George Orwell

George Orwell (Eric Blair)

George Orwell was the pen name for Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), a leading English social democrat writer, essayist and journalist who exposed the evils of communist totalitarianism in two novels published near the end of his life: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. His first novel, based on his experiences on the Imperial Police Force in Burma, Burmese Days, explored the evils of colonialism.

The formative experience of Orwell's creative life was volunteering to fight the Spanish Fascist forces to keep them from overturning the democratically elected socialist government of Spain in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He enlisted in the POUM (In English, Workers Party for Marxist Unity) Militia, and saw action on the Aragon front, where he fought side by side with Anarchists and Communists, as well as Republican regulars.

He became disillusioned with the Spanish government's policy of witholding arms from the POUM and the Anarchists, which he saw as an attempt by the Communists to water down the revolutionary nature of the Anti-Fascist resistance, and centralize power in the hands of the Moscow-backed Communist Party. Taking a bullet through his neck but surviving, Orwell was invalided to Barcelona, where he witnessed the Stalinist repression of Trotskyist and Anarchist parties. Orwell and his wife were forced to escape from Spain as fugitives, after the POUM was banned by the increasingly repressive regime.

Despite his persecution, Orwell continued to support the Republic upon his return to England, viewing a Communist dominated Spain as better than a Fascist Spain.Template:Fact-political He recounted his experiences in Spain in the book Homage to Catalonia.

Orwell had only ten years left in his life when he returned. During that period he and his wife adopted a baby boy, but Orwell's wife died shortly thereafter.

In those ten years Orwell wrote his famous anti-communist described above, first spending three years on the short story Animal Farm (1944), and then perhaps five years on the longer novel 1984 (1949). Orwell continued championing Socialism right up to his death, writing a regular column in the left-labor Tribune paper, but strongly criticized the USSR, unusually for a left-winger of the period. He died of tuberculosis in 1950.

Quotes

• In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

• It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.

• One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England.

• If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

• The truth is that to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we,' the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them,' the Lower Orders.

• War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

• The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

• Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I know it.

• I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

• If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Bibliography

Books

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
• Burmese Days (1934)
• A Clergyman's Daughter (1935)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Coming Up for Air (1939)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Essays

• The Spike (1931)
• A Hanging (1931)
• Shooting An Elephant (1936)
• Charles Dickens (1939)
• Boys' Weeklies (1940)
• Inside The Whale (1940)
• The Lion and The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941)
• Wells, Hitler and the World State (1941)
• The art of donald McGill (1941)
• Looking back on the Spanish War (1943)
• W. B. Yeats (1943)
• Benefit of Clergy: Some notes on Salvador Dali (1944)
• Arthur Koestler (1944)
• Notes on Nationalism (1945)
• A Nice Cup of Tea (1946)
• How The Poor Die (1946)
• Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels (1946)
• Politics and the English Language (1946)
• Second Thoughts on James Burnham (1946)
• Decline of the English Murder (1946)
• Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946)
• A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray (1946)
• In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse (1946)
• Why I Write (1946)
• The Prevention of Literature (1946)
• Such, Such Were the Joys (1946)
• Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947)
• Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
• Bookshop Memories (1936)
• The Moon Under Water (1946)

Poetry

• Romance
• A Little Poem
• Awake! Young Men of England
• Kitchener
• Our Minds are Married, But we are Too Young
• The Pagan
• The Lesser Evil
• Poem From Burma

References

That Year Is Almost Here by Paul Gray, Time Online.