Printable View
I listened to a radio programme about George Orwell this afternoon. I was intrigued by a suggestion made by the host, Matthew Parris, that philosophically Orwell was all over the place. I wonder whether he had a point. Orwell seemed to know what he didn't like, but wasn't sure what he wanted in its place. The Road to Wigan Pier was his most overtly political work and that was an odd book.
I would've thought it obvious that he is a socialist...
I listened to it also and Parris is right because I would class Orwell as an idealist looking for a political party that doesn't exist. One of the commentators said that he enlisted in a Marxist militia in the Spanish civil war but he in fact joined an anarchist military group called POUM (I don't recall the Spanish definition) but Orwell was definitely against the communist anti-nationalist forces and 1984 tells us why. He claimed to be a democratic socialist, with the implication that the socialist party of the UK wasn't democratic and that is why he joined a breakaway group calling itself the Independant Labour Party.Quote:
Originally Posted by kev67
The Road to Wigan Pier is indeed a political book but is a form of reportage as much as anything else. Having read all of Orwell's published work I came to the conclusion that he was a Utopian idealist whose importance lay in his justifiable warning of the danger of communism at a time when the 'intelligentsia' were falling for its propaganda.
I agree he is a left winger, but what sort of left winger? For example, one tenet of socialism used to be to the public ownership of the means of production, i.e. nationalisation of privately owned industries. Was Orwell particularly bothered about that? Maybe he would be more a fan of the Scandanivian economic model, which entails a high level of social welfare, high taxes, but is not interested in nationalisation. Professional politicians have often studied various economic and political theories and have picked out from them a coherent set of guidelines for choosing policies that they want to see put in practice. It's not just a case of right or left. Orwell did not go to university, where he might have studied a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics like so many modern politicians (actually, PPE sounds interesting, but it's not something I really know much about). Instead he joined the Burmese colonial police. Much of Orwell's political outlook was shaped by his eye-witness experience, but maybe that never added up to a coherent political philosophy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Volya
Good post.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
I think Orwell was on the left but he recognised earlier than most that communism under Stalin had failed. I suspect he was far more disappointed by the way communism turned out than by the rise of facism. Communism was more underhand and cynical. I remember reading the Soviet backed communists in the Spanish Civil War executed many of their POUM allies, with whom they had been fighting against Franco's fascists. Mussolini and Franco may have been right wing reactionaries. Hitler may have had dreams of creating an empire of racially pure supermen and was not too delicate in going about it. However, Hitler, Franco and Mussolini were not so cynical and paranoid as Stalin. They did not mispresent themselves as much. They did not murder so many of their own supporters.
In Homage to Catalonia Orwell refers to the fighting that broke out between the POUM and the communists in Barcelona and it is clear that he didn't trust them.Quote:
Originally Posted by kev67
Stalin was paranoid but, given the circumstances surrounding his rise to power, it's hardly surprising that he saw enemies wherever he looked. Orwell recognised that such a mentality was dangerous and would have nothing to do with a political party controlled by Stalin but that left him out in the cold as far as his own aspirations were concerned. In the UK many in the traditional Labour party weren't able to see what Orwell had recognised as a danger even more problematical than fascism if only because of its ability to build up a potential fifth column in Britain. The Independant Labour Party was the natural home of those who were to the left of Labour and to the right of the Communist party but its authority was minimal and its members marginalised.
In his essay, Why I write, Orwell says he is a social democrat and is against totalitarianism. That was written in 1946. However, earlier he seemed to have been a revolutionary. In another essay, My Country Right or Left, written in 1940, he criticized other left wing intellectuals for sneering against patriotism, and regarding themselves as too enlightened to fight for anything. I was agreeing with all this when he wrote:
Only revolution can save England, that has been obvious for years, but now the revolution has started, and it may proceed quite quickly if only we can keep Hitler out. Within two years, maybe a year, if only we can hang on. we shall see changes that will surprise the idiots who have no foresight. I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood. All right, let them, if necessary. But when the red militias are billeted in the Ritz I shall feel the England I was taught to love so long ago and for such different reasons is somehow persisting.
What did he mean by that? How was it obvious that only revolution could save England? What did he mean when he wrote 'now the revolution had started'? A revolution had not started, a war had started. How could he have thought that a violent revolution with blood flowing down the gutters would have resulted in anything good?
I assume Orwell must have had a change of heart between 1940 and 1946, or he could not have described himself as a social democrat. I suppose he may have got a lot of what he wanted by 1946 anyway. Labour had won the general election. The National Health Service was being introduced. Large scale industries were being nationalised, whether that turned out to be a good thing or not. Economic policy was directed towards full employment. A revolution was not necessary, as it turned out.
I have just been reading Orwell's essay, The Lion and the Unicorn. Orwell seems to know precisely what he thinks there and also how he defines socialism and fascism.
I think it's necessary to reiterate that Orwell was a maverick who changed his stance on the political spectrum throughout 1930s and 1940s. Although proclaiming that he never put pen to paper except in the cause of social democracy,it's noticeable that he joined a Marxist group during the Spanish civil war. However, during the febrile political atmosphere of the pre-war period, allegiances were often fluid and Orwell was not the only one who gravitated between different groupings. The general strike of 1926 seemed to presage revolution and it's this that prompted Orwell to claim that revolution was coming. Interestingly, the Labour party that won the 1945 general election had a good many fellow travellers in tow and the nationalisation of the UK's infrastructure was in line with what had gone before in the USSR and its satellites.Quote:
Originally Posted by kev67
It might be that Orwell was whistling in the dark about keeping Hitler out by having a revolution in England, but why he should have thought that a red revolution would have been able to stop a German takeover is strange given what happened to the republican forces in Spain, of which he had first-hand experience.
I seem to remember Orwell joined the POUM during the Spanish Civil War, which was an anarchist resistance movement. I suppose all the Spanish Republican militias were rather left wing.
I finished reading the The Lion and the Unicorn yesterday, and read another essay this morning titled Wells, Hitler and the World State. It's incredible. It's like reading a report by George Smiley.
Tip: buy George Orwell's Essays instead of Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, both published by Penguin. Essays includes every essay in Shooting an Elephant, as far as I can see as well as some others.
I have read the complete essays and some of them are very funny, especially the one about Orwell's experience of working in a bookshop and that on Donald Gill's seaside postcards. Orwell wasn't only obsessed with politics, he also had a wry sense of humour.Quote:
Originally Posted by kev67
In Homage to Catalonia, he describes how he was incorporated into the POUM ( The Workers Party of Marxist Unification) almost by chance, although an anarchist group claiming to be Marxist seems somewhat paradoxical. I suspect that Orwell felt more at home with such a party rather than the more orthodox Marxist groups which were politically closer to Soviet Russia than Republican Spain.
I can't find it with a quick Google, so I'll have to go through his essays, but I'm pretty sure the statement was "..everything I've written since ..... was in the cause of social democracy..."Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Pretty sure the date was just before Animal Farm was published.
You are correct but I was paraphrasing for want of the original text.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
I always thought of him as something of what would now I suppose be called an anarcho-syndicalist, but at heart he had a strong affiliation for King (or Queen) and country. I remember the Orwell biographer DJ Taylor, and I agree with him, saying that Orwell wasn't a card-carrying socialist until a bit later in his life - around the time he wrote Road to Wigan Peer he was pretty much on that road, but it wasn't set just at that moment as at one point in that book he mentions the leader of some socialist group (I forget where) almost incidentally, and before that he had really more of a Dickensian interest in the poor than a Marxist interest.
He seemed (to me anyway, I've read his complete works) to certainly have an anarchistic streak, and he thought of him self as a 'Democratic Socialist' as has been pointed out above, and it's worth taking his own opinion into account but I don't think he really knew himself. What he always seemed to be trying to do was not be a voice for any kind of party line. But remember the flip-side, he did once join a political party, and he did come up with a list of who he suspected were Communists and Communist sympathizers for the British government toward the end of his life, pretty much as he was writing Nineteen Eighty-Four.
i believe Orwell has the views of an ardent socialist. Orwell believed that all polictical theories besides socialism were hopeless. He said socialist weren't trying to make a perfect world but were trying to improve it.