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homosexuality, Hichens says: “Only one My Orwell Right or of his inherited prejudices––the shudder generated by homosexuality––appears to Wrong have resisted the process of self-mastery” (p. 9). Here Hitchens conveys to the Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher reader two surmises which are not Hitchens. Basic Books, 2002, 211 + xii corroborated by any recorded utterance pages. A book review by David of Orwell, and which I believe to be Ramsay Steele false: that Orwell disapproved of homosexuality because it revolted him physically, and that Orwell made an At the end of his book on George Orwell, unsuccessful effort to subdue this gut Christopher Hitchens solemnly intones response. that “‘views’ do not really matter,” that Orwell harbored no unreasoning, “it matters not what you think but how visceral horror of homosexuality and he you think,” and that politics is “relatively did not strive to overcome his unimportant.” The preceding 210 pages disapproval of it. The evidence suggests tell a different story: that a person is to that, if anything, he was less inclined to be judged chiefly by his opinions and any such shuddering than most that politics is all-important. heterosexuals. His descriptions of his Why Orwell Matters is an encounters with homosexuality are advocate’s defense of Orwell as a good always cool, dispassionate, even and great man. The evidence adduced is sympathetic. His disapproval of that Orwell held the same opinions as homosexuality was rooted in his Hitchens. Hitchens does allow that convictions. He was intellectually and Orwell sometimes got things wrong, but morally opposed to it. in these cases Hitchens always enters Compare Orwell’s opposition to pleas in mitigation. Hitchens’s efforts to homosexuality with his opposition to minimize the importance of Orwell’s inequalities of wealth and income. Both objectionable views, or in some cases his of these standpoints involve an element inability to see them, paint a misleading of moral disapproval, but both are picture of Orwell’s thinking. reasoned and thoughtful, both draw upon an elaborate theoretical structure conveyed by an ideological tradition––in Orwell’s Anti-Homosexuality the first case, fin-de-siècle preoccupation with degeneracy, in the second, One way of playing down Orwell’s non- equalitarian socialism. How apposite Hitchensian views is to attribute them to would it be to dismiss Orwell’s income- his unreflective gut feelings. We are to equalitarianism, one of the foundations suppose, then, that when Orwell thought of his socialism, by saying that it was an things over, he anticipated the Hitchens involuntary shudder, that he could not rid line of half a century later, but whenever himself of an inherited, unreflective Orwell slid into heresy, it was because he prejudice? allowed himself to be swayed by his Orwell’s anti-homosexual intense emotions. position (definitely not ‘homophobia’, Of Orwell’s opposition to which would suggest irrational fear)

Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 1 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society flowed naturally from beliefs and values cogent worldview, and relates Orwell to about which he was quite forthcoming, the “anti-degenerate” thinking of though he never provided a systematic influential writers like Max Nordau. exposition. Orwell held that modern During the Second World War, Orwell machinery and urbanization were repeatedly insinuated, or more than inhuman and degrading. City life was insinuated, that “pacifists” were rootless, alienating, and demoralizing. homosexuals and therefore cowards. The Although there was no going back to the “nancy poets,” Auden and his friends, organic rural community which had been were a favorite target. Apparently no shattered by the industrial revolution, any one ever explained to Orwell that ad more than there was any going back to hominem arguments are generally religious faith, both losses were sad and fallacious, and he often made his point wrenching––in this respect, Orwell’s by unfairly questioning the motives of outlook is akin to that of Mr. and Mrs. those whose views he was combatting. Leavis. Industrial and scientific progress Above all else, Orwell was a could not be stopped without rhetorician and a propagandist. He unacceptable consequences, but were doubtless sincerely believed that essentially malign. homosexuals were more inclined to be Orwell was decidedly against cowards and therefore more inclined to birth control as well as feminism and be politically against war. But he homosexuality.1 He singled out certainly chose this kind of argument “philoprogenitiveness” (a high valuation because he thought it would work as an for having children) as one of a handful instrument of persuasion, and perhaps it of essential precepts of any viable did. One remarkable thing, though, is society. He believed (as did most that the ‘pacifist’ views Orwell assailed intellectuals in the 1940s) that western in this manner were precisely the society was beset by a crisis of declining opinions he had himself held until quite fertility. He routinely equated decency recently, and had enthusiastically with masculinity and masculinity with propounded for almost a decade. virility and physical toughness. He Among advanced and humane expressed contempt for people who took thinkers in Orwell’s day, there was still aspirin. He did not welcome reductions an overwhelming consensus that in the working day or increasing homosexuality was pathological. This affluence, because more leisure and more had been the view of Krafft-Ebing and of comforts were liable to lead to Freud, for instance. The theory was still ennervating softness and a life of popular among intellectuals that the meaningless vacuity. As was remarked alienation of urban life encouraged by someone who knew him well, his masturbation, which led to all the human ideal would have been a big- perversions, particularly homosexuality. bodied working-class female raising It is not especially surprising that Orwell, twelve children.2 who was never one for intellectually Though I cannot unpack all this striking out on his own, would assimilate here,3 it forms part of a coherent and this predominant view. At this time, anything perceived as sexual

1 ambivalence was quite commonly taken Orwell himself was sterile. He and his wife as a symptom of decadence and adopted a son, whom Orwell devotedly cared for after her death. disintegration, as witness, among many 2 Most of the above views are clearly propounded examples, the figure of Tiresias in The in Chapter 11 of The Road to Wigan Pier. Waste Land. 3 See my forthcoming book, Orwell Your Orwell: In the mid-1930s Orwell resisted An Ideological Study (South Bend: St. conversion to socialism because he Augustine’s Press, 2004). Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 2 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society associated it with cranky and degenerate However, this reconstruction of practices, including vegetarianism, Orwell’s motives for being a “pacifist” is nudism, teetotalism, and sexual not convincing. It is not a report of the abnormality. After he had become a reasons given by Orwell, or by the bulk socialist, he saw these associations as a of the left, whose anti-war theories and liability to the socialist movement, and attitudes Orwell shared. You would therefore saw it as incumbent upon him hardly guess from Hitchens’s remarks to fight against them within the left. He here that Orwell observed the growth of perceived middle-class people as more anti-fascist pronouncements by susceptible to crankiness than working Conservatives and viewed them with men, and went out of his way to emulate concern as signs of warlike intentions what he identified as working-class towards Nazi Germany, or that he habits, even to the extent of slurping his condemned the Chamberlain government tea out of his saucer. Orwell’s machismo for its arms build-up. is therefore intimately linked with his Orwell’s view, prior to his worship of the proletariat. conversion to a pro-war position, was very much in line with the “pacifism” of the left, harking back to the First World Orwell’s Anti-War Phase War and expecting the next war to be similarly indefensible. If, as Hitchens Another of Hitchens’s techniques is to to quite reasonably does, we take Orwell’s tell us what Orwell must have been real career as a writer as starting in thinking when he arrived at his mistaken October 1928, then for more than half of views. He reconstructs Orwell’s that career Orwell was a “pacifist”. thoughts so as to offer a rationale for Orwell joined the Independent Labour Orwell’s views which is acceptable to Party (I.L.P.) and his anti-war views present-day political correctness and to were quite similar to those of other I.L.P. Hitchens, while it may not be the members; he left the I.L.P. after he began rationale that would have occurred to to support the war. Orwell. Here’s an example: Orwell accepted the common leftist view that “fascism” was nothing So hostile was Orwell to other than capitalism with the gloves off, conventional patriotism, and so and that going to war would make horrified by the cynicism and Britain fascist (or speed up Britain’s stupidity of the Conservatives in going fascist, which was probably the face of fascism, that he fell inevitable in due course) so that no true for some time into the belief that “war against fascism” was possible. War ‘Britain’, as such or as so defined, against fascism, then, could only be a wasn’t worth fighting for. (p. feeble pretext for a war driven on both 127) sides purely by the economic rivalry of capitalist states. Notice that Orwell “fell,” rather Here, as time and again than reasoned his way, into this position. throughout Hitchens’s book, we see Because Orwell’s anti-war standpoint up Hitchens concealing from his readers to August 1939 is an opinion that (inadvertently, for Hitchens does not Hitchens disagrees with, it is implicitly quite grasp it himself) that Orwell has a attributed to Orwell’s emotional reasoned way of arriving at conclusions reactions, and these reactions are Hitchens doesn’t like. Orwell, of course, presented sympathetically. We are did not think up the reasoning or invited to admire Orwell’s motives and conclusions for himself, but adopted both ignore his arguments. from the leftist discourse of the times,

Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 3 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society though within the range of views on the political views could scarcely have been left, he selected some positions in more commonplace. For the most part, preference to others, and then engaged in they were the leftist orthodoxy––and that controversies with fellow leftists. means the intellectuals’ orthodoxy––in the 1930s and 1940s. They were mainly the political correctness of his day, just The Banality of Orwell’s Politics as Hitchens’s views are of his. And on the rare points where this Hitchens praises Orwell for having noted characterization might be disputed, that Catholics tended to be pro-fascist. Orwell’s views were still far from outré But it is misleading to present this as in that milieu at that time. though it were an isolated aperçu, Hitchens’s primary exhibit is without mentioning that Orwell was Orwell’s attitude to “the three great doggedly anti-Catholic. In a letter to a subjects of the twentieth century . . . girl-friend he casually dismisses one imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism” (p. writer as “a stinking RC,”4 though there 5). By “imperialism” Hitchens means may be an element of self-mockery here only the British empire: he is an with respect to his own anti-Catholicism, enthusiastic supporter of American which was notorious among his imperial expansion today. By acquaintances, for earlier in this letter he “Stalinism” he means Communism, his refers to “my hideous prejudice against years on the left having left him with the your sex, my obsession about R.C.s, etc.” habit of being semantically charitable to Orwell was very much a Protestant Trotskyists. And within “fascism” he atheist; in his youth there had been a loosely includes both National Socialism vigorous Catholic movement in British and Spanish Nationalism. A crucial letters, against which he reacted strongly; premiss of Hitchens’s thesis is that being Orwell saw the Catholic Church as an simultaneously opposed to these three old and still formidable enemy of entities was unusual. This is a simple freedom of thought. factual error. Thousands of people held It’s perhaps necessary to add, these views. since this seems so strange today, that As an example, let’s look at Orwell lived in a culture where it was Bertrand Russell, probably the most unquestionably the done thing to make influential writer of the British left in the derogatory or laudatory generalizations 1920s and 1930s, someone who knew about entire groups of people, however Orwell and someone from whose defined, and at the same time minimal opinions on political questions Orwell good manners to treat individual seldom greatly diverged (though their members of those groups with complete views on culture and personal fulfillment respect, as well as sporting and decent to were quite unalike). Orwell had a short take individuals as one found them. On a life, so that some of the writers who had personal level, Orwell was open and influenced him in his youth outlived considerate to homosexuals, Catholics, him––another was George Bernard and Communists. Shaw. Hitchens often gives the Russell was an active and impression that Orwell’s opinions were outspoken opponent of the British exceptional, and occasionally seems to empire. He was chairman of the India imply that Orwell was almost isolated. League, pressing for Indian This is a popular take but it won’t bear independence. Russell was always a examination. In broad outline, Orwell’s committed opponent of Fascism, Naziism, and the Spanish Nationalist rebels. 4 Complete Works, Volume 10, p. 268. Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 4 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society

Immediately after the Bolshevik dated his re-appraisal to the Munich seizure of power in Russia in 1917, agreement, and especially to Hitler’s Russell displayed some general subsequent breach of that agreement by sympathy for the new regime. He then occupying what remained of visited Russia and wrote The Practice Czechoslovakia. and Theory of Bolshevism (1920), Most leftists at the beginning of shocking many by his bitter opposition to the 1930s were anti-war (or, as they were Communism (Bolshevism renamed itself loosely called, “pacifists”).6 Some ‘Communism’ just around this time). remained against the war, but many, Russell remained resolutely opposed to including Russell and Orwell, switched Communism until Orwell’s death and to support for a war against Hitler. I then until at least 1958 (when he began mention this to emphasize that in case to soften his opposition to the Soviet Hitchens wants to take support for the Union because of his belief that the British war effort as evidence of anti- extinction of humankind through Naziism, Orwell was a late convert to thermonuclear war had become a serious support for the war effort (as Hitchens, of likelihood). course, fully acknowledges), and in this In the 1930s, both Russell and respect was a fairly ordinary leftist Orwell were at first opposed to the intellectual of the period. Though there looming war with Germany, both were isn’t space to document it here, Russell’s classed as “pacifists”, and both switched commitment to all three of Hitchens’s at around the same time to support for correctness tests was more resolute, more the war. Russell wrote the anti-war book unswerving than Orwell’s. At times, for Which Way to Peace? (1936), while instance, Orwell wobbled on the issue of Orwell wrote an anti-war pamphlet Indian independence, asserting that it which was not printed and has not was not really practicable (just a few survived, though we can figure out much years before it became a reality). of what it must have said by scattered remarks he made at the time. As Hitchens notes, Orwell also tried to Goodbye to the Empire persuade his friends to form an illegal underground group to sabotage the war Aside from Russell’s views, there is effort. much wider evidence for the broad Orwell reports that he changed opposition to the empire, to Naziism and his view about the war as the result of a Fascism, and to Communism. The tide of dream, on August 22nd 1939, ten days leftwing support for dismantling the before the outbreak of war. Hitchens’s empire was so strong that the Labour statement that Orwell became pro-war Party, following its landslide election when “the war itself was well under victory in 1945, was able to rush through way” (p. 127) is thus inaccurate, though independence for Burma and India. it is true that Orwell’s new position did After all, what was at stake? not become widely known until after the There had long been a widespread view war had begun. Russell is on record as within British politics that the empire having switched to support of the war by was a net drain on Britain’s resources early 1940. He explained his change of position in a long letter to the New York Times in February 1941,5 in which he

5 Editor (Chicago: Open Court, 2002), pp. 177– Reprinted in Ray Perkins Jr., ed., Yours 182. Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: A Lifelong Fight 6 This term was commonly used to include those for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the who were not strictly pacifists. Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 5 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society and would better be abandoned.7 The rapid rise in British living standards ever majority of those in favor of holding onto experienced. Taken overall, the empire the empire accepted that the colonies probably was a net drain on British would gradually acquire more self- resources. Certainly, there is no clear government until they achieved indication that the British people as a ‘dominion status’, the stage reached by whole suffered economically from giving countries like Canada and Australia. up the empire. India in the 1930s was already largely self-governing, except for foreign policy, and more self-government would no The Left Loves Orwell doubt have arrived even under Churchill. During the war, the Indian Orwell wrote for leftwing intellectuals, Congress, under Gandhi’s inspiration, they were his intended audience, and he opposed the war and took the position strained to make his opinions acceptable that the Japanese or Germans would be to them. He was adroit at trimming his no worse as rulers than the British. utterances to gain maximum Britain therefore suspended the Congress acceptability by the left. When, in his and imposed martial law in India, an final years, he suddenly attained literary important piece on the strategic fame, he acquired a much larger chessboard. Though critical of martial audience. and this was embarrassing, like law, Orwell (again, like Russell) was not one of those Hollywood comedies where in favor of giving India independence someone whispering to an intimate while the war was going on, a position acquaintance discovers too late that the that flowed automatically from his public address system has been switched support for the war effort. on, and his words are being carried to Orwell believed that the empire everyone in town. was “a money racket,” that Britain Hitchens reproduces some choice benefitted economically from examples of leftist hostility to Orwell. exploitation of the colonies, and that Any Communist Party member or decolonization would necessarily bring fellow-traveller and any orthodox about a sharp drop in British living Trotskyist defender of the Soviet Union standards. Orwell, writes Hitchens as a progressive workers’ state, was approvingly, “never let his readers forget bound to regard Orwell as a bitter enemy. that they lived off an empire of overeseas Hence the nasty attacks by Raymond exploitation, writing at one point that, try Williams, E.P. Thompson, and Isaac as Hitler might, he could not reduce the Deutscher, which Hitchens deftly German people to the abject status of dissects. It is rather surprising that Indian coolies” (p. 44). Orwell might be Hitchens doesn’t similarly excerpt some forgiven for overlooking, in the heat of of the feminist examples of anti-Orwell the moment, that the Indian coolies’ diatribe, among which Daphne Patai’s is, status was abject before the British though sometimes unfair, often quite arrived, after which it became less abject, perceptive.8 but what to make of Hitchens, all these It is easily confirmable that the years later, holding aloft this daft remark bulk of books and articles on Orwell are as if it were a penetrating observation? both leftist in political orientation and The abandonment of the empire very well-disposed towards Orwell. The coincided with the beginning of the most left has all along been predominantly

7 See for example Peter Cain, ed., Empire and 8 The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology Imperialism: The Debate of the 1870s (South (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). 1984). Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 6 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society pro-Orwell. The most common view those who enjoyed whirlwind romances among leftists is that Orwell is the with Communism, like Auden and property of the left, and that it is Spender, and who could never furnish therefore outrageous if a rightwinger spectacular confessions and memoirs cites Orwell in opposition to because they had nothing spectacular to totalitarianism. If you start researching recall or confess. There were some who Orwell, you soon lose count of the times left the Party or never joined it but you have read about the sacrilege of the remained devout fellow-travellers. There John Birch Society in using ‘1984’ as a were some sui generis cases, like J.B.S. telephone number. Haldane, whose wife left him and wrote A particularly crude example of an informative book that may be the most prevalent leftist view is Orwell considered a slightly spectacular for Beginners.9 The For Beginners confession and memoir, and who himself series is a set of socialist tracts, in the faded away without actually breaking form of easy introductions to modern with the Communists, or John Strachey, thinkers illustrated with cartoons. Orwell a non-C.P. member who preached the for Beginners is one of the most Communist line with great eloquence for inaccurate and amateurish of this a few years, then put it all behind him to commercially successful series; it seek a career as a Labour politician. Then exemplifies the conventional opinion that there were the broad ranks of the left, anyone who mentions Orwell in who had spasms of sympathy for Soviet criticizing socialism is doing something Russia now and then, but who were not unconscionable, because, to a leftist, to be dislodged from support for the Orwell is ‘one of ours’. Labour Party or the I.L.P., both Hitchens refers to “the essentially anti-Communist intellectuals of the 1930s” (p. 56) as organizations. though most of them were pro- The rarity of the individuals who Communist. He mentions Orwell’s conformed to the pattern described by “innumerable contemporaries, whose Hitchens is illustrated by the fact that defections from Communism were later Richard Crossman couldn’t find a single to furnish spectacular confessions and convincing British example of a former memoirs” (p. 59). Hitchens is not alone Communist intellectual turned anti- in exaggerating the importance of Communist for the landmark volume, Communist influence in the 1930s. The The God that Failed, and not wishing to notion that most British intellectuals go to press without one British specimen, were bowled over by Communism is an had to make do with Stephen Spender. inflated legend. The lack of any such examples There were those very few did not arise because large numbers of intellectuals, like Maurice Dobb and intellectuals joined the Communist Party Maurice Cornforth, who remained and never left it. It arose because very Communists throughout. There were few joined the Communist Party at all, those promising young intellectuals like and nearly all of those who did left Christopher Caudwell who became quickly before they could get up to any Communists and died fighting for skullduggery worth memorializing. My Communism in Spain. Whether they guess would be that prior to 1941 more would have remained Communists for British intellectuals joined the I.L.P. than long had they survived a few more years joined the C.P.G.B. And, it goes without is not certain. I doubt it. There were saying, far more joined the Labour Party than either of those. The gigantic Labour

9 Party, with a membership of millions, David Smith and Michael Mosher, Orwell for operated a rigorous and active policy of Beginners (Writers and Readers, 1984). Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 7 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society excluding all members of the Communist firing, Hitchens rushes to poor Orwell’s Party or any of its front organizations. defense: Orwell “only says that middle- To say all this is not to belittle the class people, such as his own immediate effectiveness of the Communist Party of forebears, were convinced that the Great Britain. It had an extraordinary working classes smelled” (p. 46). impact on British political and According to Hitchens, to accuse Orwell intellectual life, given that it was always of saying that the workers smelled is a such a small group of people with so “simple––or at any rate a simple- little popular support. minded––confusion of categories,” and It might be contended that the he refers readers to The Road to Wigan real influence of the Communist Party Pier, where what Orwell says about the was not in its membership but in the odiferous working classes can be spread of pro-Communist ideas among “checked and consulted.” non-C.P. members. But first, this too can A pity, then, that Hitchens did not easily be exaggerated. Much of it was take a minute or two to check or consult akin to Western admiration for Japan in it. Orwell broaches the topic of the 1970s. It did not mean that the proletarian smelliness by stating that in admirers wanted to do the bidding of the his childhood “four frightful words” admirees. were “bandied about quite freely. The Second, Orwell was not as words were: The lower classes smell.”11 implacable an anti-Communist as is often So far this is consistent with Hitchens’s supposed. The Road to Wigan Pier, for reading, and must have been where instance, has some cracks against the Hitchens stopped. Orwell now pursues Communists and some compliments to this theme for three pages. them. It comes down in support of their At first he does not strongly line du jour, the Popular Front, and it commit himself on the factual issue of dismisses resolutions “against Fascism proletarian redolence, though he does and Communism” with “i.e. against rats imply that the comparative uncleanliness and rat poison,”10 a remark as idiotically of navvies, tramps, and even domestic pro-Communist as anything in Les servants is a matter of observation. He communistes et le paix. quotes from a Somerset Maugham travel book: “I do not blame the working man But Stink He Does because he stinks, but stink he does. It makes social intercourse difficult to After Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier came persons of sensitive nostril.” Then out in 1937, Orwell was twitted by Orwell confronts the inevitable factual Communists, who gleefully quoted his question: scandalous slander against the English workers: that they smelled. Orwell Meanwhile, do the ‘lower branded this a “lie” and persuaded his classes’ smell? Of course, as a publisher Victor Gollancz to make a fuss whole, they are dirtier than the about it. upper classes. They are bound to Hitchens indignantly denies that be, considering the circumstances Orwell wrote the sentence, “The working in which they live, for even at this classes smell.” Hitchens vouchsafes that late date less than half the houses this would be a “damning” sentence, a in England have bathrooms. “statement of combined snobbery and Besides, the habit of washing heresy.” All his hormones of outrage yourself all over every day is a

10 Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 1989 11 Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 119. [1937]), p. 206. Orwell’s italics. Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 8 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society

very recent one in Europe, and As an English working-class the working classes are generally child in the 1950s, when things were a more conservative than the lot better than twenty years before, I can bourgeoisie. . . . It is a pity that recall that, though most homes by then those who idealise the working had bathtubs, it was out of the question class so often think it necessary to to pay for hot water to be available all praise every working-class the time. The water was heated for the characteristic and therefore to occasion, and when it was bath night, pretend that it is meritorious in once a week at most, barely enough was itself. (p. 121) heated for one bath per person; this meant that if the depth of water in the tub The “Meanwhile” indicates that though exceeded about two inches, it would get Orwell feels he can’t evade answering uncomfortably cold. (Showers did not the question, he wants to put it in its become common among the English unimportant place, as an aside to his working class until the 1960s.) You main argument. He avoids answering it didn’t wash your hair as often as you had directly or literally, while making his a bath (so the shoulders of jackets and meaning quite clear: the smelliness of the coats were always greasy, as therefore lower classes is not a false belief held by were places like chairbacks that they the upper classes, but a fact. frequently touched), and you “could not A little later Orwell mentions the afford” (the opportunity cost was too notion “that working-class people are high, because of your low income) to dirty from choice and not from change your socks, underwear, or shirt necessity,” again accepting that they are every day. Clothes had to be washed by dirty while trying to leave that point in the housewife, by hand, in a sink, with peripheral vision. “Actually, people who soap flakes and then hung on a line, have access to a bath will generally use every Monday unless it rained, to dry in it” (p. 122). He has already told us that the wind. Wearing the same clothes for most households don’t have bathtubs, many days or weeks at a stretch is which means that the great majority of probably more conducive to a noticeable working-class people don’t have baths in smell than not bathing. their homes. Earlier, Orwell has closely After The Road to Wigan Pier identified being dirty with smelling (pp. appeared, Orwell must have kicked 119–120), so there is no room to interpret himself for having given the Communists him as accepting the griminess of the such an easy way to ridicule and lower orders without also acknowledging discredit him. He blustered, not quite the olfactory corollary. honestly, parsing his written words, We see then, that despite some trying to make something of the fact that references by Orwell to the middle-class he had never literally said “the lower belief that the lower classes smell, classes smell,” except in attributing these worded almost as though this belief were words to middle-class snobs. Yet Orwell in itself wrong, Orwell ultimately does had unmistakably intimated that the not flinch from the objective fact that the working classes smelled, and it is both English working classes of 1936 are careless and pointless of Hitchens to dirtier than their social superiors like maintain otherwise. himself, and that they therefore smell–– though it’s not their fault. This is not an invention of Orwell’s detractors, as I’ve Got a Little List Hitchens heatedly asseverates, but Orwell’s very own opinion. And In 1945 the Labour Party swept to power Orwell’s opinion on this point is correct. in Britain, with a landslide electoral

Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 9 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society victory. Orwell saw himself as a not very convincing.13 He draws various supporter of this government, though he distinctions, some of which are speedily became disappointed in it. questionable, while others are quite The British Foreign Office had a genuine, though they don’t gainsay a covert section known as the Information certain family resemblance between the Research Department (I.R.D.), concerned two endeavors. to counteract Communist propaganda. “A blacklist is a roster of names George Orwell supplied this department maintained by those with the power to with a list of names, annotated with affect hiring and firing,” says Hitchens. comments mainly on their possible Why would Hitchens say this, except to Communist connections, but also their imply that Orwell’s list was not truly a sexual habits, their characters, their ‘blacklist’? Yet Hitchens quotes Orwell ethnic backgrounds, and their political as writing that “If it [the listing of soundness generally.12 Orwell, it now ‘unreliables’ by the I.R.D.] had been seems to some, was a McCarthyist before done earlier it would have stopped McCarthy. people like Peter Smollett worming their This is a sensitive matter for way into important propaganda jobs Hitchens. He has an unbroken record of where they were probably able to do us a detestation for ‘McCarthyism’, recently lot of harm.”14 So Orwell’s intention speaking out in condemnation, yet again, was that his list should be used as (or as of Elia Kazan’s co-operation with HUAC part of) a blacklist, to stop suspected in naming old Communist associates, Communists from being hired. which led to the interminable vilification In another attempt at exculpating of Kazan by Hollywood and the Orwell by legalistic definition, Hitchens mainstream media. Hitchens has also says that “a ‘snitch’ or stool pigeon is been labelled “Snitchens” by Democratic rightly defined as someone who betrays Party faithfuls, because he gave friends or colleagues in the hope of plea- testimony to Congress corroborating the bargaining or otherwise of gaining fact that Sidney Blumenthal had been advantage” (p. 166). Does this mean that spreading dirt about Monica Lewinsky at the same behavior for motives other than the behest of his boss the Arkansas “advantage,” such as sincere concern Rapist. about the Communist threat, would grant Here Hitchens tries to show that immunity from these labels? Many like there is a great gulf between what Orwell Kazan who told the truth about their did and what McCarthyists did, but he is involvement with the Communists to the F.B.I. or to HUAC did it as a matter of 12 George Orwell, Complete Works, Volume 20, conscience. And as for the fact that pp. 240–259. Unfortunately Secker and Orwell did not personally know most on Warburg have not handled the Complete Works the list, Hitchens surely needs to do more happily. The hardbound edition is available only work on this angle. Can it be right to as a set at a monstrous price. Volumes 1–9 are report to the authorities one’s suspicions Orwell’s nine book-length works. Volumes 10– 20 comprise all of Orwell’s other output, of a stranger’s Communist sympathies, arranged chronologically. These last eleven intending that this will hurt his volumes, but not the first nine, have been released in paperback, with no volume number or series title on the cover or title page. None of 13 With the air of one setting the facts straight, them can be bought in a regular way from Hitchens declaims that the “existence” of bookstores in the U.S., though they can be Orwell’s list “was not ‘revealed’ in 1996.” But purchased from British suppliers online. They no one has ever suggested that it was. The fact are usually listed by title, with no indication that that Orwell had passed on this list to a secret they belong to the Complete Works. Volume 20 government agency was revealed in 1996. has the title Our Job Is to Make Life Worth 14 Hitchens, p. 163; Orwell, Complete Works, Living, 1949–50. Volume 20, p. 103. Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 10 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society employment chances, and simultaneously Furthermore, since most Labour voters wrong to report one’s definite knowledge were not “socialists” even in a very of a friend’s Communist Party broad sense, there would be something membership? not very democratic about employing a On the Daily Telegraph’s secret government agency for reference to “Thought Police” in this disseminating democratic socialism. connection, Hitchens protests that “the Hitchens is now a militant Information Research Department was supporter of Bush’s war against what unconnected to any ‘Thought Police’.” Hitchens calls “theocratic terrorism,” Must conservative newspapers be subject though its next step is apparently to to a ban on the most elementary use of terrorize a lot of non-terrorists in metaphor? Compiling secret government secularist Iraq. Any threat posed to files on the ideological outlooks of Americans by Islamic terrorism today is people who have broken no law but are paltry by comparison with the suspected of holding certain opinions is Communist threat of the 1940s and surely one aspect of the phenomenon 1950s. The current “war on terror” is satirized in Orwell’s Thought Police. committing more injustices than were My point is not that Orwell ever committed by “McCarthyism,” should not have given this list to the though the victims this time do not I.R.D., though perhaps he shouldn’t, but include well-connected academics, that Hitchens should be more bureaucrats, or movie stars. Far from understanding of “McCarthyism”, a term complaining about these injustices, now most often used for activities with Hitchens smacks his lips at Bush’s which McCarthy himself was not magnificent “ruthlessness”. Hitchens has connected. Many of the elements now yet to get his ducks in a row on the collectively referred to as question of when it is right to give “McCarthyism” were wrong, and there information to the government. were some horrible injustices. But, My own view is that while you contrary to most conventional accounts, shouldn’t give the government the time there actually was a Communist of day on a matter of drugs, conspiracy; it was no hallucination. pornography, insider trading, or illegal When it is known that the Communist immigration, when it comes to murder, Party is under the control of Moscow and rape, or being a member of the its members are used for conspiratorial Communist Party and therefore ipso work such as espionage and facto a Soviet agent, under the conditions disinformation, should it be out of the of fifty years ago, you may sometimes, question to deny sensitive government according to the precise circumstances, posts to Communists? That’s what be morally obliged to co-operate with a Orwell and Tail-Gunner Joe wanted to government body by telling it what you do, and I think both of them had a good know. Whereas “McCarthyism” was general case. mainly concerned with people who lied There is also a suggestion in about their past deeds in behalf of a Hitchens’s account that Orwell and Celia specific organization, Orwell’s list was Kirwan, his old flame at the I.R.D., were mainly concerned with people’s doing this anti-Communist chore for ideological sympathies whether or not democratic socialism, which renders it these had resulted in illegal acts. This more virtuous. It would surely be hard aspect of the comparison surely does not for Hitchens to argue that democratic favor Orwell. non-socialists ought not to be entitled to do anything to combat Communism that democratic socialists are entitled to do.

Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 11 of 12 The Libertarian Alliance is an independent, non-party group with a shared desire to work for a free society

Why Orwell Matters, Really

Orwell matters because he was a great writer. Orwell’s social and political views are interesting, as are those of Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift, but they are most interesting for their nuances and their precise expression rather than for their gross anatomy, which was unexceptional and sometimes fashionably silly. Orwell wrote two novels worth reading, Burmese Days and Coming Up for Air. He wrote a wonderful little allegory, Animal Farm. He wrote by far the most powerful of all dystopian stories, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which made many a Westerner feel like committing suicide and many a Communist subject feel like not committing suicide (because someone outside hell understood what hell was like). He wrote excellent accounts of his own experiences, somewhere between investigative journalism and sociological participant observation. That’s quite a lot for an individual who died at forty-six. Yet there is something of greater weight than all of these put together: the numerous short pieces, the essays and reviews he turned out rapid-fire, week by week, mainly to put bread on the table. Although Orwell was not an original theoretician, and his ideas, broadly characterized, were all off-the-shelf, he had a superb gift for formulating them sharply, so that their implications appeared fresh and unexpected. These writings sparkle with polemical virtuosity; they throb with life.15 They will make entertaining reading for centuries to come.

15 The essays are now available in one 1,400-page volume: George Orwell, Essays (Knopf, 2002). Also invaluable are the four volumes of The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell (Godine, 2000 [1968]). Why Orwell Matters, by Christopher Hitchens.- A book review by David Ramsay Steele For further details please visit www.libertarian-alliance.org.uk orwell.pdf Page 12 of 12