Talk:George Orwell

Orwell wrote an essay as the introduction to Animal Farm, a painfully obvious and blatant attack on Stalinism.

• It is "ironic" that the particular example of self-censorship Orwell referred to in the essay was the refusal of the left-wing and liberal press of the time to publish criticism of the Soviet Union [1]

On the other hand:

• throughout his life, Orwell remained a confirmed socialist and worked almost exclusively for socialist journals [ibid]

Then there is:

• Orwell begins his critique on class and socialism in The Road to Wigan Pier [2]

And this nuanced view:

• In the 1930s revolutionary socialists and communists were quite a bit more mainstream in English and American intellectual life than they are today. Orwell knew their arguments intimately, and sympathized deeply with their goals. Indeed, the first half of The Road To Wigan Pier is a blistering attack on the harsh working and living conditions of the English working class of his day. And yet he felt that intellectualized socialism, with its emphasis on absolute mechanization and total efficiency, was somehow deeply dehumanizing. [ibid]

International Socialist Review says:

• Orwell became a self-described socialist as a result of lessons learned early in life. His service as a colonial policeman in Burma turned him into a fierce anti-imperialist with a commitment to exposing oppression and championing the rights of the working class. But Orwell was also a controversial and contradictory writer who took diverse–sometimes courageous–positions over the course of his life that have left his work open to interpretation. He moved from firm anti-imperialist and working class politics to become a supporter of the British Labor Party and a critic of the left by the end of his life, including an almost obsessive focus on Stalinism. [3]

Edit summary

Sorry, I missed the comment about Animal Farm. Same thing goes, distorted communism, or Stalinism, perhaps, but not communism. --AngryCommunist 22:24, 4 January 2008 (EST)