When Law Ceases to Be a Limit: Animal Farm and Orwell’s Warning to the Rule of Law
by: Joana Capaz
Coelho
Published in 1945, Animal
Farm, by George Orwell, is often read as a satire of the Russian Revolution,
but its true strength lies in the fact that it transcends that historical
framework and asserts itself as a timeless reflection on power, its corruption,
and the fragility of the legal structures that are meant to restrain it.
The narrative begins with a diagnosis of structural injustice: “our
lives are miserable, laborious, and short”, declares Old Major, denouncing an
order in which “the produce of our labour is stolen by human beings”. The revolt that follows is not presented as “a mere impulse” of
ideology, but as a reaction to a situation of exploitation and inequality,
grounded in an ideal that appears unassailable: “All animals are equal”. This
proclamation functions as the normative foundation of the new community, a kind
of “constitutional principle” that promises equality, dignity, and distributive
justice.
After the expulsion of Mr.
Jones (the owner of the Farm), the animals seek to organize themselves
according to their own rules, establishing the Seven Commandments, painted on
the barn wall, which synthesize the values of the revolution and function as a
kind of legal foundation of the new order. At the same time, they institute the
Sunday meetings, conceived as a space for collective deliberation, where all
may vote and decide the course of the farm. These two elements — the Commandments
as a “normative body” and the meetings as a mechanism of participation —
represent, in legal terms, the pillars of an embryonic model of the rule of
law: general rules, publicly known, and decisions taken with the involvement of
the community. For a brief moment, the farm seems to demonstrate that
self-government, grounded in cooperation and equality, is possible.
However, Orwell shows that
the solidity of a system does not depend solely on the proclamation of
principles, but on the existence of effective safeguards capable of preventing
the concentration of power. The violent expulsion of Snowball, carried out by
Napoleon with the aid of the dogs he had secretly raised, marks the first major
institutional rupture: disagreement is no longer resolved through debate, but
eliminated by force. Shortly thereafter, the Sunday meetings are suspended
under the argument that they are a waste of time and that management should be
entrusted to a restricted committee of pigs. Collective deliberation becomes a
symbolic ritual, limited to the raising of the flag and the singing of “Beasts
of England,” while real decisions are communicated as faits accomplis.
Political participation is hollowed out without being formally abolished, and
power gradually concentrates in a single figure.
The moment when the Commandments begin to be altered reveals, perhaps
even more clearly, the degradation of the system. The Sixth Commandment, which
had categorically stated “No animal shall kill any other animal”, later appears
with a decisive addition: “without cause”. Two words introduced without debate,
without vote, and without transparency are enough to legitimize executions and
internal purges. The law is not eliminated; it is silently modified. The barn
wall continues to display norms, but their content no longer functions as a
limit on power and instead adapts to its needs. This mechanism — maintaining
the form of legality while altering its meaning — is one of the most subtle and
dangerous features of the erosion of the rule of law, as it creates the
illusion of normative continuity while, in practice, expanding the scope of
arbitrariness.
The manipulation of language
plays a decisive role in this process. Squealer, the regime’s spokesperson,
resorts to fallacious arguments and the constant invocation of fear — “Surely,
comrades, you do not want Jones back?” — to justify each controversial
decision. Fear replaces contradiction; loyalty replaces criticism. When the
anthem “Beasts of England” is banned on the grounds that the revolution has
already been completed, this is not merely cultural censorship, but an attempt
to control collective memory and erase reference to the original ideals.
Without memory, comparison between promise and reality becomes impossible; and
without comparison, critical awareness weakens.
As power consolidates, a
cult of personality emerges around Napoleon, portrayed as the source of
prosperity and protection, while any failure is attributed to external enemies
or internal traitors. The famous reformulation of the founding principle — “All
animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” — crystallizes
the perversion of the initial ideal, transforming equality into a rhetorical
statement that conceals a rigid hierarchy. The phrase, seemingly “absurd”, juridically translates the institutionalization of inequality and the
normalization of privileges incompatible with any serious conception of
equality before the law.
What makes Animal Farm
particularly disturbing is the gradual way in which this transformation occurs.
There is no single moment of absolute rupture; there are successive small
changes, justified by reasons of efficiency, security, or necessity. The
exception becomes the rule, and the rule adapts to the exception. The animals,
initially uneasy, eventually accept each change as inevitable. Law does not
disappear when it is violated once; it weakens when the violation ceases to
cause indignation and becomes integrated as part of normality. Orwell’s work
reminds us that the rule of law is sustained not only by normative texts, but
by a culture of civic vigilance, effective participation, and a constant demand
for accountability.
More than a dated political
allegory, Animal Farm remains a warning about how easily equality can be
instrumentalized, law can be molded, and institutions can be hollowed out when
power ceases to recognize limits external to itself. Democracy is not lost only through noisy
coups; it can dissolve slowly, through discreet adjustments and the progressive
acceptance of the unacceptable.
As the German politician Sigmar
Gabriel, former Vice-Chancellor of Germany, declared in 2017: “Those who fall
asleep in a democracy may one day wake up in a dictatorship”!
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