the pig committee

Immediately after Snowball's expulsion, Napoleon mounted the raised platform where Old Major had once delivered his speech, with the nine dogs that had been reared in secret bounding around him, and announced the end of the Sunday-morning Meetings. All questions relating to the working of the farm would henceforth be settled by a special committee of pigs, presided over by himself. The committee would meet in private and afterwards communicate its decisions to the others. The animals would still assemble on Sundays to salute the flag, sing Beasts of England, and receive their orders for the week, but there would be no more debates.

On the third Sunday after Snowball's expulsion, the committee revealed that it had already prepared the plans for the windmill, down to the last detail. A special committee of pigs had been at work upon them for the past three weeks. Napoleon announced that the windmill would be built after all, and the animals were told that the plan had actually been his own creation, stolen by Snowball. The committee's secret work thus allowed Napoleon to claim credit for an idea he had vehemently opposed.

The committee's existence represented a fundamental departure from the principles of Animalism that Old Major had laid down. The original commandments had decreed that no animal should live in a house, sleep in a bed, wear clothes, drink alcohol, or engage in trade. The committee, composed of pigs who later took up residence in the farmhouse, drank alcohol, and eventually wore clothes, systematically violated every one of these rules. The simplification of the commandments to "Four legs good, two legs bad" had been intended to make Animalism accessible, but it also made it easier for the pigs to reinterpret the rules to suit their needs. The committee was the institution through which these reinterpretations were formalized and enforced.

The committee's bureaucratic work—the endless production of "files," "reports," "minutes," and "memoranda" on large sheets of paper, which were then burned in the furnace—was presented as essential to the farm's welfare. Squealer tirelessly explained that the pigs had to expend enormous labours every day upon these mysterious things, and that this work was of the highest importance. The animals, too ignorant to understand, accepted the explanation. The committee's members were brainworkers, and their privileges—milk, apples, and later beer—were justified by this work. The animals worked like slaves all that year, but they were happy in their work, believing it was for their own benefit.

The committee's power was enforced by the dogs. When the four young porkers who had protested the abolition of the Meetings were seized, the dogs tore out their throats after they confessed to consorting with Snowball. Even Boxer, the most loyal worker, was unable to prevent the violence; he felled a dog that attacked him, but Napoleon ordered it released. The committee's authority was absolute and unchallengeable.

In the final days of the farm, the pigs who formed the committee—and indeed all the pigs—took on the full appearance of humans. They walked on their hind legs, carried whips, and wore clothes. The committee's work had led to the complete abandonment of the original principles of Animalism. The Seven Commandments were reduced to a single phrase: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." When the neighbouring farmers came to visit, the pigs played cards with them, drank toasts, and the farm was renamed the Manor Farm. The pig committee, which had begun as a pragmatic administrative body, had become the instrument of a tyrannical human-like ruling class, indistinguishable from the humans it had once overthrown.