Too Big To Fail

Remember Animal Farm?

In his dystopian allegory, George Orwell takes us on a journey to another land where the pigs rule, the other animals work, and gradually, through trickery and force, the pigs re-write history and take unearned rewards to cushion their lives. The remaining animals suffer, but somehow continue their allegiance to both the pigs and the ideology they spout. Even as they die, broken, they somehow believe that they inhabit the best of possible societies, and the changes that would improve their lot, so readily seen by an outside observer, go unrealized.

When we read the tale, we were certain that it referred to communist Russia. It was a cautionary tale, but we always took it as caution against communism, for the evils portrayed in Animal Farm were seen as a direct (and unavoidable) consequence.

Perhaps we were wrong, or too narrow minded.

For along has come Andrew Ross Sorkin, and he has retold the tale in his latest book. The setting has moved to a modern democratic capitalist nation, but the pigs still rule, still write history. Sorkin has spiced it up with the feel of a modern spy novel, with multiple parallel threads racing towards some convergence – as we read, we get swept up in the contributory actions of the characters, fearful of the outcome.

The story traces the trajectory of an impending financial collapse – the industry in which pigs are employed. As the pigs gather and take actions to stave off banking failures, we see the Animal Farm rubric of 'All animals are equal, but some are more equal' replaced with 'All corporations are equal under the law, but some are Too Big To Fail' – from which Sorkin titles his book.

Money is transferred from the workers (equines) to the bankers (pigs) under the guise that all will suffer if it isn't done. As they decry the horror that has potentially befallen them, the pigs line their pockets with bonuses and golden parachutes, and all across the country, the equines, instead of dropping dead from overwork, are sent home without jobs, to lose their homes, possessions, and dignity.

To illustrate how much control the pigs have, in one memorable sequence, a candidate for major public office (for this nation apparently has open, democratic elections), suspends his campaign to rush to the capital to do the pig's bidding, to insure that sufficient money is transferred from the workers to the bankers. Imagine!

Such is the pig's control that in the end of the book, the government itself is used as a major transfer mechanism to undermine the country's underpinnings of meritocracy and equality. As the book closes, the pigs are shaken, but unrepentant, and Sorkin has updated a major allegory to demonstrate how greed and unearned privilege are dangers that tear and subvert the well functioning of society.

What is most disquieting in Sorkin's retelling is that it leaves a reader with the sense that, like the original, the events are not the outcome of a fertile imagination, but rather they are a close approximation of real events in a real nation. This nation, too, not unlike our own, is decidedly uncommunist, and yet the outcome was the same as in Animal Farm. So, we must honestly confront the question:

Could It Happen Here?