What I learned from Orwell’s Animal Farm is that you can destroy human remnants of behavior but you cannot destroy the way people have passed on their experiences to you. No matter how a power form exists it has the potential of behaving like a human one.

The elimination of old power elements may go but influences can still remain and become part of new fiber waiting to emerge. So when the humans disappeared from the scene and there was a new order on the farm, the likelihood of a transition from a system of equality, to one where there would be an elimination of liberties among the supposedly equal partners, would be more than likely. Signs of that transition are foreshadowed by the elimination of milk and apples to feed the pigs all the way to when they acquire human habits especially drinking beer. Orwell did a beautiful job of giving a hint of how the hierarchy gradually moved away from stating theior equality to being “more equal than others”.

So right away before there was any visible disagreement among the pigs as to how the farm should be run, some them set themselves apart as a ruling body. To solidify that they made sure that they would be the only ones to effectively write; one can suspect that they could have provided a system of equal education throughout the animal world there but they did not.But their was an internal struggle with the elimination of one of their leaders Snowball which was used to further qualify the reason for a stronger pig leadership. All this was done with the excuse of maintaining “animal” independence and a productivity level second to none.

They were the organizers and planners and so in effect they were the new ruling class. Ironically they probably presented the same excuses for their better treatment as the humans did before they were kicked out. But the adage of accepting any living form with four legs and not two is what kept the animals from ever wanting a return of their old owners. The turning point to that adage came to an end when those pigs were found to be mimicking their hated neighbours that they began to business with.

A parallel between this novel and the rise of the ex- Soviet Union or totalitarianism has been cited in the literature. It is no strange co-incidence that Naploean happened to be the name of the successful leader in the power struggle to keeping the humans away. One can suspect that whenever citizens offer equal opportunities to those who are less fortunate, there are going to be advantage takers and the ’sharing’ is going to skewed to benefit a few.