1984

[BurnTheOliveTree]

I'm sure this discussion has been had, but I wish to have it again. :)

I recently saw Eusebio criticise Orwell, as did RedStar2000.

From what I understand, the basic argument against is that Orwell thinks revolution inevitably fails, and is ridiculing or challenging the whole concept of revolting against the system.

In animal farm, the pigs have the whole "All pigs are equal, some are more equal than others". Yeah, superficially, one could deduct from this that Orwell reckons revolutionaries are idiots/villains. But surely the critics miss the point here...? Isn't Orwell just lecturing on revolution going wrong? There are lots of heartening moments in Animal Farm, contrasting with the pigs' tyranny.

In 1984, the ENTIRE plot rests on painting a nightmare portrait of capitalism come fascism gone horrible, horribly wrong. No doubt you'll bring up the fact that Winston royally fucks up, and ends up being tortured into insanity and praising big brother. Again, revolution gone wrong. And, again, there are heartening moments.

I think Orwell just wanted to convey that revolution was not easy, or simple. He might also have genuinely felt that kicking back against the establishment was next to useless, however praise-wrothy the attempt. He might just have wanted a poignant ending. Writing happy endings in fiction is jolly hard work, especially if you're avoiding cheapening the story.



Feel free to attack my opinions, i'm sure there will be those itching to point out my shoddy logic. :L

-Alex

[Conghaileach]

I think that 1984 was aimed at 'authoritarian communism', Stalinism as Orwell saw it. This is why we see lipservice being paid to IngSoc without any substance to it.

I wouldn't agree with some of the criticisms of the book, but I do have my own. I think that fundamentally Orwell was trying to make the point that if we let a totalitarian dictatorship come into being, by the time we get around to organising against it, it will already have become impossible to fight. I don't think there's necessarily anything in the book that suggests that revolution is pointless.

That being said, I'm sure that with a little searching you will be able to find quite a few threads on the book.

[Raj Radical]

He mentioned that "true english socialism was betrayed by ingsoc" if I remember.

Its been a long time since ive read it.

[Global_Justice]

don't forgot the man volunteered and went and fought in the spanish civil war, which isn't the action of a man who thinks revolution is pointless.

[Janus]

don't forgot the man volunteered and went and fought in the spanish civil war, which isn't the action of a man who thinks revolution is pointless.
Yeah, this is the main counterpoint against those who believe 1984 was reactionary.

[Shadowlegion]

while I think it was a book mainly directly against authoritarian communism, I think it was also in reaction of a lot of his peers, who claimed the stalinist regime was socialist, even though they admitted it applied little in the ways of socialism and constantly committed atrocities against its own people.. at least I think that was the inspiration for "doublethink."

1984 is applied way too much though in my opinion.. its real meaning is based heavily in perception and personal politics.

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 06:53 AM

don't forgot the man volunteered and went and fought in the spanish civil war, which isn't the action of a man who thinks revolution is pointless.
Yeah, this is the main counterpoint against those who believe 1984 was reactionary.
Urm, people do change their minds you know.

That said I think 1984 was against "Stalinism" and fascism.

I have already ranted about Orwell's anti-proletarianism and counter-revolutionary traits, and RS2K has debunked Orwell enough as well. 1985 By Burgess explains a lot. A search of these forums will bring a lot of it up. Someone shoudl pin it as it's been posted way more times then needed, along with Animal Farm.

[Year: 1]

Orwell was a left-wing communist/anarchist. Just read his book Homage to Catalonia. Professor Chomsky said that Homage to Catalonia is Orwell's best book. Also read Orwell's preface to Animal Farm

Here is a passage early on in the first few pages of Homage to Catalonia:

I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper
articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time
and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The
Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was
still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it
probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was
ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was
something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been
in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building
of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with
the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the
hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost
every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were
being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an
inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been
collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers
looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial
forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senior' or 'Don' or
even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said
'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first
experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a
lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and
all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and
black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in
clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs
of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the
crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small
number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all.
Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some
variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in
it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I
recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I
believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers'
State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or
voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers
of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as
proletarians for the time being.

Orwell's preface to Animal Farm

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html

http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/books/homagetocatalonia.htm

[Conghaileach]

Originally posted by Year: [email protected] 12 2006, 06:11 PM
Orwell was a left-wing communist/anarchist.
I disagree. He only ever defined hismelf as a democratic socialist, as far as I can remember, and he would have been closer to Trotskyism than to any other tendency.

[Year: 1]

Originally posted by Conghaileach+Jul 12 2006, 06:44 PM--> (Conghaileach @ Jul 12 2006, 06:44 PM)
Year: [email protected] 12 2006, 06:11 PM
Orwell was a left-wing communist/anarchist.
I disagree. He only ever defined hismelf as a democratic socialist, as far as I can remember, and he would have been closer to Trotskyism than to any other tendency. [/b]
What kind of a statement is that? How is a Social Democrat synonymous with a Trotskyite? Pretty contradictory. If you mean the Trotsky of the Leninist period who with Lenin advocated the need for a vanguard party and all the accoutrements and trappings of the bureaucracy then I would have to strongly disagree. Orwell was in favor of worker control not party discipline.

[Che Guevara 1967]

Kind of ironic that Orwell depicted a Communist totalitarian government which oppressed its people at great lengths. Also ironic that he depicted the Oceania government constantly spying on their people. If only he saw the neo-cons of today. However, I guess its all parties within the Capitalist government, not just the neo-cons...

[blake 3:17]

I don't think that either Isaac Deustscher or Raymond Wiliams was ever a Non-Socialist, but that's another story.

It isn't easy to deal with Orwell, having been canonized by Left, Middle, and Right. One of the main points Deutscher makes is that Orwell was as anti-Social Democratic/Labour Party as he was anti-Communist.


The Stalinist left has severely criticized Orwell, and 1984 in particular. Isaac Deutscher, one of the "fathers of the New Left," slammed Orwell as a "simple-minded anarchist,"54 a viciousness explained by the fact that Deutscher believed the Soviet Union was a workers’ state and the invasions of Eastern Europe were progressive. Others have used Orwell’s supposed rejection of the left to excuse their own retreat from it, like well-known former Marxists Christopher Hitchens and Raymond Williams.

Orwell was dying from tuberculosis when the controversy surrounding 1984 erupted. He took some steps to rescue it from the right, declaring, "My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on socialism."55

The danger lies in the structure imposed on socialist and liberal capitalist communities by the necessity to prepare for total war with the USSR and the new weapons, of which the atom bomb is the most powerful.... But danger lies also in the totalitarian outlook of intellectuals of all colors. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: "Don’t let it happen. It depends on you."56 Link to International Socialist Review article. (http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/orwell.shtml)