Catholic Church, etc--are judged before they are read, and in effect
before they are written. One knows in advance what reception they will
get in what papers. And yet, with a dishonesty that sometimes is not
even quarter-conscious, the pretence is kept up that genuinely literary
standards are being applied.
Of course, the invasion of literature by politics was bound to happen.
It must have happened, even if the special problem of totalitarianism
had never arisen, because we have developed a sort of compunction which
our grandparents did not have, an awareness of the enormous injustice
and misery of the world, and a guilt-stricken feeling that one ought to
be doing something about it, which makes a purely aesthetic attitude
towards life impossible. No one, now, could devote himself to literature
as single-mindedly as Joyce or Henry James. But unfortunately, to accept
political responsibility now means yielding oneself over to orthodoxies
and "party lines", with all the timidity and dishonesty that that
implies. As against the Victorian writers, we have the disadvantage of
living among clear-cut political ideologies and of usually knowing at a
glance what thoughts are heretical. A modern literary intellectual lives
and writes in constant dread--not, indeed, of public opinion in the wider
sense, but of public opinion within his own group. As a rule, luckily,
there is more than one group, but also at any given moment there is a
dominant orthodoxy, to offend against which needs a thick skin and
sometimes means cutting one's income in half for years on end.
Obviously, for about fifteen years past, the dominant orthodoxy,
especially among the young, has been "left". The key words are
"progressive", "democratic" and "revolutionary", while the labels which
you must at all costs avoid having gummed upon you are "bourgeois",
"reactionary" and "Fascist". Almost everyone nowadays, even the majority
of Catholics and Conservatives, is "progressive", or at least wishes to
be thought so. No one, so far as I know, ever describes himself as a
"bourgeois", just as no one literate enough to have heard the word ever
admits to being guilty of antisemitism. We are all of us good democrats,
anti-Fascist, anti-imperialist, contemptuous of class distinctions,
impervious to colour prejudice, and so on and so forth. Nor is there
much doubt that the present-day "left" orthodoxy is better than the
rather snobbish, pietistic Conservative orthodoxy which prevailed twenty
years ago, when the CRITERION and (on a lower level) the LONDON MERCURY
were the dominant literary magazines. For at the least its implied
objective is a viable form of society which large numbers of people
actually want. But it also has its own falsities which, because they
cannot be admitted, make it impossible for certain questions to be
seriously discussed.
The whole left-wing ideology, scientific and Utopian, was evolved by
people who had no immediate prospect of attaining power. It was,
therefore, an extremist ideology, utterly contemptuous of kings,
governments, laws, prisons, police forces, armies, flags, frontiers,
patriotism, religion, conventional morality, and, in fact, the whole
existing scheme of things. Until well within living memory the forces of
the Left in all countries were fighting against a tyranny which appeared
to be invincible, and it was easy to assume that if only THAT particular
tyranny--capitalism--could be overthrown, Socialism would follow.
Moreover, the Left had inherited from Liberalism certain distinctly
questionable beliefs, such as the belief that the truth will prevail and
persecution defeats itself, or that man is naturally good and is only
corrupted by his environment. This perfectionist ideology has persisted
in nearly all of us, and it is in the name of it that we protest when
(for instance) a Labour government votes huge incomes to the King's
daughters or shows hesitation about nationalising steel. But we have
also accumulated in our minds a whole series of unadmitted
contradictions, as a result of successive bumps against reality.
The first big bump was the Russian Revolution. For somewhat complex
reasons, nearly the whole of the English Left has been driven to accept
the Russian r�gime as "Socialist", while silently recognising that its
spirit and practice are quite alien to anything that is meant by
"Socialism" in this country. Hence there has arisen a sort of
schizophrenic manner of thinking, in which words like "democracy" can
bear two irreconcilable meanings, and such things as concentration camps
and mass deportations can be right and wrong simultaneously. The next
blow to the left-wing ideology was the rise of Fascism, which shook the
pacifism and internationalism of the Left without bringing about a
definite restatement of doctrine. The experience of German occupation
taught the European peoples something that the colonial peoples knew
already, namely, that class antagonisms are not all-important and that
there is such a thing as national interest. After Hitler it was
difficult to maintain seriously that "the enemy is in your own country"
and that national independence is of no value. But though we all know
this and act upon it when necessary, we still feel that to say it aloud
would be a kind of treachery. And finally, the greatest difficulty of
all, there is the fact that the Left is now in power and is obliged to
take responsibility and make genuine decisions.
Left governments almost invariably disappoint their supporters because,
even when the prosperity which they have promised is achievable, there
is always need of an uncomfortable transition period about which little
has been said beforehand. At this moment we see our own Government, in
its desperate economic straits, fighting in effect against its own past
propaganda. The crisis that we are now in is not a sudden unexpected
calamity, like an earthquake, and it was not caused by the war, but
merely hastened by it. Decades ago it could be foreseen that something
of this kind was going to happen. Ever since the nineteenth century our
national income, dependent partly on interest from foreign investments,
and on assured markets and cheap raw materials in colonial countries,
had been extremely precarious. It was certain that, sooner or later,
something would go wrong and we should be forced to make our exports
balance our imports: and when that happened the British standard of
living, including the working-class standard, was bound to fall, at least
temporarily. Yet the left-wing parties, even when they were vociferously
anti-imperialist, never made these facts clear. On occasion they were
ready to admit that the British workers had benefited, to some extent,
by the looting of Asia and Africa, but they always allowed it to appear
that we could give up our loot and yet in some way contrive to remain
prosperous. Quite largely, indeed, the workers were won over to
Socialism by being told that they were exploited, whereas the brute
truth was that, in world terms, they were exploiters. Now, to a
ll
appearances, the point has been reached when the working-class
living-standard CANNOT be maintained, let alone raised. Even if we
squeeze the rich out of existence, the mass of the people must either
consume less or produce more. Or am I exaggerating the mess we are in? I
may be, and I should be glad to find myself mistaken. But the point I
wish to make is that this question, among people who are faithful to the
Left ideology, cannot be genuinely discussed. The lowering of wages and
raising of working hours are felt to be inherently anti-Socialist
measures, and must therefore be dismissed in advance, whatever the
economic situation may be. To suggest that they may be unavoidable is
merely to risk being plastered with those labels that we are all
terrified of. It is far safer to evade the issue and pretend that we can
put everything right by redistributing the existing national income.
To accept an orthodoxy is always to inherit unresolved contradictions.
Take for instance the fact that all sensitive people are revolted by
industrialism and its products, and yet are aware that the conquest of
poverty and the emancipation of the working class demand not less
industrialisation, but more and more. Or take the fact that certain jobs
are absolutely necessary and yet are never done except under some kind
of coercion. Or take the fact that it is impossible to have a positive
foreign policy without having powerful armed forces. One could multiply
examples. In every such case there is a conclusion which is perfectly
plain but which can only be drawn if one is privately disloyal to the
official ideology. The normal response is to push the question,
unanswered, into a corner of one's mind, and then continue repeating
contradictory catchwords. One does not have to search far through the
reviews and magazines to discover the effects of this kind of thinking.
I am not, of course, suggesting that mental dishonesty is peculiar to
Socialists and left-wingers generally, or is commonest among them. It is
merely that acceptance of ANY political discipline seems to be
incompatible with literary integrity. This applies equally to movements
like Pacifism and Personalism, which claim to be outside the ordinary
political struggle. Indeed, the mere sound of words ending in '-ism' seems
to bring with it the smell of propaganda. Group loyalties are necessary,
and yet they are poisonous to literature, so long as literature is the
product of individuals. As soon as they are allowed to have any
influence, even a negative one, on creative writing, the result is not
only falsification, but often the actual drying-up of the inventive
faculties.
Well, then what? Do we have to conclude that it is the duty of every
writer to "keep out of politics"? Certainly not! In any case, as I have
said already, no thinking person can or does genuinely keep out of
politics, in an age like the present one. I only suggest that we should
draw a sharper distinction than we do at present between our political
and our literary loyalties, and should recognise that a willingness to
DO certain distasteful but necessary things does not carry with it any
obligation to swallow the beliefs that usually go with them. When a
writer engages in politics he should do so as a citizen, as a human
being, but not AS A WRITER. I do not think that he has the right, merely
on the score of his sensibilities, to shirk the ordinary dirty work of
politics. Just as much as anyone else, he should be prepared to deliver
lectures in draughty halls, to chalk pavements, to canvass voters, to
distribute leaflets, even to fight in civil wars if it seems necessary.
But whatever else he does in the service of his party, he should never
write for it. He should make it clear that his writing is a thing apart.
And he should be able to act co-operatively while, if he chooses,
completely rejecting the official ideology. He should never turn back
from a train of thought because it may lead to a heresy, and he should
not mind very much if his unorthodoxy is smelt out, as it probably will
be. Perhaps it is even a bad sign in a writer if he is not suspected of
reactionary tendencies today, just as it was a bad sign if he was not
suspected of Communist sympathies twenty years ago.
But does all this mean that a writer should not only refuse to be
dictated to by political bosses, but also that he should refrain from
writing ABOUT politics? Once again, certainly not! There is no reason
why he should not write in the most crudely political way, if he wishes
to. Only he should do so as an individual, an outsider, at the most an
unwelcome guerrilla on the flank of a regular army. This attitude is
quite compatible with ordinary political usefulness. It is reasonable,
for example, to be willing to fight in a war because one thinks the war
ought to be won, and at the same time to refuse to write war propaganda.
Sometimes, if a writer is honest, his writings and his political
activities may actually contradict one another. There are occasions when
that is plainly undesirable: but then the remedy is not to falsify one's
impulses, but to remain silent.
To suggest that a creative writer, in a time of conflict, must split his
life into two compartments, may seem defeatist or frivolous: yet in
practice I do not see what else he can do. To lock yourself up in an
ivory tower is impossible and undesirable. To yield subjectively, not
merely to a party machine, but even to a group ideology, is to destroy
yourself as a writer. We feel this dilemma to be a painful one, because
we see the need of engaging in politics while also seeing what a dirty,
degrading business it is. And most of us still have a lingering belief
that every choice, even every political choice, is between good and
evil, and that if a thing is necessary it is also right. We should, I
think, get rid of this belief, which belongs to the nursery. In politics
one can never do more than decide which of two evils is the lesser, and
there are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like
a devil or a lunatic. War, for example, may be necessary, but it is
certainly not right or sane. Even a General Election is not exactly a
pleasant or edifying spectacle. If you have to take part in such
things--and I think you do have to, unless you are armoured by old age or
stupidity or hypocrisy--then you also have to keep part of yourself
inviolate. For most people the problem does not arise in the same form,
because their lives are split already. They are truly alive only in
their leisure hours, and there is no emotional connection between their
work and their political activities. Nor are they generally asked, in
the name of political loyalty, to debase themselves as workers. The
artist, and especially the writer, is asked just that--in fact, it is
the only thing that Politicians ever ask of him. If he refuses, that
does not mean that he is condemned to inactivity. One half of him, which
in a sense is the whole of him, can act as resolutely, even as violently
if need be, as anyone else. But his writings, in so far as they have any
value, will always be the product of the saner self that stands aside,
records the things that are done and admits their necessity, but refuses
to be deceived as to their true nature.
REFLECTIONS ON GANDHI
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but
the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in
all cases. In Gandhi's case the questions on feels inclined to ask are:
to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity--by the consciousness of
himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking
empires by sheer spiritual power--and to what extent did he compromise
his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are
inseparable from coercion and fraud? To give a definite answer one would
have to study Gandhi's acts and writings in immense detail, for his whole
life was a sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant. But
this partial autobiography, which ends in the nineteen-twenties, is
strong evidence in his favor, all the more because it covers what he
would have called the unregenerate part of his life and reminds one that
inside the saint, or near-saint, there was a very shrewd, able person who
could, if he had chosen, have been a brilliant success as a lawyer, an
administrator or perhaps even a businessman.
At about the time when the autobiography first appeared I remember
reading its opening chapters in the ill-printed pages of some Indian
newspaper. They made a good impression on me, which Gandhi himself at
that time did not. The things that one associated with him--home-spun
cloth, "soul forces" and vegetarianism--were unappealing, and his
medievalist program was obviously not viable in a backward, starving,
over-populated country. It was also apparent that the British were making
use of him, or thought they were making use of him. Strictly speaking, as
a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert
himself to prevent violence--which, from the British point of view,
meant preventing any effective action whatever--he could be regarded as
"our man". In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude
of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to
repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists
who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How
reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi
himself says, "in the end deceivers deceive only themselves"; but at any
rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due
partly to the feeling that he was useful. The British Conservatives only
became really angry with him when, as in 1942, he was in effect turning
his non-violence against a different conqueror.
But I could see even then that the British officials who spoke of him
with a mixture of amusement and disapproval also genuinely liked and
admired him, after a fashion. Nobody ever suggested that he was corrupt,
or ambitious in any vulgar way, or that anything he did was actuated by
fear or malice. In judging a man like Gandhi one seems instinctively to
apply high standards, so that some of his virtues have passed almost
unnoticed. For instance, it is clear even from the autobiography that his
natural physical courage was quite outstanding: the manner of his death
was a later illustration of this, for a public man who attached any value
to his own skin would have been more adequately guarded. Again, he seems
to have been quite free from that maniacal suspiciousness which, as E.M.
Forster rightly says in A PASSAGE TO INDIA, is the besetting Indian vice,
as hypocrisy is the British vice. Although no doubt he was shrewd enough
in detecting dishonesty, he seems wherever possible to have believed that
other people were acting in good faith and had a better nature through
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