Question

And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.

–Animal Farm,
George Orwell

Read the passage carefully. Then use evidence from the text to write a well-structured paragraph that compares and contrasts the ideas of Karl Marx and Old Major.

Answer 1

Both Karl Marx and Old Major condemn the injustice of the existing order and call for a radical overturning of it, but they do so in different modes and with different emphases. Old Major’s speech gives a moralistic, prescriptive program: humans are the enemy and “all the habits of Man are evil,” so “no animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade,” and above all “no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind… No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.” These rules mirror Marx’s core goals — the end of exploitation, the abolition of bourgeois property relations and market trade, and the creation of an equal, classless society — for example Marx’s call to abolish private property and unify workers against the ruling class. But Marx’s critique is analytic and historical (class struggle and material conditions drive social change) and he outlines political strategy (revolution, the proletariat’s seizure of state power as a transitional phase), whereas Old Major offers immediate moral imperatives and simple taboos aimed at mobilizing animals emotionally. Moreover, many of Old Major’s specific prohibitions (no clothes, no alcohol, no smoking) are symbolic moralizations that Marxian theory would see as cultural superstructure shaped by economic relations, not primary targets in themselves. In short, Old Major compresses Marxist aims — equality, abolition of exploitative relations, and collective ownership — into a moral creed for animals, omitting Marx’s theoretical analysis and the political complexities he deemed necessary to achieve them.