Trade with humans allowed

The absolute prohibition against trade was a founding principle of Animal Farm. Old Major had explicitly instructed the animals never to "engage in trade," and the first revolutionary act had been the destruction of all human implements, including money, whips, and ribbons, which were considered marks of human oppression. The Seven Commandments, inscribed on the barn wall, implicitly forbade any contact with the human economy. But less than a year after the Rebellion, during a Sunday morning assembly, Napoleon announced a new policy: Animal Farm would engage in trade with neighboring farms. The windmill, he declared, required materials that could only be obtained through commerce, and he had already made arrangements to sell hay, wheat, and—most controversially—eggs, which the hens were told to welcome as a necessary sacrifice. The needs of the windmill, Napoleon insisted, must override all other considerations.

The trade policy was implemented through a human intermediary, Mr. Whymper, a solicitor from Willingdon who visited the farm every Monday to receive instructions. Eggs were sold to a grocer's van that called weekly, and the money was used to purchase machinery for the windmill. The farm's economy became increasingly integrated with the human market, and while the windmill was eventually completed, the prosperity it brought did not extend to the ordinary animals. The farm grew richer, but the pigs and dogs alone enjoyed the benefits; the others continued to work long hours on insufficient rations, their memories of the pre-Rebellion days fading. The pigs, who had already begun to adopt human habits—moving into the farmhouse, sleeping in beds, and drinking alcohol—now took the final step: they began to walk on their hind legs, with Napoleon himself carrying a whip. The barrier between animal and human had collapsed, and the pigs became indistinguishable from the farmers they had once expelled.

The decision to allow trade was therefore not merely a practical adjustment but a fundamental betrayal of the Revolution's ideals. Old Major's warning against commerce had been a cornerstone of his vision of a society free from human vices; by reversing that prohibition, the pigs set in motion the erosion of all the commandments. The trade policy was the first concrete step toward the pigs' complete humanization, leading directly to the final scene in which the pigs and humans share a toast, their faces and voices indistinguishable, and the farm reverts to its original name, the Manor Farm.