Renverse ton image : Animal Farm, d’Orwell (fable)

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Sortie à la fin de la guerre, cette fable à clefs semblait avertir sur les dangers et les signes menaçants de dictature en URSS. En effet, il est facile de voir sous le masque animal, les personnages importants de la Révolution russe : le vieux guide Lénine mort trop tôt pour avoir imprimé une direction ; la lutte pour le pouvoir entre les deux seconds Staline et Trotsky ; le premier usant bientôt du moyen de suspicion pour écarter toute voix contraire et s’assurer le pouvoir absolu. Tout le monde se doute bien que Staline a fait assassiner Trotsky mais les partis communistes de tout pays n’osent critiquer le leader de la cause.

Si la cause d’émancipation des travailleurs est reconnue bonne par Orwell, ayant été un fervent défenseur de la cause anarchiste pendant la guerre d’Espagne, l’auteur dénonce l’évidente dérive dictatoriale du régime. Comme le disait Lénine lui-même, le peuple russe n’était pas prêt pour la Révolution, il n’avait pas traversé de période d’ascension et de développement d’une classe moyenne bourgeoise. Il manquait ainsi d’éducation, d’aptitudes à gérer, à comprendre les besoins et les implications d’un régime autonome et démocratique. On retrouve cette évidence dans La Ferme des animaux où la majorité des animaux sont trop incultes, ne pouvant que difficilement lire les règles, et n’ont pas assez bonne mémoire ni capacités rhétoriques pour discuter et débattre. Ils sont donc de fait dépendants des cochons plus intelligents. Les cochons et les chiens sont des symboles courants des figures d’autorité et de l’ordre dans le monde de la culture (les poulets remplaçant les pigs dans la culture française, mais les cochons sont considérés comme les plus proches de l’homme en termes de capacité intellectuelle). En prônant une Révolution radicale et totale, l’URSS en est retournée à un même régime écrasant les pauvres, semblable voire plus dur que ce qu’il était auparavant. De la même manière, la ferme autonome des animaux est devenue encore plus exploitante que celle des humains. En cela, Orwell rejoint ce qui sera le discours d’un Franz Fanon sur la décolonisation : on ne peut simplement annoncer un ennemi aisément identifiable – comme le bourgeois, le noble, le blanc, le français, le mâle, l’Homme – et penser qu’en s’en débarrassant, tous les maux disparaîtront. C’est bien dans la mauvaise éducation, dans la désinformation, dans le système même d’économie et de politique que la domination est à rechercher.

De plus, on ne peut pas limiter le texte d’Orwell à une simple critique de l’idéologie communiste ou des dictatures, sous couvert de fable animalière. Premièrement, le discours contre l’exploitation des animaux n’est pas juste une fable et est bien prononcé, et résonne largement au XXIe siècle. L’animal, et en allant plus loin aujourd’hui, la nature, sont elles aussi des travailleurs exploités à défendre, de la même manière que l’on défend l’ouvrier. Ils sont également victimes d’une domination. L’anarchiste a une vision écologique bien plus développée que le marxisme, notamment par l’héritage des géographes anarchistes Reclus et Kropotkine, mais aussi parce que le Cosaque Nestor Makhno et les anarchistes catalans sont avant tout les héritiers des communautés paysannes autogérées du Moyen-Âge, telles que décrites par Jean Anglade dans Les Bons Dieux (tandis que le paysan est le plus souvent une figure réactionnaire chez les communistes). Deuxièmement, Orwell ne critique pas l’idéal communiste en soi, mais bien les habitudes de gouvernement vertical que maintiennent la majorité de ses théoriciens, ses instances politiques et partisanes. En cela, Orwell ne critique pas seulement les dictatures mais tout un système politique admis communément de gouvernement vertical. Le choix de « Napoléon » comme nom pour le cochon dictateur n’est pas innocent, et sera d’ailleurs remplacé dans la traduction par César. La France est très fière de ce personnage historique dont elle a fait un grand héros alors qu’il n’a fait que perpétrer l’exploitation, rétablir l’esclavage, la noblesse, l’exploitation des pauvres. Dans la révolution promise, ce sont seulement de nouveaux chefs qui ont pris le pouvoir mais rien n’a changé pour les exploités, en dépit des promesses et des discours. Troisièmement, si la dictature voulant combattre le capitalisme ordinaire est dénoncée comme étant encore pire, cela ne veut pas dire pour autant que Orwell considère le capitalisme comme souhaitable. C’est bien un pur anarchisme (sans chef) que revendique Orwell, organisation horizontale, ou par le bas. Mais ce changement, qui ne nécessite pas une révolution, nécessite une évolution structurelle progressive et une préparation des mentalités par l’éducation. Sans cela, les bonnes pensées et idées seront détournées de leurs buts initiaux comme le moulin, qui de base de l’indépendance énergétique, devient la justification de l’exploitation des animaux.

Passages retenus

Le discours du vieux Major, p. 3 :

Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours ? Let us face it, our lives are miserable, laborious and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength ; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery : that is the plain truth.
But is this simply part of the order of Nature ? It is because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it ? No, comrades, a thousand times no ! The soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen of horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep – and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition ? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word – Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilizes it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of gallons of milk have you given this last year ? And what has happened to that milk that should have been breeding up sturdy calves ? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our enemies. And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this last year, and how many of those eggs ever hatched into chickens ? The rest have all gone to market to bring in money for Jones and his men. And you, Clover, where are those four foals you bore, who should have been the support and pleasure of your old age ? Each was sold at a year old – you will never see one of them again. In return for your confinements and all your labour in the fields, what have you ever had except your bare rations and a stall ?
And even the miserable lives we lead are not allowed to reach their natural span. For myself I do not grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones. I am twelve years old and have had four hundred children. Such is the natural life of a pig. But no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end. You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, every one of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year. To that horror we all must come – cows, pigs, hens, sheep, everyone. Even the horses and the dogs have no better fate. You, Boxer, the very day that those great muscles of yours lose their power, Jones will sell you to the knacker, who will cut your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds. As for the dogs, when they grow old and toothless Jones ties a brick round their neck and drowns them in the nearest pond.
Is it not crystal clear, then comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings ? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of your labor would be our own. Almost overnight we could become rich and free. What then must we do ? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race ! That is my message to you comrades : Rebellion ! I do not know when that Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a hundred years, but I know, as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet that sooner or later justice will be done. Fix our eyes on that, comrades, throughout the short remainder of your lives ! And above all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so that generations shall carry on the struggle until it is victorious.

Les cochons reçoivent les hommes, p. 99 :

There, round the long table, sat half a dozen farmers and half a dozen of the more eminent pigs, Napoleon himself occupying the seat of honour at the head of the table. The pigs appeared completely at ease in their chairs. The company had been enjoying a game of cards, but had broken off for the moment, evidently in order to drink a toast. A large jug was circulating, and the mugs were being refilled with beer. No one noticed the wondering faces of the animals that gazed in at the window.
Mr Pilkington, of Foxwood, had stood up, his mug in his hand. In a moment, he said, he would ask the present company to drink a toast. But before doing so there were a few words that he felt it incumbent upon him to say.
It was a source of great satisfaction to him, he said – and, he was sure, to all others present – to feel that a long period of mistrust and misunderstanding had now come to an end. There had been a time – not that he, or any of the present company, had shared sentiments – but there had been a time when the respected proprietors of Animal Farm had been regarded, he would not say with hostility, but perhaps with a certain measure of misgiving, by their human neighbours. Unfortunate incidents had occured, mistaken ideas had been current. It had been felt that the existence of a farm owned and operated by pigs was somehow abnormal and was liable to have an unsettling effect in the neighbourhood. Too many farmers had assumed, without due enquiry, that on such a farm a spitit of licence and indiscipline would prevail. They had been nervous about the effects upon their own animals, or even upon their human employees. But all such doubts were now dispelled. Today he and his friends had visited Animal Farm and inspected every inch of it with their own eyes, and what did they find ? Not only the most up-t-date methods, but a discipline and an orderliness which should be an example to all farmers everywhere. He believed that he was right in saying that the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the country. Indeed he and his fellow-visitors today had observed many features which they intended to introduce on their own farms immediately.