What do you make of George Orwell?

[Tranquillus in Exile]

George Orwell (Eric Blair) started his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, a British imperial possession. He quit in the late 1920s, returned to England, and made a living by school-teaching, journalism, and even occasional bookselling.

In 1936 he volunteered for the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War and was injured in action. In WWII he worked for the BBC. After the war he supported the British Labour Party, which gained a landslide majorrity in 1945 and continued in office until 1951.

The Labour Party was far to the left of anything in America. It nationalized everything in sight, founded the National Health Service (with Conservative support) in 1948, and began dismantling the Empire, starting with the Indian sub-continent. At the same time Britain under Labour was a founder of NATO and America’s staunchest ally, especially in the Korean War.

If you have read some of Orwell’s essays, you will know that he was deeply but not stridently patriotic, gently celebrating English tradition and even eccentricities. His best-known book is the dystopian 1984, published just before his death in 1950. It has been praised by American conservatives who see it as an onslaught on “socialism”. But Orwell was a self-described Democratic Socialist.

So what do you make of him? Was he a wicked (or possibly ill-judged) socialist; or was he something more complicated?

 

[PostmodernProphet]

George Orwell (Eric Blair) started his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, a British imperial possession. He quit in the late 1920s, returned to England, and made a living by school-teaching, journalism, and even occasional bookselling.

In 1936 he volunteered for the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War and was injured in action. In WWII he worked for the BBC. After the war he supported the British Labour Party, which gained a landslide majorrity in 1945 and continued in office until 1951.

The Labour Party was far to the left of anything in America. It nationalized everything in sight, founded the National Health Service (with Conservative support) in 1948, and began dismantling the Empire, starting with the Indian sub-continent. At the same time Britain under Labour was a founder of NATO and America’s staunchest ally, especially in the Korean War.

If you have read some of Orwell’s essays, you will know that he was deeply but not stridently patriotic, gently celebrating English tradition and even eccentricities. His best-known book is the dystopian 1984, published just before his death in 1950. It has been praised by American conservatives who see it as an onslaught on “socialism”. But Orwell was a self-described Democratic Socialist.

So what do you make of him? Was he a wicked (or possibly ill-judged) socialist; or was he something more complicated?

its too late to make anything of him......he's dead.......

 

[Tinkerpeach]

He believed in Anarcho-syndicalism so he was neither socialist nor conservative.

If you don't know what that is it is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labor movement. Syndicalisme is a French word meaning "trade unionism." Anarcho-syndicalists view labor unions as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the State with a new society democratically self-managed by workers. Anarcho-syndicalists seek to abolish the wage system, regarding it as "wage slavery," and state or private ownership of the means of production, which they believe lead to class divisions.

This is easily seen in 1984 which is basically a book against authoritarianism.

Essentially he believed in workers running the system but through a capitalist system, sort of a mixture of Marxism and capitalism but where the people actually make the decisions.

 

[Cypress]

George Orwell (Eric Blair) started his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, a British imperial possession. He quit in the late 1920s, returned to England, and made a living by school-teaching, journalism, and even occasional bookselling.

In 1936 he volunteered for the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War and was injured in action. In WWII he worked for the BBC. After the war he supported the British Labour Party, which gained a landslide majorrity in 1945 and continued in office until 1951.

The Labour Party was far to the left of anything in America. It nationalized everything in sight, founded the National Health Service (with Conservative support) in 1948, and began dismantling the Empire, starting with the Indian sub-continent. At the same time Britain under Labour was a founder of NATO and America’s staunchest ally, especially in the Korean War.

If you have read some of Orwell’s essays, you will know that he was deeply but not stridently patriotic, gently celebrating English tradition and even eccentricities. His best-known book is the dystopian 1984, published just before his death in 1950. It has been praised by American conservatives who see it as an onslaught on “socialism”. But Orwell was a self-described Democratic Socialist.

So what do you make of him? Was he a wicked (or possibly ill-judged) socialist; or was he something more complicated?

Democratic socialist.

He despised totalitarian Stalinism as much as he detested unfettered capitalism.

 

[Tranquillus in Exile]

He believed in Anarcho-syndicalism so he was neither socialist nor conservative.

I know what anarcho-syndicalism is, Peach. There was plenty of it around in the Spanish Civil War, but Orwell didn’t join it (if ‘join’ is the right word).

Here he is explaining how he became a democratic socialist (as I said):

“The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw

[It comes just after the poem in his essay.]

 

[Tinkerpeach]

I know what anarcho-syndicalism is, Peach. There was plenty of it around in the Spanish Civil War, but Orwell didn’t join it (if ‘join’ is the right word).

Here he is explaining how he became a democratic socialist (as I said):

“The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw

[It comes just after the poem in his essay.]

He didn't join it at the time but wrote that had he known what the democratic socialists were to become that he would have.

He thought there was something better but he later switched to that ideology after the war.

 

[Cypress]

I know what anarcho-syndicalism is, Peach. There was plenty of it around in the Spanish Civil War, but Orwell didn’t join it (if ‘join’ is the right word).

Here he is explaining how he became a democratic socialist (as I said):

“The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw

[It comes just after the poem in his essay.]

The Spanish civil war gave him a sobering outlook on the Soviet-backed factions of the left, and helped consolidate his rejection of Soviet Communism and fueled his clear turn towards democratic socialism.

 

[Hawkeye10]

George Orwell (Eric Blair) started his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, a British imperial possession. He quit in the late 1920s, returned to England, and made a living by school-teaching, journalism, and even occasional bookselling.

In 1936 he volunteered for the anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War and was injured in action. In WWII he worked for the BBC. After the war he supported the British Labour Party, which gained a landslide majorrity in 1945 and continued in office until 1951.

The Labour Party was far to the left of anything in America. It nationalized everything in sight, founded the National Health Service (with Conservative support) in 1948, and began dismantling the Empire, starting with the Indian sub-continent. At the same time Britain under Labour was a founder of NATO and America’s staunchest ally, especially in the Korean War.

If you have read some of Orwell’s essays, you will know that he was deeply but not stridently patriotic, gently celebrating English tradition and even eccentricities. His best-known book is the dystopian 1984, published just before his death in 1950. It has been praised by American conservatives who see it as an onslaught on “socialism”. But Orwell was a self-described Democratic Socialist.

So what do you make of him? Was he a wicked (or possibly ill-judged) socialist; or was he something more complicated?

Very insightful, and was proven right by history.