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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I started reading this at a friend's house because it was short. Found myself hooked.
I consider this to be Orwell's most important work.
For anyone who talks about British people benefitting from the Empire, for anyone who says all white people are descended from an aristocracy who stole their wealth from the rest of the world
For anyone who talks about "the patriarchy".
Read. This. Book.
Britain was built by a population of desperately poor men and women who scraped together a meagre second-world-level existence from the most grinding poverty imaginable. Women were not oppressed. They struggled equally and cooperatively with their husbands, just to get the family through the week.
The overwhelming number of white people weren't rich. They lived in sub-human conditions that would horrify you today, no matter what your skin colour. Only a tiny fraction of the population lived in any level of material comfort. So much so that the government realised it could barely raise an army of soldiers when the first world war came, because hardly anyone in the country was fit enough to run a mile.
The rich aristocracy were as isolated from the population of Britain as most billionaire oligarchs living in London are today.
I consider this to be Orwell's most important work.
For anyone who talks about British people benefitting from the Empire, for anyone who says all white people are descended from an aristocracy who stole their wealth from the rest of the world
For anyone who talks about "the patriarchy".
Read. This. Book.
Britain was built by a population of desperately poor men and women who scraped together a meagre second-world-level existence from the most grinding poverty imaginable. Women were not oppressed. They struggled equally and cooperatively with their husbands, just to get the family through the week.
The overwhelming number of white people weren't rich. They lived in sub-human conditions that would horrify you today, no matter what your skin colour. Only a tiny fraction of the population lived in any level of material comfort. So much so that the government realised it could barely raise an army of soldiers when the first world war came, because hardly anyone in the country was fit enough to run a mile.
The rich aristocracy were as isolated from the population of Britain as most billionaire oligarchs living in London are today.
George Orwell seems a pretty reliable writer of both entertaining and meaningful text. I should work through his ouvre.
A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants, within reasonable limits. Hence the fact that in times of stress 'educated' people tend to come to the front; they are no more gifted than the others and their 'education' is generally quite useless in itself, but they are accustomed to a certain amount of deference and consequently have the cheek necessary to a commander.
There is the queer spectacle of modern electrical science showering miracles upon people with empty bellies. You may shiver all night for lack of bedclothes, but in the morning you can go to the public library and read the news that has been telegraphed for your benefit from San Francisco and Singapore. Twenty million people are underfed but literally everyone in England has access to a radio. What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity. Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life.
I went there partly because I wanted to see what mass-unemployment is like at its worst, partly in order to see the most typical section of the English working class at close quarters. This was necessary to me as part of my approach to Socialism, for before you can be sure whether you are genuinely in favour of Socialism, you have got to decide whether things at present are tolerable or not tolerable, and you have got to take up a definite attitude on the terribly difficult issue of class.
The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism, in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
The underlying motive of many Socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy; what they desire, basically, is to reduce the world to something resembling a chessboard.
A machine evolves by becoming more efficient, that is, more foolproof; hence the objective of mechanical progress is a foolproof world--which may or may not mean a world inhabited by fools.
What about that far larger class, running into millions this time--the office-workers and black-coated employees of all kinds--whose traditions are less definitely middle class but who would certainly not thank you if you called them proletarians? All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it? When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working-class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist Party.
One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
A great historical document. The first half is long-form journalism, based on Orwell's extended stay in a coal mining town. It is a thorough description of the dark side of industrialism's rise in England. The second half delves into the theoretical. We see Orwell give a detailed defense of an embrace of socialism to address the rampant inequality that he sees and inherent in the capitalist system. It's not all wholly applicable now, but it's hard to disagree with what he sees as hypocritical and empty politics for his time, and it also serves as a standing theoretical alternative to The Way We Do Things.
It was better than i expected, but still not really my cup of tea. And he trashed on Butler. One does not trash on Butler.
Let's wash the stink off Socialism and show the world what it truly is: justice and liberty! Fascism is not an acceptable state of life for any creature on this Earth.