The Insincere Sense of Unity in Communism

“All animals are equal.” (Orwell, 19)

This simple quotation serves as the unifying rallying cry for the allegorical animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and given Orwell’s impetus for writing one of his finest works, the connection to Whittaker Chambers’ life is clear. The allure of a Communist state is simple to ascertain for the outcasts and downtrodden on which the ideology preys. If society writ large discards you, join the Communist Party and overthrow the government. It is a simple summation of Communist motives but the movement is revolutionary at heart, an escape from the present reality in order to create your own reality, like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book but on a much-larger scale and with much more dire repercussions.

As such, it is easy to see how Chambers found a sense of comfort in the warm first impression of the Communist Party. Chambers had been ostracized from an early age, owing to a splintered home life. As Hannah Arendt explains, such a situation is ripe for Communist ideation to grow. “The truth is that these masses grew out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in class only through membership in a class.” (Arendt, 362) The sense of fragility to which Arendt alludes can explain the desire for Communists to view nothing as private property as Chambers notes. It is a hallmark of Communist ideology that every aspect of one’s life is state-controlled from property to wealth to a shared ideology. Demonstrated in Alger Hiss’ willingness to gift Chambers an unwanted car or allow him to sleep in his house free of charge, there is a common sense of We over I. Not that any friend willing to offer a free couch is automatically communist but there is a prevailing notion of Party over individual. Orwell’s Napoleon (an anthropomorphic boar standing in for Joseph Stalin) declares as much with “All animals are equal”, a motto that quickly devolves.

With a disintegration of class society, the isolation that Communist members sought to avoid quickly comes to bear as no relationship is seen as more important than complete allegiance to the Party. As Arendt writes, “…there is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.” (365) To ensure complete loyalty to the Party at all costs, all opposition – or even seeming opposition is quickly removed. This logic is why Chambers worries that in testimony he will receive the brunt of any damage from the Party. “I had already been warned by other sources…that the Justice Department was preparing to move against me, that it was actively making plans to indict me, and not Alger Hiss…”. (Chambers, 500) Taking the initiative to express a personal conviction different from the official Party narrative – strictly forbidden – and attempting to coerce others to join in his evasion put Chambers in a precarious position.

Surely under Communism, the ideology begins as “All animals are equal” but as Orwell would continue, “All animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others.” (Orwell, 96)

Works Cited

Orwell, George. Animal Farm: a a Fairy Story /by George Orwell ;with a Preface by Russell Baker, Introduction by C.M. Woodhouse. Harcourt Brace, 1996.

Chambers, Whittaker. Witness. Regnery History, 2014.

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.