The irony of consistently using George Orwell to critique the Left is lost on many.

George Orwell was a Marxist. Though a critic of Stalinism, he remained a Left-wing Social-Democrat till his death.

He fought fascists in the Spanish civil war, under the banner of the POUM, the Party of Unified Marxists. This is all well documented and Orwell writes about it himself in his fantastic book Homage to Catalonia.

It's there that his criticism of the Soviet system, specifically, Stalinism and their reactionary political line of class collaboration, solidified. After being shot in the neck by a fascist sniper, Orwell was hospitalized. He eventually had to flee Spain, not just from the Francoists, but from the Stalinists who considered him 'ultra-left'.

Orwell believed in self-organization, as all true communists and anarchists do. The Stalinists at the time wanted to stop organizations like the POUM or the anarcho-syndicalist groups like FAI or CNT. These groups wanted self-organization of the working class to create communes throughout Spain, as the social structure to fight fascism. Instead, the Stalinists followed a line of class collaboration with the national bourgeoisie against the Francoists. You can see where that got them. They attempted to force the same thing in China, which led to the nationalist KMT slaughtering all leftists.

Animal Farm, like 1984, was a critique of Stalinism, hypocrisy and bureaucratic state-capitalism. It's not a critique of communism. Orwell died a leftist.