# Orwell SUCKS! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 15, 2008, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504 "2008-04-15T22:27:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/1 "2008-04-15T22:27:23Z")
I used to think George Orwell (Animal, 1984) was a genius. The further I get reading his stuff though, the more I come to think that his skill was absolute genius in the service of bitter obstinate obnoxious assininity. He has this frightening tendency to wave his hands and condemn everyone equally. Which he does. A lot. he hates Capitalism, he hates Communism, he hates Religion, he hates Fascism. He hates Russia, he hates Germany, he hates the U.S.A. He hates the English language. Apparently he dislikes England too, but as he must live there confines this to a general distaste for everything. Seriously? What was this guy’s problem? Terminal depression? Just plain bad attitude? Supposedly, he was a Socialist (post Spanish Civil War when he left the COmmunists), but at no point have I ever heard him argue for it in any sensible fashion. Instead, he seems to just bitterly resent the fact that no one really gave a shit what he thought, and became increasingly cranky over it. I particulary “enjoyed” (read: found annoying) his pathetic and ill-informed hack job on both politics and the English language in, well, “Politics and the English Language.” Making sweeping statements about what a terrible state the English language is (because it no previous term existed for what it talks about, or because it uses an expressive, emotional, but anachronistic word to convey meaning), he then goes on to blah blah blah about how this means every argument offered by any political party on anything is just a euphemistic lie. Well fuck you with a rubber hose, too, bitch. I don’t think the Democrats are always wrong or lying. I think they are wrong, but hardly about everything, and as often as not it’s a matter of different values which I don’t share. Heck, I can’t even honestly say the Nazis or Soviets were _always_ wrong or always lying. Just usually. I wish this guy was still alive so I could send him an email asking whether he thought 1984’s Newspeak was a good idea, because that seems to be what he’s pushing here. :rolleyes: Honestly, he strikes me as a wordsmith who stayed at his practice so long and became so bitter that he started focusing all his rage on the words themselves. He moronically attacks some metaphors (but not others, in a display or arbitraryiness rarely equalled in monarchical stupidity)… for not being expressive enough. I’m sorry Mr. Orwell, but the phrase _toe the line_ is incredible expressive and amply puts its point across. And yes, probably some speakers do use longer forms when they’re not necessary. Unfortunately, Orwell can’t even get this right. He harps on the cirumlocutions themselves (“exhibit a tendency to”) rather than bad usage thereof. Longer forms can mean something - or not. It’s all in the hands of of the writer. Would this cock-nogging limey verb-flayer honestly argue that, say, the entirey of the 19th century was a litary wasteland? Probably not. He’s just bitter because his stark style doesn’t appeal to everyone. And he whines about “pretentious dictation,” somehow missing that what is pretentious in a bad writer’s hands is precisely what makes things great in a skilled writer’s. A great painter and a bad one use the same pallette of colors. The irony is that according to his standards, the “good” English (expressive and powerful) is quite atrocious. I think he fails to see this because he doesn’t want to see it. That is, he compares "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. " to a bad “translation.” Except that the anacronisms and phrasing are quite doubleplusungood according to the same fucking criteria he vomited over the page just above it! He also fails to pass the “half-way” intelligent test when he, after having pushed strict accuracy, gets annoyed by people talking in long complicated words to be more accurate. Yes, “I think” does technically mean the same as “In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that”. Ecept that the latter is being definitively clear that this is an opinion, and emphisizing its tentative nature. Which is sometimes important. And yes, this entire rant has been written in a style which, I should think, would utterly infuriate the rotten bastard. I wonder, (and this is not an attack, just speciulation) if part of him really did love the power of Totalitarianism. He would not have been the first literary type to admire regimes which were not half-ashamed of themselves as democracies always appear to be. Meanwhile, Hitler and Stalin quite unapologetically (but hypcritically) worked quasi-poetry into their messages. They had the great advantage of not having opposition. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/2 "2008-04-15T22:39:11Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] Orwell SUCKS! [/QUOTE] You would do well to change this to: Orwell’s writing is distasteful. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. ---
**Author:** ![blinkingblinking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@blinkingblinking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blinkingblinking)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/3 "2008-04-15T22:44:37Z")
I am going to work now so have not much time to reply. “He’s just bitter because his stark style doesn’t appeal to everyone.” Animal Farm and 1984 are two of the most successful books of the 20th C in terms of sales and critical reaction. Both books have sold over 10 million copies world-wide ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/4 "2008-04-15T22:53:19Z")
[QUOTE=blinkingblinking] I am going to work now so have not much time to reply. “He’s just bitter because his stark style doesn’t appeal to everyone.” Animal Farm and 1984 are two of the most successful books of the 20th C in terms of sales and critical reaction. Both books have sold over 10 million copies world-wide [/QUOTE] That was kinda my point. His books are popular. His style, however, is not universal. Which seems to be what pissed him off. If he were going be annoyed by over-use of euphamism, it would be ones thing. But he winds up confusing a thing he doesn’t always do himself (talking straight) with some idealized Platonic language. We will never have the latter, and it’s often the mucky bits he claims to disdain that make a language interesting, or even usable. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/5 "2008-04-15T23:12:31Z")
I suggest moving this thread to CS. It is really a literary debate. > [@smiling bandit](#): > > Seriously? What was this guy’s problem? Terminal depression? Just plain bad attitude? The tragic sense of life. Consider that he was very much a realist and yet at bottom an optimist, in the sense of never giving up hope. From [“Looking Back on the Spanish War”:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part16) [quote=] I never think of the Spanish war without two memories coming into my mind. One is of the hospital ward at Lerida and the rather sad voices of the wounded militiamen singing some song with a refrain that ended— UNA RESOLUCION, LUCHAR HAST’ AL FIN! Well, they fought to the end all right. For the last eighteen months of the war the Republican armies must have been fighting almost without cigarettes, and with precious little food. Even when I left Spain in the middle of 1937, meat and bread were scarce, tobacco a rarity, coffee and sugar almost unobtainable. The other memory is of the Italian militiaman who shook my hand in the guardroom, the day I joined the militia. I wrote about this man at the beginning of my book on the Spanish war [Homage to Catalonia], and do not want to repeat what I said there. When I remember—oh, how vividly!—his shabby uniform and fierce, pathetic, innocent face, the complex side-issues of the war seem to fade away and I see clearly that there was at any rate no doubt as to who was in the right. In spite of power politics and journalistic lying, the central issue of the war was the attempt of people like this to win the decent life which they knew to be their birthright. It is difficult to think of this particular man’s probable end without several kinds of bitterness. Since I met him in the Lenin Barracks he was probably a Trotskyist or an Anarchist, and in the peculiar conditions of our time, when people of that sort are not killed by the Gestapo they are usually killed by the G.P.U. But that does not affect the long-term issues. This man’s face, which I saw only for a minute or two, remains with me as a sort of visual reminder of what the war was really about. He symbolizes for me the flower of the European working class, harried by the police of all countries, the people who fill the mass graves of the Spanish battlefields and are now, to the tune of several millions, rotting in forced-labour camps. When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew! Think of a programme which at any rate for a while could bring Hitler, Petain, Montagu Norman, Pavelitch, William Randolph Hearst, Streicher, Buchman, Ezra Pound, Juan March, Cocteau, Thyssen, Father Coughlin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Arnold Lunn, Antonescu, Spengler, Beverley Nichols, Lady Houston, and Marinetti all into the same boat! But the clue is really very simple. They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings. Behind all the ballyhoo that is talked about ‘godless’ Russia and the ‘materialism’ of the working class lies the simple intention of those with money or privileges to cling to them. Ditto, though it contains a partial truth, with all the talk about the worthlessness of social reconstruction not accompanied by a ‘change of heart’. The pious ones, from the Pope to the yogis of California, are great on the’ change of heart’, much more reassuring from their point of view than a change in the economic system. Petain attributes the fall of France to the common people’s ‘love of pleasure’. One sees this in its right perspective if one stops to wonder how much pleasure the ordinary French peasant’s or working-man’s life would contain compared with Pétain’s own. The damned impertinence of these politicians, priests, literary men, and what-not who lecture the working-class socialist for his ‘materialism’! All that the working man demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn’t leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. Not one of those who preach against ‘materialism’ would consider life livable without these things. And how easily that minimum could be attained if we chose to set our minds to it for only twenty years! To raise the standard of living of the whole world to that of Britain would not be a greater undertaking than the war we have just fought. I don’t claim, and I don’t know who does, that that wouldn’t solve anything in itself. It is merely that privation and brute labour have to be abolished before the real problems of humanity can be tackled. The major problem of our time is the decay of the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police. How right the working classes are in their ‘materialism’! How right they are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time! Understand that, and the long horror that we are enduring becomes at least intelligible. All the considerations are likely to make one falter—the siren voices of a Pétain or of a Gandhi, the inescapable fact that in order to fight one has to degrade oneself, the equivocal moral position of Britain, with its democratic phrases and its coolie empire, the sinister development of Soviet Russia, the squalid farce of left-wing politics—all this fades away and one sees only the struggle of the gradually awakening common people against the lords of property and their hired liars and bumsuckers. The question is very simple. Shall people like that Italian soldier be allowed to live the decent, fully human life which is now technically achievable, or shan’t they? Shall the common man be pushed back into the mud, or shall he not? I myself believe, perhaps on insufficient grounds, that the common man will win his fight sooner or later, but I want it to be sooner and not later—some time within the next hundred years, say, and not some time within the next ten thousand years. That was the real issue of the Spanish war, and of the last war, and perhaps of other wars yet to come. I never saw the Italian militiaman again, nor did I ever learn his name. It can be taken as quite certain that he is dead. Nearly two years later, when the war was visibly lost, I wrote these verses in his memory: The Italian soldier shook my hand Beside the guard-room table; The strong hand and the subtle hand Whose palms are only able To meet within the sound of guns, But oh! what peace I knew then In gazing on his battered face Purer than any woman’s! For the flyblown words that make me spew Still in his ears were holy, And he was born knowing what I had learned Out of books and slowly. The treacherous guns had told their tale And we both had bought it, But my gold brick was made of gold— Oh! who ever would have thought it? Good luck go with you, Italian soldier! But luck is not for the brave; What would the world give back to you? Always less than you gave. Between the shadow and the ghost, Between the white and the red, Between the bullet and the lie, Where would you hide your head? For where is Manuel Gonzalez, And where is Pedro Aguilar, And where is Ramon Fenellosa? The earthworms know where they are. Your name and your deeds were forgotten Before your bones were dry, And the lie that slew you is buried Under a deeper lie; But the thing that I saw in your face No power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst Shatters the crystal spirit. [/quote] This was a man who knew much of bitterness, but not a bitter man. More later. Orwell is my hero. ---
**Author:** ![Ro\_Carter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7feea3/32.png) [@Ro\_Carter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ro_Carter)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/6 "2008-04-15T23:15:21Z")
I was just discussing this the other day. While I can understand why some people enjoy/claim to enjoy his writing, I’ve disliked it from the first sentence. To me, it has about the same appeal as reading the diary of a depressed and angsty college student. Same basic points, but one has a plot. Sorry if we were aiming for a more scholarly take on why Orwell is awful, but I’m trying to block out most Orwell-related memories. ---
**Author:** ![vison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e47774/32.png) [@vison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vison)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/7 "2008-04-15T23:31:58Z")
[QUOTE=George Orwell] . . .In spite of power politics and journalistic lying, the central issue of the war was the attempt of people like this to win the decent life which they knew to be their birthright. [/QUOTE] IMHO, that sentence alone shows that Orwell was not terminally bitter, and was also a very good writer. And, furthermore, he was right. As in Correct, not Right. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/8 "2008-04-15T23:35:28Z")
I found him difficult to read - although I was pretty young when I read him - but his ideas were interesting. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/9 "2008-04-15T23:38:48Z")
Y’know **Brainglutton** , I just don’t think I can agree. He strikes me as a man who _wanted_ to romanticize things but ultimately disliked humanity too much. He hated political coercion but seemed to hate the very human ability to choose itself. I found it amusing how he talked about all those who admired Fascism in that passage, glossing over his own support of its twin in Communism. I recently re-read 1984. I found it shocking and not a little sickening that the most “human” character in it is O’Brien. Winston Smith is a degraded, sick little man, and comes to realize this himself toward the end of part 2. Julia is ultimately a shallow creature, and largely an object for Winston to lust over. O’Brien, however, is the man with no illusions - a man, if I may so say, a little like Orwell himself. Orwell in some ways put himself in the book as Smith. I think O’brien suits him better. O’Brien is after all, intelligent in an academic sense, far more clever in the human sense, tough, and with fewer illusions. He “believes” in Big Brother through the magic of Doublethink, while knowing there really isn’t even a man behind the curtain. He _enjoys_ his power and position without shame. He is, in fact, the completly rational man in the story, who knows his own goals and interests and acts accordingly. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2008, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/10 "2008-04-15T23:51:56Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] Apparently he dislikes England too, but as he must live there confines this to a general distaste for everything. [/QUOTE] Orwell **loved** England, with full awareness of all its faults, which was unfashionable for a left-intellectual of the time. From [“The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) > [@](#): > > One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a POSITIVE force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not. > > Also, one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook. Till recently it was thought proper to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs enormously from country to country. Things that could happen in one country could not happen in another. Hitler’s June purge, for instance, could not have happened in England. And, as western peoples go, the English are very highly differentiated. There is a sort of back-handed admission of this in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often feel more at home in Europe. > > When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning— all these are not only fragments, but CHARACTERISTIC fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle? > > But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person. > > And above all, it is YOUR civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/11 "2008-04-16T00:03:20Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] Supposedly, he was a Socialist (post Spanish Civil War when he left the COmmunists), but at no point have I ever heard him argue for it in any sensible fashion. [/QUOTE] Also from “TL&TUm” Part II, “Shopkeepers at War”: > [@](#): > > What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism, that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit—DOES NOT WORK. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler’s conquest of Europe, however, was a PHYSICAL debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result. > > When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddlesteamer of equal horse-power stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism. > > Socialism is usually defined as “common ownership of the means of production”. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does NOT mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it DOES mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. 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. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc etc) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment. > > However, it has become clear in the last few years that “common ownership of the means of production” is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a classsystem. Centralised ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. “The State” may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money. > > But what then is Fascism? > > Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and—this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism—generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen. > > \ > > However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State. > > All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal to the strain of preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern scale you have got to divert the greater part of your national income to armaments, which means cutting down on consumption goods. A bombing plane, for instance, is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or eighty thousand pairs of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread. Clearly you can’t have MANY bombing planes without lowering the national standard of life. It is guns or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But in Chamberlain’s England the transition could not be made. The rich would not face the necessary taxation, and while the rich are still visibly rich it is not possible to tax the poor very heavily either. Moreover, so long as PROFIT was the main object the manufacturer had no incentive to change over from consumption goods to armaments. A businessman’s first duty is to his shareholders. Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it pays better to manufacture motor cars. To prevent war material from reaching the enemy is common sense, but to sell in the highest market is a business duty. Right at the end of August 1939 the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac-and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your throat with. But it was “good business”. > > And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was rearming. After 1936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was coming. After Munich it was merely a question of how soon the war would begin. In September 1939 war broke out. EIGHT MONTHS LATER it was discovered that, so far as equipment went, the British army was barely beyond the standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way desperately to the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles against tanks, with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even enough revolvers to supply all the officers. After a year of war the regular army was still short of 300,000 tin hats. There had even, previously, been a shortage of uniforms—this in one of the greatest woollen-goods producing countries in the world! This must have seemed a more persuasive argument in 1941 than now, but it is at any rate a sensible one. What he actually meant by socialism can be discerned from Part III, “The English Revolution”: > [@](#): > > I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England’s internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world: > > 1. Nationalisation of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries. > > 2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest taxfree income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. > > 3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines. > > 4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over. > > 5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented. > > 6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers. > > The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. I have deliberately included in it nothing that the simplest person could not understand and see the reason for. In the form in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of the DAILY MIRROR. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of amplification is needed. > > 1. NATIONALISATION. One can “nationalise” industry by the stroke of a pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere OWNERS who live not by virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. How sudden a change in the conduct of industry it implies is less certain. In a country like England we cannot rip down the whole structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time of war. Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with much the same personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing directors carrying on with their jobs as State employees. There is reason to think that many of the smaller capitalists would actually welcome some such arrangement. The resistance will come from the big capitalists, the bankers, the landlords and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with over £2,000 a year—and even if one counts in all their dependants there are not more than half a million of these people in England. Nationalisation of agricultural land implies cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganisation of English agriculture that would not retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being permanently in debt to the bank. With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimising the smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are “their own masters”. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of land in town areas. > > From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is THEMSELVES. They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices that are ahead of us, war or no war. And even if the face of England hardly seems to change, on the day that our main industries are formally nationalised the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From then onwards the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management, from privilege to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership will in itself bring about less social change than will be forced upon us by the common hardships of war. But it is the necessary first step without which any REAL reconstruction is impossible. > > 1. INCOMES. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption goods available. And this again implies a stricter rationing scheme than is now in operation. It is no use at this stage of the world’s history to suggest that all human beings should have EXACTLY equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other hand the money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible that earnings should be limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions. But there is no reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with £3 a week and a man with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the Duke of Westminster and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot. > > 2. EDUCATION. In wartime, educational reform must necessarily be promise rather than performance. At the moment we are not in a position to raise the school-leaving age or increase the teaching staffs of the elementary schools. But there are certain immediate steps that we could take towards a democratic educational system. We could start by abolishing the autonomy of the public schools and the older universities and flooding them with State-aided pupils chosen simply on grounds of ability. At present, public-school education is partly a training in class prejudice and partly a sort of tax that the middle classes pay to the upper class in return for the right to enter certain professions. It is true that that state of affairs is altering. The middle classes have begun to rebel against the expensiveness of education, and the war will bankrupt the majority of the public schools if it continues for another year or two. The evacuation is also producing certain minor changes. But there is a danger that some of the older schools, which will be able to weather the financial storm longest, will survive in some form or another as festering centres of snobbery. As for the 10,000 “private” schools that England possesses, the vast majority of them deserve nothing except suppression. They are simply commercial undertakings, and in many cases their educational level is actually lower than that of the elementary schools. They merely exist because of a widespread idea that there is something disgraceful in being educated by the public authorities. The State could quell this idea by declaring itself responsible for all edilcation, even if at the start this were no more than a gesture. We need gestures as well as actions. It is all too obvious that our talk of “defending democracy” is nonsense while it is a mere accident of birth that decides whether a gifted child shall or shall not get the education it deserves. Criticize the above as you will, you cannot say he is not arguing in a sensible fashion, and a very commonsensical fashion, too. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/12 "2008-04-16T00:54:56Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Criticize the above as you will, you cannot say he is not arguing in a sensible fashion, and a very commonsensical fashion, too. [/QUOTE] I think you and I hve a very different idea of “sensible.” I usually take it to mean, “not a wild flight of fancy that a the maddest schizophrenic would not, even with no conception of human reality or reason, leave it off as too silly to be contemplated within two paragraphs.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/13 "2008-04-16T01:15:42Z")
[QUOTE=smiling bandit] I think you and I hve a very different idea of “sensible.” I usually take it to mean, “not a wild flight of fancy that a the maddest schizophrenic would not, even with no conception of human reality or reason, leave it off as too silly to be contemplated within two paragraphs.” [/QUOTE] Orwell’s views as expressed, and views **far** more extreme, were shared by a significant minority of British of his time, many of those highly educated. Few of them were mad schizophrenics. Orwell’s **arguments** are sensible even if you can find fault with his conclusions. This started off as a Pitting of Orwell based on his general world-view and literary criticism, with no hint of politics as such. At this point, I’m am moved to doubt your intellectual honesty. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/14 "2008-04-16T02:23:48Z")
Hold on there – on the one hand, how Orwell interprets the facts he sees and what he deduces about the relative merit of “socialized” vs. “capitalistic” systems may have been _ **wrong** _ but they most certainly were not ideas “too silly even for a mad schizophrenic” _in his historic context_. OTOH, in hindsight he DOES come off as embracing a naive romantic ideal, raging at how the world would rather do nothing about uplifting the downtrodden, and in a sense wondering if it is that language is being used to shape the debate so that the opposing ideas are not heard. He is specially vexed at the realization that the communists are just another bunch of power-seekers, who’d cynically use the true revolutionary workers as cannon fodder to gain power and then purge them. Even if it is not what he really feels, he **can** come across as frustrated that in the end there’s nobody he can follow. Never had trouble with his writing style as such – in the case of his nonfiction, always bearing in mind the time and place, I felt it dated, very much of its time; but the novels worked. And that is yet another turn of self-conflict: a man who aspires to the ideal of a socialized system AND opposes totalitarianism, comes out and writes two famous novels (1984 and Animal Farm) where the collectivized society degenerates into totalitarianism. On the political side: Orwell hates/fears totalitarianism, but apparently he fears that it’ll come because (a) democracies will fail to deliver the expected quality of life to the masses, and the masses will submit to a ruler who says if they can’t have a piece nobody will; or (b) because the masses will bow to a ruler that promises opression and meager rations rather than take chances on freedom but no guarantee of food. Yet, in his desire that the underclass be lifted up to appreciate freedom with dignity, he perceives that the man who has to scrape for his very subsistence is in no position to enjoy that uplift, and that those in the circles of political, economic and social power indeed have a stake in heeping the underclass down, so his plan is enforcing a social uniformity so as to smash the overclass/underclass divide, that happens to result in fewer degrees of freedom for the individual. _In historic context_ it does not surprise me: many people who lived through the Depression and World Wars felt that way. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/15 "2008-04-16T02:58:02Z")
If you think he’s critical in _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ I suggest you don’t read _The Road to Wigan Pier_. ---
**Author:** ![xcheopis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bc8723/32.png) [@xcheopis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xcheopis)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/16 "2008-04-16T04:51:56Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] If you think he’s critical in _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ I suggest you don’t read _The Road to Wigan Pier_. [/QUOTE] Or, _Down and Out in Paris and London._ ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/17 "2008-04-16T05:06:20Z")
[QUOTE=xcheopis] Or, _Down and Out in Paris and London._ [/QUOTE] Or, _Everyone in the World Sucks Balls._ Talk about bitter. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/18 "2008-04-16T05:20:14Z")
[QUOTE=xcheopis] Or, _Down and Out in Paris and London._ [/QUOTE] Which, by coincidence, I happen to be reading right now. It’s quite interesting, knowing the thinker and writer into which he developed, to read material from so early in his career (it’s the first thing Blair published under the Orwell name, I believe). The style is quite stark, matter-of-fact, coldly observational, but with an intelligence and perspective just barely perceptible in the background, a careful, focused mind making deliberate choices about detail and consciously sculpting his scenes. There is true art in that, real talent; he makes it look easy but it absolutely, absolutely is not. It reads as reportage, as simply relating what he sees, the shapes of objects and the smells of places and the behavior of people, but it’s all so beautifully, beautifully done that the artistry almost disappears. His sky-high reputation is not an accident. The man was a giant. ---
**Author:** ![Ponster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponster/32/17081_2.png) [@Ponster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponster)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/19 "2008-04-16T05:45:48Z")
Errr, Sorry…I was looking for the BBQ pit. I seem to have stumbled in here by mistake ! ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2008, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504/20 "2008-04-16T06:01:41Z")
[QUOTE=Ro Carter] While I can understand why some people enjoy/claim to enjoy his writing… [/QUOTE] Wow, that’s very big of you. You claim to understand, while at the same time implying that people who say they like Orwell might just be liars who only claim to enjoy it. Do you seriously think that people say they like Orwell merely to be contrary, or to impress you, or something? Anyway. I love Orwell. I find him, by turns, exhilarating, infuriating, inspiring, depressing, cogent, confused, brilliant, obtuse. And i love him despite, and because of, his multitude of contradictions. For me, one of his two most famous works, _Animal Farm_ is actually his least interesting and enjoyable. Despite its popularity, especially among Cold Warriors seeking every possible weapon in their ideological battle against the Soviet Union, i think _Animal Farm_ is actually a rather simplistic and trite political satire. Orwell’s other famous work, _1984_, is excellent, but i think that many people in western societies have tended to see it as primarily a critique of totalitarian societies. Even while cultural references to Big Brother and Newspeak proliferate, many people still don’t really appreciate that Orwell was offering a critique of the way that thought control operates is our ostensibly free, democratic societies. But leaving those two well-known works behind, i think that Orwell’s non-fiction works and his essays were really his greatest strength, even while demonstrating many of the contradictions that make him so frustrating at times. _Road to Wigan Pier_ and _Down and Out in Paris and London_ are really interesting examples of investigative journalism-cum-anthropology, and display some of the best and worst characteristics of both. Orwell himself was, i think, eminently aware of his internal struggles about portraying the homeless and the working classes. He constantly displays empathy and egalitarianism, only to turn around a few pages later and unleash a stream of resolutely middle-class value judgment about his subjects. Despite the fact that it’s often overlooked or dismissed as literature, i think the novel _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_ is a really nice little revelation of Orwell’s conflicted feelings about what it means to be middle class in England. Similarly, he had much sympathy for socialist causes, while often having little time for socialists, deriding them as sandal-wearing vegetarians. And his appreciation for the variety and the idealism of the left was tempered by his frustration and hostility to its sectarianism and what he perceived as its self-righteousness. _Homage to Catalonia_ really demonstrates some of his frustrations in these areas. Whether you like his writing style is, obviously, as much an aesthetic matter as anything else. Personally, i think he was a writer best suited to the essay format. Some of his essays are masterworks of English prose. As with many overtly political writers, i think it’s probably easier to appreciate Orwell, and to forgive his inconsistencies and his excesses, if you agree with his politics. I completely understand why some people can’t stand him, but i remain convinced that he was one of the best and most important writers of the twentieth century. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-sucks/445504.md?page=2)