Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

basically, no doubt, because no one genuinely wanted any major change to

  happen. The Labour leaders wanted to go on and on, drawing their salaries

  and periodically swapping jobs with the Conservatives. The Communists

  wanted to go on and on, suffering a comfortable martyrdom, meeting with

  endless defeats and afterwards putting the blame on other people. The

  left-wing intelligentsia wanted to go on and on, sniggering at the

  Blimps, sapping away at middle-class morale, but still keeping their

  favoured position as hangers-on of the dividend-drawers. Labour Party

  politics had become a variant of Conservatism, "revolutionary" politics

  had become a game of make-believe.

  Now, however, the circumstances have changed, the drowsy years have

  ended. Being a Socialist no longer means kicking theoretically against a

  system which in practice you are fairly well satisfied with. This time

  our predicament is real. It is "the Philistines be upon thee, Samson". We

  have got to make our words take physical shape, or perish. We know very

  well that with its present social structure England cannot survive, and

  we have got to make other people see that fact and act upon it. We cannot

  win the war without introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism

  without winning the war. At such a time it is possible, as it was not in

  the peaceful years, to be both revolutionary and realistic. A Socialist

  movement which can swing the mass of the people behind it, drive the

  pro-Fascists out of positions of control, wipe out the grosser injustices

  and let the working class see that they have something to fight for, win

  over the middle classes instead of antagonising them, produce a workable

  imperial policy instead of a mixture of humbug and Utopianism, bring

  patriotism and intelligence into partnership--for the first time, a

  movement of such a kind becomes possible.

  ii.

  The fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word

  into a realisable policy.

  The inefficiency of private capitalism has been proved all over Europe.

  Its injustice has been proved in the East End of London. Patriotism,

  against which the Socialists fought so long, has become a tremendous

  lever in their hands. People who at any other time would cling like glue

  to their miserable scraps of privilege, will surrender them fast enough

  when their country is in danger. War is the greatest of all agents of

  change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings

  realities to the surface. Above all, war brings it home to the individual

  that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because they are

  aware of this that men will die on the field of battle. At this moment it

  is not so much a question of surrendering life as of surrendering

  leisure, comfort, economic liberty, social prestige. There are very few

  people in England who really want to see their country conquered by

  Germany. If it can be made clear that defeating Hitler means wiping out

  class privilege, the great mass of middling people, the �6 a week to

  �2,000 a year class, will probably be on our side. These people are quite

  indispensable, because they include most of the technical experts.

  Obviously the snobbishness and political ignorance of people like airmen

  and naval officers will be a very great difficulty. But without those

  airmen, destroyer commanders, etc etc we could not survive for a week.

  The only approach to them is through their patriotism. An intelligent

  Socialist movement will use their patriotism, instead of merely insulting

  it, as hitherto.

  But do I mean that there will be no opposition? Of course not. It would

  be childish to expect anything of the kind.

  There will be a bitter political struggle, and there will be unconscious

  and half-conscious sabotage everywhere. At some point or other it may be

  necessary to use violence. It is easy to imagine a pro-Fascist rebellion

  breaking out in, for instance, India. We shall have to fight against

  bribery, ignorance and snobbery. The bankers and the larger businessmen,

  the landowners and dividend-drawers, the officials with their prehensile

  bottoms, will obstruct for all they are worth. Even the middle classes

  will writhe when their accustomed way of life is menaced. But just

  because the English sense of national unity has never disintegrated,

  because patriotism is finally stronger than class-hatred, the chances are

  that the will of the majority will prevail. It is no use imagining that

  one can make fundamental changes without causing a split in the nation;

  but the treacherous minority will be far smaller in time of war than it

  would be at any other time.

  The swing of opinion is visibly happening, but it cannot be counted on to

  happen fast enough of its own accord. This war is a race between the

  consolidation of Hitler's empire and the growth of democratic

  consciousness. Everywhere in England you can see a ding-dong battle

  ranging to and fro--in Parliament and in the Government, in the factories

  and the armed forces, in the pubs and the air-raid shelters, in the

  newspapers and on the radio. Every day there are tiny defeats, tiny

  victories. Morrison for Home Security--a few yards forward. Priestley

  shoved off the air--a few yards back. It is a struggle between the

  groping and the unteachable, between the young and the old, between the

  living and the dead. But it is very necessary that the discontent which

  undoubtedly exists should take a purposeful and not merely obstructive

  form. It is time for THE PEOPLE to define their war-aims. What is wanted

  is a simple, concrete programme of action, which can be given all

  possible publicity, and round which public opinion can group itself.

  I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we

  need. The first three points deal with England's internal policy, the

  other three with the Empire and the world:

  1. Nationalisation of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.

  2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax free income

  in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.

  3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.

  4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war

  is over.

  5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured

  peoples are to be represented.

  6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other

  victims of the Fascist powers.

  The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite

  frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a

  Socialist democracy. I have deliberately included in it nothing that the

  simplest person could not understand and see the reason for. In the form

  in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of the

  DAILY MIRROR. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of

  amplification is needed.

  1. NATIONALISATION. One can "nationalise" industry by the stroke of a

  pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is

  that
the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in the

  State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes

  possible to eliminate the class of mere OWNERS who live not by virtue of

  anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share

  certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live

  without working. How sudden a change in the conduct of industry it

  implies is less certain. In a country like England we cannot rip down the

  whole structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time of

  war. Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with

  much the same personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing

  directors carrying on with their jobs as State employees. There is reason

  to think that many of the smaller capitalists would actually welcome some

  such arrangement. The resistance will come from the big capitalists, the

  bankers, the landlords and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with

  over �2,000 a year--and even if one counts in all their dependants there

  are not more than half a million of these people in England.

  Nationalisation of agricultural land implies cutting out the landlord and

  the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the farmer. It is

  difficult to imagine any reorganisation of English agriculture that would

  not retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the

  beginning. The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried

  manager. He is virtually that already, with the added disadvantage of

  having to make a profit and being permanently in debt to the bank. With

  certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of

  land, the State will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great

  mistake to start by victimising the smallholder class, for instance.

  These people are necessary, on the whole they are competent, and the

  amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are "their own

  masters". But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the

  ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will

  never permit any ownership of land in town areas.

  From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property

  of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that

  the State is THEMSELVES. They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices

  that are ahead of us, war or no war. And even if the face of England

  hardly seems to change, on the day that our main industries are formally

  nationalised the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From

  then onwards the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management,

  from privilege to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership

  will in itself bring about less social change than will be forced upon us

  by the common hardships of war. But it is the necessary first step

  without which any REAL reconstruction is impossible.

  2. INCOMES. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage,

  which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of

  consumption goods available. And this again implies a stricter rationing

  scheme than is now in operation. It is no use at this stage of the

  world's history to suggest that all human beings should have EXACTLY

  equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some

  kind of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On

  the other hand the money reward need not be very large. In practice it is

  impossible that earnings should be limited quite as rigidly as I have

  suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions. But there is no

  reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And

  within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with �3 a

  week and a man with �1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures,

  which the Duke of Westminster and the sleepers on the Embankment benches

  cannot.

  3. EDUCATION. In wartime, educational reform must necessarily be promise

  rather than performance. At the moment we are not in a position to raise

  the school-leaving age or increase the teaching staffs of the elementary

  schools. But there are certain immediate steps that we could take towards

  a democratic educational system. We could start by abolishing the

  autonomy of the public schools and the older universities and flooding

  them with State-aided pupils chosen simply on grounds of ability. At

  present, public-school education is partly a training in class prejudice

  and partly a sort of tax that the middle classes pay to the upper class

  in return for the right to enter certain professions. It is true that

  that state of affairs is altering. The middle classes have begun to rebel

  against the expensiveness of education, and the war will bankrupt the

  majority of the public schools if it continues for another year or two.

  The evacuation is also producing certain minor changes. But there is a

  danger that some of the older schools, which will be able to weather the

  financial storm longest, will survive in some form or another as

  festering centres of snobbery. As for the 10,000 "private" schools that

  England possesses, the vast majority of them deserve nothing except

  suppression. They are simply commercial undertakings, and in many cases

  their educational level is actually lower than that of the elementary

  schools. They merely exist because of a widespread idea that there is

  something disgraceful in being educated by the public authorities. The

  State could quell this idea by declaring itself responsible for all

  education, even if at the start this were no more than a gesture. We

  need gestures as well as actions. It is all too obvious that our talk of

  "defending democracy" is nonsense while it is a mere accident of birth

  that decides whether a gifted child shall or shall not get the education

  it deserves.

  4. INDIA. What we must offer India is not "freedom", which, as I have

  said earlier, is impossible, but alliance, partnership-in a word,

  equality. But we must also tell the Indians that they are free to secede,

  if they want to. Without that there can be no equality of partnership,

  and our claim to be defending the coloured peoples against Fascism will

  never be believed. But it is a mistake to imagine that if the Indians

  were free to cut themselves adrift they would immediately do so. When a

  British government OFFERS them unconditional independence, they will

  refuse it. For as soon as they have the power to secede the chief reasons

  for doing so will have disappeared.

  A complete severance of the two countries would be a disaster for India

  no less than for England. Intelligent Indians know this. As things are at

  present, India not only cannot defend itself, it is hardly even capable

  of feeding itself. The whole administration of the country depends on a

  framework of experts (engineers, forest officers, railwaymen, soldiers,

  doctors) who are predominantly English and could not be replaced within

  five or ten years. Moreover, English is the chief lingua franca and

 
nearly the whole of the Indian intelligentsia is deeply Anglicised. Any

  transference to foreign rule--for if the British marched out of India the

  Japanese and other powers would immediately march in--would mean an

  immense dislocation. Neither the Japanese, the Russians, the Germans nor

  the Italians would be capable of administering India even at the low

  level of efficiency that is attained by the British. They do not possess

  the necessary supplies of technical experts or the knowledge of languages

  and local conditions, and they probably could not win the confidence of

  indispensable go-betweens such as the Eurasians. If India were simply

  "liberated", i.e. deprived of British military protection, the first

  result would be a fresh foreign conquest, and the second a series of

  enormous famines which would kill millions of people within a few years.

  What India needs is the power to work out its own constitution without

  British interference, but in some kind of partnership that ensures its

  military protection and technical advice. This is unthinkable until there

  is a Socialist government in England. For at least eighty years England

  has artificially prevented the development of India, partly from fear of

  trade competition if Indian industries were too highly developed, partly

  because backward peoples are more easily governed than civilised ones. It

  is a commonplace that the average Indian suffers far more from his own

  countrymen than from the British. The petty Indian capitalist exploits

  the town worker with the utmost ruthlessness, the peasant lives from

  birth to death in the grip of the money-lender. But all this is an

  indirect result of the British rule, which aims half-consciously at

  keeping India as backward as possible. The classes most loyal to Britain

  are the princes, the landowners and the business community--in general,

  the reactionary classes who are doing fairly well out of the STATUS QUO.

  The moment that England ceased to stand towards India in the relation of

  an exploiter, the balance of forces would be altered. No need then for

  the British to flatter the ridiculous Indian princes, with their gilded

  elephants and cardboard armies, to prevent the growth of the Indian trade

  unions, to play off Moslem against Hindu, to protect the worthless life

  of the money-lender, to receive the salaams of toadying minor officials,

  to prefer the half-barbarous Gurkha to the educated Bengali. Once check

  that stream of dividends that flows from the bodies of Indian coolies to

  the banking accounts of old ladies in Cheltenham, and the whole

  sahib-native nexus, with its haughty ignorance on one side and envy and

  servility on the other, can come to an end. Englishmen and Indians can

  work side by side for the development of India, and for the training of

  Indians in all the arts which, so far, they have been systematically

  prevented from learning. How many of the existing British personnel in

  India, commercial or official, would fall in with such an

  arrangement--which would mean ceasing once and for all to be "sahibs"--is a

  different question. But, broadly speaking, more is to be hoped from the

  younger men and from those officials (civil engineers, forestry and

  agricultural experts, doctors, educationists) who have been

  scientifically educated. The higher officials, the provincial governors,

  commissioners, judges, etc are hopeless; but they are also the most

  easily replaceable.

  That, roughly, is what would be meant by Dominion status if it were

  offered to India by a Socialist government. It is an offer of partnership

  on equal terms until such time as the world has ceased to be ruled by

  bombing planes. But we must add to it the unconditional right to secede.

  It is the only way of proving that we mean what we say. And what applies

  to India applies, MUTATIS MUTANDIS, to Burma, Malaya and most of our

  African possessions.

  5 and 6 explain themselves. They are the necessary preliminary to any