George Orwell Explains in a Revealing 1944 Letter Why He’d Write 1984

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Most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s notable men of let­ters — i.e., writ­ers of books, of essays, of reportage — seem also to have, lit­er­al­ly, writ­ten a great deal of let­ters. Some­times their cor­re­spon­dence reflects and shapes their “real” writ­ten work; some­times it appears col­lect­ed in book form itself. Both hold true in the case of George Orwell, a vol­ume of whose let­ters, edit­ed by Peter Davi­son, came out last year. In it we find this mis­sive, also pub­lished in full at The Dai­ly Beast, sent in 1944 to one Noel Will­mett, who had asked “whether total­i­tar­i­an­ism, leader-wor­ship etc. are real­ly on the up-grade” giv­en “that they are not appar­ent­ly grow­ing in [Eng­land] and the USA”:

I must say I believe, or fear, that tak­ing the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon dis­ap­pear, but only at the expense of strength­en­ing (a) Stal­in, (b) the Anglo-Amer­i­can mil­lion­aires and © all sorts of pet­ty fuhrers of the type of de Gaulle. All the nation­al move­ments every­where, even those that orig­i­nate in resis­tance to Ger­man dom­i­na­tion, seem to take non-demo­c­ra­t­ic forms, to group them­selves round some super­hu­man fuhrer (Hitler, Stal­in, Salazar, Fran­co, Gand­hi, De Valera are all vary­ing exam­ples) and to adopt the the­o­ry that the end jus­ti­fies the means. Every­where the world move­ment seems to be in the direc­tion of cen­tralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an eco­nom­ic sense but which are not demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly organ­ised and which tend to estab­lish a caste sys­tem. With this go the hor­rors of emo­tion­al nation­al­ism and a ten­den­cy to dis­be­lieve in the exis­tence of objec­tive truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophe­cies of some infal­li­ble fuhrer. Already his­to­ry has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a his­to­ry of our own times which could be uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed, and the exact sci­ences are endan­gered as soon as mil­i­tary neces­si­ty ceas­es to keep peo­ple up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews start­ed the war, and if he sur­vives that will become offi­cial his­to­ry. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the pur­pos­es of, say, bal­lis­tics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great super­states which are unable to con­quer one anoth­er, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direc­tion in which we are actu­al­ly mov­ing, though, of course, the process is reversible.

As to the com­par­a­tive immu­ni­ty of Britain and the USA. What­ev­er the paci­fists etc. may say, we have not gone total­i­tar­i­an yet and this is a very hope­ful symp­tom. I believe very deeply, as I explained in my book The Lion and the Uni­corn, in the Eng­lish peo­ple and in their capac­i­ty to cen­tralise their econ­o­my with­out destroy­ing free­dom in doing so. But one must remem­ber that Britain and the USA haven’t been real­ly tried, they haven’t known defeat or severe suf­fer­ing, and there are some bad symp­toms to bal­ance the good ones. To begin with there is the gen­er­al indif­fer­ence to the decay of democ­ra­cy. Do you realise, for instance, that no one in Eng­land under 26 now has a vote and that so far as one can see the great mass of peo­ple of that age don’t give a damn for this? Sec­ond­ly there is the fact that the intel­lec­tu­als are more total­i­tar­i­an in out­look than the com­mon peo­ple. On the whole the Eng­lish intel­li­gentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accept­ing Stal­in. Most of them are per­fect­ly ready for dic­ta­to­r­i­al meth­ods, secret police, sys­tem­at­ic fal­si­fi­ca­tion of his­to­ry etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side. Indeed the state­ment that we haven’t a Fas­cist move­ment in Eng­land large­ly means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuhrer else­where. One can’t be sure that that won’t change, nor can one be sure that the com­mon peo­ple won’t think ten years hence as the intel­lec­tu­als do now. I hope they won’t, I even trust they won’t, but if so it will be at the cost of a strug­gle. If one sim­ply pro­claims that all is for the best and doesn’t point to the sin­is­ter symp­toms, one is mere­ly help­ing to bring total­i­tar­i­an­ism near­er.

You also ask, if I think the world ten­den­cy is towards Fas­cism, why do I sup­port the war. It is a choice of evils—I fan­cy near­ly every war is that. I know enough of British impe­ri­al­ism not to like it, but I would sup­port it against Nazism or Japan­ese impe­ri­al­ism, as the less­er evil. Sim­i­lar­ly I would sup­port the USSR against Ger­many because I think the USSR can­not alto­geth­er escape its past and retains enough of the orig­i­nal ideas of the Rev­o­lu­tion to make it a more hope­ful phe­nom­e­non than Nazi Ger­many. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or there­abouts, that our cause is the bet­ter, but we have to keep on mak­ing it the bet­ter, which involves con­stant crit­i­cism.

Yours sin­cere­ly,
Geo. Orwell

Three years lat­er, Orwell would write 1984. Two years after that, it would see pub­li­ca­tion and go on to gen­er­a­tions of atten­tion as per­haps the most elo­quent fic­tion­al state­ment against a world reduced to super­states, sat­u­rat­ed with “emo­tion­al nation­al­ism,” acqui­es­cent to “dic­ta­to­r­i­al meth­ods, secret police,” and the sys­tem­at­ic fal­si­fi­ca­tion of his­to­ry,” and shot through by the will­ing­ness to “dis­be­lieve in the exis­tence of objec­tive truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophe­cies of some infal­li­ble fuhrer.” Now that you feel like read­ing the nov­el again, or even for the first time, do browse our col­lec­tion of 1984-relat­ed resources, which includes the eBook, the audio book, reviews, and even radio dra­ma and com­ic book adap­ta­tions of Orwell’s work.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to George Orwell

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Cir­ca 1921)

George Orwell and Dou­glas Adams Explain How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

George Orwell’s Polit­i­cal Views, Explained in His Own Words

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.


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Comments (40)
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  • Hanoch says:

    It is amus­ing to read Orwell’s pre­dic­tion that the USSR “retains enough of the orig­i­nal ideas of the Rev­o­lu­tion to make it a more hope­ful phe­nom­e­non than Nazi Ger­many.” How wrong he was on that score. Any time pow­er is cen­tral­ized in a gov­ern­ment — be it eco­nom­ic or polit­i­cal pow­er — indi­vid­ual free­dom dimin­ish­es.

  • Acon Cernedman says:

    Fan­tas­tic post, what a pre­scient piece of writ­ing from the great Orwell. Absolute­ly nec­es­sary read­ing for every­one today more than ever.

  • Acon Cernedman says:

    Replay to Hanoch —

    You’ve com­plete­ly, I pre­sume delib­er­ate­ly, missed his point. Did you ignore all the times he deplored Stal­in? “the less­er of two evils” he com­plete­ly made clear, and I’m not sure why you’re using his own opin­ion that cen­tralised gov­ern­ment dimin­sh­es indi­vid­ual pow­er as if it was your orig­i­nal thought — that was the whole warn­ing of this piece!

  • matt says:

    Aesop, Han­noch, all he said was that he WOULD sup­port the USSR vs. Nazi Ger­many. He said this in order to sup­port his posi­tion that he would always accept the less­er of the two evils. He says, sim­ply, that the USSR rep­re­sents a “more HOPEFUL phe­nom­e­non”. Aesop, Han­noch, I think you are both wrong: Orwell did not pre­dict that the USSR was going to be suc­cess­ful; just that it had more hope of suc­cess than Nazi Ger­many. On this point Orwell was exact­ly right. What is it exact­ly that he was wrong about, again?

  • Sage of Synapses says:

    Acon —

    Actu­al­ly, Orwell admits in the let­ter that he does not believe cen­tral­iza­tion always dimin­ish­es indi­vid­ual free­dom, as exem­pli­fied by this line:

    ” … I believe very deeply … in the Eng­lish peo­ple and in their capac­i­ty to cen­tralise their econ­o­my with­out destroy­ing free­dom in doing so”

    He only sug­gests loss of free­dom as a grave dan­ger, but not an inevitable con­se­quence.

  • steveoooo says:

    Great His­to­ry

    Free Lite­Coins
    http://ltc4you.com/?r=9162

  • CrazyJ says:

    Every­where the world move­ment seems to be in the direc­tion of cen­tralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an eco­nom­ic sense but which are not demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly organ­ised and which tend to estab­lish a caste sys­tem.

    - Sounds like the EU

  • Paragon says:

    Hitler dis­ap­pears, at what cost? More and more peo­ple agree with the rise of Cap­i­tal­ism, from Cap­i­tal­ism — The end jus­ti­fies the means: Anglo-Amer­i­cans (in a posi­tion of pow­er, they estab­lished the Unit­ed States after tak­ing the land from the Native Amer­i­cans) build a nation based on Mer­i­toc­ra­cy and the “Amer­i­can Dream”. Eco­nom­ic move­ments that work “in an eco­nom­ic sense” but estab­lish a caste sys­tem: Look at con­tem­po­rary U.S. soci­ety, 80% of the wealth in Amer­i­ca is held by 1% of the pop­u­la­tion. The infal­li­ble fuhrer in this case? Amer­i­can ide­ol­o­gy of mer­i­toc­ra­cy and hard work, and get­ting out of the sys­tem what you put in (every­one has equal oppor­tu­ni­ty in the Unit­ed States). “the hor­rors of emo­tion­al nation­al­ism and a ten­den­cy to dis­be­lieve in the exis­tence of objec­tive truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophe­cies of some infal­li­ble fuhrer.” By per­pet­u­at­ing and active­ly spread­ing the gospel of the Amer­i­can Dream, dom­i­nant groups in Amer­i­ca (WASPs) can essen­tial­ly con­trol which groups suc­ceed and which do not, do you think it is mere coin­ci­dence that White Male Priv­i­lege is a large fac­tor in wealth/income? Pub­lic pol­i­cy is shaped by those in pow­er to give resources and oppor­tu­ni­ty to those seen fit. “But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great super­states which are unable to con­quer one anoth­er, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direc­tion in which we are actu­al­ly mov­ing” The police state of Amer­i­ca and the rev­e­la­tions made by Edward Snow­den in that the NSA is lit­er­al­ly record­ing and spy­ing on prac­ti­cal­ly every­one in the world? George Orwell is beyond his years in rec­og­niz­ing that which mil­lions can­not see even tens of years lat­er.

  • Kat says:

    The Amer­i­cans talk about mer­i­toc­ra­cy, but they do not and have not ever prac­tised it eco­nom­i­cal­ly. In Cap­i­tal­ism, eco­nom­ic might makes right.

  • ierizat says:

    He was wrong on many lev­els, but no one can pre­dict the future.
    He was not the only one to think of De Gaulle as a “furher”. De Gaulle was author­i­tar­i­an and pater­nal­is­tic but he was far from a dic­ta­tor. He resigneds when the vot­ers opposed him, instead of forc­ing his way on them.
    And what is that, putting Gand­hi and De Vale­ta in the same bag as Hitler, Stal­in, Salazar ?
    “No fas­cist move­ment in Great Britain” ? What about Oswald Mosley ??
    What­ev­er…

  • Montana Sans Soucie says:

    Ifind so much or Orwell’s work so spook­i­ly pre­scient, I day­dream­ing­ly won­der if there’s such a thing as time trav­el after all, and if Orwell did­n’t set out to some­how warn us.

  • Baz G says:

    De Valera, for good or ill, was demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed on mul­ti­ple occa­sions — so more like Macken­zie King than Stal­in. That Orwell would lump Dev in with mass mur­der­ers says a lot about his blind spots which don’t get a big air­ing these days.

  • sk says:

    Maybe Orwell real­ly was pre­scient. How else could he have includ­ed the answers to all of ier­iza­t’s ques­tions in the very same let­ter that caused him to ask them 80 years lat­er?

  • Baz G says:

    De Valera was no fuhrer. He as opposed and ridiculed by a size­able minor­i­ty in Ire­land through­out his career. The peo­ple who defeat­ed his side in the Civ­il War hand­ed pow­er over to him, and he in turn did not take ret­ri­bu­tion on them in any dras­tic way. His eco­nom­ic polices were a dis­as­ter but that is an entire­ly sep­a­rate issue. Like so many Eng­lish­men of his time, Orwell was clue­less about Ire­land.

    • Tangy says:

      yeah but he did preach a form of iso­la­tion­ism and nation­al­ism as well as cre­at­ing what was essen­tial­ly a church state which indoc­tri­nat­ed at least two gen­er­a­tions of irish peo­ple and per­pe­trat­ed unbe­liev­able oppres­sion of peo­ple. no i would­nt call him a dic­ta­tor but he cer­tain­ly fails under the head­ing of blind­ly nation­al­ist and cer­tain things he did were in line with oth­er extreme rulers.

  • Matthias says:

    Absolute­ly no doubt George Orwell gauged his time and the near future, the pro­tag­o­nists with rise and down­fall, as well as hopes and fears excep­tion­al­ly well.

    Please per­mit me to remark, as I am detached from that very moment in 1944, biased through cur­rent knowl­edge ‑even if inter­sub­jec­tive­ly proven‑, and affect­ed by a soll/ist clar­i­fi­ca­tion, I am unable to ful­ly fath­om his vision.

    Sim­i­lar­ly ‑yet/and- with­out rejec­tion of any crit­i­cism, I find it a bit pre­pos­ter­ous to re-inter­pret Orwell’s let­ter as pre­dic­tive of FR, GB, USA and RUS suc­cess. In the spir­it of the time, as the war got longer and longer, the enthu­si­asm of cen­tral forces waned, hopes in the alliance forces increased, and the win­ner takes it all.

    I strong­ly advo­cate we see the bound­ar­i­less facts and trends he iden­ti­fied: DE, GB, FR, USA and RUS — all were con­duct­ing human exper­i­ments (eg. nuclear, twins, euthana­sia); all are increas­ing­ly gath­er­ing data on all aspects of life (big broth­er); all strive to tight­en reach and grip then abuse pow­er at the pin­na­cle of their reign; wealth indeed is grouped more and more in top 1% casts; the true nature of mem­o­ries is that of re-draw­ing and his­to­ry accord­ing­ly re-writ­ten.

    To realise and warn us for these trends, for us to learn how to read and to pre­vent the pro­duc­tion of new such facts; to me this is Orwell’s great­est con­tri­bu­tion.

  • Summer says:

    <3 Matthias

  • Square Shooter says:

    It seems the Cre­ator might well have raised up yet anoth­er trum­pet-of-warn­ing-car­ry­ing watch­man, as is now being Trum­pet­ed by Jonathan Cahn. Type that in YouTube and see how, also, his music is as cor­rect and inevitable as has befall­en every sin­gle nation in the his­to­ry of the world. The Cre­ator expelled man from the gar­den to learn his les­son the way he insists — the hard way. Mat­tithyahu 3 indeed. It’s nor depen­dant upon one per­son believ­ing. It’s depen­dant on us all not.

  • James Slater says:

    Orwell was no econ­o­mist, which is why he was entire­ly incor­rect on ‘cen­tralised economies can be made to work’. The only debate in eco­nom­ics about cen­tralised economies is the pre­vail­ing rea­sons as to how they fail. They were already pre­dict­ed to fail by this point in his­to­ry, but I assume he had­n’t read Hayek.
    He was also epis­te­mo­log­i­cal­ly incor­rect about cen­tral­is­ing economies not destroy­ing free­dom. You can­not cen­tralise economies with­out destroy­ing free­dom, and you can­not cen­tralise economies with­out cen­tral­is­ing pow­er expo­nen­tial­ly.
    Orwell was a great crit­ic of the Sovi­ets, and a great crit­ic of the cult of per­son­al­i­ty that con­sumes peo­ple and their lib­er­ties with feroc­i­ty — but he’s not turn­ing his crit­i­cism on his own cog­ni­tive bias­es. Orwell was no clas­si­cal lib­er­al, he was a sta­tist who roman­ti­cised about a pow­er­ful state that some­how has no cor­rup­tion, and no infringe­ment on indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty.

  • Constantine says:

    Yeah, It’s always inter­est­ing to see how peo­ple try to impute to oth­ers their own ideas.

    Orwell nowa­days seems to be depict­ed as a lib­er­tar­i­an anti-com­mu­nist hero, notwith­stand­ing his own stat­ed and well-known polit­i­cal stances.

  • Idiothunter says:

    Actu­al­ly he was right, com­pared to Nazi Ger­many. It’s just that Nazis lost.

  • Curtles says:

    How iron­ic that the advert under this inter­est­ing arti­cle is an ad for track­ing employ­ee atten­dance.

  • Dave Conroy says:

    Actu­al­ly, Orwell reviewed The Road to Serf­dom for a British week­ly. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s not as inter­est­ing a review as one would hope.

    The chap­ter in Hayek on “The End of Truth” (chp. 11?) reads to me so much like a blue­print for the soci­ety of 1984 that I am con­tin­u­al­ly sur­prised to have nev­er seen Hayek men­tioned as an influ­ence on the nov­el.

    Maybe it’s just that no one is inter­est­ed in read­ing both Orwell and Hayek. It’s too bad; both men shared an admirable fear of the slide into total­i­tar­i­an­ism and wrote per­sua­sive­ly about the dan­ger, they just saw it hap­pen­ing dif­fer­ent ways.

  • Mark Waterhouse says:

    Are we for­get­ting that the book was orig­i­nal­ly title !948, and changed to to 1984 by Amer­i­can pub­lish­ers. It was­n’t a futur­is­tic tome, it was about the world in 1948.

  • Gregg Matson says:

    I have pub­lished a book titled LIVING IN 1984–AMERICA’S FLIRTATION WITH FASCISM. For rea­sons that need no expla­na­tion, I rec­om­mend read­ing this to one and all.

  • Vince Emmer says:

    “Look at con­tem­po­rary U.S. soci­ety, 80% of the wealth in Amer­i­ca is held by 1% of the pop­u­la­tion.”

    The rich­est mid­dle class in his­to­ry — liv­ing at the high­est lev­el of mate­r­i­al con­sump­tion rel­a­tive to the past and rel­a­tive to oth­er coun­tries — can increase its share of the wealth immense­ly by sav­ing.

    If you are post­ing on the inter­net and don’t con­sid­er your­self rich, your hori­zons are as lim­it­ed as those inside a dump­ster.

  • Vince Emmer says:

    “Look at con­tem­po­rary U.S. soci­ety, 80% of the wealth in Amer­i­ca is held by 1% of the pop­u­la­tion.”

    The rich­est large mid­dle class in his­to­ry — liv­ing at the high­est lev­el of mate­r­i­al con­sump­tion ever achieved any­where — can increase its share of the wealth immense­ly by con­sum­ing a lit­tle less and sav­ing a lit­tle more.

    If you are post­ing on the inter­net and don’t con­sid­er your­self rich, your self-inflict­ed hori­zons are as lim­it­ed as those inside a dump­ster.

  • Dana says:

    Any time you have two or more peo­ple gath­ered togeth­er, indi­vid­ual free­dom dimin­ish­es. Bet­ter go live in a cave.

  • Dana says:

    Oh my good­ness are you ever con­fused.

    1. You don’t judge some­one’s wealth by how much con­sum­ing they do. By def­i­n­i­tion if they’re spend­ing that mon­ey they no longer own it as an asset, and buy­ing con­sumer goods guar­an­tees that your prop­er­ty will depre­ci­ate in val­ue. The only good for which this is nor­mal­ly not true is real estate and even that can drop in val­ue if the mar­ket down­turns.

    Wealth is about what you keep, as YOU point out. So don’t jump all over the map and rede­fine wealth every oth­er sen­tence.

    2. Our mid­dle class isn’t large any­more. In fact, it’s shrink­ing. The hoard­ing of wealth by the top 1% is a big part of the rea­son why. We as a nation are more pro­duc­tive than we have ever been and, rather than prove the the­o­ry that hard work and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty equal high­er pay, the boss-men are hoard­ing that increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pay­ing off share­hold­ers and CEOs. Not only is this a recipe for soci­etal col­lapse, it’s not good moral behav­ior either. If you don’t want to pay your work­ers, do the work your­self.

    What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inex­cus­able is that so many work­ers have been replaced by machines now and you can’t pay machines. You might as well let your work­ers ben­e­fit from that increased rev­enue.

    3. If you amass wealth “by con­sum­ing a lit­tle less and sav­ing a lit­tle more” then by def­i­n­i­tion if you’re pay­ing for inter­net ser­vice you are not in fact rich, or at least not rich­er than you would have been with­out said inter­net ser­vice. Unless your employ­ment is through the inter­net, but of course no one mak­ing your sorts of argu­ments ever con­sid­ers that.

    4. You also fail to under­stand that just because some­one’s on the inter­net at any giv­en time does­n’t mean they’re pay­ing full cost to access the inter­net. What about peo­ple using library com­put­ers and going online? What about peo­ple liv­ing in a mul­ti-adult house­hold and every­one pays a lit­tle into the inter­net bill? What about a per­son with a sec­ond­hand lap­top going to pub­lic places with wifi? I’ve even heard of home­less peo­ple with lap­tops because they did­n’t have enough to pay for a place to live but they had enough to get the com­put­er. You can find lap­tops now that cost way less than rent–or, if you rent­ed a place for that lit­tle, you would­n’t want to live there. And $500 isn’t wealth unless you’re in rur­al Africa.

    More per­spec­tive and less judg­ing please.

  • robinoi says:

    “All the nation­al move­ments every­where, even those that orig­i­nate in resis­tance to Ger­man dom­i­na­tion, seem to take non-demo­c­ra­t­ic forms, to group them­selves round some super­hu­man fuhrer (Hitler, Stal­in, Salazar, Fran­co, Gand­hi, De Valera are all vary­ing exam­ples) and to adopt the the­o­ry that the end jus­ti­fies the means.”

    UKIP sup­port­ers’ per­son­al­i­ty cult around Farage.

  • Fran says:

    Hi! Very inter­est­ing post to under­stand Orwell‘s sit­u­a­tion after writ­ting 1984. That‘s is my favourite book, and I record­ed this Span­ish read audio­book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQcg-ovV740

    I hope that helps you!

  • Shawn says:

    He was­n’t wrong. The USSR nev­er start­ed a world war or geno­cide. In fact the USA was and is much more dan­ger­ous!

  • Waleed Alhaddad says:

    Link “do browse our col­lec­tion of 1984-relat­ed resources” is bro­ken.

  • unknown says:

    Ben shapiro and orwell would be good friends.

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  • doug chipp says:

    Peo­ple either you get it or you don’t!

  • JoAnn Leichliter says:

    No wor­ries though, Tangy. Ire­land has shak­en off those shack­les for the most part and become just anoth­er indis­tin­guish­able mol­e­cule in the vast tapi­o­ca of the Euro­pean Union.

  • Noah Edelson says:

    Almost every sin­gle state­ment James made is incor­rect, IMO. He was not employed as an econ­o­mist- he gets points for that. Right now, a cen­tral­ized econ­o­my in Chi­na is prop­ping up the failed US econ­o­my, redis­trib­ut­ing mas­sive loans to the tune of 2 tril­lion while (for instance) the Pres­i­dent in 2020 print­ed more $ than had been print­ed in the years 1776–2019. James wrote his bit in 2014, but it was already appar­ent at that point. Cen­tral­ized gov­’ts usu­al­ly do impose them­selves on free­doms — that is a haz­ard.

    Assum­ing Orwell had­n’t read Hayek was incor­rect. In his review of “The Road to Serf­dom” by Hayek, he wrote

    “Between them these two books sum up our present predica­ment. Cap­i­tal­ism leads to dole queues, the scram­ble for mar­kets, and war. Col­lec­tivism
    leads to con­cen­tra­tion camps, leader wor­ship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned econ­o­my can some­how be com­bined with the free­dom of
    the intel­lect, which can only hap­pen if the con­cept of right and wrong is restored to pol­i­tics.”

    Orwell’s polit­i­cal views var­ied wild­ly depend­ing on what side of the bed he woke up on. The claim that he was Sta­tist could be made because of state­ments such as

    “Every line of seri­ous work that I have writ­ten since 1936 has been writ­ten, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, against total­i­tar­i­an­ism and for demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism.” ‑George Orwell, _Why I Write_, full text at OrwellFoundation.com/Orwell/Why-I-Write

    How­ev­er, he also men­tioned in 1938 (in Road to Moroc­co)
    “Ten years ago it was almost impos­si­ble to get any­thing print­ed in favour of Com­mu­nism; today it is almost impos­si­ble to get any­thing print­ed in favour of Anar­chism or ‘Trot­sky­ism’ ”. Anar­chism == anti-State. Gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple (cor­rect­ly) think of him as a sort of lib­er­tar­i­an social­ist. Like Noam Chom­sky, except with much more vio­lent nation­al­ism in his blood- despite how he crit­i­cized those traits- he hat­ed paci­fism even more. Would have been cool to have him and that era’s oth­er bril­liant social­ist (Ein­stein) debate on that. Orwell would have won- Ein­stein’s paci­fism went on hia­tus when he start­ed fundrais­ing for the Abra­ham Lin­coln Brigade. Those were actu­al­ly Amer­i­cans fight­ing *WITH* Orwell’s social­ists & anar­chists, *AGAINST* Fran­co’s Fas­cist Fucs.. (frag­ile ultra-con­ser­v­a­tives).

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