MSNBC host Krystal Ball suggested Tuesday that George Orwell’s famously anti-communist novel “Animal Farm” is an allegory for capitalism run amok — immediately setting the hair of literature professors across the country on fire.

Ball spoke on MSNBC’s “The Cycle” about the recent release of French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which argues capitalism is intrinsically unfair and advocates a global wealth tax to level the playing field.

Ball noted that Piketty’s claims have been met with some criticism, which she felt was undeserved. “Piketty has predictably gotten the full Cold War treatment,” she claimed. “The National Review calls his book ‘soft Marxism,’ and Lord only knows what they’re saying at less responsible outlets or (ugh) the comments section.”

“Even the august and ostensibly economically literate Wall Street Journal tells him to read ‘Animal Farm,’” she noted. “Animal Farm? Hmm. Isn’t that Orwell’s political parable of farm animals where a bunch of pigs hog up all the economic resources, tell the other animals they need all the food because they’re the makers and then scare up the prospect of a phony bogeyman every time their greed is challenged? Sounds familiar.”