One of the strangest things about that text is that very few of the folks I've talked to about it seem to feel that the issue with the pigs at the end is that there is a farmer.
That is to say, I very rarely find anyone who will agree that the book is anti-capitalist at teh same time that it's opposed to Stalinism.
I see the book continually taken happily anti-communist text. But the text is certainly not _just_ about the Soviet system under Stalin.
Over the years, the big impact of Orwell to me has been how readily people can look at systems that they consider to be Other than their own and critique them while eagerly ignoring the implications for their own situation. That is, everyone here thinks the sheep are dumb, but at least they went through a period of time where they tried to replace the farmer with a different pig... where I live in Texas, all the sheep just think they are the farmer.
That is to say, I very rarely find anyone who will agree that the book is anti-capitalist at teh same time that it's opposed to Stalinism.
I see the book continually taken happily anti-communist text. But the text is certainly not _just_ about the Soviet system under Stalin.
Over the years, the big impact of Orwell to me has been how readily people can look at systems that they consider to be Other than their own and critique them while eagerly ignoring the implications for their own situation. That is, everyone here thinks the sheep are dumb, but at least they went through a period of time where they tried to replace the farmer with a different pig... where I live in Texas, all the sheep just think they are the farmer.