Orwell: the Best Student of the Left

“The typical socialist often had very little concrete experience with the actual conditions facing those they purported to care about. They were often middle class, well educated, and highly resentful of the rich.”

Introduction

One of the most common critiques made by today’s post-modern conservatives and classical liberals is that the Left is dominated by various kinds of “elites.” This was the accusation made in a February New York Times op-ed by David Brooks entitled “How the Left Embraced Elitism.” In the op-ed, the author chastises progressives for believing that “political elites” have the “wisdom” to direct the lives of hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans. The conservative outlet National Review has published numerous articles on the “spoiled brat” mentality of “elite white liberal” snobs and other left-wing groups. And, of course, members of the Intellectual Dark Web have gotten in their shots as well.

Most of these accusations are not especially interesting, mainly boiling down to criticisms of the tone of left-wing activism or pointing out that some of the figures calling for wealth redistribution, like Bernie Sanders, are not exactly poor. Countering such claims involves little more than pointing out that they say nothing about the substance of egalitarian arguments, being little more than complaints about tone or borderline ad-hominem attacks. Moreover, accusations of hypocrisy would seem far more apt when directed against wealthy and educated individuals who invoke the language of elitism to attack those who wish to establish a more egalitarian society. What I want to look at is the more interesting claim, advanced recently by figures like  Jordan Peterson, that the Left does not actually care about helping the poor or disadvantaged. Instead, they are driven by less noble sentiments, from pure envy of the rich to Dostoevskian resentment and a desire for revenge against reality itself (analyzed here).  This argument is most articulately advanced by George Orwell in his classic book The Road to Wigan Pier and other texts. In the remainder of this essay, I will focus on analyzing Orwell’s argument, acknowledging its merits while also observing why we shouldn’t use it as a basis to deny the need for major egalitarian reforms to society. This is something which Orwell himself, as a committed socialist, also believed.

George Orwell on the Left

George Orwell is probably best known among the reading public for his classic literary denunciations of totalitarianism in Animal Farm and 1984.  These books drew chilling parallels with the real life Stalinist experiment and painted a damning portrait of societies driven by paranoia, constant fear, and a total lack of personal freedom. What are less known are Orwell’s non-fictional works, from his essays to book length journalism ala The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. In Why I Write, Orwell’s lovely paean to his craft published in 1946 shortly before his death, he elaborates on his writing philosophy: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism, as I understand it.”