Old Major is the first major character described by Orwell in Animal Farm. He is the kind, grand fatherly philosopher of change. Orwell based Major on both the German political economist Karl Marx and the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilych Lenin. Old Major’s vision of a socialist utopia serves as the inspiration for the Rebellion, it must be underlined though that his philosophy is only an ideal.After his death, the socialism he professes is drastically altered when Napoleon and the other pigs begin to dominate. It is interesting that Orwell does not mention Napoleon or Snowball anytime during the great speech of old Major, this may perhaps reflect how distant and out-of-touch they really were; the ideals old Major seemed to not even have been considered when they were establishing their new government after the successful revolt. It almost seemed as though the pigs fed off old Major's inspiration and then used it to benefit themselves (an interesting twist of capitalism) instead of following through on the old Major's honest proposal. This could be interpreted as Orwell's attempt to criticise Stalin, who many consider to be someone who completely ignored Marx's political and social theory.   Using old Major's seeming naivety, Orwell concludes that no society is perfect, no pure socialist civilization can exist, and there is no way to escape the evil grasp of capitalism.  Unfortunately when Napoleon and Squealer take over, old Major becomes more and more a distant fragment of the past in the minds of the farm animals.