Thoughts after a history symposium

One accidental benefit of the tragic and in many cases avoidable circumstances which have resulted in large portions of the world being obliged to work from home in 2020-21 is that conferences and academic symposia have moved online and thus become easy to attend from the comfort of one's own home. I myself am presenting at a couple of literary conferences in mid-2021, one of which I most likely would not have been able to attend had this situation not arisen. And I was very fortunately, as far as time differences allowed, able to attend a free history symposium over the weekend of 18th-21st March hosted by the University of Louisiana. I'm not a historian; I have a PhD, but in English literature. I've never studied history at a tertiary level, and only get involved in it as a hobby. As such I was very glad that the hosts of the conference "Napoleon and his Legacy: Warfare, Politics and Society" made attendance so easy.

I was initially attending to see the roundtable discussion of podcasters who specialise in the Napoleonic Wars, fan that I am of Everett Rummage's Age of Napoleon podcast. And yet the two other sessions I was able to attend in full given the time difference, and which particularly interested me, were the opening and closing keynotes given by Professor Michael Broers and Professor Emeritus Charles Esdaile respectively.

I don't make much of a show of my interest in European, and particularly Napoleonic, history on this blog because it's rarely terribly relevant. Of the two academics in question, I only own one book by Broers, Europe under Napoleon, and one by Esdaile, Napoleon, France and Waterloo. I believe that Broers has something of a reputation as a Napoleon enthusiast, not just of the era but of the man himself; in the Open Letters Review, Steve Donoghue accuses Broers of engaging in "damage-control for the pestiferous little Corsican" in the second volume of Broers' work of Napoleonic biography, The Spirit of the Age. Esdaile has a reputation very much on the opposite side, with none other than political-strongman apologist Andrew Roberts referring to Esdaile's work Napoleon's Wars: An International History as "the Case for the Prosecution".

Professor Esdaile's closing address in particular attracted considerable discussion, as those who do not cast Bonaparte in a favourable light often do. The usual questions were asked of why he was so intent on criticising Napoleon. Yet the answer is perfectly clear. For those unfamiliar with it, Bonaparte was, for all of his alleged military and administrative genius, a particular expert at PR and propaganda, making himself appear not only particularly gifted, competent and fair in general, but also personally responsible for numerous achievements which are either exaggerated or were largely the work of other people.

Putting aside the issue of his personal achievements and any other qualities like his supposedly enormous energy, (sometimes) charming personality and reformist approach, it is fairly clear, deep down, why Napoleon appeals: he won a lot of battles. He made a number of pithy remarks. He adopted a unique and distinctive aesthetic. Furthermore, he positioned himself, and was positioned by others, as the "fun" and exciting rebel opposed to both the French aristocracy, pampered, decadent and foolish, and the British, who can easily be portrayed as the boring, fusty establishment — while also ruthlessly expansionist — sitting on the sidelines for much of the era paying (or pretending to pay) other countries to fight France on their behalf. It's little wonder that for years after his death, French political activists, often young liberal-minded students who had never lived under his authoritarian regime and would probably have opposed it if they had, would, in times of turmoil, call out "Vive l'Empereur!" and dress up as him to protest and riot. Napoleon doesn't represent oppression, conscription, taxation, broad governmental power, soldiers thrown into the meat grinder of terrible battles like Borodino or Waterloo. He is two fingers up to the regime in power.

I don't think Napoleon was a particularly nice person (in fact I think he often comes across as self-absorbed and tiresome, and his "friends" and associates probably walked on eggshells around him), and I think above all his greatest crimes are the thousands of pointless deaths of soldiers that must be laid at his feet, just as much as they may have equally been the responsibility of other European potentates who refused to let his empire become hegemonic in Europe. This, of course, is in addition to the sexism he institutionalised in the Civil Code, the racist policies and colonial atrocities for which he and his administration were responsible, and his fundamentally anti-democratic subversion of the popular will in his usurpation and centralisation of power within himself. And even if it is true (which it may or may not be) that he may have been no worse than other political and military figures of his time, and even if we are for some reason inclined to overlook or justify all the death, misery and oppression originating from him, Napoleon may be interesting, sometimes even funny in his ridiculous pomposity just as, at times, he seems remarkable in drive and strength of will. But I do not think that he was an especially extraordinary man except insofar as he was extraordinary in his capacity to make himself appear extraordinary. If the Napoleonic Wars were, as their name and some of their causes suggest, about making war against Napoleon himself just as much as they were about determining the balance of power in Europe after the French Revolution, then they were finally won, six years after Waterloo, on St Helena, where Napoleon, in the instant of his death (and as a consequence of much reputation-management beforehand) transformed into the very genius he wished for people to think of himself as by virtue of the lasting, often quite absurd, legend that arose around him. The British did the worst thing they could have possibly done by imprisoning him in such a remote and inhospitable place. Rather than defanging him, they proved to the world that he was so dangerous, and therefore in the eyes of many so incredibly formidable, that he had to be sent far away so as to do no harm. The British made him "great", far more than he did himself.

This is, I think, the argument that Esdaile was making at the symposium I attended, or at least it's the idea that many Napoleonic scholars and historians seem to miss; that one must be very suspicious of all "facts" to see where the truth really lies. Napoleon is only one example, but a particularly good one due to the enormous extent to which he, his supporters, and historical writing, have most likely transformed him into something he was not. It seems unscientific to allow a man whose entire goal was to make himself look good get away with it simply because, as a result of what he may represent, people want to let him do it.

On the Ending of "Animal Farm"

Everyone thinks Orwell's on their side, don't they? Well, I mean other than the former Soviet government and modern-day die hards. My point is, Animal Farm is one of those novels that is exploited for its meaning in a way mostly indicative of the lack of knowledge of history in modern society. My copy even says on the back "Orwell's chilling 'fairy story' is a timeless and devastating satire of idealism betrayed by power and corruption." There's a good word: "timeless".

Of course Animal Farm can be read as a "timeless" text, unless you're one of those psychotic anti-intellectuals who think that the author's intentions are always absolute and that every text has only one meaning. At the same time, however, it has to be recognised that Animal Farm is a very specific satire of the events of the Russian Revolution and the history of the Soviet Union up until the mid 1940s, and specifically a representation of the "betrayal of the Revolution", as it was perceived, by Stalin and his supporters, who abandoned any serious concept of an egalitarian state and cemented the nation as a totalitarian bureaucracy in complete contradiction of its original purposes.

Yet simplistic analyses, as taught at a school level and regurgitated endlessly by many people with no literary education after school level, insist that the novel is simply trying to criticise "communism", in its nebulous Western twentieth-century sense as, effectively, a catch-all term for a non-traditional absolute government where people march around in uniforms a lot and put stars on everything. It's not, though, is it? Orwell himself was a socialist. Animal Farm is one strand of "Leftist" (another now-meaningless term) thought, Orwell's self-described "democratic socialism", criticising the authoritarian socialism of the Soviet Union. He was particularly frustrated that, despite mounting evidence in favour of Stalin being a ruthless tyrant, many on the British Left and elsewhere refused to see it (or perhaps had vested interests in ignoring the evidence).

The novel quite simply isn't just some catch-all attack on the "communist" bogeyman that reductive political thinkers would like to believe it to be. We don't even need Orwell's intentions to see this. It doesn't matter that Orwell is a socialist for us to see that this is a socialist novel criticising another form of socialism: it's all bound up in the conclusion of the narrative.

The ending of Animal Farm is probably best-remembered for the presentation of the pigs' nonsensical axiom "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." That of course sums up the hypocrisy of the Soviet bureaucracy fairly well. They key, however, is the dinner scene in which Mr Pilkington of Foxwood and some fellow farmers dine with Napoleon and the other important pigs. By this point, the transformation of the Farm back to its original state is complete: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which."

So the pigs are indistinguishable from the men. We know the pigs are Stalin and his cronies. But what do the men represent? We see three major groups of "men" in the tale. Firstly, there is Jones, the farmer who is ousted by the animals. He and his family obviously represent the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy. I don't think that can be disputed. Jones and some men later attack the farm in the "Battle of the Cowshed", representing resistance by White Russian forces and their Western Allied supporters in the Russian Civil War. People would be less likely to know this because most people don't know that this part of history ever even happened. Then there's Frederick of Pinchfield, a "smaller and better kept" farm from which the later "Battle of the Windmill" attack happens. An orderly state attacking the Soviet Union? I think all would agree that Pinchfield represents Germany and Frederick ultimately fulfils the role of Hitler. So far, so simple. Pigs are like men. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler and the Tsar, wasn't he?

Of course. But it's not Jones or Frederick at the final dinner when the pigs and men are indistinguishable. It's Pilkington of Foxwood. Pilkington is an "easy-going gentleman-farmer who spent most of his time in fishing or hunting according to the season." Foxwood is a "large, neglected, old-fashioned farm." It has an uneasy relationship with Animal Farm for most of the narrative, but by the end of the text we see that Napoleon and Pilkington are very much on the same page. Who is Pilkington?

He's the West, obviously, and probably specifically the United Kingdom. I don't think you would get much disagreement about that, either. So when the animals look from pig to man and find them indistinguishable, what is Orwell saying? That Stalin is just as bad as the West. It couldn't be more obvious. Consider the words of Pilkington: "If you have your lower animals to contend with [...] we have our lower classes!"

Animal Farm is not just an anti-communist (if we read "communist" specifically as "Stalinist Soviet socialist") novel; it's an anti-capitalist novel as well. Western class-oriented capitalism is presented at the end of the text as the abysmally low bar by which Stalin's awful regime is judged, and Stalin's is found to be just as bad. I read a stupid comment the other day in which someone dismissed the ending as critical of capitalism because in their view the humans only represented the Aristocracy and the Nazis. This is to completely overlook what Pilkington and Foxwood are meant to represent in the text. Orwell spells it out to us with Pilkington's reference to classes.

I'm not saying I agree with Orwell. The way capitalism is currently practised in the West is extremely flawed, largely due to the shamelessly obvious power certain businesses wield over governments, but I can't fail to recognise that it has improved many people's quality of life and is at least somewhat functional for some people for the time being. Similarly, while I support a number of the aims of socialism, I am not an anything-ist because I find "-isms" reductive and intellectually limiting; I do not wish to subordinate my own independence of thought to ideology developed by other people. It's also true that Orwell in 1943 and '44 when he wrote Animal Farm did not have the wealth of information that we do now about the extent of Stalinist atrocities, partially due to Soviet secrecy and partially because the news that did make it to the West was often hushed up by pro-Stalinists. Fortunately, as it were, Orwell witnessed the repressive nature of the regime and its allies first hand in the actions of the PSUC in Spain.

Nonetheless, when people use Animal Farm as a literary stick with which to beat socialism, they generally fail to recognise that using this narrative in particular necessitates beating the Western democratic-capitalist system as well, and this makes Animal Farm a poor text for the Right to use to demonise the Left or for pro-capitalists to denigrate pro-socialists or whatever, because if you use Animal Farm in that way you're not saying "You're horrible", you're saying "You're as bad as I am!" That hardly makes a case for capitalism, does it? Unless you want to attack both, Animal Farm isn't the novel to use.

In that respect, of course, Animal Farm is quite the novel of its context. You would struggle to find any but the most deluded old-school communists these days who would dismiss, ignore or justify the outrages committed by Stalin's regime, when in the 1940s when the truth was less well known it was a more serious point of contention. Similarly, virtually everyone on the "Left", for want of a better term, would utterly denounce the policies of Stalin's USSR. This means, really, that Animal Farm and its well-known elements are a feeble weapon in the hands of those most eager to use it, and far more rhetorically effective in the hands of people who would place themselves similarly to Orwell's "democratic socialism". Yet these nuances tend to elude the most vocal political "thinkers".

These days everyone thinks they're an expert on literature, or that there's no such thing as expertise when it comes to the study of texts. Those people are, of course, wrong, and it's high time we recognised this. So the next time someone says "Haven't you read Animal Farm?" as a way of attacking one political position, the correct response is probably "Have you?"