'Free from hunger and the whip': Exploring the political development of George Orwell.

摘要

The aim of this study is to dispel some of the confusion surrounding the development and character of George Orwell's politics. Past scholars have argued variously that his democratic Socialism was ill-conceived, or that he wavered in his belief in Socialism towards the end of his life. Yet commentary on Orwell has suffered from the tendency to address only a part of his opus, and many of his lesser-known political writings have been ignored. Since no exhaustive attempt has been made to retrace the gradual formation of his political ideas, this study commences with a complete review of his political development from his early youth. From 1936, the year of his journey to Civil War Spain and of his public emergence as a Socialist, it becomes possible to commence an interpretation of his politics. The study draws not just upon Orwell's major writings but upon his lesser-known political pieces and previously overlooked correspondence, and follows chronologically the progression of his political ideas.;After his Spanish experience, Orwell held that political power had to be seized and maintained by the working-class if any genuinely democratic Socialist revolution were to succeed. For the first time in history, he argued, totalitarianism had emerged, seducing many Western intellectuals with its ideology of power as an end in itself. To counter this threat to human freedom and equality, Orwell called for a moral transformation in Left-wing politics. This he considered could be achieved through a new appreciation of the 'crystal spirit', or common decency, of the working-class. In Animal Farm, he addresses not just the aftermath of the Russian revolution but the fate of revolutions in general, while in Nineteen Eighty-Four he examines the psychological dimensions of totalitarianism pushed to their logical extreme. Neither work spells the end of hope for a democratic Socialist society.;Orwell's analysis of totalitarianism remains vitally relevant in the 1990's since political repression, whatever its ideological colour, has not disappeared. His lasting insistence on the compatibility of freedom and equality in society continues to challenge the pragmatic cynicism with which politics are all too often examined and practised today.