Louis Proyect writes: >> You either didn't get my point or having got it, refuse to engage >> with it. I told you that Russia was ruined economically by a civil >> war that included the U.S. as one of the invading armies. This >> created conditions that favored corruption, bureaucracy and all the >> rest. In Orwell's fable, there is no attempt to explain Napoleon's >> behavior outside of some kind of quasi-Pauline belief in the >> rottenness of man (or pig). In other words, the novel is utterly >> useless for understanding the real emergence of Stalinism. It is, I >> suppose, useful to understand how one pig went bad but I prefer more >> upbeat fare like "Babe" when it comes to porcine verities.
You made the argument that (1) Animal Farm did not reference the Civil War, and (2) the tale was that workers should never try and govern their own affairs. All I did was point out that (1) was not accurate, and (2) was not how I remember the book. You seem to want to argue a point (3), that the story fails to sufficiently connect the Civil War with the disastrous ending of the story. Interesting theory, and I love counter-factuals as much as anyone, but unprovable. Animal Farm is an allegory of what occurred, not an allegory of what did not occur, so give Orwell a break. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
