Orwellian Socialism

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Orwellian Socialism

George Orwell, the penname of Eric Arthur Blair, is one of

the most prominent English writers of 20th century (Ash). He is

best known for his fable Animal Farm, and his dystopian novel

Nineteen Eighty-Four (Rossi and Rodden 8-10). Orwell is generally

considered to be a “political writer” (Rossi and Rodden 1).

However his political views conformed to neither communism nor

capitalism, which were the major political ideologies that

governed the world politics in the first half of the 20th

century. He has a unique understanding of socialism that

contradicts the Stalinist Communism of his age and capitalist

ideology in general. His idea of socialism is based on a

classless, egalitarian society in which the state has the

responsibility to provide its citizens with equal rights and

equal opportunities, so that every individual is capable of

thinking for themselves. Especially, for the purpose of drawing

attention to the conditions of the poor and oppressed, Orwell

got down among the poorest people and produced a body of work

dealing with poverty and social injustice, as well as other

works dealing with the violation of basic human rights by

totalitarian oppression. The aim of this paper is to analyse

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the development of Orwell’s understanding of socialism through

analysing some of his works: The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to

Catalonia, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

As he was born in the beginning of the 20th century,

Orwell experienced his maturity in between the two world wars

(“George Orwell Biography”). He considered himself as “lower-

upper-middle class” (the Road to Wigan Pier 130). Having no

disposable income or inheritance after his graduation from

Eton, Orwell decided to work as an imperial police officer in

Burma (Rossi and Rodden 1-2). He witnessed, and to some extent,

participated in the cruelty of the British Empire against its

unwilling native subjects in Burma, and as a result, this

experience embittered him against the Empire (“A Hanging”).

After his five-year service in Burma, Orwell returned to

England and started his professional writing career (Rossi and

Rodden 2-3). However, it was not until 1940s that he became

successful and famous as a writer (8). In his essay “Why I

Write”, Orwell describes how his view point started to shape:

First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession

(the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I

underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This

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increased my natural hatred of authority and made me

for the first time fully aware of the existence of

the working classes, and the job in Burma had given

me some understanding of the nature of imperialism:

but these experiences were not enough to give me an

accurate political orientation.

Throughout his early professional career as a writer,

Orwell generally wrote about the lives of the poorest people at

the bottom of society, without expressing a clear opinion about

politics (Rossi and Rodden 3). However, during his research on

the living conditions of the working class in Northern England

in 1936 when he witnessed the plight of the worker under crude

industrialism, his distrust of capitalism was confirmed (3-4).

Also, during his visit to Spain in 1937, he saw how a perfect

example of socialist community where the proletariat had been

in charge, was destroyed for the purpose of the absolute

control of communist politics, therefore he took a stand

against communism (5). In the Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell realizes

his true aspirations: “I felt that I had got to escape not

merely from imperialism but from every form of man's dominion

over man. I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among

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the oppressed, to be one of them and on their side against

their tyrants.” (165)

In his essay, “Why I Write”, Orwell stated that everything

he had been writing since 1936 was “against totalitarianism and

for democratic socialism”, and his main goal was to reveal any

kind of deceit exercised on the public. For him, Stalinist

communism was as deadly, and as unjust to its subjects as

fascism was in its ambition of gaining absolute power, and

Orwell was against “[f]ascism in all its forms” (Rossi and

Rodden 6).

In the beginning of his research on the conditions of the

poor, Orwell did not have a clear idea of socialism; however

his exploits before completing the Road to Wigan Pier gave him a

hold of the matter (Rossi and Rodden 3-4). As he wrote in the

Road to Wigan Pier:

When I thought of poverty I thought of it in terms of

brute starvation. Therefore my mind turned

immediately towards the extreme cases, the social

outcasts: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes.

These were ‘the lowest of the low’, and these were

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the people with whom I wanted to get in contact. What

I profoundly wanted, at that time, was to find some

way of getting out of the respectable world

altogether. (165)

However, capitalism oppresses the working classes upon

whose shoulders it rises, before it gets to the lowest of the

low such as tramps, petty criminals, prostitutes and the like.

It enslaves the mind of the workers and makes them to believe

that they have to do what is told them to do, without so much a

questioning. Orwell writes this about the English worker:

He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority

and has a firm conviction that 'they' will never

allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when

I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they

earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did

not form a union. I was told immediately that 'they'

would never allow it. Who were 'they'? I asked.

Nobody seemed to know, but evidently 'they' were

omnipotent. (50)

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In the Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell describes the living and

working conditions in the industrial areas of Northern England:

counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Orwell explains under how

harsh conditions the coal miners work: horrible, crammed and

dark working places, long working hours without seeing the

daylight, low wages that are not enough to maintain a decent

lifestyle, and dangerous working conditions as a result of gas

explosions and collapses. (20-53) He describes the abhorrent

housing conditions: how workers and their families were made to

accept living in small, dirty, old and bug infested houses in

which large groups of people had to live simply because there

are no better houses available to them in the area (53-82). All

of these conditions create unhappy people who live their lives

like serving time in a prison. For example, the Brooker family

who owned the lodging house in which Orwell stayed for a while

was better off than many of the other working class people but

they seemed unhappy (1-15). They emitted “the feeling of

stagnant meaningless decay, of having got down into some

subterranean place where people go creeping round and round,

just like blackbeetles, in an endless muddle of slovened jobs

and mean grievances.” (14)

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According to Orwell, the biggest problem in establishing

socialism as an economic model within the whole of the English

society, was the false class consciousness. Orwell, defining

himself as a classical example of “lower-upper-middle class”,

admits that he was raised in recognition of his class roots,

which forced him to look down on “common people” who were

considered to be socially and culturally lower than the middle

classes (133-140). Common people, or working class people, as

they were taught to middle class children such as Orwell

himself, were “dirty” (142). Although it plays a substantial

role, money alone was not the only distinguisher of class, as

Orwell puts it: “A naval officer and his grocer very likely

have the same income, but they are not equivalent persons and

they would only be on the same side in very large issues such

as a war or a general strike--possibly not even then.” (134) As

a result of this false class consciousness, the true meaning of

socialism could not be grasped by its followers. Middle class

socialists tend to exalt the working class values, but in the

mean time, they secretly hate every bit of the traits

associated with that very class. Orwell, describes these people

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as “bourgeois socialists” who glorify every aspect of the

proletariat culture while secretly loathing it (151).

Orwell observes with bitterness the kind of preconceived

notions and prejudices against the working class, which is

inherent in the middle classes. After his return from Burma,

when unemployment records were high, he hears people claiming

that manual labourers are “lazy idle loafers on the dole”, who

are out of work because of their sloth (93). He adds that this

mentality is also adopted by the out-of-work labourers who

blame themselves for their unemployment (94).

Orwell thinks that, in order to make socialist ideology

work in England, socialist middle classes should make

compromises of their habitual traits, which seem so

insignificant at the first glance, but later came to identify

with a particular class, such as how one drinks his soup or

wears his tie etc. (150-180) In spite of all these conflicting

notions, Orwell holds that socialism in England can be

achieved, for he believes that “the English people had more

features of their lives and history that united than divided

them” (Rossi and Rodden 4).

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Up until this point, Orwell’s socialism is against

capitalism which enslaves the working classes. He argues for

the relief of the economic and social burden on them by, first

realising their plight, and then providing them with better

living conditions, making their voices heard and removing the

oppression hanging over their heads. However, so far he does

not count the capitalist bourgeoisie and its interests in his

socialist theory. This is a fact which he would fully

comprehend while writing Homage to Catalonia.

In 1936, Orwell went to Spain to write about the Spanish

Civil War, but immediately after his arrival he joined the

anarchist paramilitary group POUM (Homage to Catalonia 2). Orwell

witnessed how beautifully the proletariat was governing their

community without the interference of any governing body of the

state, where class distinctions had disappeared and an

atmosphere of solidarity took over (2). As there was still a

war going on, and the newly-in charge commoners were clumsily

operating their businesses, the scenery was not pretty to look

at with its sloppiness, however their endeavour in creating a

socially equal community, for Orwell, was “worth fighting for”

(2-3).

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Orwell wrote down his experiences and impressions of the

civil war in Spain, in Homage to Catalonia. It is the turning

point in Orwell’s idea of socialism, in regards to the change

of his standing point towards Communism, and his understanding

of democratic socialism (58-65). In the Lenin Barracks, where

he was first assigned to serve by the anarchist militia, Orwell

witnessed the true comradeship of the common men. The

‘soldiers’ in POUM’s militia were mainly young peasants and

workers in ragged clothes, who lacked discipline, knowledge and

experience that were principally sought in militia men (4-15).

They were neither provided with proper weaponry, nor did they

know how to handle any kind of ammunition (5-6). In addition to

this, the living conditions in the barracks were wretchedly

unbearable with the cold weather and filth (8-12). The real war

was against bad conditions, rather than the enemy, the fascist

army of Franco, because there was virtually no serious attack

from either side (10-20). Even the leaders of the anarchists

admitted it: “Georges Kopp (commander of the militia), on his

periodical tours of inspection, was quite frank with us. ‘This

is not a war,’ he used to say, ‘it is a comic opera with an

occasional death.’” (18) But, what was holding these people

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together, even under such poor conditions? According to Orwell,

it was not a war for democracy against the fascism of Franco,

like it was being mentioned by the mainstream press in Europe,

for it was something much more comprehensive, and greater in

depth: it was “a definite revolutionary outbreak” (27). Because

“the land was seized by the peasants; many factories and most

of the transport were seized by the trade unions; churches were

wrecked and the priests driven out or killed”, and all of these

acts of revolt were not being carried out simply because of a

desire for democracy (27).

Orwell admits that he did nothing that can be considered

actual fighting in the trenches of the war, just like his

fellow soldiers who were in the same militia as he was. But he

does not think the months he spent there was, all in all,

fruitless for him: “They formed a kind of interregnum in my

life, quite different from anything that had gone before and

perhaps from anything that is to come, and they taught me

things that I could not have learned in any other way.” (60)

According to Orwell, the communal life he lived among the

common Spanish people was the closest thing to a truly equal

and socialist society, for there, in Aragon:

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Many of the normal motives of civilized life —

snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.

— had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-

division of society had disappeared to an extent that

is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of

England; there was no one there except the peasants

and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his

master. (60)

Orwell defines the ideal of socialism, first and foremost,

with “equality”. He argues that the most important thing that

engages people to act the way they did in Spain, is the “idea

of equality” through “classless society” (61).

What made Orwell completely break from communism are his

experiences with Stalinist-Communists in Spain (Rossi and

Rodden 5). When Orwell first came to Spain, he did not have any

knowledge about the divisions among the communists, and his

idealism was yet unharmed: “If you had asked me why I had

joined the militia I should have answered: ‘To fight against

Fascism,’ and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I

should have answered: ‘Common decency.’” (Homage to Catalonia 26)

He considered the war to be socialism versus fascism, a war in

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which the “rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple”

(25). However, with the siege of the Barcelona Telephone

Exchange by government forces (Civil Guards), which was being

controlled by an anarchist group called CNT at the outset of

the rebellion, the so-called “war” took a different turn (71).

The Republic, for whose sake anarchist groups like POUM and CNT

were fighting, decided to take control of the situation in

Catalonia, seeing an opportunity in the so-called “Barcelona

May Day” fights (71-82). The republican forces arrested and

imprisoned not only anarchists but also everyone who is

remotely associated with anarchist groups like POUM (85-90). In

addition to this, both the local and the international press

affiliated with communism were falsely accusing and demonizing

the anarchist movement, with incredibly biased and untruthful

allegations (90-110). For example, the Daily Worker, claimed that

it was a “fascist plot” operated by POUM, which they believed

to be a Trotskyist-fascist organisation, employed by Franco to

create a “deliberate, planned insurrection against the

Government” and sabotage socialist movements (93). According to

Orwell, these claims had no base for they lacked evidence and

conflicted within themselves: Daily Worker suggested that German

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and Italian troops, seeing the Barcelona uprisings as an

opportunity, were waiting to board on the eastern coasts of

Spain, however, Orwell knew that no German or Italian ships

were advancing to those coasts (93-94). It was also claimed by

the pro-communist press, that the anarchists were aided with

weapons, which came from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy (95-

98). Orwell saw through this too, because he himself had

witnessed how little and inadequate weaponry they had (10-35).

Orwell saw how quickly the pro-communist press labelled

socialist freedom fighters like POUM and CNT as fascists,

although they had a huge history of anti-fascism (101).

According to Rossi and Rodden, what Orwell understood from his

stay in Spain, is that “true socialism” can be achieved, unless

the Communists get involved in their struggle of power (5).

After his return to England, Orwell was shocked to find that

his observations had been ignored, and that how reality was

undermined for the purpose of not contradicting the mainstream

communism (5). In his essay, “Looking back on the Spanish War”,

he wrote: “I saw great battles reported [...] where there had

been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men

had been killed... I saw newspapers in London retailing these

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lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures

over events that never happened” (quoted in Rossi and Rodden

5).

The war in Spain was distorted in the press, because its

true nature, if known by the general public, would be

disturbing and even devastating for the communist ideology of

Stalin, as Orwell wrote: “It was the Communist thesis that

revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be

aimed at in Spain was not workers’ control, but bourgeois

democracy.” (Homage to Catalonia 28) Because Spain had foreign

capital invested in it, it would not be for the capitalists’

best if the working classes kept on holding the control in

Catalonia (29). At this point, Orwell understood that struggle

for absolute power in any form, either capitalism or communism,

was the main enemy to socialism, and for the purpose of gaining

power anything could be done, including the distortion of the

truth and violation of the most basic human rights. The crucial

element that shaped Orwell’s idea of socialism is his belief in

the individual-community relationship that is based on

equality. Therefore, his experience with the Stalinist-

communists, which showed him the true nature of yet another

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absolutist ideology, made it clear that communism is not answer

for socialism.

Orwell’s experience with the Stalinist-Communists in

Spain, and his later rejection by the same absolutist ideology

in Britain, made him completely disillusioned with communism,

and set him to work on Animal Farm (Bloom 14-15). In Animal Farm,

Orwell depicts the history of the Russian-Bolshevik Revolution

up until early 1940s in an allegorical form, by using animals

as his main characters (Bloom 14). The story begins in Manor

Farm (Russia), which is owned by Mr. Jones (representing the

Russian Tsar Nicholas II), where the pigs (Russian

intelligentsia) are plotting against their incompetent owner to

gain their freedom (21-22). Orwell sets the characters, each of

which corresponding to a major actor in the revolutionary war,

be it a person or a group, as the following: Napoleon, a young

boar, as Stalin; Snowball, another young boar, as Trotsky; Mr.

Jones as the Russian Tsar or nobility in general, Squealer as

the Communist-controlled Russian newspaper Pravda, (17-19). The

pigs gather together and form an ideology to set all the

animals free of the hegemony of Mr. Jones, which they call

“animalism” (which corresponds to socialism), and take over the

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control of the farm (Bloom 21-22). First they form a seemingly

egalitarian community where job-division is fairly organized,

but the pigs stand as a separate group governing the whole

rebellion (23). They write the Seven Commandments, which

basically dictate that “all animals are equal” and “four legs

good, two legs bad” (Animal Farm 21-25). The news of the animals’

success of overthrowing their owner in Manor Farm spread to the

neighbouring farms (26-30). However, some time later Snowball

and Napoleon get into a major dispute, which leads to

Napoleon’s expelling of Snowball from the farm (30-35). After

Snowball’s dissent, Napoleon takes full charge of the farm and

takes questionable measures which the other animals protest

against, such as trade with other farms, more hard-work for

animals, and pigs’ sleeping in beds which formerly belonged to

Mr. Jones; but they are soon persuaded by Squealer through

effective propaganda (35-40). According to Bloom, this

situation points to “the beginning of Animalism’s

bastardization” (28). Napoleon blames Snowball at every

occasion, and punishes any other animal who disobeys his orders

or agrees with Snowball, with sheer cruelty, which resembles

the exterminations of the peasants by Stalin (Bloom 29-30).

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Napoleon corrupts and distorts every rule that was laid in the

Seven Commandments in order to fit into his agenda, and the

basic rule “all animals are equal” gets transformed into “all

animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than

others”, which symbolises the corruption of the original

principles and the betrayal of revolution (30-31). The pigs

dine with humans, stand on their two legs and carry whips in

their trotters, just like the humans do, and they reach to a

point where a pig cannot be distinguished from a man, or a man

from a pig (Animal Farm 62-67). For Bloom, “[t]he pigs’ meeting

with the farmers is a symbol of the Teheran Conference, when

Stalin met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt”

(32).

In Animal Farm, Orwell tells the story of how a

revolutionary war can be turned into a brutal autocracy by the

power-hungry, and how power politics corrupt every good deed.

In the introduction of Animal Farm, Orwell clearly states his

intensions:

Nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of

the original idea of Socialism as the belief that

Russia is a Socialist country and that every act of

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its rulers must be excused... For the past ten years

I have been convinced that the destruction of the

Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of

the Socialist movement. (quoted in Bloom 14)

Animal Farm is not only a “critique of the Russian

Revolution”, but it can also be considered “Orwell’s allegory

for all revolutions”, in which “the oppressed remove their

oppressor” (Bloom 20-21). The main point that can be taken from

the story is that if people do not make the revolution for

themselves without succumbing to the hegemony of any other

prominent group, the ideal socialism with “freedom” and

“equality” could never be achieved (Letemendia 70). Also it

would be foolish to expect that an aggressive leading group,

who benefited the most from bloodshed and plotting than any

other method, would be faithful to its case, and lawful towards

its subjects (70-71). As Orwell puts it, in a letter he wrote

to the American writer and editor Dwight Macdonald: “[y]ou

can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there

is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship” (quoted in

Letemendia).

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Orwell believes in the importance of the individual-

society relationship. He underlines the involvement of every

individual in the making of any kind of policy (Letemendia 70-

72). He does not completely put the blame on the pigs in the

betrayal of revolution in Animal Farm, for he accuses the other

animals for not resisting the pigs when they saw the need to:

“The turning point of the story was supposed to be when the

pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves. [...] If the

other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then, it

would have been all right.” (quoted in Letemendia) Because,

according to Letemendia, “[o]nly when all members of society

saw the essential need for individual responsibility and

honesty at the heart of any struggle for freedom and equality

could the basic goals of Socialism, as Orwell saw them, be

approached more closely” (72).

As I mentioned earlier, Orwell puts the emphasis on the

individual’s involvement in revolutionary process, for it

directly affects the nature of revolution. To carry out a

democratic-social movement, all individuals must participate in

the whole process. This brings us to the question of rights and

responsibilities granted to persons in a particular society.

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Orwell criticises the totalitarian nature of Communism, and its

slavery and torture of its opposing subjects, such as purges,

tortures, fake confessions, false accusations and staged

trials. (Rossi and Rodden 5-9). In the last novel he wrote,

Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell depicts the life that “would” or

“might” happen if the totalitarian type of state spreads to the

rest of the world, denying individuals their personal freedom

by placing an omnipresent surveillance over their lives, and

exterminating any kind of free thought. So, the book is not a

completely prophetic work, as Orwell puts it: “I do not believe

that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive,

but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is

a satire) that something resembling it could arrive” (quoted in

Williams 9). His main point is that if individuals do not stay

alert and react against any policy of their government, that

they deem unfair, much worse can happen.

In order to underline the seriousness of the problem of

state’s increasing control over its subjects through

technological advancements, Orwell sets an abhorrent dystopia

in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the state has the full control of

all the public and private affairs of its citizens. Orwell

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picks his protagonist as “everyman”, Winston Smith (Rossi and

Rodden 9). Through Winston’s story, Orwell depicts a

nightmarish future of totalitarianism that has been enhanced

with technology. Winston and many other people of his age (at

least the ones who are not completely brainwashed) live in a

constant state of uneasiness induced by the perpetual

observance of the State. There are “telescreens” in both public

and private places such as offices, cafeterias and people’s

houses, which work for transmitting any image and sound in a

particular room, as well as displaying messages from the State

to its subjects (Nineteen Eighty-Four 3-25). There are also posters

of the leader of the state on almost every wall, whom they call

Big Brother, which say “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”, which

ensures one’s feeling of being constantly watched (5). Winston

works in the “Ministry of Truth” as an editor who revises

historical records to make the past look compatible with the

recurring events, in favour of the State, for example he omits

“vaporised” people from the records, and creates false data

about persons who actually have never existed, to fit them into

the story line (48-61). Under such circumstances, of course,

thinking differently than others, is not allowed, and even so

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if it is done, it requires capital punishment. The Party (as

the State is generally called) captures such “thought

criminals” and without a trial or any other democratic type of

judgment process, executes and “vaporises” them from the

records, which means they have never existed in the history

(24-50). The Party ensures its continuation through maintaining

an existence in the family life. It educates little girls in

school to turn them into women who will lay with their husbands

only for the purpose of propagation (83-84, 166-168). Thusly it

creates families which are made up of couples, who have no

intimacy towards one another. The children of these couples

also are usually detached from their parents, for they are

educated in schools within the Party’s doctrine which dictates

cruel treatment to dissenters and rewards complete adherence to

the rules; so the children within families would turn in their

parents to the Thought Police (28-32). Taking pleasure in sex

through marriage is forbidden by the Party, by driving people

to such sham marriages, as well as taking pleasure in eating

and drinking is forbidden by serving them tasteless food (75-

76) and prohibiting the distribution of relatively more

pleasurable food such as coffee or sugar (175-177). The Party,

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in order to indoctrinate its ideology without the resistance of

its subjects, takes hold of the language too. Newspeak, which

is being developed by philologists in the Ministry of Truth, is

a new language created by narrowing down the Oldspeak (original

English), thusly robbing the language of its heritage and

treasure, and reducing its vocabulary to a pile of simplified

words (62-66). The purpose of doing this is to prevent free-

thinking: “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally

impossible, because there will be no words in which to express

it.” (67) In addition to Newspeak, Orwell introduces the

concept of “Doublethink”, which means distorting the meanings

of the words to delude and manipulate ordinary people’s minds

(43-46). As a result of Doublethink, manipulation of the words

goes so forward that it reaches to a point where words lost

their true meanings, and originally opposite words seem similar

to each other, like in the three Party slogans: “WAR IS PEACE,

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” (6). “The past was

dead, the future was unimaginable”: this is how the

protagonist, Winston, feels (34). Like many other individuals,

he feels the oppression that has been put on him by the state,

and tries to fight it. But the totalitarian regime has gotten

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so strong over the years that it eventually captures and breaks

him.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell underlines the importance

of individual-society relationship. He puts “freedom of

thought, interpersonal relationships, and the power to

participate in the social processes of interpreting “truth” and

recording “history” as the fundamental building blocks of

humanity” (Becnel 75). The ability of critical thinking is the

ordinary person's only means to contribute to the political

process, and to exist in a society as an active individual with

a mind of his/her own. This is why the Party makes sure that

eighty-five percent of the population is ignorant and incapable

of any kind of critical thinking (80). As long as the common

man is ignorant and undereducated, it would be that much

simpler to control him so that the leading elites can run their

rules without any strong opposition. Knowing this, Orwell

advices the readers never to give up on questioning, and when

the situation requires it, defending their individual rights

and liberties.

Orwell's understanding of socialism has been criticised,

misunderstood and abused for many times over the years

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(“Introduction” 3-5). His criticism of Stalinist-Communism has

led some to believe that he was against socialism; however, the

truth is that he was against any kind of ideology that abused

the weak in order to gain absolute power. He especially

despised communism because it inflicted the same abuse on the

poor as capitalism did, but its difference from capitalism was

that it functioned under the pretence of socialism. Orwell had

an egalitarian and liberal understanding of socialism that did

not favour any special group of people in any way, and because

of its unruly and unjust actions, Stalinist-Communism was the

complete opposite of that.

Orwell’s idea of democratic socialism is a sum of his

deductions and contemplations which are the results of his

experience with the working class people with whom he met, and

of his reflections on the policies and actions of communist

Russia. He is anti-capitalist, anti-communist and liberal

humanist. He based his idea of socialism on the grounds that it

requires the complete participation of all the classes on equal

terms. While he admits that socio-cultural differences could be

difficult to overcome, it still can be achieved through mutual

respect and understanding. I do not agree with those who claim

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that Orwell was pessimistic about the future of socialism and

that he believed that every revolution was doomed to failure.

He was a serious writer who made the public awareness of facts

his top priority, so he darkened his tone to intensify the

effect of his writing on the reader. If he really was

pessimistic, he would not have tried to blow the fake socialist

bubble of Communism and effectively campaign against it through

his writings. It is his powerful tone of writing and arduous

effort to uncover truths, which make him one of the great

political writers of the 20th century.

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