Talk:George Orwell

Re: the pertinent point made by Nicholas about Orwell not in fact being anti-socialist when many argue he was. This is plainly not true. Orwell was indeed a socialist the difference being he was a democratic socialist opposed to the totalitarianism/authoritarianism that was apparent in the Eastern European Socialist systems.

It is definitely untrue to say that Orwell wasn't a socialist though as he was a member of the Independent Labour Party, something I have included on the page about him.
--JDH

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It seems to me that this very site is reminiscient of one aspect of the book 1984. See, the content of this page in particular can always be changed so that I could write here; "We have always been at war with the Klingons", but at a later time someone could come back and change the word "Klingons" to "Romulans." Thus, the truth of who we always have been at war with can easily be erased and changed to suite the needs of the site. However, it is different in that anyone can make the change, not just the Ministry of Truth, and there are not consoles in our walls with cameras watching us... or are there...
--Shaun

How about the Recent Changes list?

That is a good point. Although things can be changed, we are able to look at what has been changed, when, and by whom. Still, I think that this site is a great experiment. --Shaun

ps: I learn how to edit web pages while having fun... isn't the internet great?

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The Recent Changes list is not as good a way to track changes as you might think.

In wikipedia, history of the article's edition can be easily buried by renaming the article with a different case e.g. From 'Muslim Language' to 'Muslim language' or simply do a redirect, all the history just disappears. The history of the articles also periodically get truncated, so if one floods the history with enough editions, one's tracks of altering the 'truth' can be erased. Another trick is to justify the paragraphs differently from time to time so that the diff will show overwhelming differences that are actually not changes. Others will not be able to spot one word change amongst hundred of lines of fake changes.

I guess the only safeguard is that sooner or later an expert would review the article from scratch. However, not all the experts have the time to review the article over and over again.

Then again, Wikipedia does not have a monopoly on information. The Party of Nineteen Eighty-Four does; that's the point. --Sam

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"You have nothing to lose but your aitches"

What is this 'aitches' thing ? --Taw

Guessing here. The england of George Orwell was, and no doubt is, a very class conscious place. Enunciation can be a dead giveaway to anyone who would like to obscure their less than than stellar (class-wise) orgins. It's the kind of thing that you'll want to change to get that upward mobility thing happening. Or so the general perception goes. 'aitches' is referring to the h given the right pronunciation, cockney for example. Preoccupation with this enunciation/class thing is referred to in many english comedy shows ie monty python or fawlty towers, so check em out.

It's called "dropping your aitches".

Lower class (and by extension, ill-educated) people in the UK are often characterized (with some justification) as dropping their aitches, i.e. leaving the letter 'h' off the beginning of words. So they would say 'urricane instead of hurricane, or 'appen instead of happen. This was further extended (with less justification) to cover these people trying to sound upper class by over compensating and adding more aitches, for example referring to 'a haccident' Verloren

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Both of these books are often represented as being critical of Socialism per se, which is only credible whilst in ignorance of Orwell's own opinions.

Would anyone care to substantiate this statement? My own reading of Animal Farm and 1984 convinces me that "socialism" (the Marxist type) is inevitably and inherently corrupt and unworkable. Please add evidence to the contrary into the article, or give a citation for who says Orwell's alleged criticism of socialism is "only credible whilst in ignorance of Orwell's own opinions." Ed Poor

Well, once an author publishes a book he or shee looses control over it, and people are right to read it isa they wish. Personally, I don't read these two books the way Ed Poor did -- I think that they are both cynical, and especially cynical about the concentration of power in the hands of the State in general, and about the emerging "Welfare States" in England and the US after WWII and Stalinism. But I don't see them as knocking "socialism" in general, or all possible forms of socialism. Indeed, I think as an allegory 1984 is pretty harsh towards capitalism. Also, as I recall (it's been a while) I thought Snowball was the hero, and perhaps metaphorically Orwell was supporting Trotsky's version of communism against Stalin (Napolean).

In any event, there are many ways to read a particular book. The danger lies in infering the intent of the author. And I think that is the point of this passage -- that it is a mistake to infer from the books that Orwell himself was against socialism. SR

It is hard to image why Orwell, who was a socialist, would write a book that was a polemic against socialism. "Animal Farm" was a critique of the totalitarian nature of the Russian Revolution, and how the revolution betrayed its socialist ideals. The fact that he considered those ideals to have been betrayed sort of presupposes that he held those ideals in the first place. I suppose it is possible that Orwell changed his views after the Spanish Civil War, but in his book "Homage to Catalonia" he makes clear both his socialist views and his opposition to the ideology of the Soviet Union. -- Egern

How's this for substantiating the statement: Anyone reading any of Orwell's published essays (which make up the majority of words he published during his lifetime) can't help but notice Orwell stating such suggestive things as "I am a Socialist". His political views were very well and clearly articulated, and it requires denying or ignoring his own statements about what those views are to deny that he was a Socialist. That said, he never shied away from pointing out the problems within certain parts of the broad socialist movement, most especially including Stalinism. The two books he is best known for are either criticisms of Soviet Communism as a betrayal of socialist ideals and common decency, or a simple reductio ad adsurdam of totalitarian society of any form. Both of these can be interpreted as condemnations of certain political movements that non-socialists associate with socialism (i.e. Russian or Maoist Communism), but they are certainly not condemnations of socialism per se. There's plenty of evidence that 1984 was mostly inspired by Orwell's experience as a WW2 propagandist for the BBC, which certainly wasn't Socialist in any recognizable sense of the word at the time. Certainly his criticism of totalitarianism can be applied to non-socialist ideologies (such as fascism), as his preface suggests by mentioning that for American audiences, "Ingsoc" could be replaced by "100% Americanism" or some such phrase. -Ben Brumfield

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Regarding Orwell's works being against Socialism:

"The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." [Excerpt taken from the essay "Why I Write" written by Orwell in 1936.]

I have added this citation to the article as there exists an endless polemic about Orwell being anti-socialist, when the man plainly speaks of his politics as being Socialist. You can read the essay I cited for yourselves at http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/897/ -Nicholas

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Should the essays be at George Orwell/essay name[?], essay name[?] or essay name (essay)[?]? -- Tzartzam

Simply essay name[?] if there is nothing else with that name. If there is something else, then it would be essay name (essay)[?], but I can't think of any examples where that would be required. --Camembert

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Shouldent this article mention that Orwell had a wife who died young, and the fact that he had a son, it seems rather odd to leave these things out G-Man 22:12 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)