/lit/ - Literature

>>13085662
Pointing out Orwell was a "socialist" is about as dumb as the /pol/tards who harness his Very Bad Dictatorship highschool read for their cause.
>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.
Key words are "as I understand it".

Had any of the chapo-listening juice-drinkers bothered reading Orwell's nonfiction they'd know he would have probably hated their guts. The Road to Wigan Pier has an entire chapter dedicated to the sort of overeducated middle-class people and "cranks" who cling to banner of socialism like flies to a corpse. The guy is so prescient that his description of the phenomena is as relevant today as it was in the 1940's.

Orwell actively tried keeping a more-or-less optimistic attitude (at least until very late in his life), but the seeds of pessimism where all there. The sort of "socialism" he seemed to be earning for was a working-class socialism, by and for the real proleteriat. But he openly acknowledged that this socialism did not meaningfully exist. For the typical worker, "socialism" simply meant higher wages and shorter workhours. The longer the middle-class book nerds entrench themselves as (sometimes literal) representatives of the "socialist working class", the wider the gap between Orwell's ideal socialism and socialism-in-practice becomes.
There was nothing to offset this dynamic in Orwell's time.
In 2013, Mark Fisher publishes Exiting the Vampires' Castle.
In 2019, some University of Louisville graduate student makes a meme about how stupid neo-fascists are because they don't realize Orwell was AKSHUALLY a socialist, too!