'Animal Farm' by George Orwell

I first read this at school when I was about ten I think, and while I remember it reasonably well, I find that I am unable to recall the details when it comes up - as it regularly seems to - in the Monday night pub quizzes I play ridiculously competitively.

As this month marks the eightieth anniversary of its publication I thought that I should perhaps give it a re-read fifty years on from when I first encountered it. Then of course the intricacies of the Russian Revolution were unknown to me, and when I later studied them at secondary school, the potted history my earlier English teacher had given to explain the allegory turned out to be very helpful.

'Animal Farm' is a novella written in the style of a children's story. It is populated by a variety of farm animals who all speak English to one another, many of whom are slightly baffled by the world they inhabit. In this respect it is all very familiar, but the story turns darker and darker as it proceeds making it both highly memorable and extraordinarily powerful. It must rank - along with Nineteen Eighty-Four - as one if the very best pieces of political writing of the Twentieth Century.

he characters are magnificently drawn and the way that they mirror the real figures in Russian history works fantastically well. It is just so so clever. Is there any better explanation anywhere of how power corrupts, how absolute power corrupts absolutely and how majorities are in practice unable to resist the authority of corrupt minorities? Pigs get the upper hand and rule everyone else in their own interests, protected by their trained attack-dogs.

This time round though I got much more out of it because I realised that it can be read not just as an indictment of Stalinism specifically and totalitarian government generally, but of the way that power is used and deployed in any context, including in employing organisations. This little passage struck me as being just priceless in this regard, featuring as many in the book do a vile, self-serving little pig called Squealer who acts as his regime's chief propagandist:

Somehow it seemed as if the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer, except of course for the pigs and dogs. Perhaps this was partly because there were so many pigs and so many dogs. It was not that these creatures did not work after their fashion. There was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organisation of the farm. Much of this work was of a kind the other animals were too ignorant to understand. For example, Squealer told them that the pigs had to expend enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called 'files', 'reports', 'minutes' and 'memoranda'. These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely covered with writing and, as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace. This was of the highest importance for the welfare of the farm, Squealer said. But still neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour, and there were very many of them and their appetites were always good.

An allegory for Stalinism? Yes of course, but also a rather good one for most larger organisations I have found myself working in these past forty years where bureaucrats rule and largely do so in their own interests. There are always plenty of Squealers and would-be Squealers knocking about who see all developments, however indefensible, as a juicy opportunity to feather their own nests. This is why 'Animal Farm' will always be relevant and will always be the most magnificently eloquent indictment of 'official' human corruption in all its contexts.