why do various anarcho-types and libertarians feel the need to defend george orwell?

[ed miliband]

i mean i've seen it a few times on this forum, in irl and on other forums. like stalinists will attack orwell calling him everything from a rapist to a grass to a libuhral and then people with politics i'd usually be sympathetic to will come along and stand up for him. lol i even recently saw a thread on libcom attempting to draw comparisons between orwell and guy debord.

orwell said some nice stuff about anarchists, sure, but he was a social conservative, a patriot, had no qualms working for the british state to support the war effort, saw socialism as something that could only really be acheived through parliamentary means via the labour party. and yet even libcom's li'l synopsis for him describes him as a "libertarian socialist" - as meaningless as that term is, how could he possibly be considered as such?

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I defend Orwell, but I agree. He was more of a Social Democrat than a libertarian socialist. Still, his writings and the things he did in his life have deserved my respect and it is a crime for Stalinists to call him a Nazi spy, etc. He fought for the socialists in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists, he wrote great books against Stalinism, etc. and for that I respect him.

[ed miliband]

how is it really any different from stalinists going "x historian was bourgeois so cannot be trusted" before proclaiming that we can trust y historian precisely because they were bourgeois but were slightly less critical about stalin than other bourgeois historians?

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I am analyzing Orwell on his actions and his critique on a highly authoritarian system. I think that these things were important and heroic. Stalin was a murderous lunatic who should be despised and did nothing positive, in my opinion. That is the difference.

[Sasha]

how is it really any different from stalinists going "x historian was bourgeois so cannot be trusted" before proclaiming that we can trust y historian precisely because they were bourgeois but were slightly less critical about stalin than other bourgeois historians?

Who's saying anything about historians and let alone trusting them.
You can appreciate writers (or any one else for that matter) while still thinking they where wrong on a lot of levels.
I appreciate Tolkien for being a good writer. I appreciate fucking Ezra Pound for being a great poet even though he was a fash. I appreciate orwel and hemingway for being great writers, that they where far to the left of Tolkien and pound and staunch anti-fascists is a nice bonus and makes me defend them against inane stalinoid libel but I wont claim that orwel was anything other than a democratic socialist/social-dem.

[Book O'Dead]

I've always liked Orwell's novels, stories & essays, especially 'Burmese Days'. His politics are pretty much irrelevant to me anymore although I applaud his efforts on the BBC against fascism as well as his having fought against Franco's armies in behalf of the Republic

[ed miliband]

Who's saying anything about historians and let alone trusting them.
You can appreciate writers (or any one else for that matter) while still thinking they where wrong on a lot of levels.
I appreciate Tolkien for being a good writer. I appreciate fucking Ezra Pound for being a great poet even though he was a fash. I appreciate orwel and hemingway for being great writers, that they where far to the left of Tolkien and pound and staunch anti-fascists is a nice bonus and makes me defend them against inane stalinoid libel but I wont claim that orwel was anything other than a democratic socialist/social-dem.

oh for sure, a lot of dodgy stuff is great; i like knut hamsun and italian futurism and burzum, etc. but people don't simply defend orwell as a writer, which would be fair enough, but explicitly on political grounds. sometimes it isn't even defence, but an active move to claim orwell as part of our political tradition (as in the libcom case i point out).

so why is it like stalinists and historians? 'cos in the case of stalinists toying with bourgeois historians, they do so because it's politically expedient. if a bourgeois historian is critical of stalin it's because they're the enemy, duh, but if a bourgeois historian says that stalin maybe wasn't all that bad it's useful. for me that's somewhat similar to anarchists and libertarians claiming orwell as "one of us" because he said nice stuff about anarchists in the spanish civil war and didn't like stalin. dodgy politics, class position, etc. can be put aside.

[Anderson]

Can you confidently say that his works were not used by capitalist propaganda machinery against communists worldwide and have not helped turn away large numbers of people from being leftists.

Also I want to point out that the focus of anti communist propaganda has been on symbols and leaders of the working class movement. This is a easy way for them to denounce Marxism. The idea is to show the communist leaders as character less and self centered and thereby claiming capitalism to be a better system. Who needs to argue on economic and philosophic aspects if the battle can be won by attacking the Marxist leaders.

I do not want to sound like drawing any particular conclusion, but just want to highlight that the analysis on Orwell or any of the communist leaders should be done carefully.:)

[Anarpest]

Some people probably like his novels, and hence even if they don't think him immaculate clearly don't see him as Satan's Little Helper either. In speaking of 'defending' him, you also have to look at what the criticisms they are 'defending' him from mean: what their significance is and where they come from. They're generally ultimately motivated by the fact that Orwell criticized the Soviet Union, and hence fall within the overall ambit of Soviet apologism; which, needless to say, isn't particularly popular within anarchism. The charge is not that Orwell was not the new Kropotkin, but ultimately simply that he attacked the Soviet Union and its apologists within the leftist movements of the time, and the charges of 'liberalism' do not concern his views on Parliament, but rather the fact that he saw the Soviet system as repressive.

There's a difference between a comprehensive overview of Orwell's political views (needless to say anarchists would probably have issues with the political views of many major socialist figures as well) and a debate where anarchists are forced to dispute a claim which ultimately comes down to the idea that criticism of the Soviet Union from a leftist viewpoint is always a product of hidden reactionism.

[Offbeat]

I think that part of it is the fact that he actively travelled to Spain and fought with the POUM. Actions speak louder than words as they say, and although Orwell certainly had a knack with words he was more than just a left-wing writer in that he actually took part in the fight against fascism. His politics may have been more social democratic than socialist, but how many great revolutionary theorists actually fought in revolutionary wars? Well a few did, but the point is Orwell was a committed enough anti-fascist to risk his life trying to defend the Republic.

[Mr. Natural]

George Orwell/Eric Blair was an excellent writer, put his life on the line in the Spanish Civil War, experienced and hated Stalinism and its Communist Party, and died a socialist.

What's not to like?

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

Just to go against Stalin, ultra-leftists will kiss the ass of any liberal that criticizes him.

Orwell was a liberal.
Just look at how he tries to do apologia for neo-Toryism, Zionism, and Celtic Nationalism and even puts them under the "positive nationalism" section in this work of his:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
(Even when taken in the post war context, it is still apologia, not to include the fact that his approach to nationalism is anti-materialistic.)

And in that same work, we find him spewing shit not only about the Soviet Union, but also about Communism in general. Pure liberal crap and no one can deny that. Communism as transferred nationalism (even in his sense of the word)? Lolz

[dodger]

George Orwell/Eric Blair was an excellent writer, put his life on the line in the Spanish Civil War, experienced and hated Stalinism and its Communist Party, and died a socialist.

What's not to like?

Old Etonian.

[ed miliband]

Just to go against Stalin, ultra-leftists will kiss the ass of any liberal that criticizes him.




um, not true at all. that's what makes the treatment of orwell peculiar.

[dodger]

George Orwell/Eric Blair was an excellent writer, put his life on the line in the Spanish Civil War, experienced and hated Stalinism and its Communist Party, and died a socialist.

What's not to like?

Hitchens wrote a bum kissing tribute to him.Saint George Orwell.

[dodger]

George Orwell/Eric Blair was an excellent writer, put his life on the line in the Spanish Civil War, experienced and hated Stalinism and its Communist Party, and died a socialist.

What's not to like?

The infamous List of Names: His days in the Rangoon Police were not wasted.

by each name was JEW.or HALF JEW or H O M O S E X U A L incidentally a criminal offence. Certainly open to blackmail.

I Isaac Deutscher(how did his name get on the list?):laugh:

[Ostrinski]

I like Orwell's writings. I don't know anything about him besides that.

[o well this is ok I guess]

He fought with the cool side in the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway never did that shit. Steinbeck never did that shit.
That's
uh
that's about it

[dodger]

George Orwell/Eric Blair was an excellent writer, put his life on the line in the Spanish Civil War, experienced and hated Stalinism and its Communist Party, and died a socialist.

What's not to like?



, "backward agricultural countries like India and the African colonies can no more be independent than can a cat or a dog." (George Orwell: `The English Revolution', first published: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. GB, London, February 19, 1941.)

Well? Would he get a lifetime ban from Revleft? Lifetime honorary membership of
BNP, perhaps?

[The Young Pioneer]

You guys can't ever just read a fictional work and enjoy it, can you? :laugh:

I guess I'm just shallow but Animal Farm to me was just a story about literal talking pigs...it didn't upset me that it's supposed to be some big political commentary instead.

[ed miliband]

maybe this is like some weird oedipus complex shit since my dad is a real lover of orwell.

[Tim Cornelis]

It depends what one means by "defending" him. While Orwell was no anarchist, he was certainly sympathetic to it.


Just to go against Stalin, ultra-leftists will kiss the ass of any liberal that criticizes him.

Orwell was a liberal.
Just look at how he tries to do apologia for neo-Toryism, Zionism, and Celtic Nationalism and even puts them under the "positive nationalism" section in this work of his:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
(Even when taken in the post war context, it is still apologia, not to include the fact that his approach to nationalism is anti-materialistic.)

And in that same work, we find him spewing shit not only about the Soviet Union, but also about Communism in general. Pure liberal crap and no one can deny that. Communism as transferred nationalism (even in his sense of the word)? Lolz

If advocacy of nationalism in some variant qualifies one as "liberal" then surely most Marxist-Leninists are in fact liberals? The inflated use of the word "liberal", like "fascist", has rendered it almost entirely useless.

Notwithstanding his theoretical flaws (which were indeed numerous), George Orwell was more of a revolutionary socialist than many of us will ever be. He fought a revolutionary war to defend the socialist construction of Spain, he participated in Marxist political parties, and he was an avowed socialist.


Just to go against Stalin, ultra-leftists will kiss the ass of any liberal that criticizes him.

And inversely, anyone who criticises Stalin is a liberal. :rolleyes:

[dodger]

I am analyzing Orwell on his actions and his critique on a highly authoritarian system. I think that these things were important and heroic. Stalin was a murderous lunatic who should be despised and did nothing positive, in my opinion. That is the difference.

Heroic, Anti-Capitalist? Attacking the USSR and Stalin in 1930/40's Britain hardly warrants 'heroic'. Inept attacking a gallant and brave wartime ally. Craven and warped sucking up to Atlee Orwell wrote that without the Empire Britain would be `a cold rock whose inhabitants would be reduced to eating herring' (The Road to Wigan Pier, chapter 10). The flannelled upper class fool got that wrong. Though many relish Herrings. Seems you can take the boy out of Eton, but you simply can't take Eton out of the Socialist man. He was every time the prisoner of his blinkered class background.....as for our sins, we ofttimes are.

His descriptive of below stairs in "Down and Out" rang very true I had 1st hand knowledge myself. Read the rest as schoolboy of course and in my early 20's, not tempted to revisit. Even less after Hitchens....they both managed to get up a lot of peoples noses. Can only be their fearless defence of truth.

[Agathor]

Heroic, Anti-Capitalist? Attacking the USSR and Stalin in 1930/40's Britain hardly warrants 'heroic'. Inept attacking a gallant and brave wartime ally. Craven and warped sucking up to Atlee Orwell wrote that without the Empire Britain would be `a cold rock whose inhabitants would be reduced to eating herring' (The Road to Wigan Pier, chapter 10). The flannelled upper class fool got that wrong. Though many relish Herrings. Seems you can take the boy out of Eton, but you simply can't take Eton out of the Socialist man. He was every time the prisoner of his blinkered class background.....as for our sins, we ofttimes are.

His descriptive of below stairs in "Down and Out" rang very true I had 1st hand knowledge myself. Read the rest as schoolboy of course and in my early 20's, not tempted to revisit. Even less after Hitchens....they both managed to get up a lot of peoples noses. Can only be their fearless defence of truth.

Anti-Stalinists were extremely unpopular in Britain during the war. Stalin was Uncle Joe. Orwell couldn't find a publisher in Britain that would take Animal Farm. It made him a lonely figure on the left.

You have an unpleasant obsession with Orwell's public school education. Can children choose how they are educated? It's instructive that people either attack Orwell for things that are untrue -- that he was a rapist, or an MI5 grass -- or things he had no control over, as in his education. Attacking someone for being born to rich parents is on the same level as attacking someone for being born to black parents.

Orwell was a member of the ILP, and if he sucked up to Atlee I must have missed it.

[x359594]

No doubt there are various reasons why "anarcho-types and libertarians" (who or whatever these types may be) defend George Orwell, but I find him to be a fine prose stylist. His novels are well constructed, well plotted and have interesting insights into the British society of his day.

As a journalist his reportage is always as accurate as can be. His essays are well argued, and he's not afraid to admit his errors. All in all, a very good writer indeed.

[ed miliband]

(who or whatever these types may be)

lol what point are you trying to make? it's obvious i'm talking about what might pretentiously be described as the "anarchist milieu" - anarchist-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, libertarian socialists and libertarian communists, etc.

[Omsk]

Criticizing Stalin,what an..interesting and comical concept.

[Bronco]

I'm more curious as to why so many leftists feel the need to be so fiercely critical of him. I mean sure, he wasn't an anarchist and never claimed to be one but so what, he was a great writer and some of his stuff is still valuable from a political point of view

[x359594]

...it's obvious i'm talking about what might pretentiously be described as the "anarchist milieu" - anarchist-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, libertarian socialists and libertarian communists, etc.

I know what you're talking about, it's just that it's hard to find consensus among all the sub-sects, and that's why I wrote "who or whatever."

[MustCrushCapitalism]

Orwell was a critic of pacifism, though, that's one thing I respect of him.

But overall yeah I agree he was a liberal.

[Offbeat]

I'm more curious as to why so many leftists feel the need to be so fiercely critical of him. I mean sure, he wasn't an anarchist and never claimed to be one but so what, he was a great writer and some of his stuff is still valuable from a political point of view
Very true. Most people I know are not in fact revolutionary leftists but I still get on with them. You can't hate someone just for not being a revolutionary when most people are not.

[Thetwoterrors]

Anti-Stalinists were extremely unpopular in Britain during the war. Stalin was Uncle Joe. Orwell couldn't find a publisher in Britain that would take Animal Farm. It made him a lonely figure on the left.

False. This story is repeated over and over again to make it seem like Orwell was a lonely, obscure figure who stood gallantly as an exile in the political wilderness until his death. His work was actually published in some of the most read newspapers in England (and the world) all the way up until his death. He was extraordinarily well-known, and far from being exiled from politics during the war he was a regular on BBC during the whole war.

Just because he couldn't get his shitty work animal farm published (and it is quite shitty) during the war doesn't mean he was instantaneously rebuked by the left or the political system. Democratic freedoms in Britain were all but suspended during the war... and we on the left are supposed to feel bad because Orwell wasn't able to publish his reactionary piece of trash attacking a wartime ally? Give me a break.

[dodger]

Anti-Stalinists were extremely unpopular in Britain during the war. Stalin was Uncle Joe. Orwell couldn't find a publisher in Britain that would take Animal Farm. It made him a lonely figure on the left.

You have an unpleasant obsession with Orwell's public school education. Can children choose how they are educated? It's instructive that people either attack Orwell for things that are untrue -- that he was a rapist, or an MI5 grass -- or things he had no control over, as in his education. Attacking someone for being born to rich parents is on the same level as attacking someone for being born to black parents.

Orwell was a member of the ILP, and if he sucked up to Atlee I must have missed it.

I was born in 1947 my experience of Public School people is that they were blinkered, they did not say the British Empire was won on the playing fields of Eton for nothing. You may call my noting his background an obsession, I can draw on years of experience and that of others. It was and is designed to make the pupil feel superior and fit to rule. Hardly a revelation to you, I am sure. Early suspicions that Orwell was a nark were vindicated, by release of 'some' papers.

His views that black people were unfit to run their country coincided with every gin sodden planter, cabinet minister from Singapore to Barbados. The poisonous idea that British workers would perish without the empire was both a lie and a propaganda gift to No 10. As was the view that trade unions harmed the country and particularly the members. His anti-Semitism went with the flannels, the newsreels of Jew-camps with graphic unforgettable images had made Orwell's "unpleasant obsession" even more bizarre and frankly repugnant. I quite agree,Agathor the dice falls how it does, birth. You wont hear Dodger complaining. I never mentioned rape simply because I had never heard of such an accusation.

Why did he put beloved Charlie's name on the list. Was Orwell deranged? Besides, Orwell's knack for spotting Jew let him down in Chaplin's case, he was not. He simply never denied it because his half brother was. Now that shows integrity and how truly unimportant ones parents are, he must have learnt that in an East End slum, not on the playing fields of Eton, it must be said.

Many on the list went on to prominence, some even recognized by receiving Royal honours. I truly wonder if his mental state was such that MI6 filed the list under B for bonkers. Anyhow a Wiki link and plenty of other links out there, to give us an idea what they were up to.

http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ird.%20mi6%20wiki&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FInforma tion_Research_Department&ei=UUKDT-DMDNLRiALJ5tG7CQ&usg=AFQjCNE3AwcbqjtebiLs-mOEQDtgVSSYKA

[Mr. Natural]

Dodger, How about going into more detail on Orwell's Rangoon days? I've heard he was a homophobe, but nothing on anti-Semitism.

Bigotry is ugly and deeply counterrevolutionary in all its guises. Just the same, wouldn't all of us as well as our left political heroes be banned from Revleft if the full details of the lives concerned were known? The people I admire make the inevitable human mistakes, and then they correct them.

Orwell belonged to the POUM--the left communist militia in Spain that has been incorrectly called "Trotskyist." Trotsky opposed the POUM. The POUM's founder and leader, Andres Nin, was kidnapped and skinned alive by the NKVD. Orwell then risked his life when he went to the NKVD prison where his militia commander was being held to intercede for him.

Orwell had his faults, but Stalin was a monster. I would be privileged to serve in the trenches with an Orwell, and you can be sure I would also challenge any bigotry.

[x359594]

...Why did he put beloved Charlie's name on the list. Was Orwell deranged? Besides, Orwell's knack for spotting Jew let him down in Chaplin's case, he was not. He simply never denied it because his half brother was. Now that shows integrity and how truly unimportant ones parents are, he must have learnt that in an East End slum, not on the playing fields of Eton, it must be said...

This informer list can't be wished away, and Orwell's Jew hatred is ugly and reprehensible. Also, Chaplin was by far the greater artist in his chosen medium than Orwell was as a novelist. Still, he was a good prose writer, and his Homage to Catalonia is vividly written.

[x359594]

...Orwell belonged to the POUM--the left communist militia in Spain that has been incorrectly called "Trotskyist." Trotsky opposed the POUM...

Strictly speaking Orwell was not a member of the POUM although he served in the POUM militia. As he writes in Homage to Catalonia, he was making arrangements to transfer to the International Brigades so that he could fight on the Madrid front before the May Days made him re-consider. Hardly the action of a card carrying POUMista.

[zimmerwald1915]

Orwell belonged to the POUM--the left communist militia in Spain that has been incorrectly called "Trotskyist."
Before calling others out as incorrect, you might want to check your facts. The POUM was a fusion of CI oppositions, but barring a split from the Italian left there were no left communists in it or that fought with it. Certainly none that got near the leadership.

Sorry to derail.

[RedHal]

You guys can't ever just read a fictional work and enjoy it, can you? :laugh:

I guess I'm just shallow but Animal Farm to me was just a story about literal talking pigs...it didn't upset me that it's supposed to be some big political commentary instead.

yeah I think you're one of the few who do not see Animal Farm as a condemnation of the historical communist movement. The CIA thought it was such great cold war propaganda that it even funded the 1954 animated film version.

[Ostrinski]

No, YPL, people cannot just enjoy literature.

[marl]

Regardless of whatever the deeper message may be in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, they're good reads.

[Firebrand]

Isn't there already a massive thread on Orwell in the literature forum?

[ed miliband]

of a completely different nature to this one, yes

[Yuppie Grinder]

he wrote great books against Stalinism, etc. and for that I respect him.
1984 is not a great book. It is liberal, bourgeois, and anti-worker.
A big chunk of the plot of 1984 is this: Members of the petit-bourgeois middle class realize that only the proles who make up 85% of Oceania have the power to overthrow big brother, but can't BECAUSE WORKERS ARE JUST TOO DAMN STUPID TO DO ANYTHING FOR THEMSELVES.

[zonmoy]

thing is that the very same books can and should be used against the corporatists and far right wing groups.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

The guy is basically a confused libertarian liberal who gives right-wing assholes things to shit their pants about and to use to advance their anti-progress and anti-worker agendas. He is a disgrace even to bourgeois liberalism. Look, even on Conservapedia they have him as one of the great thinkers of conservatism. Look at the bottom of this page: http://www.conservapedia.com/Orwell

Stop supporting him just because he keeps the Stalin monster out from under your bed.

He could not even be a good liberal.

[Geiseric]

Seeing how Stalinists tried to kill him and P.O.U.M. I'm not surprised that he doesn't like them. I mean he was there, in the trenches, in Barcelona when the P.S.U.C. teamed up with the Republican government to take down strikers. Their line was "First the war, then the revolution," which echoes the Social Patriotism of the 2nd international, and the notion that allying with Capitalists to beat other Capitalists is acceptable.

[Thetwoterrors]

Scott Lucas noted in his book on Hitchens/Orwell (the book is correctly titled 'The betrayal of dissent') that there is very little political value in a book like 1984 which happened to be on the reading lists of the black panthers AND the John Birch Society. We could use it against the corporatists, we could say 'it's an anti-fascist/anti-capitalist/anti-authoritarian novel' but the problem with that is it's not true. Unfortunately, the book was written in such a way in that it could be a novel which criticized the idea of socialism without losing the support of all the leftists who actually footed the bill and published Orwell's horrendous work. The anti-worker, anti-communist, and misogynistic politics of 1984 and Animal farm are obscured by all the leftists who scream that it's simply a denounciation of 'the horrors of stalinism' (cliches, folks, cliches).

The right-wingers have correctly interpreted both books as being indictments of revolutionary communism and revolutionary struggle. Orwell was on his way out of the left by the time of his death and he was barely a leftists even then, he was an ex-colonial policeman who took up the role of being a critic of left-wing politics almost as soon as he was first published. In fact, he made his career on criticizing the left and he did this under the guise that he was simply 'challenging orthodoxies'. Lucas correctly dubbed him "the policeman of the left" he was always excoriating the left for acting indecently or immorally (which happened to coincide with whatever he was feeling at the moment). Orwell was pretty much the Christopher Hitchens of the 30s and 40s.

The only difference is that Orwell did not live to inflict the full-force of his betrayal of all his left-wing benefactors and comrades. Hitchens however did, and was exposed for the scam he was. I only wish that Orwell had done so as well.

[Geiseric]

If you read the book he goes over in Goldstein's book that the revolution was betrayed, it's right fucking there and nobody pays attention to it. It's easily the most important part of the book but it's overlooked.

George Orwell was not a scam, he was easily more genuine than the members of most "Communist," parties who weren't purged.

[Thetwoterrors]

He was a total scam bro, and you fell for it. Why do you think they make us read his works all through high school and college? He's not a particularly great writer but his doom and gloom visions of socialism did enamor him to reactionaries all over the western world. He supported british imperialism and on his best day he was barely more than a social democrat. Scott Lucas also points out that despite traveling in left-wing social circles his entire life his understanding of revolutionary theory was relatively shabby.

Why do so many of the supporters of Orwell hinge their support of him on the argument that essentially boils down to: "Stalin purged people, therefore Orwell was a good guy." that's hardly a good argument as to why we as leftists should support his work.

If you recall, there's substantial doubt as to whether Goldstein's book is legitimate, the anti-government plot Winston joined was a government dragnet. Also that one point that is made through Goldstein's book hardly cancels out any other criticism of 1984.

If Orwell was such a genuine leftist, why did he blacklist many of his friends and comrades only weeks before his death? Play it down all you want, but selling out fellow comrades to a government intelligence agency is nothing more than outright betrayal.

[Agathor]

False. This story is repeated over and over again to make it seem like Orwell was a lonely, obscure figure who stood gallantly as an exile in the political wilderness until his death. His work was actually published in some of the most read newspapers in England (and the world) all the way up until his death.

Odd then that George Orwell's Critical Essays, which I have here, contains only one piece from a high-circulation magazine, which is a review of a Graham Greene book in the New Yorker; the rest are from obscure left-wing and arthouse magazines. Almost all of Orwell's journalism was published in Tribune, a magazine set up by Marxist MP Stafford Cripps, and later in Polemic, which Orwell set up with Bertrand Russell. Strange places for a liberal with high connections to the establishment press to hang around.



He was extraordinarily well-known, and far from being exiled from politics during the war he was a regular on BBC during the whole war.


He became well known in 1945 after publishing Animal Farm, fell ill in 1949, died in early 1950. His broadcasts on the BBC were, like everything on the BBC, nonpartisan reportage. He worked in the Indian office of the BBC, which almost nobody listened to.



Just because he couldn't get his shitty work animal farm published (and it is quite shitty) during the war doesn't mean he was instantaneously rebuked by the left or the political system. Democratic freedoms in Britain were all but suspended during the war... and we on the left are supposed to feel bad because Orwell wasn't able to publish his reactionary piece of trash attacking a wartime ally? Give me a break.
Halfwit doesn't like book.

[Agathor]

1984 is not a great book. It is liberal, bourgeois, and anti-worker.
A big chunk of the plot of 1984 is this: Members of the petit-bourgeois middle class realize that only the proles who make up 85% of Oceania have the power to overthrow big brother, but can't BECAUSE WORKERS ARE JUST TOO DAMN STUPID TO DO ANYTHING FOR THEMSELVES.

Lol'd heartily. Winston and Julia are not petit-bourgeosie, you prat, they are lower-level civil servants. The moral of the story is that the totalitarian system is too powerful to be overthrown

Don't post any more, you are bringing shame to your family.

[The Machine]

I\'m an anarcho type and I like Orwell, primarily as a writer and just as a bad motherfucker in the Spanish Civil War. As for his politics, they seem to be all over the place. I would primarily charictarize him as a workerist, in most of his writings he comes back to his admiration for what he sees as the character of the working class. It\'s a pretty moralistic and to some degree un-Marxist analysis but throughout his life as he drifts between reformism and revolutionary thought and between patriotism and anarchism he always maintains that faith and admiration for the working class. I think he\'s at his best politically when he\'s critiquing other leftists or writing about his time in Spain, but he\'s obviously not much of a theorist.

[Geiseric]

He was a journalist, not a professional revolutionary. But he's about as far left of a "bourgeois," journalist i've ever seen, especially since he talks shit about the Liberals, the Spanish Liberal Government, and fascism at a time when talking out against Fascism was going against Winston Churchill and Chamberlain.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I don't read all too much fictional books anymore and limit myself to books dealing with reality now, but from what i have read (Animal Farm in school, 1984 in movie) Orwell had the typical petty-bourgeois "leftists'" position because he was not a scientific socialist, but a utopian one that did not have a very good class consciousness. I guess calling him a leftist liberal fits. He was a relatively well off person growing up and seems to have acted like a normal human being to what he saw or believed to know (while he really i dont think meant the USSR in Animal Farm , as on the front of my book he writes an introduction talking about the tyrannical atmosphere for journalists on censorship by the editors). I feel his works were used as a anti-communist tool, distorted quite a bit, as i am sure the information he received about the tries of socialism vs capital in the east, through those tyrannical capitalist press was.

Don't forget: We live in the Dictatorship of capital, and the owners of the mainstream newspapers we see, are censored.

[Geiseric]

If it was against Communism he would have probably made it so Mr. Jones was a good guy and that once the farmers finish their invasions the animals live happily ever after. They didn't have anti communist messages, but messages against British censorship during the dictatorship of Churchill and the Purges of Comrade Steel. Old Major and Snowball were shown as "Good guys," meaning he wasn't against Communism... It's probably why Stalinists don't like it, because it's frighteningly accurate.

The windmill part is about the Industrialisation btw.

[Anarpest]

Isn't Orwell's choice of illustration for the Stalin-piggies reaching their lowest point basically just saying that they had become identical to humans like Mr. Jones, ie. to the capitalists?

[Anderson]

I do not support Orwell for his political views but I think he was a good writer.:)
And he had backing of bourgeois who helped disseminate his work which has made him a known historical figure.

[Mr. Natural]

Zimmerwald1915, Who did I "call out as incorrect"? You are indeed correct that POUM was not "left communist," though. I was thinking of the non-Stalinist communist left of Spain. My bad. Here is Anthony Beevor in The Battle For Spain on the POUM:
"The POUM was growing because it seemed to offer a middle course between the anarchists and the communists. But, as Andres Nin, their leader, had once been closely associated with Trotsky, the Stalinists hated the POUM even more than the anarchists. They ignored the fact that Trotsky and his Fourth International frequently attacked the POUM." (p.108) And:
"The POUM could not be defined as 'Trotskyist', as Stalinist propaganda continually proclaimed, and certainly not as 'Trotskyist-Fascist', which was the usual Comintern epithet--a death sentence in Soviet terms. But Stalinists refused to acknowledge that Trotsky's Fourth International had condemned the POUM for having joined the Popular Front in the elections, with Trotsky having repudiated his former colleague in furious articles." (p. 262)

Now I will call out "someone": the Stalinists and the Communist Party they rode in on in Spain, where they conducted themselves as treacherous, conservative, murderous thugs. Perhaps my grasp of the details of the Spanish Civil War suffers because every time I engage the events I become sickened and find it hard to continue my reading.

Animal Farm and 1984 are aimed at all forms of totalitarianism--"communist" and capitalist. I find 1984 to be an excellent expression of the rapidly developing police-security-surveillance-permanent war state so rapidly developing in the US.

[Tim Finnegan]

He was a total scam bro, and you fell for it. Why do you think they make us read his works all through high school and college?
At my school they made us read Robert Burns, who was a fucking Jacobin. Show an ounce of critical thought, why don't you.

[Franz Fanonipants]

assholes on the internet love effete pricks so

e: also most "leftists" seem to really and wholeheartedly believe that Spain was "important" in some international revolutionary schema

[Tim Finnegan]

Given the force of the strike wave in France 1936, with its overtly pro-Republican and anti-Fascist orientation, that doesn't seem wholly unreasonable. (The Communist Party, as you might expect, played the same reactionary role there as they did in Spain.)