A Biography on Orwell & Huxley

Part Four: Orwell’s philosophical outlook & worldview

“In a conversation with Jack Common in the early 1930’s, he described himself over a cup of tea as a ‘Tory Anarchist’, and of course, part of his pleasure in making this pronouncement was to leave the contradictory term unexplained.”

Christopher Hitchens, who would like people to think of him as Orwell’s equivalent today, explains Orwell’s stature by the fact that he refused to go along with any of the three main scourges of the twentieth century: colonialism, fascism and Stalinism.

Many people on the left and the right have tried to lay claim to “Saint Orwell’s“ mantle, something that was made easier by Orwell’s many contradictions. Bernard Crick, his main biographer, points out that when all the polemical dust settles, there really is no doubt where Orwell stood  politically. He called himself a democratic Socialist ( always with a capital S) and was from 1936 on a sympathiser of the Independent Labour Party and then close to the leftist journal The Tribune.

Woodcock  describes Orwell as a dissident and idiosyncratic socialist, a defender of unpopular causes,  and writes:

“Undoubtedly there were Tory elements in Orwell’s radicalism….such as his passionate English patriotism (which he carefully distinguished from nationalism) and his opposition to any kind of birth control…..he was sceptical of the myth of progress, and the price of freedom was a simpler, less affluent life, it should be paid.”

From Orwell’s writings:

On writing, liberty and authoritarianism

“I have always maintained that every artist is a propagandist. I don’t mean a political propagandist. If he has any honesty or talent at all he cannot be that. Most political propaganda is a matter of telling lies, not only about the facts but about your own feelings. But every artist is a propagandist in the sense that he is trying directly or indirectly, to impose a vision of life that seems to him desirable.” (Collected Essays 2, Orwell)

“Unless there is some unpredictable change in human nature, liberty and efficiency must pull in opposite directions.” (Collected Essays 4, Orwell)

“To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.” (Collected Essays 4, Orwell)
“….any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer.” (Collected Essays 4, Orwell)

“There was nothing particularly surprising in this. In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the concentration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books, making it necessary for nearly every writer to learn part of his living by hack work . . .”

On colonialism:

“ What we must offer India is not ‘freedom’, which, as I have said earlier, is impossible, but alliance, partnership – in a word, equality. But we must also tell the Indians that they are free to secede, if they want to.” (Collected Essays 2, Orwell, 122)

“’We like to think of England as a democratic country, but our rule in India, for instance is just as bad as German Fascism, though outwardly it may be less irritating.’” (Orwell in 1937)

“It seems to me that one can only denounce the crimes now being commited in Poland, Jugoslavia, etc. if one is equally insistent on ending Britain’s unwanted rule in India. I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country.” (Collected Essays 4 etc. Orwell, p 49)

“But that means that the position of the indigenous peoples in those countries must be changed out of recognition – that Morocco or Nigeria or Abyssinia must cease to be colonies or semi-colonies and become autonomous republics on a complete equality with the European peoples. This entails a vast change of outlook and a bitter, complex struggle which is not likely to be settled without bloodshed.” (Collected Essays 4 etc. Orwell, p 427)

On socialism and individual liberty

“The deciding factor was his recognition that there was only one way to oppose fascism effectively. ‘Socialism,’ he wrote in 1936, ‘is the only real enemy that Fascism has to face.’”

“Fighting with them against fascism made sense, but it was considerably more difficult to find agreement on what socialism stood for, and how it should be put into effect. He would be engaged in the debate on those two crucial questions for the rest of his life.”

“’This means that the small-holder has got to ally himself with the factory-hand, the typist with the coal-miner, the schoolmaster with the garage mechanic.’” (Orwell, Part II of The Road to Wigan Pier)

“Like everything else in his book, Orwell’s approach to socialism is individualistic. He wants to be a part of a collective effort, but he always wants to be free to speak his mind, to disagree with colleagues, to read what he wants, to go where he wants to go.”

“He advocates a classless society, yet he fears losing his own distinct identity as a son of the middle-class. He wants to be part of the new social order, but not if it means that he will become faceless, voiceless.”

“In sentiment I am definitely ‘left’, but I believe that a writer can only remain honest if he keeps free of party labels” (Collected Essays 2)

On priorities

“Outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening, especially vegetable gardening. I like English cookery and English beer, French red wines, Spanish whitewines, Indian tea, strong tobacco, coal fires, candlelight and comfortable chairs. I dislike big towns, noise, motor cars, the radio, tinned food, central heating and ‘modern’ furniture. (Collected Essays 2)

“…’and the essential point here is that all people with small, insecure incomes are in the same boat and ought to be fighting on the same side. Probably we could do with a little less talk about “capitalist” and “proletarian” and a little more about the robbers and the robbed’ (Orwell, Part II of The Road to Wigan Pier)

 “I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer. I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of things such as trees, fishes, butterflies and – to return to my first instance – toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.” (Collected Essays 4)