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From: evan@cascade.STANFORD.EDU (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.legal,net.books,net.social
Subject: Re: Re: Banning Books and Bibles
Message-ID: <181@cascade.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Sun, 3-Aug-86 18:03:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: cascade.181
Posted: Sun Aug  3 18:03:56 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Aug-86 06:26:43 EDT
References: <5693@sun.uucp> <349@rtech.UUCP> <350@epimass.UUCP>
Reply-To: evan@cascade.UUCP (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Systems Laboratory
Lines: 35
Xref: watmath net.legal:4452 net.books:3955 net.social:1284

In article <350@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes:
>Ah, but it attacks the Soviet Union from a Trotskyite perspective,
>not a capitalist perspective.  It supports the goals of the
>revolution; the good pig that is banished is clearly Trotsky (the pig
>that takes over is Stalin).  It attacks the Soviet Union for ending
>up too much like the West; at the end the other animals can't tell
>the pigs from the men.  I liked it; no intelligent arch-conservative
>should, since it attacks capitalism.

[This probably belongs on net.politics.theory, but just in case it doesn't
engender a discussion, I'll leave it here.]

I'm not an arch-conservative.  I am an arch-capitalist (a libertarian if you
will).  I enjoyed Animal_Farm immensely, but I didn't see it as an attack on
capitalism.  To me the men represent aristocrats and slaveowners, not
capitalists.  The point of the end of the book is that collectivist
governments wind up being just as totalitarian and unequal as royalist 
governments.  

Whether Snowball (the ousted pig) is supported by Orwell is a matter of
opinion.  He definitely had more sympathy for him than for the others, but
that can be interpreted more to point up that there are individuals who will
recognize the need for change and do the wrong thing for the noblest of
motives.  I don't know enough about Orwell to know how he meant it, but to
say that Animal_Farm is clearly Trotzkyite because of one character is as
ludicous as saying that Rand's We_the_Living is Bolshevik because of the
sympathy she shows for the character Andrei.

The main problem I had with Animal_Farm was precisely that it implied that
the only choice was between communism and royalism (and that this is no
choice at all).  Capitalism is never even considered.  It's a great book and 
it serves its purpose well, but it can leave the reader with an undeserved
fatalism.  However, this is something to be discussed, not supressed.

	evan