[MememyselfandIJK]

@stephen50rightFor your other post about 1984 (thanks google cache), I would like to point out that the book was directed at the Authoritarian right not the left. Orwell himself was a libertarian socialist who opposed Stalinism and communism only due to left in0fighting during the Spanish civil war. However, 1984 was an attack on fascism/authority in general. It was due to the cold war that the cover art and public interpretation made it seem more of a criticism of communism.

Look it up if you don't believe me.

[Thunderhawk]

Post saved for being interesting, but moved for being way off topic.


Given that the authoritarian regime at the time of 1984's publication was the Soviet Union, I think it makes sense to see and draw connections to the USSR. I have never read road to Wigan pier (on my list of things to read), but Ive been told it show cases Orwell expectations and dislike of the bureaucrats that come to power under Socialist governments. Seems like his criticisms (in novel form) are well suited for application to the USSR, even if that application was not the intent.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

@stephen50rightFor your other post about 1984 (thanks google cache), I would like to point out that the book was directed at the Authoritarian right not the left. Orwell himself was a libertarian socialist who opposed Stalinism and communism only due to left in0fighting during the Spanish civil war. However, 1984 was an attack on fascism/authority in general. It was due to the cold war that the cover art and public interpretation made it seem more of a criticism of communism.

Look it up if you don't believe me.

The book was written with totalitarianism in mind, but Orwell was worried about authoritarianism masked in the words of socialists and people on the left. While the plot features a regime that is a completely warped socialist government which is socialist in name only, the book is more accurately a warning against authoritarianism in general: left-wing authoritarianism is no longer recognizable in terms of form and function from right-wing authoritarianism in the book, which is one of the main points Orwell was making.

An important note to make, Orwell was an avowed democratic socialist, which is not the same as libertarian socialist.

If you read 1984 and liked it, I recommend you check out Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out, and the collected Essays by Orwell (available in one volume). His non-fiction was far superior to his works of fiction (although I've always had a doubleplus bellyfeel for 1984). You sound interested in how his views changed due to his experiences in Spain. Reading his thoughts in Homage are pretty illuminating and it's really interesting to see the politics from his perspective.

Given that the authoritarian regime at the time of 1984's publication was the Soviet Union, I think it makes sense to see and draw connections to the USSR. I have never read road to Wigan pier (on my list of things to read), but Ive been told it show cases Orwell expectations and dislike of the bureaucrats that come to power under Socialist governments. Seems like his criticisms (in novel form) are well suited for application to the USSR, even if that application was not the intent.

I haven't read Wigan Pier, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's in there. Homage is a pretty scathing rebuke of Soviet policy not just in Spain, but the way the Soviets projected their policies abroad. He basically directly accuses the USSR (stopping short of accusing Stalin himself) of working against communism in order to play politics, maintain their own grip on power at home, and stay in the business of selling arms and exploiting nations/factions like Republican Spain.

[MememyselfandIJK]

@Bulaba Jones Wait there is a difference between authoritarian and totalitarian?

[fuser]

1984 is a warning against any political ideology you want it to be an warning against, there is no definite, "beware of fascism, communism, capitalism" or anything.

But yeah Orwell's best work imo is "Down and Out in London and Paris".

As per his ideology its pretty vague too, and then there is the infamous Orwell's list which puts him in pretty bad light from left's pov.

[The Immortal Goon]

Typically authoritarian has a singular person in charge.

A totalitarian system is more abstract, but total. Orwell thought that capitalism was totalitarian.

What were Orwell's political opinions? Orwell was a revolutionary Socialist. That is, he hoped that there would be a Socialist revolution in England, and, as he said more than once, if violence was necessary, violence there should be. "I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood," he wrote in "My Country Right or Left," in 1940. And a year later, in "The Lion and the Unicorn," "It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can be set free. . . . Whether it happens with or without bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place." Orwell had concluded long before that capitalism had failed unambiguously, and he never changed his opinion. He thought that Hitler's military success on the Continent proved once and for all the superiority of a planned economy. "It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption," he wrote. "The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them."

A Socialist England, as Orwell described it, would be a classless society with virtually no private property. The State would own everything, and would require "that nobody shall live without working." Orwell thought that perhaps fifteen acres of land, "at the very most," might be permitted, presumably to allow subsistence farming, but that there would be no ownership of land in town areas. Incomes would be equalized, so that the highest income would never be greater than ten times the lowest. Above that, the tax rate should be a hundred per cent. The House of Lords would be abolished, though Orwell thought that the monarchy might be preserved. (Everybody would drink at the same pub, presumably, but one of the blokes would get to wear a crown.) As for its foreign policy: a Socialist state "will not have the smallest scruple about attacking hostile neutrals or stirring up native rebellions in enemy colonies."

[Beren]

I wonder how Orwell meant to criticise or warn about right-wing authoritarianism rather than Stalinism in 1947-1948 when he wrote the novel. Fascism and Nazism just had been defeated while Stalin and Stalinism were alive and fine, and on the rise actually. He described a hyperbolic Anglo-Saxon model of Stalinism in Britain. If we consider Stalinism leftist Fascism, then it is a critique of Fascism too. The figure of Emmanuel Goldstein is clearly based on Trotsky. He may have also been afraid that the whole world will become Fascist due to the Cold War. Do some people believe that Animal Farm is a critique of right-wing authoritarianism as well?

[The Immortal Goon]

Do some people believe that Animal Farm is a critique of right-wing authoritarianism as well?

The fact that the crime the pigs commit was not only to collude with the farmers—but become like the farmers—speaks to the rightwing (the farmers) being the problem in the story.

It should be no surprise that the British and American government funded versions of the story exclude the pigs coming out on their hind legs as new farmers for this very point. It was, explicitly, critical of capitalism corrupting a just revolution.

It should be noted, again, that Orwell was a participant in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the POUM. The crime the Comintern committed here, in his view, was to collude with the Spanish and French capitalist governments.

So yes, basically. But to quibble a bit, Animal Farm is explicitly a critique of right-wing totalitarianism corrupting the leftwing.

[Beren]

So yes, basically. But to quibble a bit, Animal Farm is explicitly a critique of right-wing totalitarianism corrupting the leftwing.

Animal Farm is an explicit critique of the Soviet-Bolshevik experience, which he opposed as a democratic socialist. In my opinion he believed it had been corrupted from the beginning as Napoleon and comrades were corrupted from the beginning, but feel free to interpret or spin it as you wish.

[The Immortal Goon]

The corruption was defined as being like the capitalist.

And, again, this was common criticism of the Comintern for making peace and living alongside capitalist countries.

[Ned Lud]

As an ex-Etonian and a colonial official Orwell did well to break free, but, as far as I know, he never had a decent Marxist training, reacted emotionally to the doings of State Capitalism in Spain, and worked for Churchill during the War. 1984 is a nice anti-authoritarian nightmare, but it doesn't come near to being a Marxist critique. Are we seriously to believe that a successful workers' revolution in an advanced capitalist country could come to this, and how on earth could it possibly work anyway?

[One Degree]

Animal Farm is an explicit critique of the Soviet-Bolshevik experience, which he opposed as a democratic socialist. In my opinion he believed it had been corrupted from the beginning as Napoleon and comrades were corrupted from the beginning, but feel free to interpret or spin it as you wish.

I agree with this ^ and my American version definitely had the pigs come out on two legs.

[MB.]

Orwell was a product of post war Britain. the First World War, like the Cold War in our own day, basically destroyed the legitimacy of the nations involved. Orwell had been a witness to the senseless intolerable drudgery of mine workers (Wigan Pier), the lies and barbarism of imperialism (Burmese Days), and the defeat of idealism at the hands of fascism (Homage to Catalonia), so of course he was basically disgusted with the modern world and World War Two seemed to confirm for him that the powers were basically out of control. Orwell despised the old tories who defended the empire which was nonesensical to him, and couldn't stand the the whigish writing of H. G. Welles which seemed detached from reality through technological optimism.

Orwell is badly understood today mainly because very few people besides old socialists and literary scholars read any of his works. The fact that 1984 is still generally dosed on school age students seems like a cold war relic and explains why everyone and their mom has some bullshit opinion about Orwell.

[One Degree]

I have not read all of Orwell's work, but I did teach a short class on Animal Farm. I read every critique I could find and they overwhelmingly supported the view it was about the USSR including labeling who all the animals represented. This was in the early 70's and in the US, so most my information could have been biased, but it was definitely the US view of the book.

[MB.]

Is anyone saying otherwise? Orwell said as much himself.

[One Degree]

Is anyone saying otherwise? Orwell said as much himself.

I apparently misinterpreted your post. My apologies. I thought your paragraph about the Cold War was disputing this interpretation.