How do leftists rationalize Orwell's message?

Question

I have a confession to make. This is one of the very few questions I have posted on YA where I have no other intent, no tongue in cheek, no other embedded statement.

I just realized that, Ive always been curious how a someone, having read Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), remains a leftist. There must be some rationale.

Non-leftists are also welcome to chime in with accounts of conversations they have had where they have heard how a leftist rationalizes the phenomena that Orwell describes so well.

Answer 1

Your question assumes they can read and have the capacity to comprehend meaning.

Answer 2

As has already been pointed out, Orwell (Eric Blair) was a lifelong socialist - as you'd know if you read any of his other works, like The Road to Wigan Pier, or Down and Out in Paris and London. He was no lover of capitalism, and it's rather ironic that he has become a posterboy for the American right.



1984 and (especially) Animal Farm are primarily about Stalinism - Orwell was an early critic of Stalin, and he was uncompromisingly critical of his allies on the left who continued to support the USSR under Stalinism. In this respect he was more morally clear-sighted than many on the left were until the 1960s, when anti-Stalinist leftism really kicked off (a decade after the dictator's death). But Orwell was not necessarily a critic of the 1917 Revolution, or of the USSR per se, as a careful reading of "Animal Farm" will show (Snowflake is based on Trotsky).



Now, leaving aside some of the battier bits of your 'question', the real issue here seems to be, how can the left answer the accusation that its political philosophy is inherently vulnerable to totalitarianism? Since you seem to define "left" on the basis of your own self-serving terms, I suspect you won't accept any answer to this at all. But I would say that the left has spent the best part of fifty years exorcising the ghosts of Stalin and Mao. There may be many problems with socialism, but I no longer think that an inherent tendency to authoritarianism is among them - indeed, I rather think that the left has gone too far in the opposite direction.

Answer 3

I even have only presently examine 1984 and the unhappy section relating to the written paintings is that it rather is rather much thoroughly attainable that this might ensue to us if we don't beware. i think of that's what George Orwell replaced into attempting to let us know is only to concentrate and not enable the governments to have finished administration. Already we are watched in maximum places and the government does have a tendency to hold returned information from the people. Animal farm replaced right into a dig on the Russian government and his message there replaced into evident returned to visual exhibit unit and pay attention and to probably attempt and alter issues. He replaced right into a guy of evident large understanding pondering how earlier his works have been written.

Answer 4

The story of Animal Farm progresses to the point where the pigs (the socialists) are indistinguishable from the men (the capitalists) who they originally overthrew. That's how.



...



Returning to this hours later, I am amused at your lengthy additions going on about how Orwell demonstrates the terrible flaws of socialism and/or communism and so forth. And he does. Socialism, instituted in a relatively pure form in order to do away with the sorts of oppression and inequity that can be seen under capitalism, will inevitably produce oppression and inequity of a very similar sort.



Thing is, the political left is not, for the most part, advocating full-blown socialism, but rather an economic system that is just a bit more socialistic than the one we have now. It seems that most of the people in this country would agree that some collectivist policies are appropriate - few argue against having any sort of publicly funded schools or roads, at any rate - and so the source of disagreement is only where the appropriate balance lies between capitalist and socialist policies. Trying to single out the left as though it is they and only they who must justify themselves in light of works like Animal Farm or 1984 is nonsensical for that reason.



As for your references to Hitler and Stalin, I have to say it is impressive that you are willing to invoke their names as an argument against socialism, and then claim that it doesn't really matter whether they were socialists or not, because people followed them. It's like saying democracy is bad because many a middle east despot claims to have been democratically elected, or that you shouldn't eat fruit because tobacco companies once claimed that cigarettes were good for you. And what's more, it still doesn't have jack all to do with the left, most of whom have never seriously claimed to be socialists to begin with.

Answer 5

Orwell was discussing totalitarianism; which is apolitical. It's totally about power and nothing else.



He himself was a democratic socialist. A leftist, by all accounts.



"Oh yea, I can see it now, the follow up to 1984, a world where PEPSI executives are torturing consumers with rat-cages and the COKE deviants are made to love Big Brother again.



It's just such tortured comparisons that poison the world. No one is worried about totalitarian capitalist-burg-oli...blah blah, any more than they are worried about Buddhist suicide bombers. There just isnt any such species!!"



Why don't you look into Coke's activities in Guatemala and Colombia and ask yourself if that is all that far out of the realm of Orwell's writings.



Or if you want Orwell's real feelings about capitalism just read "The Road to Wigan Pier"... I mean that's pretty cut-and-dry. You, as a capitalist, actually have bigger job to justify Orwell's writings than a socialist does.



Or, best option of all, you could have even an inkling of what you're talking about before you open your ignorant mouth.

Answer 6

Orwell was a socialist and fought on behalf of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, he was definitely a leftist. Animal Farm is about totalitarianism. Totalitarians come in various guises, whether Soviets or fascists or monarchies or capitalist bourgeois oligarchies

Answer 7

Leftist quote Orwell because, mainly, the Big Brother thing. That is the government and the "party" in power is irrelevant in the story. It is about control: Elite vs. Pawns. We are evolving into that now.

Answer 8

To answer your question;



Honestly I believe leftists believe the concept can work if the right people are in charge, but they fail to grasp the concept of the system is corrupt because of the faults of men and the changes that having power holds....Like the pigs in Animal Farm once in power they become corrupt and become the people they despised to begin with....

Answer 9

His message was what has happened over the years, he observed early on that war means defense,etc.

Answer 10

Most leftists can't tell you how many people we have in Congress or the Senate. They are indoctrinated daily.



They don't believe in communism in America because they don't know what it is.

Answer 11

Orwell was, for some Godforsaken reason, anti-communist but pro-socialism. They like the man, but rationalize his message as a "failed attempt that can still work".

Answer 12

This mostly accounts for non elected liberals. Elected liberals use invasive technology to its fullest. The eye in the sky. Perhaps they got the memo that its all the same once your on top

Answer 13

You are fallaciously grouping all leftists with collectivist dictatorships. That's like grouping all rightists with Hitler.

Answer 14

Double-think keeps them going.



War is peace.