Intellectual freedom versus economic centralization 1984 and George Orwell ’ s

TO THE END of his life, George Orwell remained a socialist. In “Why I Write” (1946), we find his programmatic statement: “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 understand it.”* Orwell had fiercely attacked the attitude of capitalist society towards the poor in Down and Our in Paris and London (1933) and in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). He always made a point of wearing the blue shirt of the French working class.2 And in the last summer of Orwell’s life (1949) he enrolled his adopted son Richard in the anarchist colony at W h i t e ~ a y . ~ Of 1984 specifically, Orwell wrote to Francis Henson: “My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter). . . .‘I4 Yet if Orwell remained in his own mind a man of the Left (indeed, the far Left), a paradox appears if we survey the references to the capitalist “past” in his last and greatest work. The capitalist “past” of 1984 is, of course, to a great extent Orwell’s present. And seen from the nightmare world of Ingsoc, the capitalist “past” has much to recommend it in fact, just about everything to recommend it. 1 There are two outstanding characteristics of this vanished “past.” First, material life for the average person had been far better in the “past” than under Ingsoc. Examples are numerous: the wide availability of real coffee, real sugar, real chocolate, good beer, wine, fruit, solidlybuilt furniture, elevators that ~ o r k e d . ~ Above all: the wide availability of wellmade books and even objects kept for their intrinsic beauty alone.6 Second, in the “past” there had existed individual freedom: freedom of thought, human rights, even freedom of speech. The total suppression of human freedom under lngsoc is, of course, the main theme of 1984 and needs no detailing. But that such freedom had once existed Orwell is careful in the novel to make clear: we are not dealing here with mere theoretical human possibilities. In the “past,” then, it had been usual for people to read books in the cozy and complete privacy of their own homes without fear of the Thought Police.’ In the “past” people had kept diaries, to record events and thoughts for themselves: this had been taken for granted.* In the “past” human relationships had existed naturally, without constant state interference which is why the life of intimacy and honesty lived by Winston Smith and Julia above the old