The farm of persuasion

"Animal Farm" is a book written by George Orwell, and it was first published in 1945. This political allegory about the Bolshevik revolution and the later communist system written in fable form, takes you vehemently but masterfully to what happened when Joseph Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union. This historical moment, precisely contemporary to the publication of the novel, completely changed the direction of the communist ideals of the country and its imprint on the rest of the world.

As with the Animalist revolution in the book, the movement is shaped by the proposition of aspirations for change in the situation of slavery of men by an empowered caste, in this case, animals enslaved by humans to work on the farm. This ideology is inculcated to the people (to the animals) by a leader with great rhetorical capacity, Lenin in the Bolshevik revolution and the Old Pork on the farm. This leads to the conclusion that it will always be necessary, even if it is a joint opinion, for an opinion leader to take charge of change. He will have to take care of establishing the ideological bases of that revolution in order to be able to remain in that position of rigor; so that the Old Pork dictates the seven laws by which the animals will have to govern to finish with their enslavement by the humans:

-Anything with two legs is an enemy, and what has four legs, a friend. With this principle an exclusionary speciesism is marked towards humans that takes shape with hatred towards the figure of the farmers and owners of Manor Farm. In this way the speciesism of humans, who use animals as a tool of work, turns against them. In turn, this guideline promotes the union between animals, without importance of the species to which they belong.

-No animal will wear clothes. As with other guidelines that follow, this entails a differentiation of humans based on natural animal behaviors. It could be called a dehumanization of animals. Although we know how rare is the occasion in which they wear clothing, it is rather an irony of the author.

-Nor will sleep in a bed. This principle follows more or less the foundations of this last one.

-Nor will drink alcohol.

-Nor will do business. This, with the previous three, is revealed against them at the climax of history, when Napoleon and Squealer, the pigs illegally taking power –calling themselves as legitimate heirs of the command-, eventually transform their behavior by the craving for control and become like the humans who both hated in the beginning: they negotiate with the owner of the farm how to make the most of it by exploiting the rest of the companions. Similary of what happened with the communist nomenklatura of the USSR: when Stalin occupies the position of President of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, he becomes the highest ruler of the State, surrounded by a series of ministers, secretaries, assistants ... with the title "leaders and advanced workers people" will once again become a social elite, interested only in their own profit and who will do nothing for the good of the rest of the people.

-One animal will never kill another animal. Another law that will also turn against them when, at the height of the mandate of the pigs, they pretend to end the life of any of their "companions" that opposes them or does not follow their guidelines ... Does it sound familiar to you?

-Among the animals must remain the camaraderie.

-All animals are equal. These last three laws are intended to create a sense of belonging to the group and brotherhood between animals, and in this way, the revolution will occur with confidence, with much more security in each other.

The Old Pork's Animalism principles then become the backbone of day-to-day life on the farm until one day the farm owners accompanied by peasants in the area burst into the liberated farm and shoot the Old Man. With his death, the revolution is headed and two of the pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, will fight to win over other animals and seize power. As happened in the Soviet Union with the death of Stalin, Trotsky (animalized in Snowball) and Stalin (animalized in Napoleon) represented two ways by which to continue the road of the communism. That of Trotsky, defending Lenin's primitive ideals, would be allegorized with Snowball, who intends to turn the farm into a veritable community of animals where all would work in unison by drawing it forward thanks also to the instruction of all. "Education is knowledge and knowledge is power" would sum up the spirit of its proposal. This ideal is truncated by the personal plans of Napoleon and his accomplice Squaler, who, as happened with Stalin, devised a tactic of propaganda and repression to sink the figure of his opponent and seize the power.

Napoleon, like Stalin did, armed himself with propaganda and ended up completely changing the ideals of the animals and the conformed system. The new leader (self-proclaimed), after defile Snowball’s figure and turn everyone against him, is intrinsically and there is no reason to object. Thus, everything he enacts should be done as it will be the best for everyone. Pigs are in their own right the leaders of the revolution, since they are the only ones capable of taking the rest on the right path. It begins in this way to conform a cult to the figure of this one, creating hymns in his honor and constructing a giant statue of his in the entrance of the farm.

However, as in all historical periods, the mandates never convince the people and can not last forever... Or yes? You'd better find out your own…

A very curious moment of the novel is which, when animals enter for the first time in the house of the owners of the farm they discover what they really do with them. They discover that the pigs, sheep and dead cows were not buried, but rather they were slaughtered in the abattoir to later feed on these remains. They begin to realize that their exploitation had an end: to make human life easier. Thus, they observe with disbelief the use that was given to the skin of the lambs to quilting the mutones, the feathers of the hollows to fill the cushions and cushions, the hens discover that their unmade young are put in a refrigerator without any type of care ... It is then when the spark ignites and that hatred that has increased towards the human race becomes force to continue with the animalistic revolution engendered with the Old Pork. At the time George Orwell wrote the book, some movements such as the ecologist or vegetarianism had not yet fully recovered, although it is certain that he wrote the novel in the awareness of the exploitation that humans have been carrying out since time immemorial . These movements, so necessary and relevant in the current global situation of global warming, extinction of certain species, along with so many other natural disasters promoted by the hand of man, have been extolled by fiction with many other creations referred to the taking of the power of the animals against the humans, as a way to take back what was his and that all the species we should share.

It is this intrinsically one of the intentions with which the novel is written, apart from the satirical criticism of the communist system of the Soviet Union, to give voice to animals against humans (in fact literally, since it grants them a language and human vocabulary), thus offering them, even in fiction, the possibility of defending their rights against the abuse of man; something that is anatomically impossible for them in real life. For this reason, we humans must reflect and take charge of our responsibility in this situation (which is total, practically), putting all our grain of sand to form a place where animals and humans cohabit without one species end with the other, which, if the industrializing and consumerist system continues to take root at present, is not so impossible.