[HN Gopher] All Is Orwell
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All Is Orwell
Author : lermontov
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-05-24 17:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newcriterion.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newcriterion.com)
| santaclaranews wrote:
| Even Orwell couldn't have predicted this fascist totalitarian
| state we are currently living in.
|
| The worst thing is 90% of the people on this site are begging for
| it. Unbelievable.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" 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."_ -- George Orwell
| mrkstu wrote:
| The question remains unanswered, whether democratic socialism
| is, in the long-term, compatible with avoiding totalitarianism.
| aplummer wrote:
| I mean what do you call long term. There are a lot of
| democratic socialist countries that don't even seem to be
| eeking towards totalitarianism. If anything, the EU is going
| the other way.
| Animats wrote:
| The first half of the 20th century was when none of the economic
| systems worked. Capitalism had the Depression, communism wasn't
| working all that well, and near-anarchy collapsed quite rapidly.
|
| We still don't know how to make an economic system that works
| anywhere near optimum, but have so much excess productive
| capacity that it doesn't matter as much.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| He wrote what he knew, and he dedicated time to knowing more.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >By my unscientific count, more words have been written about
| George Orwell than any other writer in the English language
| besides Dickens and Shakespeare.
|
| James Joyce.
| yakubin wrote:
| You're right. But I'm afraid J. K. Rowling beats both Orwell
| and Dickens in this contest. :)
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=Orwell,Rowling,Sh...
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I suppose it depends on whether you, like the author of the
| linked article, implicitly define "words written about" as
| synonymous with "the flow of publications", translated to
| sales of mainstream hard-copy published books. Google Trends
| is one way, sure, but there's also Fanfiction.net, which
| contains some 8,932 entries in the Harry Potter category.
| Some of those are compilations, some are just a couple
| thousand words, but many are super-novels at hundreds of
| thousands of words. You don't have to do much math to realize
| that's orders of magnitude larger than five biographies and
| 'several' publishers eyeing the 20-year expiration.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I think the internet favors newer books, as most people
| favor books by authors that are contemporaneous with them,
| and the internet allows all that writing that in previous
| generations would have been ephemeral and have a very short
| distribution to perhaps have greater permanence (perhaps
| not) but definitely a much wider distribution.
| billytetrud wrote:
| The article talks about how contradictory Orwell was, and lists a
| bunch of examples. But I don't think a single example shows any
| contradiction at all. It simply showed that Orwell didn't live
| his life in black and white.
| banannaise wrote:
| I think all of this says a lot more about the people who try to
| write about Orwell than it does about Orwell. He was not
| exactly a "both sides have their merits" sort of person. The
| guy literally joined a militia to throw grenades at fascists.
|
| You only find contraditions in his life if you try to apply
| tests of ideological purity rather than trying to meet him
| where he was.
| billytetrud wrote:
| Definitely
| correct_horse wrote:
| I had the same reaction. I decided that those were examples
| that subverted the author's expectations instead of examples of
| contradiction.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Could anyone summarize what the author is likely to mean by this
| part:
|
| > Why, then, did he determine that it was a fight worth fighting?
| Bravely, and at some cost to his health, he fought an unwinnable
| war for a unrealizable cause. But he still believed it was right
| to have fought and to have gone on encouraging others to continue
| doing so. Despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, the
| issue, in his view, was simple: "Shall the common man be pushed
| back into the mud, or shall he not?"
|
| > This explanation, entirely bereft of historical and cultural
| context, is bound to strike anyone half familiar with the history
| of the conflict as simplistic in the extreme, even simple-minded.
| Orwell wrote: "I myself believe, perhaps on insufficient grounds,
| that the common man will win his fight sooner or later . . . .
| That was the real issue of the Spanish war . . . and perhaps of
| other wars to come."
|
| I mean, it's fair to say that any one sentence summary of a war
| is going to be somewhat simplistic, but if one side has
| monarchists, fascists and military dictators on it, then it seems
| reasonable to me. Just the way the author writes it, I feel I
| should know of some alternative take that it seems like I don't.
|
| What do the "mountains of evidence to the contrary" suggest (in
| this author's view)? Presumably something along the lines of
| fascism being better than risking communism, which seems to a
| strangely recurring historical motif.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Because a unified 'side of the common man' is an illusion. The
| article even explicitly mentions how Stalinist communists later
| on brutally suppressed the POUM, the group of communists Orwell
| served with, even though they were 'on the same side'.
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| The Russian civil war after the 1917 revolutions had
| something like a dozen different socialist factions fighting
| each other. There's plenty to disagree about (to the point of
| going to war) even if you agree on "big picture" stuff.
| goatlover wrote:
| The author claims Orwell had plenty of evidence the conflict
| wasn't winnable, which means it's a waste of life to fight it.
| Also that collectivism would have produced a worse tyranny, and
| potentially endangered representative democracy in Western
| Europe, given Spain would have had close ties to Moscow.
|
| The thesis of the article is that Orwell is admired so much by
| all political sides because of his contradictions. He was
| against fascism, but he also recognized totalitarian tendencies
| in communism. Thus the line about some animals being more equal
| than others in Animal Farm.
| gelert wrote:
| Instead Spain became a fascist power with close ties to
| Berlin. Hardly less of a threat to representative democracy.
| Spain was a dictatorship until 1970.
|
| Collectivism might have also produced tyranny but it's not a
| good thing that a fascist won.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| But loss would have not been good for representative
| democracy either in Spain. People speak now as if Western
| Europe is some bastion of Democracy, Spain and Portugal were
| not within living memory.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| We allowed the end of privacy in exchange of our egos to not be
| hurt. I hope it's worth it.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >How to account for the enduring interest in Orwell's life and
| work?
|
| I actually have a fairly uncharitable take on why he's so popular
| in the English speaking world. One reason is Orwell's inherent
| technophobia and parochialism which is arguably the dominant
| theme in American and English speculative fiction, what Leo Marx
| dubbed 'the Machine in the Garden' myth. It's about the idea of
| modernity, industrialization and urban society intruding an
| idealized agrarian culture. You find in in LOTR, Brave New World,
| 1984 with its waxing over natural chocolate and ink-pencils.
| Asimov addresses this in his pretty scathing critique of the
| book[1]. It also still pops up in virtually every English-
| language piece of dystopian fiction.
|
| Another reason is the political aspect of his work in the US in
| particular. Orwell's politics was to a large degree a personal
| feud with Stalinism due to his experiences in the Spanish civil
| war. This unorthodox critique of Soviet communism coming from a
| socialist made him pretty much the ideal figure in the anti-
| communist discourse of US 20th century politics on both sides of
| the political spectrum. Rebellious enough to appeal to the
| liberal side, but actually pushing deeply conventional,
| conservative ideas. Also mirrored in Hitchens personal
| trajectory, who was a big admirer of Orwell.
|
| [1]http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > state capitalism
|
| An interesting term not heard much nowadays. The Economist
| applied it to China's governance model, back in 2012:
|
| https://www.economist.com/special-report/2012/01/21/the-visi...
| Animats wrote:
| Now Britain is moving towards state capitalism, with "Great
| British Railways". This is in the tradition of British "lemon
| socialism" - have the government run the troubled industries.
| In the 1950s, the government owned the steel, coal, and rail
| industries.
|
| "How Asia Works", by Joe Studwell, is worth reading. How East
| Asia moved into the 21st century is detailed, country by
| country. There were two startup phases: 1) Fix agriculture so
| it doesn't take most of the workforce, 2) Get export industries
| going. Countries which got those two right did well, and those
| which did not, didn't. Getting it wrong often involved the
| military running businesses, usually for the benefit of
| generals. The "Asian tigers" are now past that. It's not as
| clear on what the next phase is.
|
| China has formal five year plans. Currently, the 14th five year
| plan, 2021-2025, is in progress. Unlike the USSR's five year
| plans, China's plans from the Sixth Plan (1981-1985) forward
| have been generally successful. The current plan has, as usual,
| a number of components. One is to catch up in some specific
| areas - aircraft, advanced semiconductors. That's coming along
| well. Another is "dual circulation" - building up internal
| demand and not being so dependent on exports.
|
| The US generally avoids the government actively running
| businesses, but it's not that rare in other countries.
|
| [1] https://groveatlantic.com/book/how-asia-works
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Lemon socialism" is such a good phrase. I do sometimes find
| it odd how the UK has absolutely zero recognizable
| "industrial policy".
| not2b wrote:
| You hear it a lot from left-anarchists who oppose Communism as
| practiced by the USSR, and they mean it differently from the
| way the Economist means it. They would say that under the USSR,
| the state owned the factories but the workers had no more power
| than they do in a western capitalist country: like the ending
| of "Animal Farm".
| opaque wrote:
| Interesting article, but some of the arguments are pretty weak.
|
| >"Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and
| war."
|
| >"Capitalism led to the creation of monopolies ..., to food
| lines, and to war"
|
| The author seems to think these two statements are a damming
| contradiction, which proves
|
| > "When it came to recognizing unpalatable truths, it seems that
| Orwell had as much difficulty as the next man."
|
| However, both Capitalism and Communism can be flawed (and are),
| there is no contradiction here. The ability to critique both is
| probably why Orwell's work endures.
| dang wrote:
| I read the article and had the same feeling. The details are
| interesting but the arguments seem weak, particularly his
| argument about how self-contradictory Orwell was.
| mesofile wrote:
| > "It is often the contradictions in an individual's
| character that give it distinction; in the case of Orwell,
| these were more marked and more numerous than in most, but it
| is not clear whether he was even aware of them."
|
| I gave up right there, this was so grossly condescending to
| its subject. Orwell was not aware of his own contradictions?
| Has the author ever actually read any Orwell?
| godelski wrote:
| I think they also got confused with the differences between
| communism, socialism, social democracy, and democracy.
| Granted we often conflate these terms but there are
| differences, especially in authority and where that power
| lies or who it belongs to. Orwell strikes me as a person
| who was afraid of authority and how power corrupts, or how
| quickly it _can_ corrupt. Seems like a good reason to
| criticize communism. Seems like also a good reason to be
| afraid of the status quo. But you can also be critical of
| authority and think some is necessary. I think many for a
| long time have sought to find the balance of authority and
| democracy. I don 't think anyone has found the solution, if
| one exists.
| godelski wrote:
| I think it has to deal with how people think of optimization
| problems. Many people think there are global solutions. What
| we've learned over the last 200 years is that most problems are
| non-convex, lie in high dimensions, have long and coupled
| causal chains, are long-tailed, not-gaussian, non-zero summed
| (many positive, many negative), and are probabilistic in
| nature, but we assume the opposite of all these things (mostly
| due to approximations).
|
| Needless to say, things are complicated. It's why we created
| specialization in the first place, but at the same time we
| expect people to be experts in many subjects (generalists).
| Because of this thinking many people will assume someone is
| being contradictory when they can criticize different things.
| The nature of reality is complex. No matter how you side on
| complicated issues there are reasons to critique different
| sides (Israel/Palestine, China/US,
| Communism/Socialism/Capitalism/xism, and so on). Simplifying
| things just causes us to argue over things we have no
| qualifications to argue over, but we'll do it with self-
| righteous indignation instead of as a way to learn or update
| our views. This is strange because arguing, debate, criticism,
| and self reflection are so important to democracies. It is far
| more important to critique your own philosophies (the ones you
| are fighting for) than those you oppose, since those are the
| things you have control over the direction of.
|
| Sometimes it isn't about contradictions, sometimes (most of the
| times) we're just dumb and over simplifying.
| switchbak wrote:
| Increasingly I think arguments are in public and recorded for
| posterity, making the social cost of a mistake (or being
| poorly informed, etc) much higher. Given that, I think we're
| seeing many arguments that are more about group belonging and
| performance rather than a genuine effort to learn via debate
| and dialog.
|
| Throw in some radical oversimplifications and that's a pretty
| strong recipe for polarization. One that's actively
| cultivated and amplified due to media profit incentives.
| Unfortunately it's a vicious cycle that seems to make us
| dumber and oversimplify even more.
| [deleted]
| Voline wrote:
| Those two statements are only in contradiction if you believe
| there are only two choices for how to organize a society: A Red
| one and a White one -- and both built on hierarchical power.
| Orwell clearly didn't believe that. As he wrote:
|
| "Had I gone to Spain with no political affiliation at all I
| should probably have joined the International Column and should
| no doubt by this time have had a bullet in the back for being
| "politically unreliable", or at least have been in jail. If I
| had understood the situation a bit better I should probably
| have joined the Anarchists."
|
| - George Orwell, "Letter to Jack Common [October? 1937]", in
| _The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George
| Orwell, Volume 1: An Age Like This, 1920-1940_ , eds. Sonia
| Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcournt Brace Jovanovich,
| 1968), 289.
| padobson wrote:
| I completely agree. His review [0] of Hayek's The Road to
| Serfdom [1] illustrates his capacity for nuance combined with
| his willingness to face those unpalatable truths.
|
| As a sample, he was a socialist who also wrote this:
|
| _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 dreamed
| of._
|
| [0] https://maudestavern.com/2008/10/09/george-orwell-review/
| (Not sure where to find the original, but I've read it several
| times, and this looks like a faithful copy)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The article also quotes this line, the next paragraph for
| context:
|
| > Professor Hayek is also probably right in saying that in
| this country the intellectuals are more totalitarian-minded
| than the common people. But he does not see, or will not
| admit, that a return to 'free' competition means for the
| great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more
| irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with
| competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek
| denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly,
| but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast
| majority of people would far rather have State regimentation
| than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism
| is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the
| matter.
|
| I'm not sure why more democracy doesn't solve both issues,
| while retaining the benefits of both, which seems to be where
| most modern nations are broadly headed, in fits and starts.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Coordination problems are really hard to solve.
|
| Most of the world has settled on capitalism because it
| solves a specific class of coordination problems really
| well, and targeted intervention can stave off the
| externalities enough to make the system bearable.
|
| Slumps and unemployment aren't, like, an avoidable curse,
| but they're pretty damn hard to avoid, and so far no system
| has had real success.
| pie420 wrote:
| But you're wrong. If you look at economic records going
| back to the middle ages, you can see the effect of
| Keynesian economics, central banks, social safety nets,
| social security systems, etc. Have had on reducing slumps
| and unemployment. We've gotten very, very good at it. In
| the 1600's, there were great depression-style crashes
| every 5 years or so. Despite massive wars, pandemics,
| geopolitics, and automation, economic slumps and
| unemployment have been incredibly moderate the past 90
| years or so, and they have gotten milder as a function of
| time over that timeframe.
| panta wrote:
| In my view it's because democracy is somewhat orthogonal to
| capitalism or collectivism, and masses are easily
| controlled anyway (they can live with the illusion of being
| in control). A democracy loses something central to the
| concept when a restricted group has a very concentrated
| power (be it political, as in the case of pure
| collectivism, or economic, as with pure capitalism). In my
| opinion there can't be true democracy when there are strong
| imbalances in a society, even when there are regular
| democratic elections.
| chalst wrote:
| Orwell wrote that review at pretty much the same time as
| the Bretton Woods system of international monetary exchange
| was implemented, which the largest single piece of the
| Keynesian economic foundations for 25 years of economic
| growth with a high level of stability and a low level of
| inequality in the US-centric world.
|
| There were good reasons why Bretton Woods failed in 1970,
| but the subsequent ascendance of Hayekian neoliberalism
| doesn't look so good 40 years on.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > Hayekian neoliberalism
|
| That very concept is a nonsensical. No Hayekian economist
| or ideologue calls themselves neoliberal.
| pnin wrote:
| Hayek himself used the term "neo-liberal" to describe the
| "movement" of liberalism to which he belonged [0]. The
| historian Quinn Slobodian [1] advocates using the term
| "neoliberal" for the intellectual history surrounding the
| Mont Pelerin Society. In this context, it is sensible to
| distinguish between a Hayekian strand and, say, Wilhelm
| Ropke's version of neoliberalism.
|
| [0] The Freeman, 1952. https://mises.org/library/freeman-
| july-1952-b
|
| [1] Globalists. The End of Empire and the Birth of
| Neoliberalism.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The problem with a lot of conservative journos is their
| inability to make the distinction between left-wing political
| thoughts, tending to lump everything under "socialism". This
| renders them unable to understand why Orwell was a left-wing
| anti-communist and in particular anti Stalin.
|
| This is like dealing with the kind of writer who thinks that
| java and javascript are the same thing.
|
| Similarly part of what makes Orwell both interesting and
| entertaining to read is him skewering some of the excesses of
| the left of his time, _without fundamentally being hostile to
| egalitarianism_. It 's criticism because he wants a better
| left, not a non-existent one.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| > anti-communist
|
| I don't think he was. He was anti-Stalinist, stemming from
| anti-totalitarianism, but I don't he was generally hostile to
| communism.
|
| > without fundamentally being hostile to egalitarianism
|
| Which puts it much less forcefully that you could. Orwell was
| a socialist. He fought with the Marxist POUM in the Spanish
| Civil War. He was fundamentally pro-egalitarianism and
| dedicated his life in a big way to egalitarianism as realised
| by Socialism.
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