Equality and class

Equality means more than removing Jones

In Animal Farm, equality concerns who makes decisions, who receives the rewards of work and whose life is considered valuable. Class concerns the divisions between groups with different levels of wealth and power. The Rebellion removes the human owner, but Orwell asks whether changing the rulers actually changes these relationships.

Old Major identifies exploitation as the animals’ central problem: they produce the farm’s wealth, while Jones takes its benefits. In Chapter 1, he insists, “Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers.” Differences of strength or intelligence should not give one animal the right to dominate another. His declaration, “All animals are equal.”, becomes the seventh Commandment in Chapter 2.

This principle echoes the communist ideal of a classless society, in which productive resources are collectively owned rather than controlled by a wealthy minority. The animals’ Rebellion represents the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Their hope is not merely to replace Jones, but to end the division between those who labour and those who live comfortably from that labour.

Major’s vision nevertheless has a limit: his brotherhood includes animals but excludes humans. Even membership of the animal community needs agreement. In Chapter 1, the dogs chase the rats, prompting Major to ask, “Are rats comrades?” An overwhelming majority votes that they are, although the dogs and the cat dissent, with the cat voting on both sides. The vote shows both the attempt to extend solidarity to wild creatures and the resistance to treating all animals as equals.

One reading is that Major’s sharp division between animals and humans helps unite the exploited against their oppressors. Another is that blaming every problem on a single enemy encourages an oversimplified understanding of injustice. The ending exposes that weakness: animals can exploit other animals too.

The first harvest: cooperation with an unequal beginning

Chapter 3 gives the animals a genuine experience of working for themselves. The narrator states, “But everyone worked according to his capacity.” Hens and ducks gather what larger animals might miss; Boxer contributes his exceptional strength. Equality here does not require everyone to perform the same task. It means that different contributions can serve a shared good.

The narrator also reports, “Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations,” as part of a description of reduced quarrelling and jealousy. This makes the early community attractive: the animals have more food and leisure, and feel that the products of their work belong to them. Orwell gives readers reasons to value the ideal that will later be betrayed.

Yet the same chapter establishes a division between the pigs, who direct and supervise, and the animals who undertake the physical work. At this stage, the pigs’ knowledge helps solve practical difficulties. The problem is not simply that different animals have different roles, but that one group begins using its role to claim superior rewards.

The pigs reserve the milk and apples for themselves. Squealer argues that their health is necessary for everyone’s welfare and threatens the possibility of Jones’s return. Both Snowball and Napoleon support this privilege. Inequality therefore begins before Napoleon becomes the sole ruler; it cannot be explained only as one pig’s later corruption.

Structurally, Orwell places the account of collective happiness alongside the beginnings of privilege. Readers can see both the achievement of the Rebellion and the danger already growing within it.

Political leadership becomes class power

In Chapter 5, the narrator describes the accepted arrangement: “the pigs, who were manifestly cleverer than the other animals, should decide all questions of farm policy”. The important qualification is that their decisions still require approval by a majority vote. At this stage, the pigs dominate policy-making, but the other animals retain a formal say.

There are two ways to read this arrangement. The pigs’ expertise could make their leadership practical and beneficial. However, allowing them to formulate every policy means that the animals already depend on a small group to define their choices. Intelligence is becoming a justification for political superiority rather than a resource shared by equals.

After expelling Snowball, Napoleon ends the debates. A committee of pigs meeting privately now makes decisions, while the other animals receive orders. Their status changes from participants to subjects. The pigs subsequently move into the farmhouse and take comforts previously associated with Jones.

This development reflects the emergence of a privileged party bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, with Napoleon representing Stalin. A revolution promising to remove class domination produces a new ruling group. Orwell shows how political control can allow that group to protect its material advantages. The dogs enforce this arrangement, but its class consequence is that ordinary workers can no longer hold their rulers accountable.

Inequality becomes an official principle

By Chapter 9, unequal treatment is no longer an isolated concession. The narrator states, “Once again all rations were reduced, except those of the pigs and the dogs.” The animals doing the productive labour bear the hardship, while the leadership and its protectors are exempt.

The next sentence gives Squealer’s justification: “A too rigid equality in rations, Squealer explained, would have been contrary to the principles of Animalism.” He presents equality itself as a threat to the supposedly egalitarian system. Orwell contrasts the narrator’s account of what happens with the official explanation of why it is acceptable. Readers can judge the explanation against the unequal outcome.

The pigs also separate the next generation. In Chapter 9, the narrator says that the young pigs “were discouraged from playing with the other young animals”. Napoleon teaches them separately, and a schoolroom is planned for them. This makes class division something reproduced through upbringing, rather than merely a difference between the current leaders and workers.

Other animals must stand aside when meeting a pig on a path, and pigs may wear green ribbons on Sundays. These rules turn privilege into visible social rank. The pigs are not simply eating more: they are teaching the farm to recognise their superior status. Napoleon’s still greater comforts show a hierarchy even within the privileged group.

A prosperous farm does not mean prosperous workers

In Chapter 10, the farm is wealthier and better equipped, but most animals remain hungry and overworked. The narrator observes that “neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour”. This recalls Major’s objection to humans consuming the products of others’ work.

The apparent concession that the pigs and dogs work “after their fashion” is ironic. Squealer claims that the pigs’ paperwork is vital, yet the documents are burnt in the furnace as soon as they have been written. Orwell mocks a bureaucracy that presents its mysterious activities as indispensable while enjoying the food produced by others. Unlike the practical problem-solving of the early harvest, this account exposes the rulers’ claim to useful service as a justification for privilege.

The completed windmill makes money by milling corn rather than providing the electricity and leisure once promised. Economic success has become detached from the animals’ welfare. This supports Orwell’s criticism of a Soviet state whose claims of collective progress concealed the advantages enjoyed by its rulers.

The final Commandment makes betrayal permanent

In Chapter 10, Benjamin reads the only remaining Commandment to Clover:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

The second line contradicts the first. Equality cannot logically become a superior degree of equality possessed by a favoured group. The rule retains the reassuring statement while cancelling its meaning.

Its position in the narrative matters: the separate restrictions on human behaviour have disappeared, and one statement now authorises the hierarchy that those restrictions were intended to prevent. What began as privilege needing an excuse has become privilege written into law.

This is a direct betrayal of Major’s founding insistence that cleverness or strength must not justify tyranny. The pigs preserve the vocabulary of equality while establishing themselves as a ruling class. Orwell’s satire exposes how political ideals can be used to legitimise their opposite.

The ending reveals who really shares equality

At the final dinner in Chapter 10, Pilkington praises the farm. The narrator reports his claim that “the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the county”. His praise reveals his values: harsh conditions for workers are admirable if they benefit owners.

Pilkington makes the class connection explicit when he says, “If you have your lower animals to contend with,” and then, “we have our lower classes!” Pigs and humans now recognise a common interest in controlling those beneath them. Equality has been achieved between rulers, not between rulers and workers.

The scene’s arrangement embodies this division. The pigs and farmers sit comfortably around a table inside the farmhouse; the labouring animals watch through the window from outside. The final inability to distinguish pigs from humans completes the novel’s circular movement back towards the relationships under Jones. Napoleon also announces that the pigs jointly own the title-deeds: the farm does not belong equally to all its animals.

One interpretation is that the ending presents equality as an impossible dream: different abilities and unequal access to power repeatedly create domination. A stronger alternative is that Orwell condemns the betrayal of equality, not the ideal itself. The early harvest demonstrates real benefits from cooperation, and the narrative treats the workers’ suffering sympathetically. Orwell’s commitment to socialism supports this distinction between an egalitarian aim and Stalinist rule. A justified conclusion might therefore argue that equality requires more than a successful rebellion: ordinary people must be able to scrutinise and challenge those claiming to act for them.

Turning evidence into an essay argument

A useful whole-text argument follows the movement from shared labour, through protected privileges, to an officially established ruling class. Select quotations that prove this development, explain their significance and connect the particular moment to the Soviet betrayal of revolutionary equality. Context should clarify the argument rather than interrupt it with a separate history account.

Worked paragraph

Orwell presents the new ruling class as betraying equality by protecting itself from hardships imposed on the workers. In Chapter 9, the narrator states, “Once again all rations were reduced, except those of the pigs and the dogs.” The animals who produce the farm’s food suffer cuts, while the rulers and their enforcers retain their allowances. Squealer’s claim that “A too rigid equality in rations” would contradict Animalism turns the Rebellion’s founding principle into an excuse for inequality. This reflects the rise of a privileged ruling bureaucracy under Stalin despite the Soviet promise of a classless society. By Chapter 10, the final Commandment makes that privilege permanent: “BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS”. Orwell thus suggests that removing an old ruling class does not secure justice if its replacement controls both resources and the principles by which its actions are judged.

The paragraph develops one claim across two moments. Its context explains the significance of the unequal treatment, and its conclusion connects that treatment to Orwell’s wider purpose.

Central argument

The Rebellion replaces human ownership with a new animal ruling class. The pigs move from useful leadership to exclusive control of decisions, resources and status.

Equality is not identical ability: Major’s ideal gives strong and weak, clever and simple animals equal worth. Different contributions need not justify different rights.

Track the development

• Chapters 1–2: Major declares equality; it becomes the seventh Commandment. The rats vote extends comradeship, but dissent shows resistance; humans remain excluded.