Seventy-five years ago, in August 1946, it was published in the United States Animal Farm by George Orwell. It was a huge success, with over half a million copies sold in the first year. The book was followed three years later by an even greater success: Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
In the years that followed, Orwell’s writings left an indelible mark on American thought and culture. Sales of Animal Farm and of 1984 they increased in 2013 after the Edward Snowden case, the whistleblower who leaked confidential documents from the US National Security Agency (NSA). 1984 It also rose to the top of Amazon’s sales list following Donald Trump’s entry into the White House in 2017.
As a professor of philosophy, I am interested in observing how Orwell’s ideas remain current today, including those about totalitarianism and socialism.
Career start
George Orwell was the pseudonym of Eric Blair. Born in 1903 in colonial India, Blair later moved to England, where he attended elite schools thanks to some scholarships. After finishing school he became a British state official, working in Burma, now Myanmar. At the age of 24, Orwell returned to England to become a writer.
During the 1930s Orwell enjoyed modest success as an essayist, journalist and novelist. He also served as a volunteer soldier in a left-wing militia that fought alongside the Spanish Republicans during the civil war in Spain. During the conflict Orwell understood firsthand how propaganda could shape political narratives, observing the inaccurate accounts of events he had experienced firsthand.
Orwell later summarized the meaning of his writing more or less from the Spanish Civil War onwards: “Every serious line I have written since 1936 has been, directly or indirectly, directed against totalitarianism and in favor of democratic socialism.”
Orwell did not specify in that passage what he meant by totalitarianism or democratic socialism, but some of his other works make clear what he meant by these terms.
What is totalitarianism?
For Orwell, totalitarianism was a political order centered on power and control. The totalitarian attitude is exemplified by the antagonist of 1984, O’Brien. This fictional character is a powerful government official, who uses torture and manipulation to gain control of the thoughts and actions of the protagonist, Winston Smith. Significantly, O’Brien treats his desire for power as an end in itself. O’Brien is a representation of power for the sake of power itself.
Many of Orwell’s more lucid insights concern what totalitarianism is incompatible with. In his 1941 essay, The lion and the unicorn: socialism and English genius, Orwell speaks of the “totalitarian idea, according to which there is no such thing as law, only power…”. In other words, laws can limit the power of a ruler. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, seeks to erase the limits of the law through a brazen exercise of power.
Likewise in his 1942 essay, Looking back on the spanish war (Thinking back to the Spanish war), Orwell argues that totalitarianism needs to deny the existence of neutral facts and objective truth. Orwell identifies freedom and truth as “guarantees” against totalitarianism. The exercise of freedom and the recognition of truth are incompatible with the total centralized control that totalitarianism imposes.
Orwell understood that totalitarianism could be found, in politics, both on the right and on the left. For Orwell, both Nazism and Communism were totalitarian.
Orwell’s work, in my opinion, challenges us to resist the temptation to allow leaders to adopt totalitarian behavior, regardless of political affiliation. It also reminds us that some of the best tools at our disposal to resist totalitarianism are to speak the truth and preserve freedom.
What is democratic socialism?
In his 1937 book The road to Wigan Pier, Orwell writes that socialism means “justice and freedom”. The justice to which it refers goes beyond simple economic justice. It also includes social and political justice.
Orwell explains in more depth what he means by socialism in The lion and the unicorn. According to him, socialism requires “approximate income equality (as long as it is approximate), political democracy and the abolition of all hereditary privileges, especially in education.”
In specifying what he means by “approximate income equality,” Orwell says later in the same essay that the difference in income should not exceed a ratio of about ten to one. Interpreting this in today’s light, it could be said that Orwell would consider it ethical for a CEO to earn ten times more than his employees, but not three hundred times more, as is the case today on average in the United States.
In describing socialism, however, Orwell is not concerned solely with economic inequality. Orwell’s writings indicate that his favorite conception of socialism also dictates “political democracy”. As scholar David Dwan noted, Orwell distinguishes “two concepts of democracy”. The first refers to the political power available to ordinary people. The second concerns classical liberal freedoms, such as that of thought. Both notions of democracy seem important to what Orwell means by democratic socialism. For Orwell, democratic socialism is a political order that provides social and economic equality, while also preserving strong personal freedom.
I believe that Orwell’s description of democratic socialism, as well as his acknowledgment that socialism can take various forms, remain important today, as in the United States the political debate on socialism often overlooks many of the nuances that Orwell includes in the discussion. Americans, for example, often confuse socialism with communism. Orwell helps us to clarify the difference between these terms.
Given the high levels of economic inequality, political attacks on truth and renewed concerns about totalitarianism, Orwell’s ideas remain as relevant today as they were 75 years ago.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
.