Animal Farm: An Exchange

In a recent issue of The New York Review of Books I discovered the following.

George Orwell and Dwight Macdonald exchanged letters in December 1946 about the meaning of Orwell's fable, Animal Farm.

Macdonald wrote that some people have been citing the book as an argument that revolutions always end badly, "hence to hell with it and hail the status quo."

Macdonald himself didn't take the book as having any such broad a meaning, he took it as specifically applying to the history of Russia and the failure of its revolution. But he had been surprised by the prevalence of the other view and was asking Orwell for guidance.

Orwell replied:

"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 that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously 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 and apples for themselves (Kronstadt)."

Orwell acknowledged that some people do see his book as a defense of the status quo against any revolutions, but he speculated that this is because people "have grown pessimistic and assume there is no alternative" between the status quo on one hand and a dictator-led revolution on the other.

I find this fascinating, although it does rather lower my opinion of Dwight Macdonald (whose photo you see above).

He really thought its significance was limited to Russia??? Surely the fact that the most Stalin-like pig was named "Napoleon" was a clue that at least one other failed revolution was on Orwell's mind?

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