I still maintain Orwell was soft though for skipping out and then betraying the Spanish Civil War...He was a Socialist who ultimately did as much damage to Socialism as Mao or Stalin ever could or would with his writings- Not because what he said was bad or particularly untrue but how it was interpretated- He should have explained it better...so many people tell me that socialism/ communism can't work based only on what they've read of Orwell, or at least qoute him to 'prove' the point- Ie my Yr 11 English teacher at the opening class of our study or 1984/ Animal Farm "These books are evidence that Communism is the opposite to Freedom" Evidence????? Hope never have her on one of my fucking juries.
Orwell was a disenchanted socialist, and given the state of the USSR at the time he was writing, who could blame him. But 1984 was not specifically an attack on socialism, if you remember in the Goldstein book he uses as examples not merely Bolshevism and socialism (which certainly are not one and the same) but also the Roman Inquisition of the middle ages. Orwell was against any kind of totalitarian state and the reason his work is as timeless as it has been is because it is so applicable to so many social and political systems throughout history. Which is as much a blessing as a curse, because that ambiguity which lends itself to being applied to so many historical examples allows it to be so badly misinterpreted. Animal Farm was arguably different, it attacked the russian revolution specifically, although it didn't attack the revolution itself or the ideals it was based upon, but rather the way that the revolution was effectively hijacked by Stalin and his cronies who chewed up the original revolutionaries like rabid dogs. It just
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But in 1984 Orwell goes further than he did in Animal Farm (and his attack on Bolshevism and i'd argue the Republican Government in Republican Spain). He was obviously no longer content with bashing Bolshevism so he attacked democratic socialism too. He attributes The party controlling Oceania, I think it was Ingsoc, as originating as British Socialism - Goldstein's book also states that 'Ingsoc which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has infact carried out the main programme; with the result foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanant' (p166). It also states that 'In each varaiant of Socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned' (p163) By attacking both forms of Socialism the only alternative that is left is Capitalism. The implication is clear- that even democratic socialism will degenerate into Totalitarian Socialism. It is said that he wrote 1984 at disgust of Attley's
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yeah, what you are saying is more than reasonable and i agree with the vast bulk of it. I still can't blame orwell too much for abandoning socialism (or near enough too) given the context in which he was writing, and not only the spanish civil war (of which he was so involved). 1949 had not only seen the second world war come at such a terrible cost (and despite fascism and communism being at opposite ends of the ideological scale, the nazis did call themselves national Socialists, as misleading a title as it was), the Soviet Union under Stalin had made it through the terror of the 1930s only to reintroduce a new police state and new purge of society following the return of veterans from the war. At this stage in history, socialism just didn't look good, especially to those like orwell who had previously argued in favor of it so much. But the other difference was the state of capitalism in that day. You mentioned "By attacking both forms of Socialism the only alternative that is left is Capitalism." That is quite true, however, I
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