A Note on Orwellism

Published date01 December 1980
Date01 December 1980
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1980.tb01263.x
Subject MatterArticle
A
NOTE ON ORWELLISM
STEPHEN INGLE
The
University
of
Hull
FEW
writers on politics can have left behind a legacy more equivocal than
Orwell’s. Considering how relatively brief his career as a writer was and how
relatively little he actually wrote, the variety of opinions as to what he stood for
presents a paradox of almost Churchillian dimensions.
I
propose to examine
two lines of criticism of Orwell which purport to explain the ambiguities of his
legacy.
I
want to argue that these criticisms are inappropriate and to suggest
two more relevant problems with Orwellism. The first, and more sophisticated,
line of criticism argues that Orwell’s socialism was never more than a rather
vague moralistic anti-egalitarianism (not the same thing at all as egalitarian-
ism!) which lacked intellectual force and analytical depth. The second criticism
has it that Orwell shifted his ground basically, abandoning the optimistic
socialism of
The Road to Wigan Pier
(1937)
and
Homage
to
Catalonia
(1938)
for the basically anti-socialist, romantic (some would say) individualism of
Animal Farm
(1945)
and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949).
In brief Orwell was
shallow and inconsistent; no wonder, then, that opinions concerning his
political beliefs differ.
The more damning of the two lines of criticism, though it is frequently
tempered with faint praise, is that Orwell was, in political terms, a superficial
writer with no natural bent for ideology or for socio-economic analysis.
Raymond Williams, for example, claims that Orwell did not understand
capitalism
fully,
‘as an economic and political system’. Others have gone
further, claiming that Orwell had no capacity for philosophical analysis
either.2
I
want to suggest simply that Orwell abjured philosophy and ideology only
in the sense that a mystic abjures theology and dogma (and
if
I
may say
so,
this
is an analogy particularly appropriate for Orwell).
Orwell saw the essential task as being to establish socialism as a moral code.
Essential because modern man, in refuting the ‘myths’ of established religion,
had left himself peculiarly vulnerable. He had,
so
to
speak, sawn away the
branch on which he was seated. ‘But unfortunately there had been a little
mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses but a cesspool full of
barbed wire.’j But what was to replace the moral values of established
religion? ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has somehow got
to
be brought on to the
surface of the earth. We have got to be the children of God, even though the
R.
Williams,
Orwell
(London, Fontana, Modern Masters Series,
1971).
p.
26.
See
D.
Kubal,
Ourside rhe Whale: George Orwell’s Arr and
Polirics
(London, University
of
G.
Orwell, ‘Notes on the Way’,
Collerred Essays and Journalism
(London, Secker and
Notre Dame
Press,
1972),
p.
49.
Warburg,
1965),
p.
IS.
Political Studies. Voi.
XXVIII,
No.
4
(592-598)

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