Animal Farm, Economic Freedom, and Human Flourishing

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an important piece of literature for our age.

Though the main target of the satire no longer exists, this is a book that should find its way back into the curricula of upper elementary, middle, and high schools. There are a whole lot of young adults that are living in a fairy tale, hoping for communism, that would benefit from reading it seriously, too.

Based on history, however, I think that the importance of Animal Farm is greater than when Orwell wrote it and that it is useful in understanding human nature and why we should be very careful how we view each other and the role of the government.

There are several reasons why Animal Farm deserves a more prominent place in American curricula.

Why is it Important?

First, it is simply a good story, written well, and entertaining. The book is satire, but the characters are sufficiently plausible that most readers will acknowledge they’ve met that person before. It helps that the story is about animals. One of the reasons Animal Farm should be more broadly read is because it is a masterpiece.

Second, it is a brilliant example of how imaginative fiction is much more effective at carrying ideas than essays. Those meager writers who mainly write in the world of non-fiction should be blown away at how powerful Orwell’s depiction of communism captures the absurdities of that political and economic system. I have read some of Orwell’s non-fiction essays (he is an excellent essayist, too), but his 1984 and Animal Farm are much more compelling.

Third, Animal Farm provides a gateway for children to understand totalitarianism. As a child toward the end of the Cold War, I sometimes wondered how it was that the Communists could get and maintain control, if they made people so miserable. Orwell shows the way in a manner that even a child can understand.

It is interesting, however, that Orwell’s satire seems to have implications beyond his original intention.

Broadening Applicability

One of the more interesting facts about Orwell is that he was a socialist. The man lived in voluntary poverty in France for a time, had a deep sympathy for working class people in the U.K. (who were largely getting a raw economic deal), and as a result viewed socialism as the economic program most likely to help people out.

The intentions were good, but Orwell failed to account for the fact that whether socialism comes in through revolution (as with Animal Farm) or by popular vote, as he preferred, it tends to end in the same place: human misery.

One of the central tenets of socialism, perhaps the very core of it, is that the collective controls the means of production. There are, as proponents of socialism argue, multiple ways that this could happen. In the Soviet bloc, ownership was by the government. As the U.K. flirted with socialism, it was public ownership of certain industries while private ownership remained for others, under government scrutiny.

Although there are some Jacobin types on the far left who lobby for full on communism, most of the advocates for contemporary socialism view themselves as arguing for some sort of economic control by the people, funneled through a centralized planning system, but always being governed democratically.

Again, the intentions are (nearly) always to make life better. People that want socialism don’t want Venezuela, and they typically don’t believe they will get it.

Animal Farm, I think, helps show what the process of centralized control will always tend toward the abuses of the animals on Animal Farm and by the government in Venezuela.

Orwell wrote Animal Farm to mock the Soviet Union and, perhaps, to show that real socialism wouldn’t end up there, but there is little empirical evidence of a nation implementing broad economic socialism while maintaining both economic viability and a reasonable amount of personal freedom.

Those arguing that “real socialism” won’t end up like Animal Farm, are really just unthinkingly chanting, “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

Just like the sheep chanting against two legged humans, most of the advocates for socialism (or raw capitalism, for that matter) haven’t given enough thought to the system to deserve to comment. Additionally, they mistakenly believe that it is the number of legs that determines the goodness, rather than the way that power is structured. Their end goal is wrong.

Economic Freedom as a Goal

Economic freedom is important, but it should never be an end to itself. This is why so many of the arguments between contemporary socialists and capitalists is unhelpful. Economic freedom is always relative, always situated within a particular context and community, and should always remain a means to an end.

The end of economic freedom should be to enhance human flourishing.

As I understand it, human flourishing is the ability for individuals to flourish within the web of families and communities as we live out our calling to be the image of God. Others may want a more naturalistic description of that, but I’ll stick with my own worldview.

True human flourishing isn’t found in a universally level distribution of GDP across the community or in absolute personal autonomy. It must have the individual and community as complementary elements, with both playing a function.

Oddly, many of the contemporary conceptions of socialism in the United States believe they can get both absolute personal autonomy and total collective cooperation at the same time. One of the privileges of being a fringe idealist group with (so far) very little control of policy is that you can propose preposterous solutions without having to ask whether it is even possible for them to achieve the stated ends.

The trouble with popular forms of capitalism that put personal autonomy as the golden calf at the center of the platform is that capitalism requires a cooperative community to function, so the very end they pursue promises to undermine the ends they want to achieve. The trouble with socialistic proposals that see the collective as the solution is that the collective always concentrates power to a few who will use it undemocratically “for the common good” and that abuse of power inevitably demotivates the hard workers who are being deprived from the fruit of their labor for someone else’s vision of good. This is the inevitable end of socialism.

Animal Farm may have started with a revolution, but it shows the likely end of all collectivist economic systems. By using anthropomorphic animals, Orwell enables the reader to look beyond the caricatures and have sympathy or antipathy toward parties that would be impossible were they humans. The book enables important conversations as we consider the likely end of socialism, which makes it an important resource for having real discussions with a generation that seems to be lurching toward a false belief in the innocence of the collectivization of power.

Animal Farm

By George Orwell

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The Reality of Our Dystopian Fantasy

Recently I have been reading dystopian fiction as I think through the nature of totalitarianism in real life. I’m struck by both the similarities and differences between the various books I have read. Although the authors have drastically different worldviews, much of what they held to be a means of control is similar and many of those means of control are already in place.

More significantly, many of the means of control that are in place in our society are voluntarily implemented. We choose to be absorbed and distracted by our televisions and smart phones; we (societally) elect to be distracted by sex in various forms. In light of these somewhat dated dystopian visions, reality is even more frightening.

Entertainment

In George Orwell’s 1984, for example, entertainment is used both as a means of control and of monitoring. The telescreen is always on, pornography is produced for the proles to consume to keep them happy, and other cheap entertainments are made available that are poor quality and degrading. Striking in Orwell’s fantasy is the nature of the violence in the movies, which was used to help the audience dehumanize other people.

In contrast, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World doesn’t have the intrusive telescreen (likely because that technology was in its infancy and had little commercial availability), but the feelies are a common source of entertainment, where the motion pictures are trite in their plot, pornographic in nature, and have technological innovations that allow the audience to get some of the physical sensations of the actors on the screen.

In both cases, the purpose of the entertainment is largely to pacify the masses. In both cases the entertainment is also a major means of shaping culture. This is reflected in the warlike nature of Orwell’s Oceania and the sensualism of Huxley’s world.

Set in an obviously fictional dystopia, the symbolism of both authors is heavy handed, but it is not too far from the techniques used in totalitarian regimes. In We Have Been Harmonised, which reads like a real-life 1984, Kai Strittmatter describes the cheesy entertainment produced for the masses to support the Communist Party. This includes forming music groups to produce party-supporting rap music: “The reform group is two years old now / and it has already done quite a lot / Reform! Reform! Reform! Reform! Reform!”

There is also overlap with the way the Nazi’s rose to power. In Milton Mayer’s book, They Thought They Were Free, German citizens describe how they were perpetually entertained through meetings, organizations, etc., so they were always imbibing the National Socialist message and not thinking about big things.

Consider, then, the message of The Shallows and Amusing Ourselves to Death that what we consume for entertainment and how we consume it deeply shapes our experience in life, particularly how we think. The difference is that we are clamoring for more of the entertainment that is destroying us. With regard to entertainment, we are living in a voluntary dystopia.

Sex as Control

Dystopian fiction also tends to see sex as a means of control.

This is nowhere more obvious than in Brave New World, where casual sex is not only allowed, but socially expected. However, prevention of the natural result of sex is an absolute social necessity as the girls are taught from childhood to execute the Malthusian Drill to prevent pregnancy. Control is exerted by sex and lots of it to keep people quiet.

In contrast, the suppression of sex is significant in Orwell’s 1984. Party members are not supposed to enjoy it, so much of Winston and Julia’s rebelling consists of sneaking off to knock knees. Orwell is less dire in his depiction of anti-natalism, but the joyless sex that Winston suffers through from his willing, but resistant wife is appalling. Children are presented as a duty and not a delight.

In C. S. Lewis’s dystopian fairy tale, That Hideous Strength, when Filostrato describes “reproducing ourselves without copulation.” Eliminating sex is a part of control for the N.I.C.E. because, “There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.”

According to these various authors, either the total elimination of sex or its abundance is a means to control. These amount to the same thing, because in each of these situations, sex has become essentially meaningless.

Sex in Brave New World has no social purpose other than to pacify and to conceive through it is failure. Sex in Oceania is supposed to be pleasure free, solely for begetting future members of the Party. There is no social purpose of it. For the N.I.C.E., sex must be eliminated, because it will have no purpose. Whether there is a great deal of sex or very little sex, the physical act is always divorced from its natural purpose.

And this is exactly where we find ourselves. Contemporary “hook-up” culture is essentially similar to Huxley’s vision, though freely chosen. We need look no further than the rabid concern among left-leaning politicians that sex be divorced from its gendered directionality, and that if a couple who can procreate do copulate, that the government provide the means to prevent conception or destroy its result. The self-chosen sterility of many young professionals for the sakes of their careers, etc., is a sign of this acceptance. As a society, we certainly live much more on the Huxlean side of the spectrum than the Orwellian side, but I think we may not be too far from seeing Lewis’s dystopian vision come to fruition.

Self-Chosen Dystopia

The amazing think about each of these dystopias is how accurate they are with respect to the worst aspects of our culture. The tragedy is we often realize the unhappiness that results but fail to connect it to the cause. We are, in general, less happy than earlier societies even though we are much wealthier. Part of the reason for this is that the very things that were supposed to make life better have helped to sap its meaning.

At this point in my life, I’m not prepared to give up my smart phone. There are simply too many advantages to having the sum of human knowledge in my pocket wherever I go. What needs to change, however, is how often I pull that silicon and plastic rectangle out of my pocket to look at useless things. There is little doubt that some of my dissatisfaction with my life as it is because I’m constantly borrowing other people’s strife and longing for other people’s good.

At the same time, there are likely means of control that I can rightly eliminate from my life with no real loss and a great deal of gain. The challenge is to find the room above the antique dealer––hopefully one that isn’t bugged by Big Brother––and figure out what adds value, what distracts, and what can be eliminated. I think we’d all be happier if we spent some time doing that, though our technological controllers were much prefer we did not.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

Wipf and Stock

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