[Marxism] George Orwell as a Socialist Writer

[Graham M.]

Dear Monique,
                       I thought I might write to you about George Orwell,
as he is a literary figure I have a lot of interest in.   I might have
mentioned to you before that I had thought about researching an Honours
dissertation on Orwell, and I would have seriously considered embarking on
such a project if I had decided to continue on with an English major and
possible Hons. with the B.Litt.   Apart from research projects I've had in
mind myself about Orwell, I recall that you wrote to me earlier this year
about 'Animal Farm', and also wrote to one of your nieces about that book

My first exposure to Orwell's writings was in fact through reading 'Animal
Farm', not long after I came to Australia in 1967.   I'm glad that this book
was on the syllabus for English at the high school I went to.   I must have
read or re-read it three or four times altogether, over the years, and I
also saw the cartoon film a few years ago, made I think in the late 1940s (I
believe we saw it together on your T.V.).   My own view of this book changed
as my political beliefs altered over the years, from
conservative/anti-communist to libertarian socialist to Communist.   I still
think that 'Animal Farm' is a great book, and probably Orwell's finest.
The book may be taken on several levels, but it is of course as a
deceptively simple political satire that it is most effective.

The next book I read by Orwell was 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', and that was in
5th Year high school (Year 12).   The book had a great impact on me, and by
the time I came to read it I had broken out of the conservative
straightjacket and was groping towards a socialist world outlook.   The most
interesting section for me is 'Goldstein's Book', which paraphrases the
ideas of the figure in the novel modelled on Trotsky - Emmanuel Goldstein.
It is entitled 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism', and
Winston Smith, the novel's hero, reads this forbidden book.   The excerpts
from this book inserted in the text of the novel are quite extensive.   The
ideas in Goldstein's book reveal Orwell's debt to James Burnham's 'The
Managerial Revolution', which Orwell had reviewed shortly before 'Nineteen
Eighty-Four' was written (Burnham had been a Trotskyist before breaking with
the US Socialist Workers Party in 1940 and drifting off to the right).
Isaac Deutscher reviewed 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' shortly after its
publication (see "The Mysticism of Cruelty" in 'Heretics and Renegades') and
was very critical of the book's stance, arguing that it played into the
hands of Cold Warriors and contributed to anti-Soviet hysteria in the West.
But 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', in spite of some structural faults, is in my
opinion a great political novel, and must be one of the most widely-read
books of the 20th century.

A year or two after leaving school, I read 'Down and Out in Paris and
London' which, as you probably know, is an autobiographical account of life
on skid-row in the early 1930s.   I had good reason to come to identify with
this aspect of Orwell's experience; my own personal odyssey through the low
life of Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, as well as unemployment and financial
harship in the early 1970s, highlighted it.

'Keep the Aspidistra Flying', which I read in 1972, is also about financial
hardship as well as socialist politics.   I think that you read it some
years ago.   I really identified with its lead character, Gordon Comstock.
That same year I read as well 'Homage to Catalonia', which describes
Orwell's experiences in Spain during the Revolution and Civil War.   Orwell
fought on the Aragon front with the neo-Trotskyist POUM militia, and was in
Barcelona during the May Days of 1937, when the left attempted to halt
inroads on the socialist gains of the revolution by the bourgeoisie and the
Stalinists.   Orwell's account is highly valuable - he was very lucky to
escape from Spain with his life.   If you ever have a chance to see the film
'Land and Freedom', directed by Ken Loach, have a look at it: that film
depicts in cinema what Orwell writes about in his book.

In 1974, I read George Woodcock's 'The Crystal Spirit' - a good, libertarian
socialist, view of Orwell as a writer and a political thinker.   I also
acquired at about that time Orwell's 'Collected Essays, Journalism and
Letters' in four volumes, and I have dipped into this treasure trove on many
occasions.   While completing a UWA History Department unit on 'Modern
Britain' in 1976 I read 'The Road to Wigan Pier'.   That book is an
idiosyncratic view of British socialism and the British working class, based
on Orwell's first-hand experience in the industrial North in the 1930s.   I
think that Raymond Williams's strictures on this book are in order (in his
book 'Culture and Society) where he takes Orwell to task for misrepresenting
British socialists in some respects.

George Orwell was a funny character in many ways.   A genuine socialist, and
one who put his life on the line in Spain as an internationalist, he was
nevertheless very English, and he was keen to preserve what he regarded as
essential amongst the many traditional features of what it meant to be
English.    My own personal opinion is that Orwell was one of the greatest
writers of English prose in the 20th century - he remains in fact my
favourite stylist.   The other writer in English (of 20th century authors)
whose style I admire most would I think be Isaac Deutscher, and of course
Deutscher's native language was not English but Polish; a fact that only
serves to underline the greatness of his achievement in producing the very
fine biographies of Trotsky and Stalin in English.   To my mind, both Orwell
and Deutscher shine forth from the past century as beacons of democratic
socialist enlightenment, and their writings and their personal example of
socialist commitment recommend them in my opinion to new generations of
socialist thinkers and activists.

Lots of love,

Graham

(Graham Milner)