LogFAQs > #962971797

The problem with that is that there was no way that what happened on the farm wouldn't have inevitably happened. Even in some hypothetical setting in which both Snowball and Napoleon got turned into sausage before the uprising you would still have had a bunch of animals who would have been in a leaderless society that would, almost inevitably, fallen apart the moment someone took power. While Benjamin would likely have been the best choice and he likely would not have treated the animals anywhere near as badly as the pigs (it's very difficult to tell when dealing with what-ifs) you'd still inevitably have had a system that defeats itself. The farm would still need to produce to survive, work would still have needed to have been done, and it would have been impossible to maintain the preached philosophy. While it would be nice to believe that 'four legs/wings = good, two legs = bad' especially given what the other farmers tried, it would be inevitable that other farmers would have appeared. There are only two ways that the system could have progressed without the animals coming under the sway of humans once again. Namely some animal rises to take the role of farmer who owns the property and manages it like a farmer (granted, very likely a better one than Napoleon) or there is a mass collapse of society (at least at the local level) resulting in the humans leaving and the area becoming 'wild'. Or, to take it out of fairy-tale stories, a communist society in which everyone is equal/the workers own the means of production/etc. cannot exist on a macro-scale because either products and labor needs to happen which means the development of, at the very least, a worker and manager class; or you live in a society in which said things are not required which means effective regression to pre-historic levels. It's why small-scale communes can work for a time. Because the workload to maintain twenty to fifty people is relatively small and those present are willing to give up a lot of things to live at what is, effectively, a basic level. But once you try to move beyond that it simply doesn't work or apply anymore.

Or, put another way, the animals dream was doomed to failure right from the start because it's not how the world works unless they were also willing to escape into the wild. That the pigs were cruel masters who abused their power just doomed the situation harder. Likewise, even a commune that did, somehow, purge itself of corruption would be doomed to failure as, in order to keep running and functioning as a society, it would need to betray its core principles. Equality, worker-controlled, call it what you like. You have a bunch of workers just producing with no oversight you get nowhere and each type of work holds different values and so-forth. You can never achieve the ideals Marx laid out because they are a fantasy that sounds sweet but is unobtainable until such times as labor itself becomes irrelevant.