Orwell & Nineteen Eighty-Four

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> >> Orwell was pro-democracy. Socialist democracy.
> 
> on 5/5/03 9:30 PM, Terrance wrote:
> 
> > "Ingsoc," English Socialism. Like so many Americans on the left, Orwell
> > was more concerned with what Russia portended for socialism than with
> > the actual struggles of the working class.
> 
> I don't think that is correct at all. Though the particularities might have
> changed as events unfolded, Orwell was and remained a socialist, and he was
> and remained pro-democracy. Trawling on the web yesterday I found two decent
> pieces on Orwell. The first accurately places _1984_ in its literary genre
> and genealogy as an anti-utopia or "dystopia":
> 
> http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture13.html
> 
> The second is a review of an Orwell biography which presents a good summary
> of the developments and changes in Orwell's politics:
> 
> http://www.marxists.de/culture/orwell/chen.htm
> 
> Both are more informative and accurate than what I've seen of Pynchon's
> Foreword.


Thanks. I didn't mean to imply that Orwell ever repudiated socialist
democracy (this is a different point and not the one I'm interested in),
but that Orwell's critique of British Socialism (Ingsoc) was more
concerned with ideological questions and issues (as in  Animal Farm)
than the actual struggle of the working class. Thus,  Orwell's interest
in the working class was not unlike much of the American Left,
specifically, the intellectual Left. 

It's interesting too that P chooses the "author function" approach here,
distancing _1984_ from _Animal Farm_ even while his entire Foreword (old
hat) is what Foucault calls "Modern Literary Criticism" or the St.
Jerome tradition. 


Orwell was not the only intellectual Lefty who  "labored"  desperately
to communicate with, to understand, to empathize, to speak for,  the
working class. The history of Lefty intellectualism is stuffed with such
men and women. 

Worth considering in term of what P says in the Slow Learner
Introduction (page 7)  about the New Left in the USA: 

The success of the "new left" later
in the '60's was to be limited by the failure of
college kids and blue-collar workers to get together
politically.  One reason was the presence of real,
invisible class force fields in the way of
communication between the two groups.

P's comments on his re-reading of "Small Rain" are relevant 
for what they tell us about P's understanding of the class struggle in
America. 


In the  Slow Learner Introduction P says that he was an "unpolitical"
'50's student when he composed the story, but now looking back as a
political writer/thinker/reader he finds the class angle of interest.
This statement is an important one because it tells us that P is
interested in class, but that this was not always the case. I've
suggested that P is a slow learner (an honest one for sure) when it
comes to matters of both class and race.  

The much discussed ambiguous sentence (SL page 12, "it may yet turn
out...), while it remains ambiguous, is clear on at least this much,
money & power may turn out to be more of factor in the great divide
between the rich & powerful and the relatively poor & powerless.  

The ambiguity: 

We can't say for sure who P is talking about when he refers to those 
"who deplore them (racial differences) most"

We can't know what he means by "it may yet turn out" 



In any event, P provides some clues about his view of class and I think
his view (although framed by the story and his experience in the Navy)
of class is very typical of Americans generally and specifically of the
American "middle class." 



What I find interesting about the story is not so
much the quantities and puerility of attitude as 
the class angle. Whatever else peacetime service 
is good for, it can provide an excellent introduction to 
the structure of society at large. (SL.6)

It becomes evident even to a young mind that often 
unacknowledged divisions in civilian life find clear
and immediate expression in the military distinction 
between "officer" and "men." 

Unacknowledged divisions. In America, class distinctions receive little
attention.  In fact, class distinctions are not much discussed in the
United States. 

In America, the class and race a person belongs to is only a rough but
often accurate predictor of his/her social status. Looking at that
ambiguous statement again, when P says, "It may yet turn out...", he
seems to indicate that there is some evolution going on. 

Is it a matter of what intellectuals are saying ("questions of")  about
race/money&power or is P talking about an evolution in the structure
itself or both?

 
While many intellectuals think race is a more important factor, many
argue that class is more important, most argue that social hierarchies
(of race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) are
interrelated. 

Unlike the Pynchon-List Americans who constantly remind the
working-class participants here that there language is inferior, there
(s/b their)
intellects confused by their language inadequacies, and so on ...
American like to ignore the existence of social class.  

Bait? 


Snobbery and deprivation based on class difference suggest decadence and
corruption.
And, analysis of differences in life styles that are based on social
class membership, rather than personal choice, also go against the grain
because such analysis smacks of Marxist ideology. Moreover,  Americans,
with the
exception of the bleeding-heart yarders, limousine liberals, college
professors and students,  are reluctant to embark on a criticism of
capitalism, not just for the moral/political reasons, because the globe,
including members of the working class in the poorest nation states,
seem to be hungry for American capitalization. 

One of the things P does well in this Foreword is to hammer away at the
System of Production/Consumption. He's quite good on TV, for example.  
P notes that class, in his view,  has something to do (or at least it
did in the 1950s) with education. 

Back to SL: 

One makes the amazing discovery that grown adults walking around with
college educations...can in fact be idiots. And that working-class white
hats...display competence, courage, humanity, wisdom, and other virtues
associated, by the educated classes with themselves. 

Interesting choice of virtues!