Orwell Your Orwell: A Worldview On The Slab

Synopsis

To Those Who Think They Know What George Orwell Is All About, This Book Unpacks Surprise After Surprise. Orwell Your Orwell Reveals An Orwell Very Different From The One Most People Think Of. It Gives An Unexpected Yet Convincing Picture Of Orwell's Beliefs, Every Key Point Precisely Documented. Orwell Adopted A Habitual Rhetoric In Which He Portrayed Himself As A Lone, Embattled Dissident. But Objectively Examined, His Opinions Broadly Corresponded With Those Of Conventional Leftwing Thinking. Far From Being Skeptical Of Prevailing Orthodoxies, Orwell Emerges As A True Believer In The Orthodoxies Of The 1930s Left, Though A Believer Who Sharply Drew Attention To Some Of The Serious Problems With These Ideologies. In His Short Life, Orwell Underwent Several Dramatic Conversions - Such As His Overnight Switch In August 1939 From Being Fiercely Anti-war To Enthusiastically Pro-war - While Cleaving To Some Fixed Positions - Such As His Opposition To The British Empire, Totalitarianism, And Birth Control. Dr. Steele Identifies Both The Conversions And The Continuities, As Well As Some Aspects Of His Thought Which Gradually Evolved. As Well As Recovering Orwell's Actual Beliefs From The Many Accumulated Misrepresentations, Dr. Steele Also Criticizes Some Of These Beliefs, Exposing The Fallacies In Orwell's Thinking On Such Issues As The Economics Of Imperialism, The Dangers Of Hedonism, The Significance Of The Spanish Civil War, And The Efficacy Of Mind Control.-- 1. The Purveyor Of Orthodoxies -- Orwell And The Left -- Orwell's Orthodoxies -- Confirmation By Contrary Instance -- The Style Of Propaganda -- Orwell's Artful Honesty -- Do The Lower Classes Smell? -- Why Orwell Matters, Really -- 2. The Follower Of Intellectual Fashion -- The Left And The Empire -- Leftwing Anti-facism In The 1930s -- Orwell And Communism -- Russell And Orwell -- The Reception Of Wigan Pier -- Dirty Spanish Linen -- The Delayed Acceptance Of Animal Farm -- A Typical Leftwing Intellectual? -- 3. The Socialist -- What Socialism Meant In 1936 -- The Doctrinaire Socialist -- Socialism Means Central Planning -- Arguments Against Socialism -- The Non-marxist -- The Anti-trotskyist -- The Ilp Member -- Socialism And Workers' Living Conditions -- The Labour Party Supporter -- 4. The Post-socialist -- From Post-socialist Anti-socialist To Post-socialist Socialist -- Orwell On Technology -- Why Orwell Was Wrong About Technology --^ Orwell On Technology After Wigan Pier -- The World Wells Made -- Orwell's Attacks On Wells -- Some Writers Orwell Read -- Leavis's Post-socialism -- The Intellectual Crisis Of Socialism -- The Fin-de-siècle Background Of Post-socialism -- The Myth Of Mind Control -- 5. The Reactionary -- Two Anti-degeneratist Theories -- The Falling Birthrate -- The Manly Man -- The Anti-homosexual -- Why The Anti-degeneratists Were Wrong About Homosexuality -- The Degenerate Middle Class -- The Anti-hedonist -- Confusion About Hedonism -- The Vacuity Of Orwell's Anti-hedonism -- The Anti-rationalist -- Orwell's And Huxley's Anti-hedonism -- The Nostalgic Atheist -- Reservations About Jews -- 6. The Anti-imperialist -- Worse Than National Socialism? -- The Movement For Indian Independence -- Orwell's Equivocations On Independence -- A Money Racket -- Did British Workers Gain From The Empire? -- An Assumption In Search Of An Explanation --^ Were British Workers Living Off The Backs Of Starving Coolies? -- Did The Empire Hold Back The Development Of The Colonies? -- The De-industrialization That Probably Never Happened -- Hobson And Lenin -- Two Remaining Theories -- 7. The Spanish Soldier -- Civil War In Spain -- A War Between Two Coalitions -- Orwell In Spain -- Orwell's Conversion To The Revolutionary Left -- Tweedledum And Tweedledee -- The Instinctively Revolutionary Working Class -- The Revolution Runs Out Of Enthusiasm -- Orwell's Defense Of Leftist Atrocities -- The Conflict Between Socialism And Syndicalism -- Spain In The Rearview Mirror -- 8. The Class Warrior -- Pacifism And The British Left -- The Class-war Anti-war Position -- A Dream Ends A Nightmare -- Class War To Cold War -- 9. The Anti-communist -- Orwell And The Communists -- Communists In The British Left -- Communist Zigs And Zags -- Exaggerating Communist Influence -- The Beliefs Of 1930s Intellectuals -- Orwell's International Policy After 1944 --^ I've Got A Little List -- 10. The Inadvertent Anti-socialist -- The Anti-antisocialist Interpretation Of Nineteen Eighty-four -- The Rightwing Response -- The Anti-orwell Leftists -- Immediate Contemporary Reactions -- Orwell's Reply -- The Ingsoc Regime -- The Challenge To Socialists -- Two Definitions Of Socialism -- Capitalism Is Doomed -- Bad, Bad Capitalism -- Is Nineteen Eighty-four About Capitalism? -- What If There's No Such Thing As Democratic Socialism? -- 11. Must Freedom Die? -- Socialism As Ultimate Democracy -- Collectivism Without Democracy -- What To Make Of The Ussr? -- What To Make Of Fascism? -- The Myth Of Irrational Fascism -- The Myth Of Unintellectual Fascism -- Orwell On Totalitarianism -- Totalitarian Influences In Culture -- The Death Of Literature -- The End Of Truth -- The Birth Of Brainwashing -- The Stability Of The Ingsoc Regime -- The Strange Death Of Democratic Collectivism -- It Didn't Happen. David Ramsay Steele. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.