.
To be fair: the Donkey could always read in the books. He was cynic and usually considered nothing worth reading; THOUGH like many cynics he loved to be around simple idealists like Boxer the Horse and they were best friends (I think cynics often WANT to be proven wrong, provided it's by someone like Boxer who won't rub it in afterward). So HE certainly new what the truck said on the back...
I went through highschool in Spanish Springs, Nevada. One of the years in which I was required to read Animal Farm, our English teacher had to take leave 3/4 way into the year for the birth and labor of her child. Our class was assigned a substitute teacher at this time in the middle of our reading of Animal Farm. Our substitute teacher was elderly, possibly in her 80's. Our class then proceded to take advantage of the fact that we had a senior as a substitute teacher by telling her for five or six weeks straight that we had yet to see the Animal Farm animated film. We watched the Animal Farm animated film for those five or six weeks to the individual amusement to all of the class. Perhaps the substitute even got some time to prepare for the next lesson for our class.
I must add that the person narrating this is well informed on his subject, very intelligent, well spoken about Soviet matters. I learned from him. I would like to hear his further opinions on this.
I’m an American & I had to read Animal farm twice for school. 1 time was in 5th grade at a private Catholic school in 1985/6 & the teacher explained it as representing the Soviet Union & how they never achieved the utopia promised, but also explained socialism as an achievable practice, but warned of corruption. I was in public school from the 6th grade on & I think it was the 9th grade when I read this again. The teacher that time taught it as anti communist propaganda. Some Catholics were based during the Reagan years, because they knew he was ultimately responsible for all the murders of Catholics in South America. I wish I stayed with my grandparents & continued Catholic school …although it certainly had draw backs 💚 I found this channel a few weeks ago & I’ve been watching the old videos & I love all of them. If you somehow see this thank you, & anyone else that could be involved🤷♂️, for you’re work!
When I watched the film I interpreted the new ending as just a propaganda spin on Orwell’s story, I was all ready for it to end and then it straight up throws some good old propaganda on us...
"Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution. … I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job. The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves (Kronstadt). If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then, it would have been all right. If people think I am defending the status quo, that is, I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism." - George Orwell
Orwell, what a joke. Never has there been a more accurate quote to describe the "free" world than "all animals are equal, just some more equal than others".
You are the only person I’m subscribed to with notifications. Thank you for the vast historical knowledge. I have read the gulag archipelago , 1984, animal house, studied stallin, Lenin, and I could not place exactly who the Bolsheviks were or exactly the role they played. You explained it simply in all of 20 seconds. You the man
I was in the 7th grade in 1966. We were studying World History. We spent three months in England. We were allowed to mention that Scotland and Ireland also exist, but they just aren't as important as England. We spent one week--one Goddamn week--studying French history. We spent two weeks in Switzerland. (A deadly dull two weeks) Finally, after our national testing for basic skills, we got to spend two days studying the Soviet Union. Guess what our test consisted of? An essay question with the title: Why I Am Proud To Be An American. I kid you not. I had to go to the principle's office to get a chewing out for suggesting this was The Party Line. (In America censorship was different, but it still existed)
I'm a tankie and I interpreted the animals taking away the axes and reigns as disarming the workers as well as undoing the Tsar. It's also against corruption and implementing Mao's ideas of criticism and self-criticism to keep the state in check by the eyes of the people so it doesn't get full of itself and ahead of the people. They couldn't speak out part because they couldn't read, and Mao worked so hard to increase literacy he overhauled the Chinese language
19:20 Stalin had multiple meetings *immediately* after the invasion. Seriously, dude had like 90 hours of meetings within the first week of the invasion! I'll link the source vid when I find it after watching this.
5:46 I'm not sure if it was a mistranslation or not but my book is saying that it was actually a sheep that has been killed in the battle of cowshed. Not only that but napoleon actually stole 9 puppies away from some dogs and raised them secretly. The animated has either made a mistake or just did that to fill up the plothole about the dogs appearing out of nowhere
1. Stalin didn't have to prohibit anyone else from voting or anything like that, he had his agents and they'd just kill off anyone who was against him, or put them in gulags. It didn't have to be said out loud. 2. In the book the song WAS prohibited. I don't remember how exactly but there was a line like this. I think it was just said to the animals who were singing it, that they can't sing it anymore.
If you're referring to the Bloody Sunday in 22nd January 1905, where you quoted "he ordered his army to shoot into a crowd of peaceful protesters." However, (in spite of the various acts he committed) the Tsar did not give the order to fire on the crowd, but was wildly blamed for it shortly after, leading to a number of strikes across the country and the 1905 revolution.
That's not such a traumatizing scene when you think about it. Disney has been doing that same thing for years. Bambi, Dumbo, Lion King, Nemo, Inside Out, Up. It may actually be more common than not.
I feel like you missed a lot of the book. Like clover crying about how times seem to be worse than they ever were, and the sheep blindly following the pigs to the point that they drown out all arguments. That could be akin to shutting down arguments because you dont agree with them (which we see a lot of today)
The movie actually made some realistic improvements, it actually makes more sense that they *can* read, because the Soviet Union achieved full literacy. It makes sense that they can read the sign on the death wagon and such.
Orwell was a socialist, but he was also an anti-communist. And despite what you might think, those two aren’t mutually exclusive. Like some examples would be Baynard Rustin, Betrand Russel, Noam Chomsky and Michael Harrington. And something interesting about some of those anti-communist socialists is that some of them drifted rightward over time to the point of becoming conservatives. That’s what the term Neoconservative originally referred to. It was coined by Harrington to describe those of the anti-Stalinist left to American conservatism. A prime example of this was Christoper Hitchens. He went from a Trotskyist who opposed the Vietnam War to a Neocon who supported the invasion of Iraq and praised George W. Bush’s foreign policy.
Considering who Orwell was, the original book, like 1984 was clearly a critique of, and warning about, Authoritarianism and the need for constant vigilance and Revolutionary optimism. I cannot which President said it, probably Lincoln or Grant but it suits the idea certainly in the context of Orwell's Literature, "The cost for Freedom is eternal Vigilance"
My AP English teacher was a pretty based Trotskyist with some slightly reactionary social views, so she was always pointing out how great Trotsky was during our reading of this book and how he most directly and reasonably continued Marxist thought. She did this in vague and veiled language adhering strictly to the allegory so she wouldn't get fired, but it was easy to pick up on with my (at the time) rudimentary knowledge of leftist theory, tendencies and culture. Pretty epic ngl
It is not true that Stalin "didnt talk to anyone" during the first weeks of the invasion. He was always in Moscow (there is a documents when all his meetings are recorded). He stayed in Moscow even when a lot of the leadership chose to evacuate to Kuybyshev (during the battle of Moscow). Joseph Stalin was a supreme commander of the army and personally participated in planning of a lot of successful operations, thats why the Soviet people decided he deserved an Order of Lenin. Because people loved Stalin and not without a reason
@@Ajente02 he was willing to sacrifice 25 million people to win, that's why the soviets won. They were nothing but canon fodder to him. That and russian winter.
@@thomdrolet2624 stop listening to German propaganda 1. half of the 27 million were civilians and 2. Germany lost 6 million soldiers on the eastern front 3. Soviets throughout most of the war only out number the Germans about 3:1
@@thomdrolet2624 A myth that perpetuates imperialist propaganda. Watch her video responding to "Enemy at the Gates" she explains how that's wrong and how they used tactics.
@@Ajente02 Read Albert Einstein. He mentions how the Moscow Trials were real and there was a certain internal situation and genuine threats to the state.
The novel is about how power can often lead to corruption and oppression, with even those who at first had noble goals becoming the same as those before. He saw this in the USSR, in which Stalin became authoritarian like those before.
A similar thing could he said about China. China is nothing like it was before the 1980's. It had more in common with North Korea than with modern China. A totalitarian militaristic state with the population being basically indoctrinated and forced to recite the dear leader at any moment. Animal farm basically represents the communist states (aka USSR and China) falling into totalitarianism and failing to archive the goals.
Listen, "authoritarianism" is just a label, read "On Authority" by Engels! Works of Frederick Engels 1872 On Authority Written: 1872; Published: 1874 "A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely. Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether - given the conditions of present-day society - we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear. On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land. Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority? Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see. Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!] If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel. Let us take another example - the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished? But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one. When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world. We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate. We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world. Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction."
If Stalin never held his leadership position, Russia might still be a feudal, un-industrial backwaters and conquered by foreign powers. The industrialization was necessary to build up the military in preparation for war, Stalin knew that Hitler was going to invade and thus subsequently built up his military. His policies helped to win the Great Patriotic War(WW2) such as the scorcher policy where they had purposefully burned crops so that the Fascists could not eat them. If Stalin never came to power, there might've still been a highly illiterate populous, oh they would've been literate alright IN GERMAN because the Fascists wanted to conquer Eastern Europe as they considered the "Slavic race" "inferior". Also, if Stalin had never came to power, poverty and homelessness probably would've been extremely high! Also, Stalin wasn't some genocidal dictator, he had tried to resign four times, twice close to the beginning of his leadership, and twice closer to the end. The famines were caused by droughts, floods, and agricultural sabotage from the Kulaks.
“It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened.” - Marx’s response to Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy
"Your query about Animal Farm. Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution. But I did mean it to have a wider application in so much that I meant that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconcsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters. I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job. The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk an apples for themselves (Kronstadt.) If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then, it would have been all right. If people think I am defending the status quo, that is, I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism. In the case of Trotskyists, there is the added complication that they feel responsible for the event in the USSR up to about 1926 and have to assume that a sudden degeneration took place about that date. Whereas I think the whole process was foreseeable - and was foreseen by a few people, eg. Bertrand Russell - from the very nature of the Bolshevik Party. What I was trying to says was ; you can't have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship" -Georges Orwell, Letter to Dwight Macdonald (excerpt), 5 December 1946.
Its weird to say that Orwell was "anti-revolutionary." Just read his own book, "Homage to Catalonia," where he praises the anarcho-syndicalist revolution in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
Between this channel and three arrows I don't know how it happened but thank you youtube algorythm for taking me to the germanic leftist intellectual part of youtube
You'd have to read Homage to Catalonia and his political essays, and also have some familiarity with his party, the Independent Labour Party, and some of his friends and comrades from that party and their politics, like Tom Nairn, to put his later life anti-Stalinism in context. The fact that the conduct of Stalinists in the Spanish Civil War was shockingly uncomradely and sectarian, and that the Spanish Stalinists actively persecuted other anti-fascists despite the greater need to stop the fascists, is undeniable, and merited hostility from other Marxists and democratic socialists who had experienced that uncomradely and perverse action in Spain, and elsewhere in Europe from the 1920s through the 1950s. The democracy of the soviets was destroyed from the 1920s onwards. Soviets continued to meet, but they were no longer democratically elected or forums in which open debate was possible. As soon as Lenin outlawed other parties they became front organisations, whose decisions could be centrally dictated. Stalin streamlined that centralisation, but it was underway under Lenin, simply by the logic of forbidding other parties and party factions within the RSDWP-Bolsheviki. NB The depiction of the pigs as the villains is somewhat problematic, as the kids say. Obviously there is an ancient tradition of use of pig metaphors in European antisemitism. The JudenSau etc. Jews being depicted as sows shitting out gold to refer to moneylending and rentierism in general. It's possible that George Orwell was unfamiliar with those particular tropes, but using pigs as villains, in place of the traditional English-speaking world referrant of "Fat Cats" to talk about wealthy elites is an unfortunate choice, especially given the Jewish identity of many leading figures in the CPSU, including Trotsky. Orwell was not an antisemite in his published opinions, had many Jewish comrades in the ILP and the Labour Party after the war, and hasn't been accused of any personal antisemitic behaviour in any of his associates' memoirs that I've heard of, but the usage of pigs in Animal Farm to depict Stalinists and Soviet apparatchik corruption remains a worrying mistake, in my opinion. It's an error that Art Speigelman managed to avoid in Maus, for instance, in which the Jews are mice, the Nazis are dogs, and it is Poles who are depicted as pigs, interestingly - neutrals as between Jews and Nazis.
They also knew about the death wagon from the glue factory in the book. Their realization was actually pretty much emphasized as it was the first and only time of Benjamin really taking action in fear of his friend dying so there was a great protesting the horses even tried to chase the car and to tell boxer to escape (without success) Also many things that were maybe intended to be propaganda actually became true. In the book(I haven't seen the movie) the animals weren't allowed to leave the farm from the beginning of the rebellion, seems like entire eastern Europe besides yugoslavia. Then we have the poems written by whymper(?) about the great love of napoleon to his people which were the only kind of poems music etc. after snowball was expelled, seems like NK. Also you didn't mention the trading with the human farms(molotov ribbentrop packt) or mollie who wasn't able to leave behind her former live and escaped(most popular example: Berlin). Regarding the fact that this was written in 1945 I think you should pay more attention to how closely he came to a reality he nether witnessed and therefore shouldn't just put it as CIA propaganda. Of course the US used it as an instrument, but I guess Orwells intention was far beyond that.
Yes, I'm so glad someone mentioned this. In the book, Muriel the goat could read and would read. I never even noticed the Mollie and Berlin thing, awesome to finally understand it.
I'm pretty sure Napoleon did outright outlaw the song, and i just finished listening to it... but i could obv be wrong. I can see why they'd leave it out of the movie but I figured he didn't want them to be called beasts
George Orwell was a socialist intellectual, but from what I have read from him(Animal Farm, 1984) he tend to have petit bourgeois type of contempt toward the working class, which is common among petit bourgeois intellectual. But he know how to write I'll give him that.
This is photograph of him serving himself a proper tea in the trenches of Spain. But he did view the poor first hand, and lived as a poor person to see what it was like. He exposed the terrible conditions of the working class in the north of England.
_"Stalin didn't assassinate Lenin…"_ 🤔 Are we sure about that? Lenin was recovering from his stroke, and had even recently gone on a hunting trip. Then party leaders started visiting him at home and he started getting worse again. The last such visit was the night before he died. 🤷♂
Fun fact, I’m a European conservative and I support free healthcare and so does every other conservative I know. And by free I mean that everyone has access to healthcare but private healthcare can be set up and if you’re really wealthy you can pay for a better standard. Turns out I’m a socialist.
Not at all. Conservatives in America don't support free healthcare here because free healthcare for the poor is already available but leftists want the government to completely control the healthcare system.
I don't see Animal Farm as inherently anti socialism but more anti revolution, or more specifically anti short-sighted revolution, as if revolution isn't considering the long term then it tends to concentrate on the problem rather than the solution. I reread the book a few days ago and I was drawn to how insistent Orwell is that Old Major is incredibly old and wise, only to then reveal him to be 12 in an almost comedic fashion. I believe this is meant to represent that no matter how old and wise we can hope to become, or believe we have become, one human lifetime will never be enough to gather sufficient context of human history to form such an arrogant claim that it's worth undoing everything achieved by an entire people/nation up to that point in the name of shaping society into the dream of one individual. Obviously I am not making the arrogant statement that there have never been any just revolutions but more that revolution requires long consideration of where the tyranny lies and what can be done in the long term to ensure that it doesn't rear it's ugly head again, if the revolution is shortsighted the tyranny will only be displaced Great video BTW, was having trouble filling in a few blanks regarding the historical events rather than the historical figures
The "sellout" and the resistance of the chicken are a reference to the agrarian collectivizations: The peasants had to work harder for the USSR to export the fruits of labour, in order to buy new machinery with the surplus value. The punished chicken are a reference to the "Kulaks", to which every peasant resisting the collectivization got declared.
13:00 One should note that the elections in the Soviet Union most of the time had only one candidate and thus weren't real competitive elections. Also, while Stalin might not have had dictatorial powers de jure he did have them de facto. Anyone trying to oppose him in e.g. the Supreme Soviet would most likely be sent to a gulag.
@@ernestokrapf "the elections for the supreme soviet were democratic" How can it be democratic if the electorate is given only one candidate to choose from? That's not a real choice for the voters.
@@Ajente02 "There were actually independient candidates (and they always won at least between 15% and 30% of the seats)" But to my knowledge, this just meant that the party sometimes chose candidates that weren't party members but in the elections, there still wasn't more than one candidate to choose from. An independent who the party disapproves of couldn't run.
Also yes state capitalism ≠ socialism. Even Lenin himself never claimed the USSR was socialist. But also socialism in general (lower stage communism) has never existed. The only things that have existed in the way of socialist societies have been: a) attempts at the dictatorship of the proletariat (like anarchist catalonia and the Paris commune). This isn’t in and of itself socialism, and both marx and Lenin distinguished from socialism and the “transitionary stage” of the DotP. b)social democracy. c)social democracy without the conventional liberal democracy, like what existed in the USSR. A “friendly” form of capitalism meant to safeguard the revolution. The reason the DotP was never established in the USSR (or any other socialist country for that matter) is Leninist’s recognition that the revolution must be global and universal in order for this to occur. Stalin’s idea of “socialism in one country” is a literal impossibility, for the USSR would’ve (and did) have to retain commodity production and eventually open up trade with foreign countries (which requires currency, in socialism there is no currency only labor vouchers). At some point things got mixed up and now people conflate economic democracy with socialism, rather than what it is, the process which would inevitably lead to socialism. (ie socialism is a product of it, not said workplace democracy itself)
Oh and this is not a condemnation of the Soviet Union by the way. It’s meant to be the opposite, and show that critiques such as Orwell’s are pointless and counterproductive, as they pretend like they could’ve done better when in fact they could not. It is unfair to judge the USSR for whether or not it was socialist, as it was a literal impossibility for them to establish socialism. Every country in the world needs to be headed by a socialist government, and needs to seize the means and establish economic democracy, for that to happen.
Western leftists are fond of critiquing the USSR for being “authoritarian” and “bureaucratic” without understanding why it became that way, and how the system of soviet democracy worked. Indeed, we have a similar system of democracy today in cuba, albeit much more direct and quite different in some ways. I believe cuban democracy is a truer form of democracy than liberal “democracy”. The term authoritarian is meaningless, what you mean to say is “centralized” and even then it’s quite a dubious claim as economics is not black and white. There is such a thing as duality, and bottom up/top down hierarchies can coexist.
imean if were to be a little metaphorical Stalin put together a large base of support during his job as general secretary and used that to take controll
Iirc Orwell’s problem with the Soviet Union is that the authoritarian nature of the state only results in the recreation of the hierarchies socialism is meant to represent (It’s additionally why INGSOC takes ideas from Facism and Stalinism)
@@hoxhacat8195 yes I will admit it’s not a great word. I feel beyond the “Socialism in one country” thing the Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist divide is primarily based in the circumstances these leaders had faced (Be it a Civil War funded by empires, the rise of 2 Fascist states that defined itself in opposition to them, whatever the political environment of China is that year, imperialism, ect.) I am just using it as Orwell clearly sees Stalin’s ideology (if you could even call it that, since it mostly seems to he “give me and my flunkies more power”) as something separate to Marx and Lenin’s ideologies.
i'd say snowball is definitely Trotsky. He's even exiled and driven away by Napoleon and his dogs
That's what I was taught. I was surprised to hear him say that Snowball was Lenin
@@albamcgowan9300 it could be both. It's not like _Animal Farm_ is supposed to be a perfect 1:1 analogy
I always learnt that Old Major was a mixture of Marx and Lenin and Lenin didn't apply to Snowball or Napoleon but I guess it's all about interpretation
@@Viki1999 Trotsky was the leader of the Red Army, that's why he's always shown at the forefront whenever there's fighting. Also, Lenin was never chased off the USSR by Stalin, Trotsky was. Snowball is clearly a stand-in for Trotsky, while Old Major stands for both Marx and Lenin.
Lenin's essence was split between Major and Snowball.
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." ~George Orwell
That's true. And that's where I criticize him because i think his ideas of democratic socialism are wrong. I don't think he's a bad guy though.
@@JoshuaGonzalez-sr7xy to be fair being a demsoc had a different connotation that it does today. He was not a fan of planned economies or the vanguard, if that’s something you’re really attached to then, fair enough. Not sone kind of irreconcilable difference for me- but the rogue socialists he fought among side were essentially fighting for what we today would more or less consider Ancoms
@@JoshuaGonzalez-sr7xy pretty sure the fact that he was an open homophobe is a bit worse lol
@@ExpldgN I mean I guess. Did he ever do anything personally towards them?
@@JoshuaGonzalez-sr7xy Yeah, he reported gay people to the British Secret police and accused them of being communist. He was also antisemitic. He generally was not a good person.
The moral of the story: absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Agreed!
Napoleon and his piga were pretty shitty from the beginning, so I wouldnt say corruption is the moral of the story.
No. The moral of the story is that communism is evil and easily established with a few useful sheep.
@@texasswade8453 And that's another interpretation. One I hate, but one nonetheless.
@@texasswade8453 that makes no sense from an Orwellian stand point. Orwell was a socialist in the traditional sense, he wanted to establish an idealistic society. He believed in communism, but he despised Stalinism after encountering what it does to people in Spain.
When you realize that when Susan became the CEO of TH-cam, TH-cam is slowly becoming like television media
All content creators are equal but some content creators are more equal than others.
Yep, they are the same people who took over Russia in 1917, and lead today the racist anti-white, anti-christian, anti-western, SJW totalitarian, pro-censorship "all animals are equal but we are more equal, now shut up or be cancelled" movements. Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Yuri Bezmenov and others warned us, but we didn't listen. The American population was dumbed down gradually, decade by decade to the 1917 Russian level, and you can see nowadays the neo-bolsheviks taking over, in the disguise of protectors of human rights and equality.
Yep, very sad and depressing. Now she’s dead, and the other CEO is out here with what scraps are left of TH-cam before it officially dies.
Napoleon = Stalin
Snowball = Trotsky
Old Major = Marx, lil bit of Lenin
Dogs = NKVD
Crow = Orthodox Church
The other farmers = Germany and the U.S. (I think?)
I think that's most of the characters (that make a difference in the plot anyway).
Ironically, while the CIA and filmmakers wanted this to be a "socialism BAD" movie, they didn't seem to realize that the book was saying "Stalin and the USSR were bad because they came to resemble capitalists". The moral of the story is still "capitalism is bad, arbitrary authority is bad, classist relations are bad".
The ending of the psy-op movie is also really ironic, because it implies that there should be a second *socialist* revolution to put power back into the.... hooves of the animals. A liberal "revolution" would've ended in them finding a human to topple the pigs and appropriate the entire farm again.
AmunDeus exactly, and yes the other farmers were interventionists, US, Japan, Germans...
Sad to see Orwell was a Trotskyist
@@ivanalejandro6184 not sad, it is doubleplusgood.
whats wrong with trotskyism
Imagine analyzing Orwell's book that much
Except Stalin was democratically elected and wasn't really a dictator and didn't actually kill that many poeple..
A lot of right wing "libertarians" think George Orwells art was anti-socialist since it pulled so much inspiration from the USSR.
It wasn't. Orwells art was anti-authoritarian. He himself was a libertarian socialist who fought for the anarchists in the spanish civil war.
He even wrote this article called "towards european unity" where that became pretty clear.
I hate him
He's antisemitic, homophobic, and racist. Specifically, he snitched out Jews, Black people, Homosexuals, and communists to British Intelligence. His list includes him writing:
8 variations of “Jewish?” (Charlie Chaplin), “Polish Jew, (Tom Driberg)” “English Jew,” or “Jewess.”
Paul Robeson - "ROBESON, Paul (US Negro) ...Very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter."
Paul Robeson wasn't anti-white, just look at the welsh coal miners for whom Robeson Campaigned.
The testimony of Paul Robeson (one of the people Orwell snitched on), to HUAC (House of Unamerican activities committee) during the red scare.
Stephen Spender - "Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality"
Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish nationalist poet, and anti-imperialist.
George Padmore, Trinidadian journalist and anti-imperialist campaigner.
His books Animal Farm and 1984 are used widely as anti-communist propaganda in schools in the US and UK. So much so that his animated animal farm film was funded by the CIA. There's a reason they teach George Orwell in schools and not Franz Fanon, Che, Huey P Newton, Malcolm X, Lenin, CLR James, etc.
Orwell, anti-communist: A criticism of Orwell and his Work - By Isaac Asimov.
Orwell worked as a British imperial cop in Burma for 5 years. His short story, Shooting an Elephant, uses ethnic slurs and denigrates burmese people.
I like Orwell’s work but disagree with him regarding democracy. Communism should be a dictatorship of the proletariat
CWW are U trying to say the ussr wasn’t authoritarian?
@@cipkasvay good to know
Arsenal123
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn’t mean dictatorship in the more recognizable sense, it means the state should be run by the proletariat. This is not incompatible with democracy.
A government built bottom-up not top-down
"He wanted Healthcare and apparently in America that makes you a communist." 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@Pigrulerperson yeah, and he fought on the side of the republic in the spanish civil war around 1939
Can’t fault your thinking because you are Soaicalist and we know you have no choice in the matter.
You get what you pay for. There would be zero medical discoveries with out an incentive of income. No one works for free
Not sure about medical discoveries only being found through financial gain and not out of care for self and others.
@@LL-vj5yp most medical research is funded by government grants, not private funding. The profit incentive of discovering new treatments is a bad faith argument against adopting universal healthcare.
and I was traumatized by mufasa's death, it's a miracle, I'm not a monarchist
You probably are. Just don't know it. May not be the typical monarchist with an overt king, but you probably have no problem with someone even more powerful than a king, a billionaire or their Sauron sized smaller cousins hundies (hundred billionaires).
@@jmitterii2 Pov: You're holding on to a dying ideology
lead poisoning was a factor too
Check out Curtis Yarvin, he makes a strong argument for it.
I think you mean 'mufasa'
Little mistake: you said Lenin overthrew the tsar. However, the tsar was put out of power by a temporary democracy in February. Lenin took power in October because the war was continuing, so not only because of famines. Great video BTW.
@@Viki1999 oh my bad sorry
Russia didn't have "temporary democracy"... The provisional government were members of duma that were appointed members. Russia didn't have any democracy until Yeltsin and then Medvedev briefly.
@@mikhailv67tv lmao imagine believing that read up on the 1993 constitution crisis or on yeltsin 8% approval prior to his landslide victory in 96 and medvedev is Putin’s puppet
@@personbob8691 He's ended up that way, by the looks if things quite currupted but i dont believe he started that way. He had an agenda of social and government reform . He made substancial police reforms for instance, sacking many corrupt officers and professionalise the ranks. I remember the optomism when i visited
@@mikhailv67tv the manufactured optimism u mean the lies that were made to support yeltsin as I said he had 8% approval rating before his landslide victory in 96 the economy was trash under him and most people had wanted to keep the ussr but he destroyed it and he gave money to allow for the modern oligarchy and he had immense corruption
He truly was great lol
Orwell was a socialist. For example he wrote a book called homage to Catalonia where in many parts he praises the anarchist uprising in Catalonia. He even was a supporter of the Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist party.
@@cipkasvay What do you mean excactly?
@@babyblooddistilleriesinc3131 Orwell was born in the British Raj, and served as a cop in what is now Myanmar. He later about how Imperialism and Colonialism make one believe they're doing the right thing when they are really just oppressing the natives.
he was a socalist, he became disilusioned by it after fighting in the spanish civil war,
exceeeept towards the end of his life he became more right-wing
He was, but in the end he became more of "classical liberal", which is "conservative" by English standard.
15:49 I think it meant to symbolize the Kulaks destroying their crops and livestock
It is required as middle-high school reading, as well as 1984.
The United States had at least anti-communist education in the school.
I went to school in Sweden, we did not learn anything about the evils of communism. I learned that on my own.
I love how they got you to read 1984 where he explicitly says that “thus they destroyed the very principle Socialism used to stand for” - he literally says Ingsoc is not Socialist, just socialist in name
Weird, I read Animal Farm but not 1984
@@gerardbuttigieg
From Emanual Goldsteins
Theory and Practise of Oligarchical Collectivism
Note his inspiration is Leon Trotsky
@@gerardbuttigieg
I've noticed the people who try and claim Orwell was anti-Socialist perfectly demonstrate what Orwell meant when he said facts don't matter in politics.
I read Animal Farm in high school, and it's weirdly enough the book that radicalized me.
I read the book at school too. It stopped me being a Socialist. Forever. Socialism is EVIL and destructive.
@Anne Marie d'Avis state force is evil, freedom is scary and hard but it is fair. You succeed or you don't, we all get to try but we can't all win.
@Anne Marie d'Avis how do you make it work? How do you make things equal without incredible amounts of force? And this is not capitalism, all capitalism is is free exchange between two or more parties. This is something else.
@@thomdrolet2624 i believe it is called "corparateism"
@@thomdrolet2624 you'd rather have Bezos be the most powerful entity in the US?(already is but you get the point)
Ah, the film adaptation, the CIA psyop that was a mandatory part of our school education back in the 80s.
you make it sound so sinister. i rather think that animal is a cautionary tale like Orwell's other books, he didn't only bash communism you know.
Yeah, but when the CIA bought the movie rights and produced the adaptation, they exercised their creative control to change a bunch of details from the book specifically for propaganda purposes.
@@MrSafer I think the most important and relevant lesson from Animal Farm is the "recidivism of tyranny" -- the idea that revolutions against oppressive systems can be corrupted from within, becoming just as if not more oppressive than the regimes they overthrow.
sunyavadin I watched the movie and honestly it’s awful at being propaganda. It never states that the revolution was a mistake and instead calls for a second revolution to replace those of the first. It never says the farmer was right. I think the CIA fucked up xD
I watched the movie, and read the book in my sophomore class 2 years ago lmao
I was in a stage adaptation of Animal Farm with my local youth theatre when I was like 15 (I played Snowball, if anyone was wondering). I'd kill to do it again, since now I have such a deeper understanding of class struggle and Marxism, also especially after seeing this video!
Finally! An analysis about animal farm that doesn't just boil down to "communism ackhctually bad"
Who in their right mind analyses Animal Farm and gets that conclusion. The book very clearly isnt against the idea of socialism but against the authoritarian turn it took in the USSR. At least thats how i interpreted it as a kid when i read it
@@td23asus Thats why anarchists and those leaning that way are such utopians, stuck in idealism.
Socialism is always authoritarian.
The 80's Wolf yeah cause the Marxist-Leninists did a great job uniting the global proletariat and creating a socialist world. Oh wait those State Capitalists just scared off the workers into the arms of Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism. The reason Marxist-Leninists fail is because they are too Statist and for centralized bureaucracy. Remember Kronstadt. When ever workers wanted a decentralized more localized commune, as in the Paris Commune they were suppressed as “counterrevolutionaries.” Even Marx who was libertarian at heart thought the heavily Proudhonian Paris Commune was the workers social revolution he was advocating for his whole career. And he also supported Democratic Socialism as a viable revolutionary methods in the most industrialized worlds. Leninists and the other State Socialists are revisionists of Marxism. Just ask Rosa Luxemburg. Socialism is from below and decentralized.
@@blackflagsnroses6013 You are a utopian, not scientific.
"He wasnt a fan of revolution." Literally fought in the Spanish Civil war for republicans and has a hard on for the Syndicalists.
Indeed, he literally fought on the side of the elected government against an illegal military coup that, quite sadly, did a much better job in creating a successful coalition of reactionary elements. It’s the Spanish Civl War, not the Spanish Revolution(s).
I don’t know if you and the attendant likes are aware of this distinction, but Orwell’s opinion with regard to the Civil War has nothing to do with his participation. In fact, it is due to his involvement in the Civil War that Orwell had a terrifying look at Spanish/Popular Front/Comintern fratricide behind Republican lines. Soviet military support was especially contingent on the Republicans handing over their entire treasury and, to every non-Stalinist’s horror, allowing for the ideological purging of the entire Republican military (and sanctioning the same on allied non-Republican formations.)
John Doe he fought with the communist POUM, not the republican forces
@@wafflepoet5437 Except for the part where he praises the collectivisation done in Catalonia in his book Homage to Catalonia, going so far as to say in "Why I Write" that "The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."
He was not a die-hard hyper-revolutionary, to the contrast he seemed to be only slightly more socialist than patriot (to the point of being willing to keep the monarchy around as a figurehead- see "Socialism and the English Genius") but I would still say he broadly was in favor of revolution- of the "self made" kind, as he would have put it, as opposed to revolution by strong-men, as he saw the Bolsheviks to be. I sometimes find the jumps fellow libertarians make in regards to Orwell's opinions tiring (as in sometimes ridiculous/untrue/unproven and just kind of silly) but it's even more of a lie to claim he was not in support of libertarian socialism and on some level revolution.
I don't think Orwell was anti-revolutionary (at least not always he may have changed over time idk). He was a Trotskyist and fought in the Spanish Civil War with the POUM a Marxist organization and loved the way Barcelona became proletarian in the early years of it. But towards the end of that war the Spanish Communist Party (who were being supported by Stalin) called for the POUM's arrest and expulsion from Spain. This may have been the start of him being salty against the USSR under Stalin.
Also I've generally seen most people interpret Snowball as Trotsky, at least that's how my teacher in school talked about it when we covered the book in school.
He was an anarchist, actually.
@@alexr6705 he fought with the POUM, a Trotskyist organization in Spain and was a member or the Trotskyist Independent Labour Party in Britain, weird things for an anarchist and not a Trotskyist to do. He might have like what he saw of the anarchists in Spain and expressed that in Homage to Catalonia as well as elsewhere, but to my knowledge he was never himself an anarchist.
Actually, correction: in the 1930s it had many Trotskyists join it but the ILP was not itself an inherently Trotskyist organization, being more just generically Marxist throughout its time existing, it had several different kinds of Marxists involved in it throughout that period from 1900-ish to the 70s when it disbanded to become instead a leftist pressure group in the larger Labour Party.
@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot Orwell first attempted to join the International Brigades, but the leader of the British Communist Party disliked him so he contacted the ILP instead.
I think it is important to consider Orwell's experience in the Spanish civil war. In Homage to Catalonia it's gets pretty clear that he felt like the Soviets had betrayed the workers revolution. He thought that the Soviets were more concerned about their influence in Europe than helping the Spanish working class. In Orwell's opinion the Soviets fought against the advance of the revolution, for example the collectivisation of Land, and sided with the old capitalist republic and the bourgeois. I think with that in mind it's gets pretty clear why Rrwell thought the Soviet Union was counterrevolutionary and betrayed the working class.
Also i think the introduction to the Ukraine version of the animal farm sumarizes very well how he saw the Soviet Union.
yeah it might be that, the soviets did damage the spanish republic, the soviets actually charged the republicans for supplies, guns, ammo...etc and eventually actually forced the republic to move its reserve of gold, which was the 4th or 5th largesrt in the world to moscow, ( under the excuse that trade would be more efficient)after that, they overcharged the republicans for everything and basically stole the gold.
This course of action might have been caused for many factors, like the fact that within the popular front there where anarchists, socialists, and even social democrats, which of course put the soviets off, as they did not want the civil war to end with an anarchist state or any other system fundamentally diferent to the soviet one.
@@ivanmartinez-jd8gi - That's one reason the Soviet leaders called them "useful idiots".
Have you ever considered going into teaching? You have a very clear and concise way of explaining things.
Don't encourage him, there are enough soviet apologists teaching already.
@@thomdrolet2624 lol fr, oh btw, he is a transgender, so clearly he feels weak and he wants to belong to a powerful group and he wants others to solve his problems for him
@@thomdrolet2624 That makes no sense.
Just because a film is animated doesn't mean it's for children. Many of the early cartoons had adult themes. Parents make this mistake over and over again. In the book, Snowball wasn't killed, he was just driven away. When Napoleon is looking for traitors for his show trial, four of the pigs who opposed a longer working day are executed along with the rebellious hens.
To be fair: the Donkey could always read in the books. He was cynic and usually considered nothing worth reading; THOUGH like many cynics he loved to be around simple idealists like Boxer the Horse and they were best friends (I think cynics often WANT to be proven wrong, provided it's by someone like Boxer who won't rub it in afterward). So HE certainly new what the truck said on the back...
I went through highschool in Spanish Springs, Nevada. One of the years in which I was required to read Animal Farm, our English teacher had to take leave 3/4 way into the year for the birth and labor of her child. Our class was assigned a substitute teacher at this time in the middle of our reading of Animal Farm. Our substitute teacher was elderly, possibly in her 80's. Our class then proceded to take advantage of the fact that we had a senior as a substitute teacher by telling her for five or six weeks straight that we had yet to see the Animal Farm animated film. We watched the Animal Farm animated film for those five or six weeks to the individual amusement to all of the class. Perhaps the substitute even got some time to prepare for the next lesson for our class.
I must add that the person narrating this is well informed on his subject, very intelligent, well spoken about Soviet matters. I learned from him. I would like to hear his further opinions on this.
I’m an American & I had to read Animal farm twice for school. 1 time was in 5th grade at a private Catholic school in 1985/6 & the teacher explained it as representing the Soviet Union & how they never achieved the utopia promised, but also explained socialism as an achievable practice, but warned of corruption. I was in public school from the 6th grade on & I think it was the 9th grade when I read this again. The teacher that time taught it as anti communist propaganda. Some Catholics were based during the Reagan years, because they knew he was ultimately responsible for all the murders of Catholics in South America. I wish I stayed with my grandparents & continued Catholic school …although it certainly had draw backs
💚 I found this channel a few weeks ago & I’ve been watching the old videos & I love all of them.
If you somehow see this thank you, & anyone else that could be involved🤷♂️, for you’re work!
When I watched the film I interpreted the new ending as just a propaganda spin on Orwell’s story, I was all ready for it to end and then it straight up throws some good old propaganda on us...
"Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution. … I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job. The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves (Kronstadt). If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then, it would have been all right. If people think I am defending the status quo, that is, I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism."
- George Orwell
I'm not sure how true it is but I actually heard that the book animal farm is actually banned from most college campuses in America.
Not true at all.
This would've been Great when I was covering it in school years ago
Hi! American here. I was told in school that Snowball was Trotsky.
Orwell, what a joke. Never has there been a more accurate quote to describe the "free" world than "all animals are equal, just some more equal than others".
That was the joke. It was a critique on communisms idea that all comrades are equal.
I read it when I was 14 or something, didn't understand it at the time. This explains it really clearly, thanks
You are the only person I’m subscribed to with notifications. Thank you for the vast historical knowledge. I have read the gulag archipelago , 1984, animal house, studied stallin, Lenin, and I could not place exactly who the Bolsheviks were or exactly the role they played. You explained it simply in all of 20 seconds. You the man
I always thought of the hens and eggs being stolen being the kulaks and the policy of collectivization.
I was in the 7th grade in 1966. We were studying World History. We spent three months in England. We were allowed to mention that Scotland and Ireland also exist, but they just aren't as important as England. We spent one week--one Goddamn week--studying French history. We spent two weeks in Switzerland. (A deadly dull two weeks) Finally, after our national testing for basic skills, we got to spend two days studying the Soviet Union. Guess what our test consisted of? An essay question with the title: Why I Am Proud To Be An American. I kid you not. I had to go to the principle's office to get a chewing out for suggesting this was The Party Line. (In America censorship was different, but it still existed)
I'm a tankie and I interpreted the animals taking away the axes and reigns as disarming the workers as well as undoing the Tsar. It's also against corruption and implementing Mao's ideas of criticism and self-criticism to keep the state in check by the eyes of the people so it doesn't get full of itself and ahead of the people. They couldn't speak out part because they couldn't read, and Mao worked so hard to increase literacy he overhauled the Chinese language
@Cian Abroad Collectivisation began Kong before Mao came into power.
I've really been liking your videos since I started watching you. Thank you for crafting such entertainingly educational pieces of art!
Not going to lie, you made me jump at 17:41. Thanks for that.
lol
Like 3 years ago my school forced me to read this book im glad i got ur analysis
In poland we are also required to read the book in school. If i recall correctly i was like 10 when they had us read it
Did you understand that Orwell is the best writer in the world? That is perfect English.
@@carlajenkins1990 we were upfront told whatvthe book is about etc. but still i was just 10 and could not care more.
@@sekritdokumint9326 Did you study in English or Polish? That is the best use of the English language. "Clear writing leads to clear thinking."
@@carlajenkins1990 In polish
You my friend are a great analyst, historian and a teacher as well. You out did yourself on this one 👏🏾
This will save GENERATIONS of middle and high schoolers. Sad I didn't get to appreciate this, but the future definitely will.
The scene with Benjamin crying out for what was really his ONLY friend hit me so hard, every time I see it.
I think that the rebellion of the birds symbolizes the actions of kulaks who were in opposition to the collectivization of agriculture.
19:20 Stalin had multiple meetings *immediately* after the invasion. Seriously, dude had like 90 hours of meetings within the first week of the invasion! I'll link the source vid when I find it after watching this.
ever find the source vid? i'm interested
I'm kind of curious too, got a link?
"He wanted health care but apparently in America that makes you a communist". 😆
Get a job and you will have healthcare
@@ham7357 The issue with that statement is that not everyone is able to get a job.
@@brooklynn4416 being an adult is not that hard. Trust me, even I can do it
@@ham7357
Do you believe that poor people are poor because theyre lazy?
@@gunjfur8633 not necessarily you can still make poor and irresponsible decisions and not be a lazy person.
5:46
I'm not sure if it was a mistranslation or not but my book is saying that it was actually a sheep that has been killed in the battle of cowshed. Not only that but napoleon actually stole 9 puppies away from some dogs and raised them secretly. The animated has either made a mistake or just did that to fill up the plothole about the dogs appearing out of nowhere
1. Stalin didn't have to prohibit anyone else from voting or anything like that, he had his agents and they'd just kill off anyone who was against him, or put them in gulags. It didn't have to be said out loud.
2. In the book the song WAS prohibited. I don't remember how exactly but there was a line like this. I think it was just said to the animals who were singing it, that they can't sing it anymore.
Buckster the horse is the allegory of Stakhanovism
*boxer
I will work harder...
If you're referring to the Bloody Sunday in 22nd January 1905, where you quoted "he ordered his army to shoot into a crowd of peaceful protesters." However, (in spite of the various acts he committed) the Tsar did not give the order to fire on the crowd, but was wildly blamed for it shortly after, leading to a number of strikes across the country and the 1905 revolution.
Never read it in school in the 70s. Great analysis.
You have only 1 like
That's not such a traumatizing scene when you think about it. Disney has been doing that same thing for years. Bambi, Dumbo, Lion King, Nemo, Inside Out, Up. It may actually be more common than not.
I feel like you missed a lot of the book. Like clover crying about how times seem to be worse than they ever were, and the sheep blindly following the pigs to the point that they drown out all arguments. That could be akin to shutting down arguments because you dont agree with them (which we see a lot of today)
The movie actually made some realistic improvements, it actually makes more sense that they *can* read, because the Soviet Union achieved full literacy. It makes sense that they can read the sign on the death wagon and such.
Orwell was a socialist, but he was also an anti-communist. And despite what you might think, those two aren’t mutually exclusive. Like some examples would be Baynard Rustin, Betrand Russel, Noam Chomsky and Michael Harrington.
And something interesting about some of those anti-communist socialists is that some of them drifted rightward over time to the point of becoming conservatives. That’s what the term Neoconservative originally referred to. It was coined by Harrington to describe those of the anti-Stalinist left to American conservatism. A prime example of this was Christoper Hitchens. He went from a Trotskyist who opposed the Vietnam War to a Neocon who supported the invasion of Iraq and praised George W. Bush’s foreign policy.
Considering who Orwell was, the original book, like 1984 was clearly a critique of, and warning about, Authoritarianism and the need for constant vigilance and Revolutionary optimism.
I cannot which President said it, probably Lincoln or Grant but it suits the idea certainly in the context of Orwell's Literature, "The cost for Freedom is eternal Vigilance"
My AP English teacher was a pretty based Trotskyist with some slightly reactionary social views, so she was always pointing out how great Trotsky was during our reading of this book and how he most directly and reasonably continued Marxist thought. She did this in vague and veiled language adhering strictly to the allegory so she wouldn't get fired, but it was easy to pick up on with my (at the time) rudimentary knowledge of leftist theory, tendencies and culture. Pretty epic ngl
Trotsky was seen as an alternative to Stalin in trendy leftist circles when it became obvious how bad he was. I'm not sure Trotsky was much better.
"Four legs good, two legs bad"
Monkeys: Am I a joke to you?
It is not true that Stalin "didnt talk to anyone" during the first weeks of the invasion. He was always in Moscow (there is a documents when all his meetings are recorded). He stayed in Moscow even when a lot of the leadership chose to evacuate to Kuybyshev (during the battle of Moscow). Joseph Stalin was a supreme commander of the army and personally participated in planning of a lot of successful operations, thats why the Soviet people decided he deserved an Order of Lenin. Because people loved Stalin and not without a reason
@@Ajente02 he was willing to sacrifice 25 million people to win, that's why the soviets won. They were nothing but canon fodder to him. That and russian winter.
@@thomdrolet2624 stop listening to German propaganda 1. half of the 27 million were civilians and 2. Germany lost 6 million soldiers on the eastern front 3. Soviets throughout most of the war only out number the Germans about 3:1
@@thomdrolet2624 A myth that perpetuates imperialist propaganda. Watch her video responding to "Enemy at the Gates" she explains how that's wrong and how they used tactics.
@@thomdrolet2624 Stalin never had such a perspective regarding human life.
@@Ajente02 Read Albert Einstein. He mentions how the Moscow Trials were real and there was a certain internal situation and genuine threats to the state.
The novel is about how power can often lead to corruption and oppression, with even those who at first had noble goals becoming the same as those before.
He saw this in the USSR, in which Stalin became authoritarian like those before.
A similar thing could he said about China.
China is nothing like it was before the 1980's. It had more in common with North Korea than with modern China. A totalitarian militaristic state with the population being basically indoctrinated and forced to recite the dear leader at any moment. Animal farm basically represents the communist states (aka USSR and China) falling into totalitarianism and failing to archive the goals.
He never stepped foot in the USSR
Listen, "authoritarianism" is just a label, read "On Authority" by Engels!
Works of Frederick Engels 1872
On Authority
Written: 1872;
Published: 1874
"A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether - given the conditions of present-day society - we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.
Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?
Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.
Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.
Let us take another example - the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?
But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction."
If Stalin never held his leadership position, Russia might still be a feudal, un-industrial backwaters and conquered by foreign powers. The industrialization was necessary to build up the military in preparation for war, Stalin knew that Hitler was going to invade and thus subsequently built up his military. His policies helped to win the Great Patriotic War(WW2) such as the scorcher policy where they had purposefully burned crops so that the Fascists could not eat them. If Stalin never came to power, there might've still been a highly illiterate populous, oh they would've been literate alright IN GERMAN because the Fascists wanted to conquer Eastern Europe as they considered the "Slavic race" "inferior". Also, if Stalin had never came to power, poverty and homelessness probably would've been extremely high! Also, Stalin wasn't some genocidal dictator, he had tried to resign four times, twice close to the beginning of his leadership, and twice closer to the end. The famines were caused by droughts, floods, and agricultural sabotage from the Kulaks.
“It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened.”
- Marx’s response to Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy
"Your query about Animal Farm. Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution. But I did mean it to have a wider application in so much that I meant that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconcsciously power-hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters. I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job. The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk an apples for themselves (Kronstadt.) If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then, it would have been all right. If people think I am defending the status quo, that is, I think, because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there is no alternative except dictatorship or laissez-faire capitalism. In the case of Trotskyists, there is the added complication that they feel responsible for the event in the USSR up to about 1926 and have to assume that a sudden degeneration took place about that date. Whereas I think the whole process was foreseeable - and was foreseen by a few people, eg. Bertrand Russell - from the very nature of the Bolshevik Party. What I was trying to says was ; you can't have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship"
-Georges Orwell, Letter to Dwight Macdonald (excerpt), 5 December 1946.
"Unconsciously power hungry people", this is the hidden trap for most utopian philosophies and the zealots that promote them.
When each person makes a revolution for themselves, what you have is individualism, which is capitalism itself.
@@luciomarquesbemquerer5819 capitalism is private ownership, that's it.
I cried when you showed the glue truck scene.
Where can I find the poster you have as a background?
@@Viki1999 thanks!
Wel done! Genuinely didn't know that there was cia involvement there and will check on that later.
Would love an analysis of Ursula le guin's works
"Orwell was not a fan of revolution" depends what time in his life you're talking about. Check out Homage to Catalonia!
Its weird to say that Orwell was "anti-revolutionary." Just read his own book, "Homage to Catalonia," where he praises the anarcho-syndicalist revolution in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.
He was a snitch for the british government.
@@redenginner not really ; there’s this good independent article on it for some reason i can’t link it though
1:50 well it seems like he’s kinda a revolutionary after reading Homage to Catalonia
Many have not read 1984 or Animal Farm & it shows!
Between this channel and three arrows I don't know how it happened but thank you youtube algorythm for taking me to the germanic leftist intellectual part of youtube
15:10 the book said that they would be trading for materials that were urgently needed and some food
Thanks for the education! I see lots of people read this in high school. I did not.
Goor job! Glad I randomly found your channel!
I LOLed at work at “Apparently in America wanting healthcare makes you communist.”
😂😂 seriously though
You'd have to read Homage to Catalonia and his political essays, and also have some familiarity with his party, the Independent Labour Party, and some of his friends and comrades from that party and their politics, like Tom Nairn, to put his later life anti-Stalinism in context. The fact that the conduct of Stalinists in the Spanish Civil War was shockingly uncomradely and sectarian, and that the Spanish Stalinists actively persecuted other anti-fascists despite the greater need to stop the fascists, is undeniable, and merited hostility from other Marxists and democratic socialists who had experienced that uncomradely and perverse action in Spain, and elsewhere in Europe from the 1920s through the 1950s.
The democracy of the soviets was destroyed from the 1920s onwards. Soviets continued to meet, but they were no longer democratically elected or forums in which open debate was possible. As soon as Lenin outlawed other parties they became front organisations, whose decisions could be centrally dictated. Stalin streamlined that centralisation, but it was underway under Lenin, simply by the logic of forbidding other parties and party factions within the RSDWP-Bolsheviki.
NB The depiction of the pigs as the villains is somewhat problematic, as the kids say. Obviously there is an ancient tradition of use of pig metaphors in European antisemitism. The JudenSau etc. Jews being depicted as sows shitting out gold to refer to moneylending and rentierism in general. It's possible that George Orwell was unfamiliar with those particular tropes, but using pigs as villains, in place of the traditional English-speaking world referrant of "Fat Cats" to talk about wealthy elites is an unfortunate choice, especially given the Jewish identity of many leading figures in the CPSU, including Trotsky. Orwell was not an antisemite in his published opinions, had many Jewish comrades in the ILP and the Labour Party after the war, and hasn't been accused of any personal antisemitic behaviour in any of his associates' memoirs that I've heard of, but the usage of pigs in Animal Farm to depict Stalinists and Soviet apparatchik corruption remains a worrying mistake, in my opinion. It's an error that Art Speigelman managed to avoid in Maus, for instance, in which the Jews are mice, the Nazis are dogs, and it is Poles who are depicted as pigs, interestingly - neutrals as between Jews and Nazis.
Orwell the soCIAlist
@@spiderdijo7 Homage To Catalonia is a great read for any real socialist.
They also knew about the death wagon from the glue factory in the book. Their realization was actually pretty much emphasized as it was the first and only time of Benjamin really taking action in fear of his friend dying so there was a great protesting the horses even tried to chase the car and to tell boxer to escape (without success)
Also many things that were maybe intended to be propaganda actually became true. In the book(I haven't seen the movie) the animals weren't allowed to leave the farm from the beginning of the rebellion, seems like entire eastern Europe besides yugoslavia. Then we have the poems written by whymper(?) about the great love of napoleon to his people which were the only kind of poems music etc. after snowball was expelled, seems like NK. Also you didn't mention the trading with the human farms(molotov ribbentrop packt) or mollie who wasn't able to leave behind her former live and escaped(most popular example: Berlin). Regarding the fact that this was written in 1945 I think you should pay more attention to how closely he came to a reality he nether witnessed and therefore shouldn't just put it as CIA propaganda. Of course the US used it as an instrument, but I guess Orwells intention was far beyond that.
Yes, I'm so glad someone mentioned this. In the book, Muriel the goat could read and would read. I never even noticed the Mollie and Berlin thing, awesome to finally understand it.
I'm pretty sure Napoleon did outright outlaw the song, and i just finished listening to it... but i could obv be wrong. I can see why they'd leave it out of the movie but I figured he didn't want them to be called beasts
Snowball is Trotsky
Without doubt the best video you've made so far. Incredible.
To save someone 26 minutes = "Anarchist thinks Stalin bad"
He is bad
@@popsickle3549 Yea and Orwell was a butthurt snitch
@@The80sWolf_ and Stalin was horrible.
I trigger libs all day baby
So many movies about Animal Farm, when are we getting Homage to Catalonia?
There’s only 2.
George Orwell was a socialist intellectual, but from what I have read from him(Animal Farm, 1984) he tend to have petit bourgeois type of contempt toward the working class, which is common among petit bourgeois intellectual.
But he know how to write I'll give him that.
This is photograph of him serving himself a proper tea in the trenches of Spain. But he did view the poor first hand, and lived as a poor person to see what it was like. He exposed the terrible conditions of the working class in the north of England.
Morale of Animal Farm is to not let the good die young. Noble, honest leaders are your team's carry.
Even in Legend of the Galactic heroes...*shakes head. if only Kircheis were here.
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/005/259/659.jpg
Under farmer: 1 man in power. Poor farm. Poor animals
Under pigs: Many pigs power. Prosperous farm. Animals less poor
I don't see a problem with this.
_"Stalin didn't assassinate Lenin…"_
🤔 Are we sure about that? Lenin was recovering from his stroke, and had even recently gone on a hunting trip. Then party leaders started visiting him at home and he started getting worse again. The last such visit was the night before he died. 🤷♂
Fun fact, I’m a European conservative and I support free healthcare and so does every other conservative I know.
And by free I mean that everyone has access to healthcare but private healthcare can be set up and if you’re really wealthy you can pay for a better standard.
Turns out I’m a socialist.
Not at all. Conservatives in America don't support free healthcare here because free healthcare for the poor is already available but leftists want the government to completely control the healthcare system.
@@bigchungus920No Free Healthcare for the poor is not already available... That is simply not true
@@jean-luceyesofyoureyes5502 yes it is
I got assigned this for school and didn’t read it. The assignment is due tomorrow 🕺
I don't see Animal Farm as inherently anti socialism but more anti revolution, or more specifically anti short-sighted revolution, as if revolution isn't considering the long term then it tends to concentrate on the problem rather than the solution.
I reread the book a few days ago and I was drawn to how insistent Orwell is that Old Major is incredibly old and wise, only to then reveal him to be 12 in an almost comedic fashion. I believe this is meant to represent that no matter how old and wise we can hope to become, or believe we have become, one human lifetime will never be enough to gather sufficient context of human history to form such an arrogant claim that it's worth undoing everything achieved by an entire people/nation up to that point in the name of shaping society into the dream of one individual.
Obviously I am not making the arrogant statement that there have never been any just revolutions but more that revolution requires long consideration of where the tyranny lies and what can be done in the long term to ensure that it doesn't rear it's ugly head again, if the revolution is shortsighted the tyranny will only be displaced
Great video BTW, was having trouble filling in a few blanks regarding the historical events rather than the historical figures
I’m shocked that the book is required reading in the USA. I wasn’t aware Americans could read.
Read "Homage to Catalonia"
Hmm. I think Snowball was Leon Trotsky.
Great video. You do however pronounce "animals" as "enemas" which is slightly disconcerting haha!
Thx to this video I did my exam well thanks a lot @Viki 1999
the chickens are clucklaks
The "sellout" and the resistance of the chicken are a reference to the agrarian collectivizations:
The peasants had to work harder for the USSR to export the fruits of labour, in order to buy new machinery with the surplus value. The punished chicken are a reference to the "Kulaks", to which every peasant resisting the collectivization got declared.
The only ones who didn't gain from collectivisation were the richer peasents.
@@andrewd2534 cope
13:00 One should note that the elections in the Soviet Union most of the time had only one candidate and thus weren't real competitive elections. Also, while Stalin might not have had dictatorial powers de jure he did have them de facto. Anyone trying to oppose him in e.g. the Supreme Soviet would most likely be sent to a gulag.
The party really ran the elections, but the supreme soviet was democratically elected.
@@mqge2481: It's not really a democratic election if the electorate doesn't have at least 2 choices to choose from.
wrong
not even the CIA believes that
and yes, the elections for the supreme soviet were democratic
@@ernestokrapf "the elections for the supreme soviet were democratic"
How can it be democratic if the electorate is given only one candidate to choose from? That's not a real choice for the voters.
@@Ajente02 "There were actually independient candidates (and they always won at least between 15% and 30% of the seats)"
But to my knowledge, this just meant that the party sometimes chose candidates that weren't party members but in the elections, there still wasn't more than one candidate to choose from.
An independent who the party disapproves of couldn't run.
With everyone I talk and according to Russian history, i am not mistaken, Lenin was killed by Stallin though his home lady basically.
Also yes state capitalism ≠ socialism. Even Lenin himself never claimed the USSR was socialist. But also socialism in general (lower stage communism) has never existed. The only things that have existed in the way of socialist societies have been: a) attempts at the dictatorship of the proletariat (like anarchist catalonia and the Paris commune). This isn’t in and of itself socialism, and both marx and Lenin distinguished from socialism and the “transitionary stage” of the DotP. b)social democracy. c)social democracy without the conventional liberal democracy, like what existed in the USSR. A “friendly” form of capitalism meant to safeguard the revolution. The reason the DotP was never established in the USSR (or any other socialist country for that matter) is Leninist’s recognition that the revolution must be global and universal in order for this to occur. Stalin’s idea of “socialism in one country” is a literal impossibility, for the USSR would’ve (and did) have to retain commodity production and eventually open up trade with foreign countries (which requires currency, in socialism there is no currency only labor vouchers). At some point things got mixed up and now people conflate economic democracy with socialism, rather than what it is, the process which would inevitably lead to socialism. (ie socialism is a product of it, not said workplace democracy itself)
Oh and this is not a condemnation of the Soviet Union by the way. It’s meant to be the opposite, and show that critiques such as Orwell’s are pointless and counterproductive, as they pretend like they could’ve done better when in fact they could not. It is unfair to judge the USSR for whether or not it was socialist, as it was a literal impossibility for them to establish socialism. Every country in the world needs to be headed by a socialist government, and needs to seize the means and establish economic democracy, for that to happen.
Western leftists are fond of critiquing the USSR for being “authoritarian” and “bureaucratic” without understanding why it became that way, and how the system of soviet democracy worked. Indeed, we have a similar system of democracy today in cuba, albeit much more direct and quite different in some ways. I believe cuban democracy is a truer form of democracy than liberal “democracy”. The term authoritarian is meaningless, what you mean to say is “centralized” and even then it’s quite a dubious claim as economics is not black and white. There is such a thing as duality, and bottom up/top down hierarchies can coexist.
@@polilla318 Dual bottom/up and up/bottom hierarchies as in dual power structures you mean?
imean if were to be a little metaphorical Stalin put together a large base of support during his job as general secretary and used that to take controll
LMAO this chart killed me 1:30
Iirc Orwell’s problem with the Soviet Union is that the authoritarian nature of the state only results in the recreation of the hierarchies socialism is meant to represent (It’s additionally why INGSOC takes ideas from Facism and Stalinism)
"Stalinism"
@@hoxhacat8195 yes I will admit it’s not a great word. I feel beyond the “Socialism in one country” thing the Marxist-Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist divide is primarily based in the circumstances these leaders had faced (Be it a Civil War funded by empires, the rise of 2 Fascist states that defined itself in opposition to them, whatever the political environment of China is that year, imperialism, ect.)
I am just using it as Orwell clearly sees Stalin’s ideology (if you could even call it that, since it mostly seems to he “give me and my flunkies more power”) as something separate to Marx and Lenin’s ideologies.