In a certain sense, Orwell was my political enlightenment. When I was in junior high school, my history teacher gave me a thin little book on a lazy afternoon as a reward for improved exam results. The book was Animal Farm. That night, after I got home, I read it in one sitting. Although I did not yet understand Soviet history or the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, this short fable still shocked me deeply. From then on, I began reading works of philosophy and ethics since the Enlightenment, and developed a strong interest in modern left-wing thought beginning with Rousseau.
Orwell’s Life
Like many left-wing activists from upper-class backgrounds, Orwell’s revolutionary life began with deep sympathy for the lower classes in colonial India. He graduated from Eton, the famous elite school, yet during the Spanish Civil War he resolutely gave up a comfortable life and joined the International Brigades. After witnessing the Red Terror carried out by the Republican government and the Soviet Union during the war, Orwell began to reexamine the so-called socialist revolution.
The Spanish Civil War ended with Franco’s victory. After returning to Britain, Orwell began his writing career[1]. His works largely reflect on socialist revolution and socialist systems. His best-known books, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, became propaganda texts for the capitalist camp during the Cold War. Some people therefore believe that Orwell changed his political position after the Spanish Civil War.
I do not think so. Reflection does not mean opposition. As an activist who had truly entered the socialist movement, Orwell understood the nature of revolution better than those “theorists” who sat in warm studies and imagined revolution with only passion and sympathy. His reflection on revolution and satire of the socialist movement were careful decisions made from the reason and conscience he inherited from the Enlightenment. They cannot be explained away by the phrase “change of position.”
The Story of Animal Farm
The plot of Animal Farm is simple. A group of animals exploited by humans start a revolution under the leadership of the pigs. After driving away the human farmer, they build an ideal society of animal equality according to Old Major’s original vision. But the good days at the beginning of the new regime vanish quickly. The revolutionary leader Napoleon, representing Stalin, drives his comrade Snowball, representing Trotsky, off the farm and begins his path toward dictatorship.
The book reaches its satirical climax at the end: the revolutionary leaders who once opposed humans completely begin walking on two legs like humans, and bring human exploitation back to the farm in even harsher form. The difference from the old human rule is that exploitation in the new society becomes more deceptive under the decoration of propaganda. Through repeated political messaging, the animals not only silently accept their renewed slavery, but also begin to feel grateful to the new exploiters[2].
This is another story of the dragon-slayer becoming the dragon: revolutionaries become new dictators after the revolution succeeds. History often cycles through this tug-of-war between autocracy and revolution. People call that cycle the historical cycle.
The Historical Cycle
Orwell and Tocqueville are affectionately called “contemporaries” by many later intellectuals[3]. This is not only because their ideas were prophetic and universal, but also because the history they experienced has not become obsolete with the passage of time. People often sigh that history is astonishingly similar, but few seriously think about history and its similarities.
In nearly four thousand years of recorded Chinese history, the cycle of autocracy and revolution has repeated again and again. Every dynastic change was accompanied by terrifying massacre and famine. In this sense, Orwell and Tocqueville, two cold thinkers far away, became China’s contemporaries through the irony of history.
On the question of how to escape the historical cycle, Mao Zedong once discussed it with Huang Yanpei. Mao gave “democracy” as the only solution[4]. Yet when we look back at history many years later, in front of repeated tragedies, Mao’s answer seems too light, and his later practice failed to answer his own words.
So we have to ask: what causes the historical cycle of autocracy and revolution? What conditions are needed to escape it? Are the commonalities among the world’s peoples enough to support the transplantation and spread of historical experience?
These questions may seem old, but they carry heavy significance for the real world. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, countries around the world have experienced their own democratization processes. Some were peaceful; others were violent. The irony of history is that violent revolution often seems to come together with dictatorship: Cromwell in the English Revolution, Robespierre in the French Revolution, Stalin in the Russian Revolution, Mussolini in the Italian Revolution.
The possible explanation is roughly this: to unite a faction and complete a revolution amid a complicated situation, there must be a leader with extraordinary execution ability and charisma. This great revolutionary leader becomes the focus of all contradictions in modern violent revolution: the process of revolution must be autocratic, while the result of revolution is supposed to be democratic[5]. In theory, escaping the historical cycle is simple: the revolutionary leader must handle the identity transition after victory.
But real history is far more complex than theory. Every country’s democratization process is accompanied by complicated ethnic relations and cultural conflict. In those relationships and conflicts, individual choice can become secondary. In this sense, it is too arbitrary to blame the historical cycle entirely on revolutionary leaders. People have self-interested instincts, and power has an instinct to expand. Blaming these instincts is useless. Thinking about how to restrain them through external institutions is the proper historical path.
Orwell’s Spirit
For those of us living today, the first step toward solving problems is to face them. Progress in life and social change always require people who dare to look directly at problems. They can smell crisis during songs and dances of peace, and return to the value of the individual when everyone else is immersed in grand narratives. Sometimes they are stigmatized; sometimes they are treated as heroes. They are Orwell, Tocqueville, and Tolstoy; Liang Qichao, Chen Tianhua, and Lu Xun. They possess rational spirit and cold conscience. They are intellectuals. Compared with passionate revolutionary youth, society needs intellectuals even more.
China’s nearly four thousand years of history are filled with violence, blood, and tragedy, including the suppression and persecution of intellectuals. To escape the historical cycle of autocracy and revolution, we cannot lightly say “democracy,” nor can we hypocritically shout “freedom.” We must truly face problems and respond to criticism with the greatest tolerance and goodwill. We must give “Orwell’s spirit” a place of its own, so that everyone can express their thoughts clearly. Only then can the ever-rising cost of stability maintenance return to improving people’s welfare, and trains to Beijing become less crowded.
[1] Duan Huaiqing. A Generation’s Cold Conscience: Orwell’s Intellectual Legacy[J]. Social Science Forum, 2006 (5): 29-41.
[2] George Orwell, translated by Sun Zhongxu. Animal Farm[J]. Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2007 (1): 103-103.
[3] Ni Yuzhen. Tocqueville’s Unique Perspective on Democracy: Democracy as a “Social Condition”[J]. Sociological Studies, 2008, 3: 79-91.
[4] Yang Jintao. Huang Yanpei and Mao Zedong Discuss the “Historical Cycle”[J]. Consultative Forum, 2013 (11): 56-57.
[5] Hannah Arendt, translated by Chen Zhouwang. On Revolution[J]. Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2007 (3): 171-171.