RateItAll: The Opinion Network

As Drummond points out, though Orwell's Animal Farm has been quoted endlessly to argue the futility of socialism, this wasn't exactly the point Orwell was trying to make in the book. The book was an allegory of Stalin's rise to power and regime, demonstrating in simple terms, the betrayal of revolutionary ideals. There were many intellectuals around the time of Stalin's regime who niavely hoped the Soviet Union represented some type of bold new society and were sympathetic to Stalin, such as the Webbs and (to an extent) George Bernard Shaw. Translating historical events into a simple, psuedo children's story had the effect of making the brutality of Stalin's regime much more clear and less easily obfuscated by those who, for whatever reason, refused to believe the true, bloody nature of the Soviet Union. His point, as we see at the end of the book, is that the Soviets (represented by the pigs) had become indistinguishable from the capitalists (represented by the humans). The Cold Warriors who sang the praises of the book seemed to have glossed over this. Indeed, when an animated version of Animal Farm was produced in the fifties, the ending was changed. This may well have had something to do with the fact that it had recieved CIA funding. The fact that Orwell's book was now being used, essentially, as propoganda, is particularly sad, especially in the context of the quote Drummond uses. Orwell was definitely a socialist, and a rather radical one too, but he admirably had the intellectual honesty to remain sceptical about all froms of authority, whatever political stripe that authority bore.

Died a staunch socialist, contrary to popular belief. Some conservatives are shocked to hear this having read 1984 and Animal Farm. His concern was against power of any sort, though is personal experience was with Stalinists, so that's what he wrote about. Read some of his short stories, and Homage to Catalonia, and you'll get a better idea of his politics. The most memorable but simple political quote in the world was his: "All propoganda is lies, even when it's the truth."