On men and pigs

Yesterday afternoon, as my father stopped for a red light, I looked out through the tinted car windows at a man in a suit standing on the stairs of a high-rise building, speaking on his sleek, glossy cell phone while he shielded his eyes with one hand from the harsh sunlight. His gold watch gleamed. Then the stoplight turned green, the businessman disappeared from my view. When the car halted under another red stoplight, a dark, thin girl held up a garland of vibrant white sampaguitas and tapped on the window. I had no change, so I just rolled down the window and handed the young girl my French fries. They were still warm from the drive-through at McDonald’s.

Although that sort of thing has happened to everybody, including me, countless times, on that particular occasion I was reading Animal Farm, by George Orwell, and it made me contemplate, quite seriously, the failings of a democracy. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with a system wherein some people can earn enough money to buy ridiculous gold watches and send their children to private schools while other children, orphaned or abandoned, beg or sell sampaguitas on the street? A system wherein some people can throw away the food they don’t like while others starve to death? We, the middle-class people who sit around reading newspapers every morning, pass squatter areas full of homeless people and high-rise buildings full of businessmen sitting in their expensive desks making even more money, all in one car ride. And we think that’s normal. Do people even think about that at all?

Yes. That’s why there are communists. That’s the foundation of communism: perfect equality, as opposed to tyranny and totalitarianism and, well, democracy. In a democracy, people are given the right to be as foolish as they want. But is communism really the solution? And that’s the foundation of Animal Farm: Communism is not the solution, because of its impossibility. A perfect system is impossible because of the unavoidable mistakes of Man. Orwell’s message is simple: Though socialism is a perfect ideal, it will collapse in real life because of the inevitable failure of human nature. And it’s not just socialism. If a democracy were perfect, people would always elect the best leader. If communism were perfect, leaders would never forget to put the needs of the masses above their own. But in real life, everything eventually collapses. As the villainous pigs of Animal Farm so aptly put it, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

George Orwell’s book is hailed as a brilliant fable that originally targeted Stalinist Russia. Stalin, parading under the banner of communism, had stripped the Russian masses of their freedom – and George Orwell attacks that, with an illuminating, almost fearful simplicity. His story is simple. Animals drive away the cruel farmer after a stirring speech by one of the pigs, Old Major, who died soon after. (Presumably, that is the Russians driving away the last of the czars, after Karl Marx made himself heard.) The clever pigs are soon the leaders of all the other animals, and in the beginning, they lead well – there is equality, justice, and progress. But slowly, their paradise of prosperity and equality deteriorates into a hell of overwork and oppression, as the pigs begin to take advantage of their position as all-knowing leaders to exploit all the other animals. When the story ends, the pigs have become just as terrible as the cruel farmer, and the animals are no better off than before. (It would seem that Stalin, in Orwell’s mind, is nothing more than a wily, greedy, brutal pig.)

The first time I saw a pig, it was giving birth. The undulating folds of fat and pink skin strained under layers of grime and moisture as the pig grunted and squealed. A woman stuck her wet, soiled hands into the opening just under the pig’s stiff tail, helping the pale pink piglets make their way into the world in a flood of fluid and blood.

The pig didn’t exactly display intelligence. In fact, for quite some time after that encounter, I viewed the pigs with a sort of arrogant superiority, as in: You’re not as smart as I am. I didn’t see any Doc Pigs helping you with something as basic as giving birth. It was Man who helped you. Therefore, you are dumber than I am. I accepted that dolphins and apes were clever and all, but to me, the most stupid of all animals were farm animals. Ha! What was less intelligent than a plodding donkey, a waddling duck, a bleating sheep? Nothing.

Even before the "stupid" animals managed to drive away the cruel farmer in Animal Farm, I had already seen the error in my childish logic, and felt dumb for even thinking it. Pigs had been giving birth long before Man ever conceived of the idea of a midwife. Now, I generally accept that animals have an intelligence all their own.

Napoleon the pig, accepted to be the Stalin of animal farm, was intelligent. But his downfall was inevitable. Let’s translate it into modern terms: A smart man gets the position of President. Everyday, he has control of billions of pesos in taxpayer’s money. After a while, he begins to be dazzled by the sheer amount of money in front of him, and thinks that no one will notice if he takes a few million pesos. It’s a mere drop in the ocean of money. Finally he does it. He takes a million pesos and puts it in his pocket. No one notices. There are billions more where that came from. Encouraged, he takes another million... and another...

But the cruelty of Napoleon is typical. (Isn’t it strange that in a world entering the third millennium, the words "cruelty" and "typical" can be casually mentioned in the same sentence?) Far more intriguing characters are the pig Snowball – in the real world, likely Trotsky, Stalin’s nemesis – and the horse Boxer, who serves as a metaphor for the proletariat. Boxer had great difficulty in thinking out anything for himself, but he is vital to Animal Farm – he falls and the work productivity drastically decreases. Just like the masses. They are people with rights and capabilities, but being uneducated, they are easily manipulated, and thus oppressed. But the real power lies with them – they are the ones who can support or topple a government. As for Snowball, he is just as intelligent as Napoleon, and braver and more charismatic, but not quite as ruthless. Napoleon drove him out.

Another interesting thing about Animal Farm was the song the animals sang about their freedom, called Beasts of England. In the book, all the other farmers panicked every time one of their animals started singing the song – a scene curiously reminiscent of Democratic America spreading a worldwide paranoia of communism. Orwell criticized Marxism as naïve, but the American government’s fear of communism became a phobia.

There’s no sense going into a detailed discussion as to the many facets of Animal Farm, a task that would require more than a single essay. I don’t understand all the nuances of the story myself. But the fable is fascinating, enormously thought-provoking – nothing about it is nostalgic. Animal Farm is evocative and unsentimental. You should have seen me reading the scene where Boxer was sent to be slaughtered. At first I cried, but I forgot about tears in the next scene, where the pigs convinced the animals who were distraught at Boxer’s fate that Boxer had, in truth, died happily and was now in Sugarcandy Mountain, the animal heaven. (Obviously, Orwell shares Marx’s view that religion is the opium of the masses.) I was furious at the pigs, and thinking about something the cynical donkey Benjamin had voiced out, although not in these words: Life never changes, except from bad to worse.