classical_hero
In whom I trust
"This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilisations which disregard it." G.K. Chesterton.
Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key
- Thread starter SS-18 ICBM
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Terxpahseyton
Nobody
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A lot of truth in that I believe, fine quote.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
"You're literally shooting ammunition."
-mikelat, Let's Play Metro 2033 - Part 1
-mikelat, Let's Play Metro 2033 - Part 1
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
"I have no particular love for the idealised "worker" as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."
-George Orwell
-George Orwell
It's interesting that I can't tell which side he means, or which is better.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
“Marxists want nothing more than to stop being Marxists. In this respect, being a Marxist is nothing like being a Buddhist or a billionaire. It is more like being a medic. Medics are perverse, self-thwarting creatures who do themselves out of a job by curing patients who then no longer need them. The task of political radicals, similarly, is to get to the point where they would no longer be necessary because their goals would have been accomplished. They would then be free to bow out, burn their Guevara posters, take up that long-neglected cello again and talk about something more intriguing than the Asiatic mode of production. If there are still Marxists or feminists around in twenty years’ time, it will be a sorry prospect. Marxism is meant to be a strictly provisional affair, which is why anyone who invests the whole of their identity in it has missed the point. That there is a life after Marxism is the whole point of Marxism.” --Terry Eagleton
It's George Orwell, producer of the IRD List; you don't have to guess.
It's George Orwell, producer of the IRD List; you don't have to guess.
It's also George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984, standard bearer against tyrannical government. The ambiguity in his character is interesting.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
He was an anarchist. There's no ambiguity, he's a left anti-communist.That he worked for the IRD shows that he, like most anarchists, was bourgeois from the beginning, and considered the evils of Western capitalism to be less than those of socialism, once he figured out he could profit from them.
So he's siding with the worker against the policeman in that quotation?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
As a far better man, Oscar Wilde, explained in The Soul of Man Under Socialism (and thus another great quote for this thread):
I have no doubt that Orwell felt individual sympathy with a man beaten down for acting in a way that he considers necessary, or perhaps even sympathy in general with the struggles of the lower classes to better their lot. It was not uncommon for such passions to be felt by aristocrats of the ancien regime; but a sympathy for the sufferings of the meek is not the same as sponsoring their political liberation, or the destruction of that which institutionally causes their suffering.
The simple fact is, for whatever sympathy he felt with the worker downtrodden by the police man, Orwell still helped found a British government anti-communist propaganda organization, and blacklisted hundreds of people from their jobs or government posts on suspicion of being communists, both of which are active efforts to forestall the further development of a left radical movement in his country and others. He is not the friend of that cop-beaten worker.
rugbyLEAGUEfan
Deity
Based on your definition of what is best for the cop-beaten worker mind you. I don't think it's definitive that he is not a friend. The blacklisting is clearly dubious but to actively forstall the development of a left radical movement is not in the working man's worse interests in the minds of many.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
What a useless observation.
rugbyLEAGUEfan
Deity
What a useless way to educate me otherwise
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
All you said is that you disagree with my definition of what is best for the worker. Unless you expect this thread about quotations to degenerate into a general polemic against capitalism, then your statement is useless to the discussion. You didn't disprove anything I said, you just called it into question because I am a communist. Big whoop.
rugbyLEAGUEfan
Deity
I absolutely did not and you've just assumed that. I considered bolding "your" definition but decided not to as it would have implied I was doing so, and I never wanted to let your status as a communist cloud what I meant. I felt that it was presumptuous to assume that he is not a friend of the working man because he, you and possibly I (though that is less relevant) differ on what we believe is best. It was you who stated he is not a friend of the working man without qualification and chose to bold not as if to imply there can be no debate
You are right in that my post was hardly wildly enlightening. But you are wrong in reading into it an antagonism based on your political beliefs that simply isn't there.
EDIT ....I do see how you could think I was just doing the "Communist is talking crap but I can't eloquently or logically explain how, so I'll just ask a tedious question with the aim of achieving a gotcha" routine. You're just gonna have to believe that was the furthest thing from my mind.
My original hang-up was that a position which defaults to siding with suspected criminals (see what happens if I change the word?) against policemen seems odd to me.
Just as a point of infromation, Orwell's List cannot be compared with the blacklistings under McCarthy and the HUAC. It was simply a list of people with known or suspected communist sympathies, whom he therefore believed that the BBC should not approach to write anti-Communist propaganda. People named on the list included EH Carr, Hugh McDiarmid and JB Priestley, and they continued to be successful in their chosen fields despite not being asked to write for the IRD.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Very well, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and apologize for mis-attributing a position to you.
That nonetheless fails to undermine my comment, however, which is that your statement was a non-point. Obviously my comments are dependent upon my definition of what is best for the worker. But again, I can't prove that without moving the discussion away from the quotation in question into a more generalized argument about political philosophy. If that's an argument you're interested in having, feel free to open a new thread for it.
Suspected criminal is another meaningless term. Either someone is or isn't a criminal. Until one is proven to be the former, then they remain the latter.
And yet others' careers ended by being labeled politically unreliable, which is exactly what Orwell's list did. I don't know if the UK had any sort of Red Scare like the US did, but Chaplin had to leave the United States because of it, and Orwell's list most certainly called attention to the political leanings of those people.
No, they become a criminal when they commit a crime. We just don't call them that before we've proven that they are a criminal - in the same way, you can be the 'suspected source of the news' without being proven either way. This is why the person being interviewed by the police is the 'suspect', which he remains until he is charged, when he becomes 'the accused', which is just a more forceful way of saying 'the one we suspect did it'. When the policeman sees somebody commit a crime and arrests them, they're still arresting 'a suspect'. Hence the Woolwich murderers are still 'suspects' in the press, despite being caught literally red-handed.
It is however a loaded term, much like 'worker', which is why I used it. The point was that you interpreted Orwell's position as supporting the red-handed man with the machete; this is why I originally described it as a strange one.
Any names? Chaplin is the only one that I know of who was persecuted for his politics, and he was already known for them: even then, once he left the US, he was perfectly clear to continue working and receiving honours in Europe. The Red Scare was a uniquely American phenomenon; I can't think of anybody working in Britain whose career was hindered for being a communist. Certainly, people such as EH Carr, AJP Taylor and JM Smith were well known for their left-wing politics - the latter two were card-carrying Communists - and all achieved nationwide recognition and admiration.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Okay, yes, you're right. My mistake.
I don't think "loaded" term is the best way to describe it. All terms are loaded, because there is more behind any given word than simply the dictionary less-than-one-sentence definition of it.
Paul Robeson, who he even described as "anti-white!" Like Chaplin, he was already known for his politics (Robeson was an unswerving defender of Stalin); I'm not claiming that Orwell exposed these people, but rather that by calling into question their utility to the government, he helped open the door to other, more extreme positions with regards to sympathizers of The Red Menace, like McCarthyism.
From which I can only conclude that which I already knew: Britons are significantly more mature about such things than Americans.
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