On 17 August 1945, barely one month before the Second World War was declared over, the English fiction writer Eric Arthur Blair, commonly known by his nom de plume as George Orwell, published a book of fiction, Animal Farm.
The story is an allegorical rendition of events in East Europe after the devastating developments leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent attempts the world over to introduce and live by the writings of the German economist Karl Marx. Marx’ writings painted a utopian vision of a classless society where the workers ruled, and everybody lived happily thereafter. In the post-war efforts to make the world a more equal place by enforcing this classlessness and the communist doctrine of ‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs’, the so-called Marxist-Leninist countries where these rules were forced down by their state systems experienced more contradictions of the highest orders until the Mother System in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was thoroughly discredited and ended in 1990.
George Orwell narrates a story of disgruntled and discontented animals who work on the farm owned by humans, the Jones family. The animals, under their leader, a pig called Old Major, had a philosophical dream of a future world where they, by virtue of being animals would no longer live under the tyranny of their human masters – a world in which they would live in peace and harmony as free and equal animals. During the days when they lived as un-free animals under human rules, they became conscious, united and built a serious liberation movement.
Their noble struggle was led by their leader Pig, Napoleon, who in turn acquired lofty titles as a leader: Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep Fold, Ducklings’ Friend. Part of their preparation for a better future was to proclaim for themselves a set of non-negotiable precepts by which they would govern their new world once they got rid of the enemy. Towards this end, namely liberation and self-rule, they agreed upon and codified the lofty rules into Seven Commandments, namely:
Whatever goes on two legs is an enemy
Whatever goes on four legs or has wings, is a friend
No animal shall wear clothes
No animal shall sleep in a bed
No animal shall drink alcohol
No animal shall kill any other animal
All animals are equal
All the animals internalised these as the commandments under which they would live once they had dislodged the humans from the farm and they became their own masters. Virtually no meeting on the farm started without chanting these commandments in unison.
Yet, once the animals had dislodged their human masters from the farm and had taken control of what the Joneses had, the behavior of the leaders of the revolution changed drastically; so much so that those who were in the leadership rushed to amend the seven commandments to make life easier for the pigs as the executive animal family, but not for all the animals. The new and revised commandments created a different lifestyle altogether amongst the animals and the reality changed to a more abnormal and more stressful life with fear, suspicion, control, mistrust, spying and all kinds of restrictions everywhere. The once revolutionary commandments were changed by the leaders to:
Once the pigs started to walk on two legs, two legs became better than four legs;
The pigs began to believe in their own propaganda and thought that any animal that now walked on four legs or had wings was inferior;
The pigs all ended up wearing clothes they inherited from their human masters;
The rule about sleeping in beds was changed to ‘no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets’;
The new alcohol rule became ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess’;
Rule number six was altered to ‘No animal shall kill another animal without cause’;
The most important one about equality became, ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others’.
Following are the key lessons we (can) learn from the Animal Farm story:
We humans are an extension of the animal kingdom/queendom when it comes to our character traits and primordial instincts of resisting pain and looking for a way out. Self-preservation is the main motive for most of what we do. The main difference between animals and us is: we are born with larger brains that allow us to reason and develop moral and ethical considerations in our interactions; we have a language with which to communicate our joys and fears; we socialize our young with verbal communication, and we use language to counter-state the truth, meaning we lie; we go about communicating our need to procreate by camouflaging our basic instincts with the language and codes of love and marriage; and we build institutions to replace material creations and processes in order to make life more meaningful.
The Darwinian principle, namely that the fittest to adapt to change better and faster will rule the rest, is more true than false. In situations of political and socio-economic change, there is always an ‘Old Major’, who dreams, who develops a vision and who ultimately ends up as the Big Man and leader, to be obeyed, feared and sung about.
We always struggle and fight to end oppression and to take over power, in our Afrikan case to end colonial rule. In times of struggle we are motivated by the desire to be free and to have a better life in the future if compared to the past, yet once some of us move up and taste power and comfort, we start to behave like the people we replaced and once hated.
People work together and cooperate better when they are under oppression and when their enemy is commonly known. Once they are free and the enemy is gone, contradictions emerge fast, such that they turn against one another and lose focus of the better future they once fought collectively for.
The outcomes of collective struggles are invariably that there are almost always those who believe they are better and more deserving of a good life than others – the ‘Honourables’ who believe that their needs are different and higher than the rest of society.
Systems that sound progressive in name, such as Communism and Ubuntu, become illusions under the weight of modernity with its promises of better this and better that and wherein the individual is the key creator of opportunities and private property.
Victory is always inevitable and almost certain, leading participants never to see their roles and the rewards to their roles afterwards as the same. Victories open the worlds of aspirations, freedom, fear, suspicion, disenchantment as essential parts of the human condition. This condition leads to greed and avarice, dishonesty and manipulation of circumstances.
Formerly oppressed people invariably become more oppressive than they thought they were before they tasted the trappings of power and private comfort.
People who have endured hardship and later become adored leaders, have a harder time giving up power compared to those who had it longer. In the tales of Afrikan political culture, Afrikan communities were always traumatized at moments of leadership succession. In other words, whenever there was more than one aspirant to power, one of them had to die, or leave and settle elsewhere.
All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, great men are almost always bad men, wrote Lord Acton to Anglican Bishop Mansell Creighton in 1887.
Material things and material comfort have a corroding influence on people with the best intentions as they become protective of their material accumulations and shield themselves for otherwise meaningful human relationships with others.
When given the option between morality and poverty, human beings will tend towards immoral or unethical behaviour to survive better. ‘Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral’, wrote Brecht – loosely translated as ‘Food first, then morals’. In other words, hungry or poor people are NOT the best guardians of morals. It is like asking goats to guard a vegetable garden.
Life shows that it is easier to share that which is not yours than to give up what you think is yours.
People who share wealth or status at a given time or place tend to bond together to protect their interests rather than promote the common good.
Those who stand to gain from the status quo, however bad it is, always have the language and reasoning to justify what they would fight against if they were on the receiving end of the system.
So what can we say? Be careful what you ask for, because it might just come and then, who knows what!?!