Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

claim that we are fighting this war for the protection of peaceful

  peoples against Fascist aggression.

  Is it impossibly hopeful to think that such a policy as this could get a

  following in England? A year ago, even six months ago, it would have

  been, but not now. Moreover-and this is the peculiar opportunity of this

  moment--it could be given the necessary publicity. There is now a

  considerable weekly press, with a circulation of millions, which would be

  ready to popularise--if not EXACTLY the programme I have sketched above,

  at any rate SOME policy along those lines. There are even three or four

  daily papers which would be prepared to give it a sympathetic hearing.

  That is the distance we have travelled in the last six months.

  But is such a policy realisable? That depends entirely on ourselves.

  Some of the points I have suggested are of the kind that could be carried

  out immediately, others would take years or decades and even then would

  not be perfectly achieved. No political programme is ever carried out in

  its entirety. But what matters is that that or something like it should

  be our declared policy. It is always the DIRECTION that counts. It is of

  course quite hopeless to expect the present Government to pledge itself

  to any policy that implies turning this war into a revolutionary war. It

  is at best a government of compromise, with Churchill riding two horses

  like a circus acrobat. Before such measures as limitation of incomes

  become even thinkable, there will have to be a complete shift of power

  away from the old ruling class. If during this winter the war settles

  into another stagnant period, we ought in my opinion to agitate for a

  General Election, a thing which the Tory Party machine will make frantic

  efforts to prevent. But even without an election we can get the

  government we want, provided that we want it urgently enough. A real

  shove from below will accomplish it. As to who will be in that government

  when it comes, I make no guess. I only know that the right men will be

  there when the people really want them, for it is movements that make

  leaders and not leaders movements.

  Within a year, perhaps even within six months, if we are still

  unconquered, we shall see the rise of something that has never existed

  before, a specifically ENGLISH Socialist movement. Hitherto there has

  been only the Labour Party, which was the creation of the working class

  but did not aim at any fundamental change, and Marxism, which was a

  German theory interpreted by Russians and unsuccessfully transplanted to

  England. There was nothing that really touched the heart of the English

  people. Throughout its entire history the English Socialist movement has

  never produced a song with a catchy tune--nothing like LA MARSEILLAISE or

  LA CUCURACHA, for instance. When a Socialist movement native to England

  appears, the Marxists, like all others with a vested interest in the

  past, will be its bitter enemies. Inevitably they will denounce it as

  "Fascism". Already it is customary among the more soft-boiled

  intellectuals of the Left to declare that if we fight against the Nazis

  we shall "go Nazi" ourselves. They might almost equally well say that if

  we fight against Negroes we shall turn black. To "go Nazi" we should have

  to have the history of Germany behind us. Nations do not escape from

  their past merely by making a revolution. An English Socialist government

  will transform the nation from top to bottom, but it will still bear all

  over it the unmistakable marks of our own civilisation, the peculiar

  civilisation which I discussed earlier in this book.

  It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will abolish the House

  of Lords, but quite probably will not abolish the Monarchy. It will leave

  anachronisms and loose ends everywhere, the judge in his ridiculous

  horsehair wig and the lion and the unicorn on the soldier's cap-buttons.

  It will not set up any explicit class dictatorship. It will group itself

  round the old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade

  unions, but it will draw into it most of the middle class and many of the

  younger sons of the bourgeoisie. Most of its directing brains will come

  from the new indeterminate class of skilled workers, technical experts,

  airmen, scientists, architects and journalists, the people who feel at

  home in the radio and ferro-concrete age. But it will never lose touch

  with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above

  the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial

  beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open

  revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the

  spoken and written word. Political parties with different names will

  still exist, revolutionary sects will still be publishing their

  newspapers and making as little impression as ever. It will disestablish

  the Church, but will not persecute religion. It will retain a vague

  reverence for the Christian moral code, and from time to time will refer

  to England as "a Christian country". The Catholic Church will war against

  it, but the Nonconformist sects and the bulk of the Anglican Church will

  be able to come to terms with it. It will show a power of assimilating

  the past which will shock foreign observers and sometimes make them doubt

  whether any revolution has happened.

  But all the same it will have done the essential thing. It will have

  nationalised industry, scaled down incomes, set up a classless

  educational system. Its real nature will be apparent from the hatred

  which the surviving rich men of the world will feel for it. It will aim

  not at disintegrating the Empire but at turning it into a federation of

  Socialist states, freed not so much from the British flag as from the

  money-lender, the dividend-drawer and the woodenheaded British official.

  Its war strategy will be totally different from that of any

  property-ruled state, because it will not be afraid of the revolutionary

  after-effects when any existing r�gime is brought down. It will not have

  the smallest scruple about attacking hostile neutrals or stirring up

  native rebellion in enemy colonies. It will fight in such a way that even

  if it is beaten its memory will be dangerous to the victor, as the memory

  of the French Revolution was dangerous to Metternich's Europe. The

  dictators will fear it as they could not fear the existing British

  r�gime, even if its military strength were ten times what it is.

  But at this moment, when the drowsy life of England has barely altered,

  and the offensive contrast of wealth and poverty still exists everywhere,

  even amid the bombs, why do I dare to say that all these things "will"

  happen?

  Because the time has come when one can predict the future in terms of an

  "either--or". Either we turn this war into a revolutionary war (I do not

  say that our policy will be EXACTLY what I have indicated above--merely

  that it will be along those general lines) or we lose it, and much more

  besides. Quite soon it will be possible to say definitely that our feet

  are set upon one path
or the other. But at any rate it is certain that

  with our present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces,

  physical, moral or intellectual, cannot be mobilised.

  iii.

  Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the

  opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is

  always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same. It is the

  bridge between the future and the past. No real revolutionary has ever

  been an internationalist.

  During the past twenty years the negative, FAIN�ANT outlook which has

  been fashionable among English left-wingers, the sniggering of the

  intellectuals at patriotism and physical courage, the persistent

  effort to chip away English morale and spread a hedonistic,

  what-do-I-get-out-of-it attitude to life, has done nothing but harm. It

  would have been harmful even if we had been living in the squashy League

  of Nations universe that these people imagined. In an age of Fuehrers and

  bombing planes it was a disaster. However little we may like it,

  toughness is the price of survival. A nation trained to think

  hedonistically cannot survive amid peoples who work like slaves and breed

  like rabbits, and whose chief national industry is war. English

  Socialists of nearly all colours have wanted to make a stand against

  Fascism, but at the same time they have aimed at making their own

  countrymen unwarlike. They have failed, because in England traditional

  loyalties are stronger than new ones. But in spite of all the

  "anti-Fascist" heroics of the left-wing press, what chance should we have

  stood when the real struggle with Fascism came, if the average Englishman

  had been the kind of creature that the NEW STATESMAN, the DAILY WORKER or

  even the NEWS CHRONICLE wished to make him?

  Up to 1935 virtually all English left-wingers were vaguely pacifist.

  After 1935 the more vocal of them flung themselves eagerly into the

  Popular Front movement, which was simply an evasion of the whole problem

  posed by Fascism. It set out to be "anti-Fascist" in a purely negative

  way--"against" Fascism without being "for" any discoverable policy-and

  underneath it lay the flabby idea that when the time came the Russians

  would do our fighting for us. It is astonishing how this illusion fails

  to die. Every week sees its spate of letters to the press, pointing out

  that if we had a government with no Tories in it the Russians could

  hardly avoid coming round to our side. Or we are to publish high-sounding

  war-aims (VIDE books like UNSER KAMPF, A HUNDRED MILLION ALLIES--IF WE

  CHOOSE, etc), whereupon the European populations will infallibly rise on

  our behalf. It is the same idea all the time-look abroad for your

  inspiration, get someone else to do your fighting for you. Underneath it

  lies the frightful inferiority complex of the English intellectual, the

  belief that the English are no longer a martial race, no longer capable

  of enduring.

  In truth there is no reason to think that anyone will do our fighting for

  us yet awhile, except the Chinese, who have been doing it for three years

  already. [Note: Written before the outbreak of the war in Greece.

  (Author's footnote.)] The Russians may be driven to fight on our side by

  the fact of a direct attack, but they have made it clear enough that they

  will not stand up to the German army if there is any way of avoiding it.

  In any case they are not likely to be attracted by the spectacle of a

  left-wing government in England. The present Russian r�gime must almost

  certainly be hostile to any revolution in the West. The subject peoples

  of Europe will rebel when Hitler begins to totter, but not earlier. Our

  potential allies are not the Europeans but on the one hand the Americans,

  who will need a year to mobilise their resources even if Big Business can

  be brought to heel, and on the other hand the coloured peoples, who

  cannot be even sentimentally on our side till our own revolution has

  started. For a long time, a year, two years, possibly three years,

  England has got to be the shock-absorber of the world. We have got to

  face bombing, hunger, overwork, influenza, boredom and treacherous peace

  offers. Manifestly it is a time to stiffen morale, not to weaken it.

  Instead of taking the mechanically anti-British attitude which is usual

  on the Left, it is better to consider what the world would really be like

  if the English-speaking culture perished. For it is childish to suppose

  that the other English-speaking countries, even the USA, will be

  unaffected if Britain is conquered.

  Lord Halifax, and all his tribe, believe that when the war is over things

  will be exactly as they were before. Back to the crazy pavement of

  Versailles, back to "democracy", i.e. capitalism, back to dole queues and

  the Rolls-Royce cars, back to the grey top hats and the sponge-bag

  trousers, IN SAECULA SAECULORUM. It is of course obvious that nothing of

  the kind is going to happen. A feeble imitation of it might just possibly

  happen in the case of a negotiated peace, but only for a short while.

  LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism is dead. [Note, below] The choice lies between

  the kind of collective society that Hitler will set up and the kind that

  can arise if he is defeated.

  [Note: It is interesting to notice that Mr Kennedy, USA Ambassador in

  London, remarked on his return to New York in October 1940 that as a

  result of the war "democracy is finished". By "democracy", of course, he

  meant private capitalism. (Author's footnote.)]

  If Hitler wins this war he will consolidate his rule over Europe, Africa

  and the Middle East, and if his armies have not been too greatly

  exhausted beforehand, he will wrench vast territories from Soviet Russia.

  He will set up a graded caste-society in which the German HERRENVOLK

  ("master race" or "aristocratic race") will rule over Slavs and other

  lesser peoples whose job it will be to produce low-priced agricultural

  products. He will reduce the coloured peoples once and for all to

  outright slavery. The real quarrel of the Fascist powers with British

  imperialism is that they know that it is disintegrating. Another twenty

  years along the present line of development, and India will be a peasant

  republic linked with England only by voluntary alliance. The "semi-apes"

  of whom Hitler speaks with such loathing will be flying aeroplanes and

  manufacturing machine-guns. The Fascist dream of a slave empire will be

  at an end. On the other hand, if we are defeated we simply hand over our

  own victims to new masters who come fresh to the job and have not

  developed any scruples.

  But more is involved than the fate of the coloured peoples. Two

  incompatible visions of life are fighting one another. "Between democracy

  and totalitarianism," says Mussolini, "there can be no compromise." The

  two creeds cannot even, for any length of time, live side by side. So

  long as democracy exists, even in its very imperfect English form,

  totalitarianism is in deadly danger. The whole English-speaking world is

  haunted by the idea of human equality, and though it would be simply a

/>   lie to say that either we or the Americans have ever acted up to our

  professions, still, the IDEA is there, and it is capable of one day

  becoming a reality. From the English-speaking culture, if it does not

  perish, a society of free and equal human beings will ultimately arise.

  But it is precisely the idea of human equality--the "Jewish" or

  "Judaeo-Christian" idea of equality--that Hitler came into the world to

  destroy. He has, heaven knows, said so often enough. The thought of a

  world in which black men would be as good as white men and Jews treated

  as human beings brings him the same horror and despair as the thought of

  endless slavery brings to us.

  It is important to keep in mind how irreconcilable these two viewpoints

  are. Some time within the next year a pro-Hitler reaction within the

  left-wing intelligentsia is likely enough. There are premonitory signs of

  it already. Hitler's positive achievement appeals to the emptiness of

  these people, and, in the case of those with pacifist leanings, to their

  masochism. One knows in advance more or less what they will say. They

  will start by refusing to admit that British capitalism is evolving into

  something different, or that the defeat of Hitler can mean any more than

  a victory for the British and American millionaires. And from that they

  will proceed to argue that, after all, democracy is "just the same as" or

  "just as bad as" totalitarianism. There is NOT MUCH freedom of speech in

  England; therefore there is NO MORE than exists in Germany. To be on the

  dole is a horrible experience; therefore it is NO WORSE to be in the

  torture-chambers of the Gestapo. In general, two blacks make a white,

  half a loaf is the same as no bread.

  But in reality, whatever may be true about democracy and totalitarianism,

  it is not true that they are the same. It would not be true, even if

  British democracy were incapable of evolving beyond its present stage.

  The whole conception of the militarised continental state, with its

  secret police, its censored literature and its conscript labour, is

  utterly different from that of the loose maritime democracy, with its

  slums and unemployment, its strikes and party politics. It is the

  difference between land power and sea power, between cruelty and

  inefficiency, between lying and self-deception, between the SS man and

  the rent-collector. And in choosing between them one chooses not so much

  on the strength of what they now are as of what they are capable of

  becoming. But in a sense it is irrelevant whether democracy, at its

  higher or at its lowest, is "better" than totalitarianism. To decide that

  one would have to have access to absolute standards. The only question

  that matters is where one's real sympathies will lie when the pinch

  comes. The intellectuals who are so fond of balancing democracy against

  totalitarianism and "proving" that one is as bad as the other are simply

  frivolous people who have never been shoved up against realities. They

  show the same shallow misunderstanding of Fascism now, when they are

  beginning to flirt with it, as a year or two ago, when they were

  squealing against it. The question is not, "Can you make out a

  debating-society 'case' in favour of Hitler?" The question is, "Do you

  genuinely accept that case? Are you willing to submit to Hitler's rule?

  Do you want to see England conquered, or don't you?" It would be better

  to be sure on that point before frivolously siding with the enemy. For

  there is no such thing as neutrality in war; in practice one must help

  one side or the other.

  When the pinch comes, no one bred in the western tradition can accept the

  Fascist vision of life. It is important to realise that now, and to grasp

  what it entails. With all its sloth, hypocrisy and injustice, the

  English speaking civilisation is the only large obstacle in Hitler's path.

  It is a living contradiction of all the "infallible" dogmas of Fascism.