To understand socialism’s threat, a letter writer here recently advised us to read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” He should read more Orwell. Orwell was a socialist. Orwell’s words: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it.”

Our letter writer could start with “Homage to Catalonia.” It recounts Orwell’s enlistment in a socialist brigade that fought the army of the fascist Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
Though he was seriously wounded fighting the fascists, much of Orwell’s later wrath was for the war’s Russia-backed communists, who ultimately betrayed Orwell’s unit, murdering many of its members. His anger was never at socialism, always at totalitarianism and its big brothers, communist and fascist alike — Josef Stalin on the left, Franco, Mussolini and Hitler on the right. 

Next, our writer might open “Down and Out in Paris and London,” an earlier memoir decrying capitalist society’s cruelty to the homeless and hungry. Then “The Road to Wigan Pier,” an investigative dive into the wretched lives and miserable deaths of British coal miners and their families.

Today, many misunderstand Orwell’s politics. Many did in his day, too. He wrote: “In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.” 

“Animal Farm” isn’t a capitalist’s assault on socialism. It’s a socialist’s assault on totalitarianism in every form.

Charlie Bernstein
Augusta