Hot take: George Orwell is just Winston Smith IRL. England became a total shithole after the 1940s, Orwell was a propagandist who'd choked on his own anti-Red pills, and he ended up describing the quasi-dictatorial chudified surveillance state that Thatcher's London would eventually become.
Somewhere in the bowels of hell, he is currently having his face eaten by rats over and over again.
Ingsoc isn't ML though, it's completely divorced from any sort of socialism
I could see something like it developing under capitalism as an attempt to co-opt a leftist movement though
It seems much more related to the Nazis than the USSR, honestly. They called themselves socialists because it was popular not out of anything genuine.
It's been so long, and I really don't give a shit about the guy, but iirc he actually identified himself as a "english socialist" to differentiate himself from all the other forms which he considered uncivilized.
So I think ingsoc is basically him getting mad at a made-up situation wherein the Stalinists/Nazis (one in the same in Orwell's completely incoherent mind) come into England and co-opt his weird conservative form of socialism.
Ok Orwell had his share of brain worms but let's not misconstrue him, the point of 1984 wasn't "USSR = Nazis = bad," it was a warning against what he saw as the possibillity of popular energy being chanelled in support of state power, ultimately for the self-interest of a ruling class.
I'd have to reread it to see if that nuance exists in it, so I'll take your word for it lol
Yeah that's fair. I read it a while back and thought it was a decent book, but it doesn't really say anything particularly profound, I just liked it for being imaginative and presenting an interesting dystopia.
People criticize it for being "hyperbolic" but that's the entire point, he's describing state power taken to its logical extreme, using techniques for coercion that already existed in the world at the time. It's a warning about how any political consciousness among the lower classes could be completely and permanently subdued, and there's something there even if it's not some sort of extremely important political theory like the comment in the screenshot seems to think.
It is divorced but not on purpose, Ingsoc means English Socialism in 1984's simplified speech. It's meant to be socialism, Orwell's whole deal is basically his personal beef with stalin because he's a dumb bougie trotskyist snitch who had a bad experience fighting in spain. It's not even about nazis or "totalitarianism", it's purely just about stalin with almost no attempt at changing the story to be about something broader or more profound. I recommend aasimov's review of 1984, it's a great funny read.
It's explicitly meant to be socialist in name only, just like how the Nazis appropriated socialist language. The society in 1984 is not socialist and it's not intended to be taken that way.
I didn't realize it was supposed to be about communism until I got here. I was even a libertarian teenager when I read it and still just thought it was about how the CIA and FBI are bad.
It's really about what a long term Stalinism and bureaucracy would look like. All of the bureaucracy writing in it is basically taken from Orwell's experience within the British government. It's extremely particular to the political situation of the USSR and Britain in the 30s and 40s. Orwell supported other communists throughout his life, like the POUM during the spanish civil war (whose persecution by the USSR aligned faction also informed his writing as the POUM was prosecuted on it being a merger of the Trotskyist left and the workers and peasants' bloc (and broke with Trotsky in this process), said persecution included the POUM being accused of fascism and Trotskyism by the PCE in just crazy doublespeak because PCE was loyal to the Comintern).
It's of course not quite accurate, we have a much better idea of how politics and society was functioning during the Stalin period now than Orwell had access to.
Animal Farm is a cautionary tail about the dangers of counter revolutionaries and revisionists.
No the issue isn't an abundance of Tankies it's an actual left wing movement that you dislike because it shows up how ineffective and useless your own beliefs are. They didn't avoid Animal Farm & 1984, they just read The good Orwell you didn't bother to read because it wasn't on the "books everyone has read" list- The Road to Wigan Pier - and the book you should fucking read, The Ragged Trouser Philanthropists but definitely haven't bothered with either.
Fucking hell. Libs.
The Road to Wigan Pier? You mean the idealist nonsense where his solution to everything is appeals to justice and truth?
https://scottish-communists.org.uk/communist-party/britain-s-socialist-heritage/110-harry-pollitt-s-review-of-orwell-s-the-road-to-wigan-pier
That wasn't my impression of it but I haven't Read it since I was a teenager. My take away was that Orwell thought the main obstacle to widespread adoption of socialism was socialists failing to make a case that appeals to the very people who would benefit most from it.
I don't recall thinking it was overly idealistic but I was seventeen. If anything I thought he was frequently too harsh on socialists, patronising in places about the intelligence of the Working Class and unable to tell the difference between academic Marxism and Marxism as a concept.
I'll give it another read perhaps.
Read the review I posted written in 1937 by an actual communist who lived in Lancashire, and you will see how condescending and idealist Orwell’s middle class socialism is.
I mean in 1984 he literally treats the proletariat as mindless hogs that are satisfied with starvation as long as they have bingo and sex, meanwhile the only really awake people are the middle class, which is obviously why they are the ones most controlled because they are the true threat and force of socialism.
Idealism as in the philosophical opposite of materialism.
And yes it was extremely condescending of the working class, talking constantly of their smell and their sluminess. He is the effete middle class snob he sought to attack. Orwell is shit tier and anyone who seriously recommends him makes me instantly disregard their opinion.
The biggest problem, for me, with Animal farm was that Orwell forgot the part when all the neighboring farms conspired to kill or enslave all of the animals and the animals and the pigs successfully organized a counteroffensive destroying many of the neighboring farms, liberating their animals, and staring down the entire animal agricultural industry for another 45 years. They did this while massively improving the quality of life for all animals on the farms they led and even on many farms that were not in their control. As an animal liberationist, I think animal farm is an excellent story and should be replicated whenever and wherever possible.
Marxist-Leninism is when you dont read orwell, the more you dont read the more tankie you are
pretty sure the left is becoming "tankier" because the failures of corbyn and sanders show that social democratic compromise isn't politically viable in the US/UK right now--but hey, I guess it could also be because people just randomly decided to stop reading Orwell within the last couple years.
Orwell also fucking sucks at writing fantasy, but that's my two cents
Unfortunately he is, for the western “left”. The left that has never accomplished anything lol
Name 1 victory of the Orwell-esque left. I’ll be waiting
It got Hitchens to waste his time on third rate sci-fi rather than causing more damage.
idk i became more tankie sympathetic (i already was) when all the rhetoric around china started heating up and i was just like... 'so WHAT? if theyre actually genociding the uighurs, what do you recommend we do? invade a nuclear power with 1.4 billion people??? starve everyone in the country to death slowly like cuba???' like i swear to god these people dont even think about what sort of scale of disaster theyre talking about, condeming 1.4 billion to destitution and death AINT GOOD
Literally just Western chauvinists incapable of understanding what a principled anti-imperialist position entails
Do these people think a "tankie" is someone who thinks the form of government in 1984 is a good idea? Even ignoring the rightness/wrongness of Orwell that's just not even accurate to the book.
Bruh ive been called a neolib before. I’m a fucking far left free market socialist
Weird how these people love throwing out the “state capitalist” label while also being extremely hardcore capitalists also??
I'm proud to say that I thought Orwell sucked in high school. And I thought Rand sucked in high school.
The only good dystopian fiction is Brave New World and Lord of the Flies.
I liked Homage to Catalonia (though of course I now realise Orwell was utterly clueless at the time.) His other work was meh.
Lord of the Flies is kinda eh, situations similar in reality sometimes/often go more smoothly. It's a bit excessively pessimistic about humans.
LotF was written as a parody of The Coral Island, which explores a similar premise - three boys marooned on a South Pacific island - but reaches an obnoxiously settler colonialist optimist conclusion.
I guess a bit excessively pessimistic is better than being 19th century imperialist propaganda.
I've been meaning to try some of her books (slowly going through all hugo awards writers); any suggestion on which one to start ?
I'm currently reading through the Parable series with my PSL branch and a local abolitionist group. Only half way through Parable of the Sower (the first in the series). It is very good, she got the US response to climate change 100% right.
Why Lord of the Flies? That book just promotes the chud idea that without "law and order" human beings would just be savages that would gleefully kill each other.
It’s funny because they found an actual island of stranded kids a while ago, and they all worked together and practiced communism instead of smashing each other with rocks or whatever
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
The children do, initially, attempt to establish law and order. But this organizational structure breaks down as soon as individuals realize there is no consequence for misbehavior save what their fellows impart.
The story establishes a compelling historical dialect, with the kids initially attempting to replicate the world they remembered, but ultimately adapting to their material conditions over time. While you can certainly read it from a Hobbesian angle, you can also read it as an understanding of how the world functions even with "law and order". The strong prey upon the weak, gangs prey upon the individual, and all the high minded rhetoric in the world falls flat when you're on outside of the mob looking in.
You should read MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood. Fantastic dystopian sci-fi.
Suggested soundtrack items include Tobacco Fucked Up Friends and Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz
