Fifty Orwell Essays Read online

words, Socialism and Fascism.

  Socialism is usually defined as "common ownership of the means of

  production". Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns

  everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does NOT mean that

  people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture,

  but it DOES mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships

  and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole

  large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways

  superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can

  solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a

  capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there

  is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped

  back into the sea etc etc) and always unemployment. In time of war, on

  the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because

  nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of

  it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply

  calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them.

  Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials.

  Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful

  thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient

  quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the

  moment.

  However, it has become clear in the last few years that "common ownership

  of the means of production" is not in itself a sufficient definition of

  Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of

  incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and

  abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are

  simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a

  class system. Centralised ownership has very little meaning unless the

  mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some

  kind of control over the government. "The State" may come to mean no more

  than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can

  return, based on power rather than on money.

  But what then is Fascism?

  Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that

  borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for

  war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a

  Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still

  capitalists and workers, and--this is the important point, and the real

  reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with

  Fascism--generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same

  people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the

  State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It

  controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours,

  wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical

  purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a

  State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere

  EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is

  obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the

  world has ever seen.

  But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that

  which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state

  of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for

  granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the

  Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of

  Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world.

  Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent

  Nazi professors have "proved" over and over again that only Nordic man is

  fully human, have even mooted the idea that non Nordic peoples (such as

  ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of

  war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards

  conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the

  Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may

  need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open

  rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture

  weapons for Hitler's forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis

  aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main

  castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At

  the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people,

  third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to

  come the coloured peoples, the "semi-apes" as Hitler calls them, who are

  to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

  However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because

  it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world conquest, and

  not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to

  stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a

  competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main

  objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite

  directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not

  totally opposed to those of the State.

  All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense

  industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal

  to the strain of preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern

  scale you have got to divert the greater part of your national income to

  armaments, which means cutting down on consumption goods. A bombing

  plane, for instance, is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or

  eighty thousand pairs of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread.

  Clearly you can't have MANY bombing planes without lowering the national

  standard of life. It is guns or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But

  in Chamberlain's England the transition could not be made. The rich would

  not face the necessary taxation, and while the rich are still visibly

  rich it is not possible to tax the poor very heavily either. Moreover, so

  long as PROFIT was the main object the manufacturer had no incentive to

  change over from consumption goods to armaments. A businessman's first

  duty is to his shareholders. Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it

  pays better to manufacture motor cars. To prevent war material from

  reaching the enemy is common sense, but to sell in the highest market is

  a business duty. Right at the end of August 1939 the British dealers were

  tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber,

  copper and shellac-and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was

  going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling

  somebody a razor to cut your throat with. But it was "good business".

  And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was

  rearming. After 1
936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was

  coming. After Munich it was merely a question of how soon the war would

  begin. In September 1939 war broke out. EIGHT MONTHS LATER it was

  discovered that, so far as equipment went, the British army was barely

  beyond the standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way

  desperately to the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles

  against tanks, with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even

  enough revolvers to supply all the officers. After a year of war the

  regular army was still short of 300,000 tin hats. There had even,

  previously, been a shortage of uniforms--this in one of the greatest

  woollen-goods producing countries in the world!

  What had happened was that the whole moneyed class, unwilling to face a

  change in their way of life, had shut their eyes to the nature of Fascism

  and modern war. And false optimism was fed to the general public by the

  gutter press, which lives on its advertisements and is therefore

  interested in keeping trade conditions normal. Year after year the

  Beaverbrook press assured us in huge headlines that THERE WILL BE NO WAR,

  and as late as the beginning of 1939 Lord Rothermere was describing

  Hitler as "a great gentleman". And while England in the moment of

  disaster proved to be short of every war material except ships, it is not

  recorded that there was any shortage of motor cars, fur coats,

  gramophones, lipstick, chocolates or silk stockings. And dare anyone

  pretend that the same tug-of-war between private profit and public

  necessity is not still continuing? England fights for her life, but

  business must fight for profits. You can hardly open a newspaper without

  seeing the two contradictory processes happening side by side. On the

  very same page you will find the Government urging you to save and the

  seller of some useless luxury urging you to spend. Lend to Defend, but

  Guinness is Good for You. Buy a Spitfire, but also buy Haig and Haig,

  Pond's Face Cream and Black Magic Chocolates.

  But one thing gives hope--the visible swing in public opinion. If we can

  survive this war, the defeat in Flanders will turn out to have been one

  of the great turning-points in English history. In that spectacular

  disaster the working class, the middle class and even a section of the

  business community could see the utter rottenness of private capitalism.

  Before that the case against capitalism had never been PROVED. Russia,

  the only definitely Socialist country, was backward and far away. All

  criticism broke itself against the rat-trap faces of bankers and the

  brassy laughter of stockbrokers. Socialism? Ha! ha! ha! Where's the money

  to come from? Ha! ha! ha! The lords of property were firm in their seats,

  and they knew it. But after the French collapse there came something that

  could not be laughed away, something that neither chequebooks nor

  policemen were any use against-the bombing. Zweee--BOOM! What's that? Oh,

  only a bomb on the Stock Exchange. Zweee--BOOM! Another acre of

  somebody's valuable slum-property gone west. Hitler will at any rate go

  down in history as the man who made the City of London laugh on the wrong

  side of its face. For the first time in their lives the comfortable were

  uncomfortable, the professional optimists had to admit that there was

  something wrong. It was a great step forward. From that time onwards the

  ghastly job of trying to convince artificially stupefied people that a

  planned economy might be better than a free-for-all in which the worst

  man wins-that job will never be quite so ghastly again.

  ii.

  The difference between Socialism and capitalism is not primarily a

  difference of technique. One cannot simply change from one system to the

  other as one might install a new piece of machinery in a factory, and

  then carry on as before, with the same people in positions of control.

  Obviously there is also needed a complete shift of power. New blood, new

  men, new ideas--in the true sense of the word, a revolution.

  I have spoken earlier of the soundness and homogeneity of England, the

  patriotism that runs like a connecting thread through almost all classes.

  After Dunkirk anyone who had eyes in his head could see this. But it is

  absurd to pretend that the promise of that moment has been fulfilled.

  Almost certainly the mass of the people are now ready for the vast

  changes that are necessary; but those changes have not even begun to

  happen.

  England is a family with the wrong members in control. Almost entirely we

  are governed by the rich, and by people who step into positions of

  command by right of birth. Few if any of these people are consciously

  treacherous, some of them are not even fools, but as a class they are

  quite incapable of leading us to victory. They could not do it, even if

  their material interests did not constantly trip them up. As I pointed

  out earlier, they have been artificially stupefied. Quite apart from

  anything else, the rule of money sees to it that we shall be governed

  largely by the old--that is, by people utterly unable to grasp what age

  they are living in or what enemy they are fighting. Nothing was more

  desolating at the beginning of this war than the way in which the whole

  of the older generation conspired to pretend that it was the war of

  1914-18 over again. All the old duds were back on the job, twenty years

  older, with the skull plainer in their faces. Ian Hay was cheering up the

  troops, Belloc was writing articles on strategy, Maurois doing

  broadcasts, Bairnsfather drawing cartoons. It was like a tea-party of

  ghosts. And that state of affairs has barely altered. The shock of

  disaster brought a few able men like Bevin to the front, but in general

  we are still commanded by people who managed to live through the years

  1931-9 without even discovering that Hitler was dangerous. A generation

  of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.

  As soon as one considers any problem of this war--and it does not matter

  whether it is the widest aspect of strategy or the tiniest detail of home

  organisation--one sees that the necessary moves cannot be made while the

  social structure of England remains what it is. Inevitably, because of

  their position and upbringing, the ruling class are fighting for their

  own privileges, which cannot possibly be reconciled with the public

  interest. It is a mistake to imagine that war aims, strategy, propaganda

  and industrial organisation exist in watertight compartments. All are

  interconnected. Every strategic plan, every tactical method, even every

  weapon will bear the stamp of the social system that produced it. The

  British ruling class are fighting against Hitler, whom they have always

  regarded and whom some of them still regard as their protector against

  Bolshevism. That does not mean that they will deliberately sell out; but

  it does mean that at every decisive moment they are likely to falter,

  pull their punches, do the wrong thing.

  Until the Churchill Government called some sort of halt to the process,

  they have done the wrong thing wi
th an unerring instinct ever since 1931.

  They helped Franco to overthrow the Spanish Government, although anyone

  not an imbecile could have told them that a Fascist Spain would be

  hostile to England. They fed Italy with war materials all through the

  winter of 1939-40, although it was obvious to the whole world that the

  Italians were going to attack us in the spring. For the sake of a few

  hundred thousand dividend drawers they are turning India from an ally into

  an enemy. Moreover, so long as the moneyed classes remain in control, we

  cannot develop any but a DEFENSIVE strategy. Every victory means a change

  in the STATUS QUO. How can we drive the Italians out of Abyssinia without

  rousing echoes among the coloured peoples of our own Empire? How can we

  even smash Hitler without the risk of bringing the German Socialists and

  Communists into power? The left-wingers who wail that "this is a

  capitalist war" and that "British Imperialism" is fighting for loot have

  got their heads screwed on backwards. The last thing the British moneyed

  class wish for is to acquire fresh territory. It would simply be an

  embarrassment. Their war aim (both unattainable and unmentionable) is

  simply to hang on to what they have got.

  Internally, England is still the rich man's Paradise. All talk of

  "equality of sacrifice" is nonsense. At the same time as factory workers

  are asked to put up with longer hours, advertisements for "Butler. One in

  family, eight in staff" are appearing in the press. The bombed-out

  populations of the East End go hungry and homeless while wealthier

  victims simply step into their cars and flee to comfortable country

  houses. The Home Guard swells to a million men in a few weeks, and is

  deliberately organised from above in such a way that only people with

  private incomes can hold positions of command. Even the rationing system

  is so arranged that it hits the poor all the time, while people with over

  �2,000 a year are practically unaffected by it. Everywhere privilege is

  squandering good will. In such circumstances even propaganda becomes

  almost impossible. As attempts to stir up patriotic feeling, the red

  posters issued by the Chamberlain Government at the beginning of the war

  broke all depth-records. Yet they could not have been much other than

  they were, for how could Chamberlain and his followers take the risk of

  rousing strong popular feeling AGAINST FASCISM? Anyone who was genuinely

  hostile to Fascism must also be opposed to Chamberlain himself and to all

  the others who had helped Hitler into power. So also with external

  propaganda. In all Lord Halifax's speeches there is not one concrete

  proposal for which a single inhabitant of Europe would risk the top joint

  of his little finger. For what war-aim can Halifax, or anyone like him,

  conceivably have, except to put the clock back to 1933?

  It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can

  be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it

  means a fundamental shift of power. Whether it happens with or without

  bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place. Nor does it mean the

  dictatorship of a single class. The people in England who grasp what

  changes are needed and are capable of carrying them through are not

  confined to any one class, though it is true that very few people with

  over �2,000 a year are among them. What is wanted is a conscious open

  revolt by ordinary people against inefficiency, class privilege and the

  rule of the old. It is not primarily a question of change of government.

  British governments do, broadly speaking, represent the will of the

  people, and if we alter our structure from below we shall get the

  government we need. Ambassadors, generals, officials and colonial

  administrators who are senile or pro-Fascist are more dangerous than

  Cabinet ministers whose follies have to be committed in public. Right

  through our national life we have got to fight against privilege, against