RE
=In what sense is it a deception? Observers from George Orwell to
=Hannah Arendt found the similarities of political practice between
=Nazis and Stalinists, communists and fascists, to be remarkable
Is Brad implying that socialism = planning = communism = Stalin =
collectivism?
But, in any case, George Orwell in a review of The Road to Serfdom by F.A.
Hayek and The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus wrote (in 1946):
"Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. Capitalism
leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads
to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this
unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the
intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is
restored to politics."
Orwell, then, saw a difference between Stalin and economic planning: he was
against the first and for the second.
But the following is also part of George Orwell's legacy:
Electronic Telegraph
12 July 1996
Orwell is revealed in role of state informer
by Tom Utley
AN icy blast from the Cold War blew through the Left-wing
Establishment yesterday when it was revealed that George Orwell, one of the
great heroes of twentieth-century Socialism, had secretly co-operated with
the Foreign Office in its propaganda battle against Communism.
Documents released by the Public Record Office showed that
in 1949 Orwell volunteered to provide the FO's covert Information Research
Department (IRD) with a blacklist of writers and journalists whom he
regarded as crypto-Communists and fellow travellers. The revelation has
reopened old divisions on the Left, to whom Orwell has always posed an
awkward problem: should they hero-worship him for his brilliantly lucid
Socialist writings, or attack him for the fervent anti-Communism of his
later years, exemplified by his masterpiece, Animal Farm?
Eric
winmail.dat
