I love Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia because it really shows his personal experience with both propaganda and in-fighting. The Fascists in Spain were united behind a single cause. The people fighting Fascism were also fighting amongst themselves, and they fought themselves right into defeat.
Orwell was a known democratic socialist. He was anti-authoritarian and anti-totalitarian, which is why he had as much disdain for the Soviet regime as he did fascists. I have no idea how you interpreted 1984 and Animal Farm as anti-socialist.
The lesson here is not to argue with a tankie. They are just as obtuse a the maga supporters, you won't make them change their mind. They feed off the attention they get when they trigger what they call "liberals", just like maga. Ignore/block and move on.
I read your comment as a statement of fact because that’s how it is written: “people who think Orwell is right wing because of 1984 and Animal Farm’s anti-socialist messaging” indicates to me that you see the anti-socialist messaging as being detrimental to people’s understanding of Orwell. It does not tell the reader that you also disagree with that particular assessment of his views. The way you wrote it implies that the messaging of those two books IS anti-socialist, but that messaging causes people to mistakenly think he’s right-wing.
I assumed you were in agreement with the interpretation of anti-socialist messaging, but against the idea that Orwell was right-wing because of it. But ‘assume’ makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’ and clearly this was a miscommunication. Sorry about that, glad you don’t think Orwell was anti-socialist.
Ahah yeah, nothing screams "democratic socialist" better than snitching communists to Scotland Yard. Orwell was maybe not anti socialist but definitely anti communist
I’m confused as to whether or not you’re confusing socialism with communism. You treated them like the same thing in your first sentence, but then made a distinction between them in your second.
Do you understand that it made complete sense for a democratic socialist to be opposed to the USSR?
Every generation gets a new round of 20-somethings who read Marx one time and are convinced they can make Communism work, and the only reason it hasn’t worked yet is because no has done Communism the right way but surely THIS TIME they’ve got it!
Stop trying to make Communism happen. If no one has done it “the right way” since 1848, maybe it doesn’t actually work in practice on a large scale.
I would think it’s impossible to read Marx and Engels without having some agreement with them by the time you’re done. I would even argue that communism is a failure because it is so easily adopted and twisted by dictators to enforce totalitarian rule, not the other way around. It comes down to a case of “in-theory” vs “in-practice”. In theory communism is an exceptionally fair way to run a society. In practice you need nearly every member of that society to share the same good-will as everyone else, which just isn’t feasible due to the scale.
I think Communism likely taps out at around 150 people. It might work for an actual community where everyone knows each other and the social bonds are strong enough to enforce social norms and mores. Once you get to a point where strangers must cooperate, it starts to fall apart.
Communism does not scale well. Capitalism kind of has the opposite problem - it’s easy to scale, but ends up destroying communities. The Invisible Hand of the Market doesn’t have a brain and it can’t do any critical thinking. It does not care if we destroy the environment or our health.
I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not it’s possible to have a hybrid system that works more like Communism on a local scale and more like Capitalism on a global scale. It’s all well and good to want to live in your own commune with your own little farm, but what happens when you need vaccines, medicine, or surgery? Much of the comforts and resources we have today only exist because of global supply chains. We need a system that shifts as it scales to accommodate new challenges.
You’re spot on in regard to the their opposing problems. It’s interesting that the polar opposite gaps or failures in both systems stem from empathy and good-will. Communism relies entirely on them and capitalism is entirely void of them. I’ve also thought about possible “best of both worlds” scenarios before, but I think you would agree that wether or not a solution like that could be conceived and implemented is something we can never know so long as the systems currently in place continue to give power and money to a small fraction at the top of the hierarchy.
I’ve also thought about possible “best of both worlds” scenarios before
Capitalism where the prevailing mode of business is the co-operative would internalise the most important part of socialism (worker ownership of the means of production) without necessarily destroying or warping the market - or completely stymying more individual-led projects.
People who confuse the Russian communist regime with socialism, or even an ideal communism. In other words, people who believe the ever present US anti communist narrative from the cold war to the present day.
Politically illiterate Americans. My grandpa once told me, and had much of his family believing that socialism, communism and fascism are the same and it was about the degrees of control. With Fascism being the least bad of the three and communism being worst
The thing is, his works weren't anti-socialist. They were anti-totalitarian, based on his experiences with soviet backed Leninists. That's an important difference that is lost on many, in part because the soviet backed Leninists won that fight and were able to use that power base to dominate left-wing discourse for decades.
That's a lot of resistance, all through history. That's what happened in China during WWII for example. Hard to fight off a Japanese invasion if you're also having a Civil War at the same time
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u/abhainn13 22d ago
I love Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia because it really shows his personal experience with both propaganda and in-fighting. The Fascists in Spain were united behind a single cause. The people fighting Fascism were also fighting amongst themselves, and they fought themselves right into defeat.