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,

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

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