by Peter Huber
Cf. 1984, pp. 198-199: “In the past . . . war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. . . . In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four.”
forgotten doublethink: 1984, p. 269.
conquer the whole world simultaneously: “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” p. 200.
liberal societies will no longer exist: See also “Letter to H. J. Willmett” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 149: “[T]he exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuehrer wished it.”
not distinguishable at all: 1984, p. 198.
like three sheaves of corn: 1984, p. 198. “[W]e [in England] believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run,” Orwell writes. “What evidence is there that it does? And what instance is there of a modem industrialised state collapsing unless conquered from the outside by military force?” “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” p. 200. O’Brien puts exactly the same question to Winston at the end of 1984 (p. 273).
The Gutenberg Galaxy: Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1962.
England, Your England: “England, Your England” (1941), Essays, I, p. 254.
namely literature: “England, Your England,” p. 264. And Orwell doesn’t think all that much of painting in any event. “Painting is the only art that can be practised without either talent or hard work,” Orwell informs us in Burmese Days, p. 89.
separation and communication: Wigan Pier, p. 156; A Clergyman’s Daughter, p. 17; Aspidistra, pp. 28, 71, 133, 136; Down and Out, p. 93; “As I Please” (1947), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 267.
Orwell writes in a 1946 piece: “Why I Write” (1946), Essays, I, p. 316.
essay on Charles Dickens: “Charles Dickens” (1939), Essays, I, p. 103.
Orwell and his writing: Shelden, p. 314.
as clear as one can through pictures: “Politics and the English Language” (1946), Essays, I, p. 169. See also “The English People” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 27: “The people likeliest to use simple concrete language, and to think of metaphors that really call up a visual image, are those who are in contact with physical reality. . . . [T]he vitality of English depends on a steady supply of images.” See also “Tobias Smollett: Scotland’s Best Novelist” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 244: “A ‘realistic’ novel is one in which the dialogue is colloquial and physical objects are described in such a way that you can visualise them.”
German Science and Jewish Science: “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” p. 199.
sufficiently covered by the word Ingsoc: 1984, p. 194: “The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.” See also 1984, p. 312.
a high level of mechanical civilisation: “Review, The Martyrdom of Man, by Winwood Reade” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 119.
once Socialism is established: Wigan Pier, p. 206. He also concedes that “the idea of Socialism is bound up, more or less inextricably, with the idea of machine-production” (p. 188).
as in earlier essays: 1984, p. 205. “[A]U sensitive people are revolted by industrialism and its products,” Orwell declares in “Writers and Leviathan” (1948), Essays, III, pp. 462-463. But Orwell is quite sure that the machine also contains a promise of economic salvation. “[T]he conquest of poverty and the emancipation of the working class,” he concedes in the same sentence, “demand not less industrialization, but more and more.”
stolen literature’s thunder: Wigan Pier, p. 190.
technology of television: Broadcast, p. 27. Another talk was on the connection between science and literature (p. 30).
Orwell writes in Wigan Pier: Wigan Pier, p. 206.
using my brain or muscles: Wigan Pier, p. 206. Flory, the sensitive artistic, semiautobiographical hero of Burmese Days, is nonetheless “a fool about machinery,” and quite willing to “struggle with the bowels of the engine until he [is] black with grease” (p. 200).
tremendously prescient about technology: This is all the more remarkable because we know (from Orwell himself) that his early education was at a school where science was “so despised that even an interest in natural history was discouraged.” “Such, Such Were the Joys” (1947), Essays, I, p. 8. At Crossgates (Orwell’s lower school), natural history “smelt of science and therefore seemed to menace classical education” (p. 18).
have very important effects: Broadcast, p. 215.
the police of totalitarian regimes: Broadcast, p. 215.
essay that Orwell wrote in 1940: “New Words” (written 1940?), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 3.
all of his inner life known: “New Words,” p. 10.
to erode class differences: “The English People” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 23.
lying more and more difficult: “London Letter to Partisan Review” (1941), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 113. And again in “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, pp. 128-129: “[T]he BBC is a better source of news than the daily papers, and is so regarded by the public. . . . Social surveys show the same thing—i.e. that as against the radio the prestige of newspapers has declined. . . . [I]n my experience the BBC is relatively truthful and, above all, has a responsible attitude towards news and does not disseminate lies simply because they are newsy.”
will never be enforceable: “London Letter to Partisan Review,” p. 119.
for intelligent programmes: “London Letter to Partisan Review” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 190.
possibilities of radio have not yet been explored: “London Letter to Partisan Review,” p. 190.
can listen to nothing else: “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 146. Orwell referred back to this column (and reiterated its point) some months later: “[M]odern scientific inventions have tended to prevent rather than increase international communication. . . . [T]he radio [is] primarily a thing for whipping up nationalism. Even before the war there was enormously less contact between the peoples of the earth than there had been thirty years earlier, and education was perverted, history rewritten and freedom of thought suppressed to an extent undreamed of in earlier ages. And there is no sign whatever of these tendencies being reversed.” “As I Please” (1945), CEJL, Vol. 3, pp. 328-329.
Orwell says much the same thing again in “You and the Atom Bomb” (1945), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 9: “The radio was once expected to promote international understanding and cooperation; it has turned out to be a means of insulating one nation from another.” Elsewhere, however, Orwell firmly concludes that wartime radio propaganda on both sides had almost no impact at all, at least not on the enemy. See “Letter to George Woodcock” (1942), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 268. German radio propaganda was “an almost complete flop.” “London Letter to Partisan Review” (1942), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 182. BBC propaganda was “just shot into the stratosphere, not listened to by anybody.” Shelden, p. 348.
In the Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, written in March 1947, Orwell reports learning “how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries.” “Author’s Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm” (1947), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 404.
hopefully titled 1945 essay: “Poetry and the Microphone” (1945), Essays, III, p. 245.
anything except tripe: “Poetry and the Microphone,” p. 250.
have failed to return: “Poetry and the Microphone,” p
. 250.
or great monopoly companies: “Poetry and the Microphone,” p. 250.
in every country of the world: “Poetry and the Microphone,” p. 250.
run its propaganda machines: “Poetry and the Microphone,” p. 250.
bureaucratic tyranny can perhaps never be complete: “Poetry and the Microphone,” p. 251.
obscured by the voices of Professor Joad: Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad, Irish-born philosopher, pacifist, and socialist, was a prominent radio personality on the BBC’s “Brains Trust” program from 1941 to 1947.
and Doctor Goebbels: “Poetry and the Microphone,” pp. 251-252.
Chapter 6
If there is hope it lies in the proles: 1984, p. 69. Resistance is necessary, O’Brien says to Smith later in 1984, but hopeless. “You will have to get used to living without results and without hope. . . . There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime” (p. 177). Or, as Orwell has already put it in Wigan Pier, p. 158: “[E]very revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.”
how they smelled: See Wigan Pier, pp. 127, 129.
mysteriously transmuted into something nobler: Aspidistra, p. 239.
assertively at her companion: 1984, p. 82.
That’s the truth: Contrast 1984, pp. 82-83.
they are loyal to one another: 1984, p. 166. Here again we see how different Orwell’s world view might have been if he had shared Hayek’s faith in spontaneous order and the marketplace. Despite all his pessimism, Orwell believed deeply in the inherent loyalty of the ordinary English. He returns to the theme of private loyalty and trust repeatedly in 1984, particularly in his discussion of family and the proles. See, e.g., p. 31 (“conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable”), and p. 166 (“they were governed by private loyalties”). The same theme appears briefly in Aspidistra, in the language I quote earlier in this chapter, see Aspidistra, p. 239. But as 1984 plainly reveals, Orwell simply didn’t believe that private loyalty could overcome public betrayal. In Orwell’s universe, the Ministry is always more powerful than the sum of the individuals beneath it.
a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity: 1984, p. 82.
deep in conversation: Contrast 1984, p. 84.
the status of a major industry: Wigan Pier, p. 89. Here is another example of how 1984 synthesizes themes and arguments that Orwell had first developed years earlier in other writings. And it shows again the very pessimistic side of Orwell’s view of the proles. The proles are perfectly capable of keeping financial accounts, but only on futile things like the lottery, never in productive business.
even though they never were: 1984, p. 85. I quote this sentence whole because it is so wildly implausible. In the age of the telescreen, with “intercommunication” perfected to the point where there is no privacy left at all, Orwell would have us believe that there is, at the same time, no “real intercommunication” at all.
hope for England yet: Aspidistra, p. 105. As I make clear in both text and notes later, much of this wonderful paragraph from “The street was so crowded . . .” to “hope for England yet” is lifted with only minor alteration from Aspidistra. (A quite similar market scene appears in Burmese Days, pp. 126-127.) It is an important text, for it again illustrates Orwell’s own ambivalence about markets and commerce. He loves them at the retail level, the level of little stalls and shopkeepers. He loves stallkeepers, but he despises capitalism, advertising, banks, private property. He loves the marketplace, but he loathes “the free market.”
criminality among the proles: See 1984, p. 72.
abolished long ago: See 1984, p. 207.
property had been an obstructive nuisance: “Charles Dickens” (1939), Essays, I, p. 65.
officially labeled a swindle: Coming Up for Air, p. 13.
Fronky: As a child, Eric Blair “invented an imaginary friend with whom he could play freely. For some unknown reason he called the friend ‘Fronky.’” Shelden, p. 19.
The Market
like guardsmen naked on parade: I am quoting from Aspidistra, p. 105.
generally crowded and noisy: 1984, p. 128.
staggering/eats of memory: 1984, p. 85.
forecasts, and lucky amulets: 1984, p. 85.
then the handle came off: 1984, p. 70.
shopping means rations: 1984, pp. 27, 40, 59, 71, 163, 270.
and vouchers: 1984, p. 32.
private property has been abolished: 1984, p. 207.
criticism of markets, money: In Orwell’s socialist Utopia, “[m]oney, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.” Lion, p. 75.
money-business, and money-morality: Aspidistra, pp. 14, 48-49. According to my computer, “money” appears some 366 times in the book, an average of one and a half times on every page.
area huge racket: Coming Up for Air, p. 13.
insurance is a swindle: Coming Up for Air, p. 13.
frantic struggle to sell things: Coming Up for Air, p. 149.
is an obstructive nuisance: “Charles Dickens” (1939), Essays, I, p. 65.
torture millions of one’s fellow creatures: Private property cannot be reconciled with “economic justice.” “Review, Communism and Man, by F.J. Sheed” (1939), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 384.
by means of idiotic wills: “Charles Dickens,” p. 51.
Orwell writes in a 1940 letter: “Letter to Humphry House” (1940), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 532.
he declares in a 1946 essay: “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad” (1946), Essays, III, p. 368.
Capitalism is a tyranny: “Writers and Leviathan” (1948), Essays, III, p. 461.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee: “Spilling the Spanish Beans” (1937), CEJL, Vol. 1, pp. 273-274; see also “Review, Russia under Soviet Rule, by N. de Basily” CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 381: “If even a few hundred thousand people can be got to grasp that it is useless to overthrow Tweedledum in order to set up Tweedledee, the talk of ‘democracy versus Fascism’ with which our ears are deafened may begin to mean something.”
Indeed, for many years Orwell’s every mention of capitalism is paired with one of fascism. For example: Fascism “is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism when the pinch comes.” Quoted in Shelden, p. 218. Fascism is simply capitalist democracy with the “barriers down” and with the “motives out in the open.” “Raffles and Miss Blandish” (1941), Essays, I, p. 144. “It is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism.” “Letter to Geoffrey Gorer” (1937), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 284. The liberal bourgeoisie “are the supporters of Fascism when it appears in . . . modem form.” Homage to Catalonia, p. 48. p. 89
the one is robbing the other: “Review, The Communist International, by Franz Borkenau” (1938), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 350.
the capitalist affluence of his patrons: “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali” (1944), Essays, IV p. 30. Indeed, Dali’s art casts a “useful light on the decay of capitalist civilisation” (p. 26).
nothing but saleable drivel: “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 250. See also “The Prevention of Literature” (1946), Essays, III, p. 336 (“The independence of the writer and the artist is eaten away by vague economic forces”).
money controls opinion: “Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party” (1938), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 337.
that capitalism has yet produced: Aspidistra, p. 51. Advertising, which accounts fully for the “silliness” of the English press, “arises from the fact that newspapers live off advertisements for consumption goods.” “The English People” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 35. “While the journalist exists merely as the publicity agent of big business, a large circulation, got by fair means or foul, is a newspaper’s one and only aim,” he writes in a “A Farthing Newspaper” (1928), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 14.<
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monopoly on radio and the films: “The Prevention of Literature,” p. 335.
who are only one degree better: “As I Please” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 242.
theoretical rather than actual: “The English People” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 11.
the same way as a state censorship: “Freedom of the Park” (1945), CEJL, Vol. 4, pp. 39-40.
an instinctive hatred of intelligence: “The British Crisis” (1942), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 209.
the flexible glass mentioned by Petronius: Wigan Pier, pp. 206-207.
Gordon Comstock reflects bitterly in Aspidistra: Aspidistra, p. 54.
that it kills thought: Aspidistra, p. 49.
The free market is the enemy too: “Review, Workers’ Front, by Fenner Brockway” (1938), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 305.
high degree of economic equality: In 1984, p. 190, he declares (through Blythe) that social inequality would largely disappear (and “freedom” would materially advance) in “a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motorcar or even an airplane.”
freedom of speech and the press: “Democracy in the British Army” (1939), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 405.
censorship or the Secret Police: “Review, The Calf of Paper, by Scholem Asch” (1936), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 249: “You can’t ignore Hitler, Mussolini, unemployment, aeroplanes and the radio.” The theme of Mark Twain’s books, says Orwell, is: “This is how human beings behave when they are not frightened of the sack.” “Mark Twain—The Licensed Jester” (1943), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 325. Regular employment as a “cog” in the capitalist machine is equally bad. “Review, Red Spanish Notebook, by Mary Low and Juan Brea” (1937), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 287.
industrial America that was to follow: See also “Riding Down from Bangor” (1946), Essays, III, p. 406: Nineteenth century America “was a better kind of society than that which arose from the sudden industrialization of the later part of the century . . . uncorrupted.”