Ceteris Scribus: Animal Farm

The Economics of Animal Farm : The Illusion of Freedom and the Machinery of Exploitation 

Every revolution begins with a promise. The old masters will fall, the oppressed will rise, and the wealth of the many will no longer be hoarded by the few. Yet history whispers a different truth. The banners change, the slogans shift, and yet behind the curtain the same hands pull the strings. The French Revolution spoke of liberty before it drowned itself in blood. The workers’ uprisings of the 20th century swore to end exploitation but built bureaucracies that crushed their own people. And on one quiet farm, far from human eyes, the animals who had once dreamed of freedom woke to find themselves shackled once again. This time, their chains were invisible, woven from rules rewritten in the night and memories which were erased. 

Orwell’s Animal Farm is not just a story of power but it is a blueprint of economic deception. It is a lesson on how those who control labor, resources, and history itself will always find a way to turn revolution into empire. 

It is no coincidence that the architect of this betrayal is named Napoleon. The irony is sharp because his namesake, Napoleon Bonaparte, rose from the ashes of revolution not just as a conqueror but as a reformer. The French Napoleon seized power, yet he also stabilized the economy, introduced legal reforms, and at least had the courtesy to give France a half-decent tax system before declaring himself Emperor. The Napoleon of Animal Farm, however, is no such leader. He does not build ,he consumes. He does not govern ,he hoards. While Bonaparte left behind institutions that shaped nations, Napoleon the pig simply fattens himself. One reshaped history while the other left behind crumbs. 

When the animals rise against Mr. Jones, they do so not just in the name of political freedom but economic justice. The farm’s wealth had always been extracted from their labor, yet they had seen little of it. The revolution is, at its core, an economic uprising, an attempt to reclaim the value of their work and establish a system where prosperity is shared rather than hoarded. And for a brief moment, it works. 

At first, the farm flourishes under its new order. The animals work harder than ever, not because they are forced to but because they believe they are working for themselves. Productivity surges, mirroring the post-revolution economic enthusiasm often seen in newly collectivized societies. There is no coercion, no exploitation ,only effort driven by purpose. For a moment, Karl Marx might have cracked a smile , before realizing where this was going. 

Yet prosperity is never just about labor. It is about control. And in the quiet spaces between work and sleep, the rules begin to change. At first, the thefts are small. A few apples disappear. The milk, inexplicably, is gone. The animals notice, yet the explanation is swift, soothing, and irrefutable: You do not understand, comrades. We do this for you. 

And just like that, the first economic law of dictatorship is written: profits always trickle up, never down. 

This is the moment when rent-seeking behavior enters the farm’s economy. In real-world terms, rent-seeking is when those in power extract wealth without creating anything of value. The pigs justify their growing privilege as a necessity because someone has to manage the economy. They are merely “compensating” themselves for their hard intellectual labor of telling others what to do. It’s a tale as old as time: the CEO who insists on a bonus while cutting worker wages, the politician who claims a private jet is an “essential government expense.” The pigs, it seems, have learned economics from the best. 

Boxer, the great laboring horse, embodies this exploited workforce. His blind faith in “I will work harder” makes him the perfect worker: tireless, unquestioning, and entirely devoted to a system that is actively robbing him. Boxer believes in hard work the way a gambler believes his next bet will win back everything he’s lost. 

When Boxer collapses, spent and broken, he is not given rest but sold to the knacker, his body converted into profit for those who once called him comrade. And just like that, the farm reaches the final stage of an extractive economy: labor is not rewarded, it is discarded the moment it becomes inconvenient. 

The betrayal is so audacious that even the animals, who have believed everything so far, begin to question things. But Squealer who is Napoleon’s ever-loyal, ever-oily mouthpiece swiftly steps in with another economic lesson: control the narrative, and you control the economy. 

Boxer has not been betrayed, comrades! He has gone to a beautiful hospital! He died happy! 

And just like that, history is rewritten. In planned economies, where the state controls both production and information, this kind of data manipulation is standard practice. Governments inflate production numbers, alter inflation statistics, and redefine employment to make failure look like success. Napoleon and Squealer have simply taken a page out of the playbook of every authoritarian regime that ever existed. 

But the most insidious transformation of the farm is not in its economic structure, but in its memory. As conditions worsen, food rations shrink, and work increases, Squealer revises the past so seamlessly that the animals forget what life was like before. The commandments change overnight, reality bends, and no one can quite remember when it all started going wrong. Didn’t we always live like this? Wasn’t this what we fought for? 

And that is the greatest economic deception of all. 

By the end, the farm’s class mobility has been completely erased. Wealth is no longer tied to labor but to proximity to power. The ruling class is now hereditary and only pigs can ascend. This is the final stage of an extractive economy, where control is so deeply entrenched that the notion of change becomes impossible. 

The revolution did not fail; it was never allowed to succeed. 

And so we come to the final, crushing moment. The animals, ragged and starved, peer through the farmhouse window, staring into the warmth that will never be theirs. 

Inside, the pigs and the men feast. The room is golden with firelight, filled with the clinking of glasses and the slow, indulgent murmur of those who have never known hunger. The animals had once believed they were fighting against the humans. Now, they realize they had never been fighting them at all only for them. 

The pigs laugh, and the men laugh, and then for the first time their laughter is the same. 

Something shifts. The animals lean in closer, their breath misting on the glass. And then the horror unfolds. The faces blur. The movements blend together. They look from pig to man, from man to pig, from pig to man again but already it is impossible to say which is which. 

Outside, the animals do not speak. They do not protest. They do not cry out. The realization comes quietly, cold as the wind that whips through their fur. 

They had dreamed of freedom. They had labored for it, bled for it, and yet they had never moved at all. 

And outside, the wind whispered through the trees, as if it had seen this all before!

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Note: This piece is published as part of Ceteris Scribus - a one-of-a-kind intellectual and creative article writing competition hosted on Unstop by The Contrarian. Participants could choose between imagining how historical figures would react to today’s world or analyzing the economics of their favoriten fictional world. This piece by Aniket Joshi secured 1st place in the competition.

Writer's Bio:

Aniket Joshi is an MBA student at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He has done his B.Com in Financial Economics from the same university. Aniket has a deep interest in economics, finance, and strategy and enjoys exploring geopolitics and market dynamics. Outside academics, he loves playing chess and watching anime. He enjoys analyzing complex ideas, debating different perspectives, and constantly learning new things, making every challenge an opportunity to grow.