Foreword, Churchill, Orwell

[Paul Nightingale]

Many thanks to Dave Monroe for the Pynchon/Orwell stuff.
 
On Churchill. He was by this time (the start of WW2) a member of the
right-wing Conservative Party. He became Prime Minister in 1940 when the
appeasement wing led by Chamberlain lost out. To his credit, I suppose,
Churchill had spoken out against Nazi Germany for many years, which made
him an obvious candidate for PM. However, it's worth pointing out his
primary concern with threats to the British Empire. His anti-fascism was
opportunistic and couldn't compare with Orwell's own (but in 2003 we're
surely used to political leaders who discover evildoers where and when
it suits them).
 
On Orwell and the 'decline' of socialism. Pynchon seems to address
several separate but related issues. In a capitalist society, the
citizen is turned into a brainwashed consumer. Hence Orwell's target, or
one of them, is mass culture. He subscribes to the school of leftist
thought that fears the working class, as an agent of history, has been
'bought off' by mass culture (P refers to "the ubiquity of television").
Other paid-up members of this tendency are Adorno in the 1930s and
Raymond Williams in the 1950s/1960s. If socialism is "shamefully
institutional", then, it's because the post-war Labour government is
content to manage capitalism; in 1948 the working class has been bought
off by the Welfare State. It's a familiar argument, one that
assumes/fears a comfortable working class has lost all interest in
radical social change. However, "the will to fascism" (eg the threat to
civil liberties) means the state must always 'take precautions'. Perhaps
Pynchon subscribes to Gramsci's philosophy: "Pessimism of the intellect,
optimism of the will". Did Orwell?
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