Throughout the Cold War, George Orwell was a literary hero to the Western Bloc because he had written Animal Farm, a satire on the Soviet Union, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, an indictment of totalitarianism in any form. Few people in the West seemed to realize, at the time, that Orwell was a self-identified socialist (or Socialist – he always capitalized the word) – and remained so until the day he died. He hated tyranny – but he also hated inequality – perhaps in a way that only an Englishman can, living in a time and place where inequality was entirely traditional; there was still something that could be called a hereditary ruling class and it was roughly continuous with medieval gentry (“like the knife that has had two new blades and three new handles,” as Orwell remarked); and finely graded snobberies existed, and mattered, at all levels of society. And he remained convinced to the end of his life that capitalism was on its last legs and about to collapse – which was an easy thing to believe, for someone who had lived through the 1930s and ‘40s.
What Orwell meant by socialism is spelled out clearly in his 1941 booklet, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius:
"I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England's internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world: 1. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries. 2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. 3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines. 4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over. 5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented. 6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers. The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. . . . 1. Nationalization. One can ‘nationalize’ industry by the stroke of a pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere owners who live not by virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. . . . . Nationalization of agricultural land implies cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganization of English agriculture that would not retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being permanently in debt to the bank. With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimizing the smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are ‘their own masters’. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of land in town areas."
Now, it will be seen at once that what Orwell proposes is not a mere social-democratic welfare state. It is something just like Stalinism – except that the government that owns and manages the productive property is to be freely and fairly elected, not prescriptively controlled by a single party. (It should also be noted that this vision is entirely different from the autonomous workers’ and peasants’ collectives that Orwell observed, with some admiration, in the anarcho-syndicalist regions of Spain during the Civil War.)
In light of the way the Cold War ended – the Soviet system collapsing mainly from economic inefficiency -- it cannot be stressed enough that Orwell was convinced – and at the time, not unreasonably -- of the superior efficiency of a command economy to a market economy. Again, from The Lion and the Unicorn:
"Hitler's conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result. When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism. Socialism is usually defined as ‘common ownership of the means of production’. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment."
This, again, was not unreasonable at the time. It was not unreasonable for Khrushchev, in the 1950s, to predict the USSR would eventually outproduce the capitalist West. The experiment had not yet been run, and the patent efficiency of a command economy, insulated from market forces, seemed to make a whole lot of sense.
Not that Orwell was ever inclined to optimism. In 1947 he wrote “Toward European Unity,” beginning, “A Socialist today is in the position of a doctor treating an all but hopeless case. As a doctor, it is his duty to keep the patient alive, and therefore to assume that the patient has at least a chance of recovery. As a scientist, it is his duty to face the facts, and therefore to admit that the patient will probably die.” In that essay he proposed a union of European socialist republics, to include African and Middle Eastern countries – as full and equal partners, not as colonies. He stated there would be serious obstacles (listed and discussed) to the establishment of such a thing, “But we ought not to feel that it is of its nature impossible, or that countries so different from one another would not voluntarily unite. A western European union is in itself a less improbable concatenation than the Soviet Union or the British Empire.” An assertion that makes exactly as much sense now as then.
Another telling passage from the same essay: “In North America the masses are contented with capitalism, and one cannot tell what turn they will take when capitalism begins to collapse.” The imminent collapse of capitalism seemed so obvious to him – and to many British intellectuals of his time – that he never even tried to formulate an argument for it.
It is a loss to the world that Orwell died in 1950. It would be fascinating to see what such a keen, honest and insightful mind would have made of capitalism’s survival – and of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Red Scare, the sexual and feminist revolutions, and of how the Cold War ended. Probably he would have admitted he had been wrong on some points, while still arguing for the value of Socialism in some form.
What Orwell meant by socialism is spelled out clearly in his 1941 booklet, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius:
"I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England's internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world: 1. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries. 2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. 3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines. 4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over. 5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented. 6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers. The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. . . . 1. Nationalization. One can ‘nationalize’ industry by the stroke of a pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere owners who live not by virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. . . . . Nationalization of agricultural land implies cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganization of English agriculture that would not retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being permanently in debt to the bank. With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimizing the smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are ‘their own masters’. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of land in town areas."
Now, it will be seen at once that what Orwell proposes is not a mere social-democratic welfare state. It is something just like Stalinism – except that the government that owns and manages the productive property is to be freely and fairly elected, not prescriptively controlled by a single party. (It should also be noted that this vision is entirely different from the autonomous workers’ and peasants’ collectives that Orwell observed, with some admiration, in the anarcho-syndicalist regions of Spain during the Civil War.)
In light of the way the Cold War ended – the Soviet system collapsing mainly from economic inefficiency -- it cannot be stressed enough that Orwell was convinced – and at the time, not unreasonably -- of the superior efficiency of a command economy to a market economy. Again, from The Lion and the Unicorn:
"Hitler's conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result. When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism. Socialism is usually defined as ‘common ownership of the means of production’. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment."
This, again, was not unreasonable at the time. It was not unreasonable for Khrushchev, in the 1950s, to predict the USSR would eventually outproduce the capitalist West. The experiment had not yet been run, and the patent efficiency of a command economy, insulated from market forces, seemed to make a whole lot of sense.
Not that Orwell was ever inclined to optimism. In 1947 he wrote “Toward European Unity,” beginning, “A Socialist today is in the position of a doctor treating an all but hopeless case. As a doctor, it is his duty to keep the patient alive, and therefore to assume that the patient has at least a chance of recovery. As a scientist, it is his duty to face the facts, and therefore to admit that the patient will probably die.” In that essay he proposed a union of European socialist republics, to include African and Middle Eastern countries – as full and equal partners, not as colonies. He stated there would be serious obstacles (listed and discussed) to the establishment of such a thing, “But we ought not to feel that it is of its nature impossible, or that countries so different from one another would not voluntarily unite. A western European union is in itself a less improbable concatenation than the Soviet Union or the British Empire.” An assertion that makes exactly as much sense now as then.
Another telling passage from the same essay: “In North America the masses are contented with capitalism, and one cannot tell what turn they will take when capitalism begins to collapse.” The imminent collapse of capitalism seemed so obvious to him – and to many British intellectuals of his time – that he never even tried to formulate an argument for it.
It is a loss to the world that Orwell died in 1950. It would be fascinating to see what such a keen, honest and insightful mind would have made of capitalism’s survival – and of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Red Scare, the sexual and feminist revolutions, and of how the Cold War ended. Probably he would have admitted he had been wrong on some points, while still arguing for the value of Socialism in some form.
