Examples Of Paradigm Shift In Animal Farm

A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in how an individual perceives the world and society. Before Communism, society consisted of a clear social hierarchy with two main classes, the bourgeois and the proletariat. Communism introduced a new way of thinking, a paradigm shift, where society does not have distinct social classes and property is distributed evenly among all members. Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, explores the paradigm shift after the revolution and how it deviates from the notion of Communism because there is a residing bourgeois class and an unfair distribution of wealth and property.

In theory, a communist society has an equal distribution of wealth and property without the influence of the bourgeois society. Marx and Engels,

the authors of The Communist Manifesto, explained that Communism is the “[A]bolition of private property” (Marx & Engels, 27), or the property and wealth of the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels believe that if the property disappears, or is no longer converted to capital for the bourgeoisie, so do the bourgeois, and in turn, wealth is distributed amongst the classes equally.

However, the society in Animal Farm differs from the values of Communism because there is an unfair distribution of property and wealth, which allows the bourgeois class to have more capital than the others. While the purpose of the revolt in Animal Farm was to redistribute the wealth of the farm and to escape from the oppression of the humans, the harsh reality of the paradigm shift after the revolt differed greatly. For example, the fruits of the animals’ labor were thought to have been distributed equally amongst all members of the farm, but instead, they were “reserved for the pigs alone” because “the whole management and

organization of the farm depend[s]” (Orwell 36) on them. Also, from the very beginning, the animals experience the “epidemic of overproduction” (Marx & Engels, 19), which, as explained in the Communist Manifesto, leads to the creation of the bourgeois class, which uses the excess property as a way to gain capital. However, as stated multiple times in both readings, this capital is for the sole purpose of gaining power for the bourgeoisie. Since there is no equal distribution of property and wealth, the society of animals practices the theory of Communism, as explained by Marx and Engels, incorrectly.
Another fundamental part in the theory of Communism is the abolition of the bourgeois class.

Marx and Engels describe history as the “history of class struggles” which includes the “oppressor and the oppressed, [stood] in constant opposition of one another” (Marx & Engels 14), to show that the presence of the class system has been prominent throughout history. Therefore, the purpose of Communism is to introduce a paradigm shift to a society that could exist without the bourgeoisie, which is revolutionary since history proves otherwise. However, this ideal is far from realistic, because society is innately prone to corruption, an opinion held by many. When corrupted, capital is taken, and class hierarchies are formed within society. For example, from the very beginning, the pigs took advantage of the powerless society after the revolution and “did not actually work, but directed and supervised the others” (Orwell 27). The pigs appointed themselves as the orchestrators of the new society, thereby creating a distinction between them, the bourgeoisie, and the other animals, the proletariats. In contrast, the theories of Communism, after a revolution, aim for a society that has “abolished its own supremacy as a class” (Marx & Engels 36). However, as stated earlier, the pigs create a new class of supremacy after the old one was abolished. Therefore, the ideals of Communism don’t truly exist in the society of Animal Farm because the values of the post-revolution society do not

fulfill the criteria written within the Communist Manifesto.
Theoretically Marx and Engels have proposed a form of government and society without class distinctions, where production is created for the whole nation, and the bourgeoisie lose its political power to the people (Marx & Engels 35). However, the society in Animal Farm drifts farther and farther away from a communistic government. Instead, as the novel progresses, the animals’ society starts to resemble the society they had revolted against in the first place. Therefore, the paradigm shift in Animal Farm was that the farm reverted back to it’s original state even after the revolution. In Marx and Engel’s theory, the paradigm shift is vastly different from the original societal structure because there is no bourgeois class nor concentration of goods for one part of society. The primary goal of both readings was to create a communist society. However, the paradigm shifts of each culture were vastly different because of the effects of reality versus the ideological theories that changed the course of Communism within those societies.