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37 pages

English

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George Orwell is perhaps best known for his two anti-Stalinist novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, both of which are often misused as a warning against socialism of any kind. But this obscures Orwell's own radical socialist politics. This short introduction to Orwell's life and his writings argues that he remained committed to international socialism and the need for revolutionary change until the end of his life.

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Publié par	Bookmarks
Date de parution	15 décembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781914143021
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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A Rebel s Guide to George Orwell
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Colm Bryce and Simon Assaf for their work on the production of this book. Also special thanks to my partner Lorna Chessum who will be quite happy to never hear George Orwell s name ever again
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Newsinger is the author of two books about George Orwell Orwell s Politics (1999) and Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left (2018) as well as a large number of other books including the best-selling The Blood Never Dried: A People s History of the British Empire (2006).
COVER IMAGE: Orwell at his flat at 27b Canonbury Square in Islington, late 1946. Photograph: Vernon Richards INSIDE FRONT: Orwell with the POUM militia on the Aragon Front during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Photograph: Christopher Thomond INSIDE BACK: Orwell late 1946. Photograph: Vernon Richards
Published by Bookmarks Publications 2020
Copyright Bookmarks, 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE
ISBN print edition: 978-1-914143-00-7
ISBN Kindle: 978-1-914143-01-4
ISBN ePub: 978-1-914143-02-1
ISBN PDF: 978-1-914143-03-8
Series design by Noel Douglas
Typeset by Simon Assaf for Bookmarks Publications Printed by Halstan Co Ltd, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
A Rebel s Guide to James Connolly by Sean Mitchell
A Rebel s Guide to Eleanor Marx by Siobhan Brown
A Rebel s Guide to Rosa Luxemburg by Sally Campbell
A Rebel s Guide to Gramsci by Chris Bambery
A Rebel s Guide to Trotsky by Esme Choonara
A Rebel s Guide to Marx by Mike Gonzalez
A Rebel s Guide to Lenin by Ian Birchall
A Rebel s Guide to Malcolm X by Antony Hamilton
A Rebel s Guide to Martin Luther King by Yuri Prasad
A Rebel s Guide to Alexandra Kollontai by Emma Davis
A Rebel s Guide to Friedrich Engels by Camilla Royle
Sexism and the System: A Rebel s Guide to Women s Liberation by Judith Orr
Available from Bookmarks, 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE
www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk | 020 7637 1848
1: INTRODUCTION
G eorge Orwell died in January 1950, aged only 46 years of age. He was best known as a socialist novelist and journalist, the author of a book about mass unemployment in the North of England, The Road to Wigan Pier , of a book about revolutionary Barcelona in 1937, Homage to Catalonia , one of the very few sympathetic first-hand accounts of a revolution by a British participant and observer, and of two ferociously anti-Stalinist novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four . Both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four were hijacked, indeed weaponised, for use in the Cold War after his premature death. Interest in his other writings continued throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s so that he never became a mere literary footnote like so many other writers. And then in the late 1960s with the opposition to the Vietnam War, the widespread disillusionment with the Wilson Labour government, indeed with Labourism more generally, and with the growth of student radicalism his socialist politics were rediscovered. More recently, however, interest in George Orwell has positively soared. Why is this?
It is very much in response to the times we live in: people are turning to Orwell s writings because of contemporary developments, looking for both answers and inspiration. There is the harsh impact of austerity regimes on millions of people, both in Food Bank Britain and abroad. The poverty and hunger, the job insecurity and deteriorating working conditions, the worsening housing conditions and increase in homelessness, all the miseries that are part of everyday life for millions of people in Britain today, give Orwell a very contemporary relevance. The savage cutback of social provision, whether it be in housing, schooling, health or benefits, is all part of a deliberate, yes deliberate, sustained attack on the working class for the benefit of big business and the rich. And all this has been accompanied by the continuing drive to privatise everything that can make a profit for big business, whether it be done openly, like the Royal Mail (courtesy of Liberal Democrat Vince Cable it is worth remembering) or by stealth, piece by piece, like in education and the NHS. This attack on many fronts, class war from above, has been grinding people down remorselessly since the 1980s, starting with Thatcher, consolidated under Blair and Brown and then relentlessly intensified under Cameron, May and Johnson. We actually have a situation in Britain today, one of the richest countries in the world, where children are going hungry and where the government s housing policy for millions of people is, in practical terms, a return to the slum housing of the past despite all their empty rhetoric about home ownership. What we have to recognise is that it is not that the system isn t working. It is working all too well for the benefit of the rich and super rich. While the May government actually boasted of creating a hostile environment for immigrants, and the racist treatment of the Windrush Generation is certainly one of the most shameful episodes of recent times, May has, in fact, created a hostile environment for everyone who is not rich. Orwell would have had no trouble recognising this attack for what it is. This is why The Road to Wigan Pier , more than eighty years after its publication, still resonates, still speaks to us today.
And there is more. There is the increasing levels of surveillance, both government and corporate, just about everywhere, from the USA to China and places in between. Facebook, it turns out, is a close relative of Big Brother. Indeed, we live in a world increasingly dominated by billionaire Big Brother oligarchs. We are also experiencing a dramatic increase in routine everyday dishonesty on the part of politicians and governments, something not unrelated to the dominance of the new class of the super rich. Politicians have always lied, but have never been so unconcerned at being caught in the lie. This has been compounded by the brazen denial of known facts and championing of alternative facts by the Trump administration in the United States. Orwell s 2+2=5 if that s what the government wants scenario from Nineteen Eighty Four seems to be, indeed actually is, the official position of President Trump and his courtiers. The consequences of all this when global warming threatens the whole planet are going to be truly catastrophic. Alongside this there is the rise of the far right, the revival of racism and fascism and the spread of authoritarianism across much of the world. This is how ruling classes have always sustained themselves in power at times of crisis: turn ordinary people against each other, get them to blame each other for society s ills rather than turn on those really responsible, big business, the bankers, the rich and the super rich. A saviour will emerge in the shape of a right-wing authoritarian ruler with dictatorial ambitions and at least some of the trappings of fascism.
All these developments have led many people to look to Orwell for help in understanding our times. Consequently, it is of great importance to know exactly what Orwell stood for, what were the causes that he spent his life fighting for, what were his strengths, what were his weaknesses and, of course, to rescue him from those who seek to domesticate him, to eliminate from his biography his fierce commitment to the establishment of a classless socialist system throughout the world. A good example of this attempted domestication is the statue to Orwell put up outside the BBC. Orwell, of course, had worked as a propagandist at the BBC during the Second World War, but he had no illusions as to the nature of the organisation and its chosen role. As he observed at the end of the War, the BBC still had the same subtly reactionary colour it always had (Complete Works 17, p 417) . Nothing new there then! Moreover, the sheer hypocrisy of the BBC trying to embrace Orwell, to make use of his reputation, is demonstrated by the certain fact that no one espousing his political opinions would ever get a job at the Corporation today. But what were his political beliefs? As well as exposing the appalling living and working conditions experienced by working class people in the 1930s and opposing totalitarian police dictatorships whether fascist or communist in the 1940s, Orwell was also a champion of working class revolution. He had been a witness to and participant in revolution in Barcelona in 1937, an experience that changed his life, and left him convinced right up until his death in January 1950 that it was the proles , the working class, who were the agency of change and who would bring about the socialist revolution and the classless socialist society he hoped for.
2: THE BRITISH EMPIRE OR THE POX BRITANNICA
E ric Blair (he only assumed the pseudonym George Orwell for literary purposes with the publication of Down and Out in Paris and London in 1933) was very much a child of Empire. He had been born on 25 June 1903 in India where his father worked in the government s opium department. Admirers of British imperialism will assume that he was involved in suppressing the use of the drug, but those less na ve will not be surprised that his job was in producing and marketing a very lucrative export to China. It had taken three bloody wars, including the military occupation of Beijing, to force the Chinese to open their country to Britain s government-backed drug pushers. As was very much the custom at the time, young Eric returned to Britain for his education, going to a preparatory school and then on to Eton, the privileged establishment where the country s rulers were and, of course, still are prepared for the exercise of power, born to rule. He later described it as the most costly and snobbish of the English public schools (CW 19, p 86). He was a scholarship boy and subsequently claimed to have already had rebellious ideas even at Eton, but his choice