George Orwell’s Vision for a Socialist Britain: What Did He Actually Want?

“But every now and again, it is worth looking at his own vision of an ideal society. Interestingly, this is where this sharp-eyed critic comes across as short-sighted.”

George Orwell’s name has been thrown around a lot this year. Of course, this has been true of every year since the author died in January of 1950. Only the Founding Fathers of the United States and perhaps Jesus Christ are cited more frequently or in support of such a wide variety of causes. No other political writer has such a diverse following holding his banner aloft.

We all know what Orwell opposed: totalitarianism, censorship, and muddled thinking masked by equally muddled writing. He is best known to us today as the prophet of political doom. He has a lot to teach us about clear thinking, regardless of our political views. But every now and again, it is worth looking at his own vision of an ideal society. Interestingly, this is where this sharp-eyed critic comes across as short-sighted.

Orwell’s Evolution

George Orwell—the pen name of Eric Blair—was a democratic socialist. “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.” This he wrote in his 1946 essay Why I Write. However, he was not born a democratic socialist. And even after he had evolved into one, he retained many idiosyncratic views that left him on the fringe of the mainstream socialist movement.

Blair began writing in earnest after he left his job with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma in 1927, disgusted that he had allowed himself to become part of the machinery of imperialist oppression. He spent several years living with the poor in both Britain and France before he gained some literary success with Down and Out in Paris in London. Published in 1933, it introduced his now-famous pseudonym.