Boing Boing reports:
The Orwell Prize will mark the 70th anniversary of the Orwell Diaries by serializing them, one day at a time, on a blog — reminiscent of the way that Phil Gyford syndicated Pepys’s Diary.
That’s so cool. Though actually I suspect Pepys would have been the better blogger. He was LJ circa 1660.
The whole revival of Orwell thing is weird and so overdetermined. On one hand, there’s the Orwell as anti-po/mo theme. On the other, there’s Orwell as the “hero” of the “Decent Left” theme (cf. you know, everything Christopher Hitchens has recently written). What’s ignored and effaced totally is Orwell the polemicist in favour of imagining a postwar social democracy. If you read what he was saying in the 1930s, what he was wishing for - as a “realistic utopia” - was something very like what was envisaged in the whole Beveridge/Keynes libertarian social democracy vision. 1984 was also really meant to be more about the distortion of this “new Jerusalem” by the statist Labour Party than “Stalin”. But anyways… Orwell as a writer - and here I’d gesture to the almost forgotten Burmese Days - is also much neglected. Perhaps his diaries will stimulate a respectful consideration of him in regard to his own concerns not some dumbarsed political point scoring about teh war on terror or whatevs.
Absolutely - if Orwell was very anti-Stalin you must also remember he was very anti-Churchill too. This adoption of him by warmongers is ridiculous. Ferchrissake, he fought alongside the anarchists in Spain - to the left of the Commos.
Not to mention that Orwell was, in truth, not always a very nice person. He certainly didn’t always come out of his fights with fellow leftists looking good. For example anyone who reads the back-and-forth with Connie Zinniacus MP (who he accused of being a Russian agent) is left with the clear impression that Orwell made a gratuitous and damaging smear, was called on it, and rather than admitting he had no evidence cravenly retreated to bluster and doubletalk.
1984 was also really meant to be more about the distortion of this “new Jerusalem” by the statist Labour Party than “Stalin”.
That’s complete nonsense Kim.
Orwell always insisted 1984 was not an attack on the Labour Party - which he canvassed for in the 1945 general election.
I wouldn’t be so quick to be so dismissive of that claim, Ramon. You might like to look into the difference between his public statements and some of what he said in private. Unfortunately I don’t have the reference to hand.
And Napoleon in Animal Farm was also definitely Stalin
I dare say he said some unflattering things about the Labour Party in private (as we all do) but to claim 1984 was primarily an attack on the Labour Party is flat-out wrong.
Note that the post says “more about” - so it’s not as categorical as you’re making out. Orwell had previously been a member of the “Independent Labour Party” not the Labour Party as such - he broke with them over their stance on Fascism - but his political concerns continued to be consistent in that his socialism was heavily tinged with a liberal or libertarian element - hence the fact that he joined the ILP contingent to fight on the anarcho-syndicalist side of the Spanish Civil War as DD noted. His political views are not so easily characterised, of course, by this party affiliation as with the Labour Party canvassing - which had a variety of motives. You might also like to look into some of his postwar political journalism, if you’re interested. That would take you beyond the web in terms of research, of course.
The whole point is that it does a disservice to a complex writer to come up with reductionist claims about a single political hermeneutic to explain his literary work.
On which see the unpublished preface to Animal Farm, which certainly suggests a lot more nuance in his motivations and intentions in writing the book than your Jovial friend sees:
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html
Is it too pedantic to point out that Orwell actually fought with the POUM
(Workers Party of Marxist Unification) - a group that mixed Right Oppositionism with Trotskyism (to the irritation of Trotsky)? No Anarcho-Syndicalists need apply:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POUM
http://www.fundanin.org/durgan1.htm
Tim, I’m not sure whether I’m reading your comment right, but POUM were not anarchists. That was the FAI and Amigos de Durruti.
If that’s what you meant this comment may be ignored.
“This adoption of him by warmongers is ridiculous. Ferchrissake, he fought alongside the anarchists in Spain…”
Stop. You lost me at “he fought.”
Of course you might try to save it by saying, “Yes of course, but Orwell wasn’t a ‘warmonger’ himself, just for fighting in a war; he simply participated in a war because he knew it was the necessary thing to do.”
Spot the special pleading.
Class dismissed.
Orwell’s heart was in the right place and his anti-Communism is commendable. However his views on what should be done (as distinct from being opposed) were all over the shop. His Spanish writings tend to the ultra-left view that bourgeoisie democracy was little better than fascism.
Orwell is one of the great democratic-socialists whose best work ( imo) is ‘ Homage to Catalonia’ and the collected works of his edited by Sonia Orwell.
He was not a libertarian socialist or even a great literary figure but he has a certain grandeur that many anarchists could well learn from. In fact if the democratic-socialist tradition want to chuck him in the dumpster sight unseen then please - feel free. Yr tradition has often resorted to fascism and idiocy.
Indeed the POUM were not Anarchists. That was my point.
Entonces estamos unidos, camarada Tim, an la huelga y en la lucha, y no nos moverán.
Yeh,
Rightist appropriation of Orwell is as self-serving and as brazenly false as rightist accusations that the Left are more virulent in their anti-semitism than Rightist have been for at least 200 years.
The Right has been adept at Swift-boating the truth for longer than is proper.
I think this capability pre-dated Web 2.0, but I’d suggest that the intertubes have given the Right a useful sandpit in which to practise their dark arts.
In general the Left appears to be handicapped by a residual respect for evidence and by their propensity to allow their outrage to be expressed as whininess.
I’ve said it before, but the Left has much greater access to ridicule than the Right. Ridicule is a WMD against RWDBs.
Whininess must be abdured.
That is interesting Katz. I’ve noticed the tendency too, to eschew ridicule of what is often ridiculous bufoonery. Even in myself.
Is it that we’re scared of the out-of-touch label?
At the risk of appearing out of touch, out of touch with what?
FDB, perhaps your reluctance sometimes to unleash ridicule is a symptom of your abiding humanity.
Cheers compañero Liam, y quoth Orwell:
‘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.’
His enthusiasm for republican Spain is difficult to marry to Republican America.
“At the risk of appearing out of touch, out of touch with what?”
You know, how when you ridicule the crazed foamings of an Oz columnist, it means you don’t understand what it’s like for the battlers. It makes perfect sense.
“FDB, perhaps your reluctance sometimes to unleash ridicule is a symptom of your abiding humanity.”
Aw, shucks.
Orwells membership of the ILP is interesting in that it was a Party consisting of those that for whatever reason didn’t fit into the Labour Party proper, and were not neccesarily united by a common ideaology. For example, Oswald Mosley was a member (after being a Tory) during the ’20s and it was during his time as a leading ILP member that he developed his ecomomic theories that lead him down the path of fascism and the BUF, along with many other ILP identities. Orwell on the other hand stuck with the left to a greater or lesser extent, even after he became disillusioned during the Spanish War.
Orwell’s appropriation by the right I think would have disturbed him - the right mistake his anti-communism for pro capitalism, which are two very different things.
Read Orwell. Yes, “Burmese Days”, novels, essays. Read the lot. He hated English fellow-travellers and Stalin-apologists. He really did. I suspect Stalin and the thuggery of the USSR was a principal target. No-one ever claimed it was his only target. His writing is pungent and clear-sighted. Pity he died so young. Good that the Comms didn’t kill him in Spain, but.
“the right mistake his anti-communism for pro capitalism, which are two very different things.”
I was about post several hyndred words here making the same point. But…
Bingo! Nailed it there in around a dozen words, ramhead.
I think the best expression of what Orwell really wanted political systems to deliver was captured here
http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/moon-under-water.htm
Ramon (and others) there was an edition of “1984″ published (I think) in 1984, with a very interesting postword by (brain fade) the bloke who wrote “Clockwork Orange”, you know who I mean. He reckoned that orwell was writing as much as anything about Britain in 1948, with its rationing and wreckage from the war. It’s been a while since I read it, over 20 years, so I may have forgotten some of the details.
Yes, David: for physical details, but strange then that so many exiles from communist regimes - before or after 1989 - said that “1984″ mirrored sp precisely their own experiences under the Stalinist thumb.
I think Orwell was mainly against lies. And he was the kind of independent thinker who was able to spot and expose lies, in any direction. If Stalin’s boys were klying in Spaion, he said so. If Stalin’s loyal followers in Britain were lying, he said so. More power to him.
He’s independent still. No faction can “appropriate” him. And FWIW I don’t think Hitchens tried to appropriate him. He wrote a book praising Orwell. If only our journalists could write as clearly and presciently as Orwell.
Yeah, that’s an ask too big.