How Orwell Got It Wrong

By Patrick
13 Dec 14 at 02:00 PM
In: What I'm Reading

I’ve been reading the monumental four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell. It is outstanding. The average educated reader (if such a thing exists anymore) probably remembers Orwell for 1984 and Animal Farm and perhaps she vaguely remembers reading a couple of essays in college, “Politics and the English Language” and “A Hanging,” say.

This is a shame. While 1984 is one of the most important works of the twentieth century, Orwell’s essays are his greatest contribution to English literature … and not just the famous ones. There is something to be gleaned from every page of this fine collection. Even random letters offer real insight into Orwell’s worldview.

Take #26 in Volume Four: Letter to the Reverend Herbert Rogers, in which Orwell explains a review he had recently written of a book called The Democrat at the Supper Table. The book seems to be a series of contrived conversations wherein the narrator, a conservative Catholic, rails against the modern world and its various evil “-isms” (“Communism, feminism, atheism, pacifism”).

Orwell lambastes G.K. Chesterton’s feudal worldview and presents the author of this work, Colm Brogan, as merely a slight update on Chesterton and his antiquated notions. Orwell paints the author as hopelessly outdated for his rejection of planning and government regulation. I found one line especially moving, in that it’s prediction proved so wrong. In this 1946 letter he says: “I don’t myself feel at all certain that this civilisation will survive, but if it does survive I think it is quite obvious that it will not revert again towards economic chaos and individualism.” By “economic chaos” it is clear that Orwell means laissez faire capitalism. Orwell could not conceive of a deregulated world of capitalism run amok, where narcissistic individuals put their own petty pleasures above any working sense of ethical behavior.

It’s not a slight against Orwell. Orwell died in 1950. And while John Maynard Keynes died the year this letter was written, the school of economic thought that bears his name dominated economic thinking and planning for decades. Keynesian theory supported robust government intervention in guiding western economies. By the 80s his views started to fall out of favor as conservatives pushed for limited regulation and minimal state intervention. Then the global economy almost collapsed several years ago.

Keynesianism started to look pretty good once again. I’d like to think what Orwell said almost 70 years ago might prove true once again. But I’m doubtful.

Image by Moses King (scan of postcard) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons