[lbo-talk] Orwell, George Garrett, and Working-Class Socialist Intellectuals

Michael Dawson -PSU mdawson at pdx.edu
Thu Mar 25 08:15:01 PST 2004


Thanks for confirming that one's attitude to Orwell is one excellent quick test of the overall quality of one's politics and mind. None of what you try to hang on Orwell actually hangs. The British working class was and is passive. Orwell did not put himself or other middle class intellectuals above working class intellectuals. He merely noted, correctly, that workers tend not to have the time and resources to think it all the way through. "British socialism" has never existed, so any "portrait" of it would be fiction.

As to the notebooks, wow, what a scandalous discovery, that an author of a published book had notebooks that included materials not in the book! What an atrocity, a clear case of self-censorship! Cleary, Orwell failed to report reality, which was that the British working class was a happy, well-organized band of Communist intellectuals. Why anybody reads Wigan Pier, which completely blew the call on the soon-to-be triumph of the Union of British Socialist Republics, is a huge mystery to me!

Orwell was far from perfect, but he was also one of the top 2-3 socialist advocates of the 20th century. Nobody who admires his best works denies his flaws. We simply value his insight and clarity and dedication to both realism and idealism.

You Althusser/CP admirers are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Your loss.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list