If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Dak]

Orwell may have been a little off in comparison with Huxley in a war of visions of boot vs drugs, but the man was a keen observer of mankind:

The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred—a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacuo hatred—against the exploiters.

He peered through the looking glass and saw the current year:

In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words "Socialism" and "Communism" draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, "Nature Cure" quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
.........
Sometimes when I listen to these people talking, and still more when I read their books, I get the impression that, to them, the whole Socialist movement is no more than a kind of exciting heresy-hunt — a leaping to and fro of frenzied witch-doctors to the beat of tom-toms and the tune of "Fee fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of a right-wing deviationist!"

 

[viewerfromnihil]

George Orwell was no god-damned anarcho-capitalist/conspiracy theorist. The abuse of his writings by the fringe is truly shameful. You really think he was levying those charges against social democrats? Give me a fucking break. He was as opposed to extreme liberalism as he was totalitarianism.

 

[Einherjar86]

Orwell may have been a little off in comparison with Huxley in a war of visions of boot vs drugs, but the man was a keen observer of mankind:

He peered through the looking glass and saw the current year:

You do realize what he's saying here, yes? He's not suggesting that socialism actually corresponds to this reductive vision; he's saying that certain writings about socialism paint it this way.

Orwell actually believed in socialist policies, and The Road to Wigan Pier is in part a defense of socialism. He's suggesting that one reason why so many people oppose socialism is the way it's often represented.

 

[Dak]

George Orwell was no god-damned anarcho-capitalist/conspiracy theorist. The abuse of his writings by the fringe is truly shameful. You really think he was levying those charges against social democrats? Give me a fucking break. He was as opposed to extreme liberalism as he was totalitarianism.

You do realize what he's saying here, yes? He's criticizing those who reduce the socialist movement to "heresy-hunters." He's not saying that socialist writers present this reductive impression; he's saying critiques of socialism are often reductive.

Orwell actually believed in socialist policies, and The Road to Wigan Pier is in part a defense of his socialism.

Did I say he was anarcho capitalist? In Wigan Pier he was juxtaposing the wretched lot of the underclass with the English bourgeoisie (and counting himself among them) through his own undertaking to live among the underclass for a time. It is apparent across his writings that his target was totalitarianism, but particularly that of the socialist/communist sort as time went on (probably because the Fascist variant had already met with defeat - Animal Farm and 1984 came after the war and Wigan Pier).

He obviously showed no love for the Corporation, as it chewed through the underclass, but he also recognized the elements of grey: Where the engine for the slum was also the engine out of it. He was against a Means Test for aid but for programs that helped people work and provide for themselves, and noted this was not a a preferred Socialist policy:

They say that the occupational centres are simply a device to keep the unemployed quiet and give them the illusion
that something is being done for them. Undoubtedly that is the underlying motive. Keep a man busy mending boots and he is less likely to read the Daily Worker. Also there is a nasty Y.M.C.A. atmosphere about these places which you can feel as soon as you go in. The unemployed men who frequent them are mostly of the cap-touching type--the type who tells you oilily that he is 'Temperance' and votes Conservative. Yet even here you feel yourself torn both ways. For probably it is better that a man should waste his time even with such rubbish as sea-grass work than that for years upon end he should do absolutely nothing.
...............
The whole trade union movement testifies to this; so do the excellent working-men's clubs--really a sort of glorified cooperative pub, and splendidly organized--which are so common in Yorkshire. In many towns the N.U.W.M. have shelters and arrange speeches by Communist speakers. But even at these shelters the men who go there do nothing but sit round the stove and occasionally play a game of dominoes. If this move-met could be combined with something along the lines of the occupational centres, it would be nearer what is needed. It is a deadly thing to see a skilled man running to seed, year after year, in utter, hopeless idleness.

Here, is where he fails to see how the former relates to the latter, or in general how the types and attitudes he marks as being drawn to Socialism specifically inhibit productivity. This is why it matters not whether those clamoring for the means of production get them, for they actually want nothing to do with them. This is why, man for man, fascism is a superior form of collectivism to communism - it leaves the means to those who will use them and simply takes more off the top. The problem for 20th century fascism is it didn't have enough men, and it was inferior to 20th century Anglo-liberalism.

It's interesting that he notes that wastefulness is endemic in the expenditure of allowances (but with a cynical view that were they uniformly better at spending, it would be reduced. The more things change, the more they remain the same:

I doubt, however, whether the unemployed would ultimately benefit if they learned to spend their money more economically. For it is only the
fact that they are not economical that keeps their allowances so high. An English-man on the P.A.C. gets fifteen shillings a week because fifteen shillings is the smallest sum on which he can conceivably keep alive. If he were, say, an Indian or Japanese coolie, who can live on rice and onions, he wouldn't get fifteen shillings a week--he would be lucky if he got fifteen shillings a month. Our unemployment allowances, miser-able though they are, are framed to suit a population with very high standards and not much notion of economy. If the unemployed learned to be better managers they would be visibly better off, and I fancy it would not be long before the dole was docked correspondingly.

Ultimately, the constant sentiment, the one I referenced first, throughout Wigan Pier can be captured in this bit:

This is the outlook of a confessed reactionary. But how about the middle-class person whose views are not reactionary but 'advanced'? Beneath his revolutionary mask, is he really so different from the other?

and this

The middle-class Socialist enthuses over the proletariat and runs 'summer schools' where the proletarian and the repentant bourgeois are supposed to fall upon one another's necks and be brothers for ever; and the bourgeois visitors come away saying how wonderful and inspiring it has all been (the proletarian ones come away saying something different). And then there is the outer-suburban creeping Jesus, a hangover from the William Morris period, but still surprisingly common, who goes about saying 'Why must we level down? Why not level up?' and proposes to level the working class 'up' (up to his own standard) by means of hygiene, fruit-juice, birth-control, poetry, etc.

Orwell stabs at his own kind consistently:

it is not easy to crash your way into the literary intelligentsia if you happen to be a decent human being. The modem English literary world, at any rate the high-brow section of it, is a sort of poisonous jungle where only weeds can flourish.

It is irony then, that he spends the entire 10th chapter engaging in the thing which he notes, in alternating paragraphs even, is quite easy for the Socialist to do (criticize their own). I would quote from it but that would require far too much space.

Orwell's version, or vision, if you will, of Socialism was at odds with nearly anyone who called themselves Socialist - by his own admission. Can we then even call him a Socialist? Rather, he seems to imply in the final chapter that he is really a communal Luddite with no hopes of realizing that goal.

 

[Einherjar86]

Orwell's version, or vision, if you will, of Socialism was at odds with nearly anyone who called themselves Socialist - by his own admission. Can we then even call him a Socialist? Rather, he seems to imply in the final chapter that he is really a communal Luddite with no hopes of realizing that goal.

He also believed that capitalism would never achieve its goal (as proclaimed by its champions, anyway); or, if it did achieve its goal of awarding wealth to the successful, then its creation of enormous amounts of poverty and suffering was not something we should admire and applaud. He didn't think capitalism had a realistic or plausible future. In that sense, a great deal of his thought mirrors was Althusser would come to call "scientific Marxism."

Much of his intellectual development was as in debt to British Marxism as it was vocally critical of it. Also, one of the reasons for his attacks on the British communists was that they were unfairly critical of him for not being radical enough; so it's likely his attitude toward them reflected a combination of resentment and disagreement. Phil Bounds wrote a book on this several years ago. It's more complicated than whether Orwell was opposed to his communist contemporaries or in league with them (but in many cases he was in league with them).

 

[Dak]

He also believed that capitalism would never achieve its goal (as proclaimed by its champions, anyway); or, if it did achieve its goal of awarding wealth to the successful, then its creation of enormous amounts of poverty and suffering was not something we should admire and applaud.

The problem with that Orwellian analysis if you will, is that the poverty created by capitalism would be riches compared with competing systems. The problem with capitalism is not that the rising tide lifts all boats (which it does), it's the concomitant loss of meaning due to things not caused by capitalism but related to correlated idealogical/cultural forces. The dirt farmer living in a mud hut on a homestead plot in Kansas in the 19th century had more reason to live than the person working part time at McDonalds and on welfare, with cable, wifi, Netflix, and Iphone, AC, refrigeration, a car, etc. etc.

 

[Einherjar86]

The problem with that Orwellian analysis if you will, is that the poverty created by capitalism would be riches compared with competing systems. The problem with capitalism is not that the rising tide lifts all boats (which it does), it's the concomitant loss of meaning due to things not caused by capitalism but related to correlated idealogical/cultural forces. The dirt farmer living in a mud hut on a homestead plot in Kansas in the 19th century had more reason to live than the person working part time at McDonalds and on welfare, with cable, wifi, Netflix, and Iphone, AC, refrigeration, a car, etc. etc.

As much as I disagree with most of what you say, my point in bringing up this "Orwellian analysis" wasn't to get into an argument about capitalism. It was to make sure you knew more about the "keen observer" who "peered through the looking-glass," and his relationship to the British communists, many of whom informed his thinking about Western society.

In short, you like to jump to conclusions with Orwell, as many anti-statists do.

 

[Dak]

In short, you like to jump to conclusions with Orwell, as many anti-statists do.

I don't see the conclusions jumped too. He disagreed, with good reason, with existing Socialists. He had communal Luddite sentiments. That he couldn't recognize the "+" in the 2 and 2 he laid out regarding handouts and productivity, and what the subsequent "4" was, is the blindness contributed by his cleaving to equalité.

 

[Einherjar86]

The point is you don't bother to understand the context of his relation to his contemporaries, or his relation to contemporary British Marxism. He was as indebted to British communism as he was critical of it. He wasn't a staunch anti-communist critic, he was a staunch critic of totalitarianism. And he acknowledged the potentiality for communist ideology to manifest in totalitarianism, just as he acknowledged the potentiality for liberal ideals to manifest in totalitarianism; but that didn't means he disagreed wholeheartedly with contemporary British Marxism, or that he saw capitalism as more attractive than socialism.

His critique of Stalinist Russia wasn't a wholesale critique of communism. If he saw "through the looking-glass," then that looking-glass showed him the evils of capitalism too. Just wanted to make sure you know that.

 

[Dak]

that didn't means he disagreed wholeheartedly with contemporary British Marxism, or that he saw capitalism as more attractive than socialism.........If he saw "through the looking-glass," then that looking-glass showed him the evils of capitalism too. Just wanted to make sure you know that.

Well that is evident in Wigans Pier. However, it's evident that he recognized that proles had no use for the agitant bourgeoisie, nor the bourgeoisie for the true classlessness required of Marxism. In short, marxism was dead in the water, and if he was honest with himself, so was his communal Luddism.

 

[CiG]

No formal complaint against Wilfrid Laurier student Lindsay Shepherd, lawyer confirms.

This is just becoming weird.

 

[Dak]

"Regret rape" probs. Again.

 

[arg]

Non-productive members of society ideally should be allowed to die off, but if you really must keep them alive for humanitarian reasons, their quality of life definitely should not be comfortable, they should be made to work whenever possible, and they should be heavily disincentivized from and even punished for reproducing.

 

[CiG]

"Regret rape" probs. Again.

It's about the TA who secretly recorded being dressed down by faculty for showing a debate about transgenderism and pronouns featuring Jordan Peterson.

Her lawyer is now saying that the official complaints that the faculty claimed were the catalyst to their meeting most likely never existed to begin with.

 

[Einherjar86]

"Regret rape" probs. Again.

da fuq?

No formal complaint against Wilfrid Laurier student Lindsay Shepherd, lawyer confirms.

This is just becoming weird.

If this is true, the faculty here are out of line. I can only speculate as to their intentions and impressions of the situation, but it doesn't appear to be an example of collegiate academic responsibility.

Disagreeable content (which is entirely relative, of course), especially in a debate format, needs to be introduced in classrooms, properly contextualized and historicized.

 

[Dak]

It's about the TA who secretly recorded being dressed down by faculty for showing a debate about transgenderism and pronouns featuring Jordan Peterson.

Her lawyer is now saying that the official complaints that the faculty claimed were the catalyst to their meeting most likely never existed to begin with.

Gotcha. Didn't click the link, getting tired of the witch hunts.

 

[CiG]

It makes him sad that Taylor Swift's DNA will be polluted by Africa, via Drake's cock.

 

[CiG]

"Cisgender Paradigm II"

"S. J. W."

I mean, musically it's pretty cool... [cringes a bit]

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Non-productive members of society ideally should be allowed to die off, but if you really must keep them alive for humanitarian reasons, their quality of life definitely should not be comfortable, they should be made to work whenever possible, and they should be heavily disincentivized from and even punished for reproducing.

arg 2020.

 

[CiG]

Trump will run against him on a platform of anti-fascism.