• bouh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      9 months ago

      I didn’t read animal farms, but 1984 is irrelevant to communism. It’s about totalitarism. The same kind of things happened in Staline USSR, Hitler Germany, and Mussolini Italy. Also Pétain France, Franco Spain, and probably many others.

      Main features are permanent surveillance, even at home, perpetual war, exaltation of patriotism,…

      If that reminds you something, it’s normal.

    • 0ops@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      I didn’t read 1984, but the nature of the government/economic system wasn’t really an important part of Animal Farm. The whole point of that book was illustrating how through propaganda and gaslighting, bad actors can effectively _change_the system, and that an ignorant or naive populace will just let it happen. The moral of the story is to be a diligent citizen by keep your government in check, regardless of the form that government takes

      • Aqarius@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        9 months ago

        What the fuck are you talking about? Animal farm is a direct retelling of the history of the Soviet Union, written by a socialist that fought in the Spanish Civil War. The message is “Stalin ain’t it”.

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          You’re correct, but I don’t see how that contradicts what I said. A “diligent citizen” might have recognized that “Stalin ain’t it”. Instead the population, being naively trusting of their leaders, sat idle while their ‘constitution’ was eroded and political power was gradually funneled to a dictator (going by the book). Just because it was about specific events doesn’t just mean it was nothing but a neet story, there’s something to LEARN here. It was just as much a lesson for the future as it was of the past

        • scoobford@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          It’s a retelling of the russian revolution and the rise of the soviet union.

          I disagree with the other commenter’s take, I think it is more about not letting yourself be fooled that the state ever truly represents anyone other than the power brokers.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        Yeah, he was from the generation of socialists that saw both the victory in the Revolution and the betrayals in Red Terror, not to mention the Spanish Civil War, and coined the term red fascists as a result.

    • dasgoat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      9 months ago

      They’re critical of the results of people applying communism just to, respectively, become totalitarian and to create a new bourgeois class that essentially serves to replace the old ‘monarchism’ (replacing the farmer/the Czar).

      They are scathing critiques on things that happened in the name of communism but not necessarily of communism itself in the first place.