[Marxism] Re: Hitchens and Orwell

[Ed George <edgeorge@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

‘[…]

‘If in Animal Farm Orwell gave us hope (the revolution) and betrayal in 
equal measure, in Nineteen Eighty-Four he just gives us betrayal. Such 
indeed was the reaction to the book – and its commercial success was 
considerable, comfortably outstripping even that of Animal Farm […]

‘Of course, commercial success is no automatic signal of artistic merit; 
often quite the opposite: "A work a great literary merit is usually too 
rich in its texture and too subtle in thought and form to lend itself to 
adventitious exploitation." (Isaac Deutscher, ‘"1984" – The Mysticism of 
Cruelty’, Marxism, Wars and Revolutions: Essays from Four Decades 
(London, 1984), p.60.) Indeed the phenomenal success of the book since 
its publication – many people around the world will only know of Orwell 
because of Nineteen Eighty-Four – has precisely been a consequence of 
political context: "The cold-war has created a ‘social demand’ for such 
an ideological weapon, just as it creates the demand for physical 
super-weapons." (Ibid., p.60.) On this matter, Raymond Williams too 
makes an important point: to have had the effect that it had, Nineteen 
Eighty-Four "had to be written be an ex-socialist. It also had to be 
someone who shared the general discouragement of the generation: an 
ex-socialist who had become an enthusiast for capitalism would not have 
had the same effect". (Politics and Letters, p.390.) It is difficult 
here to resist a comparison with one of Orwell’s recent chroniclers, 
Christopher Hitchens (Why Orwell Matters [New York, 2002]), doyen of the 
"neo-cons", of whom a very similar point could be made. A figure of 
solid "non-Stalinist" left vintage, his recent conversion to the role of 
cheerleader for United States imperialism’s recent adventure in Iraq has 
the considerable weight and effect that it does precisely for these 
reasons: that it comes from an ex-socialist, who too can be seen to 
share the "general discouragement" of his generation.’

Full: <http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext28/Orwell.html>

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