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war or we lose it, and much more besides.... It is quite certain that with
our present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces, physical,
moral or intellectual cannot he mobilized." "We cannot establish any·
thing that a Western nation would regard as socialism without defeating
Hitler; on the other hand, we cannot defeat Hitler while we remain eco–
nomically and socially in the nineteenth century." Recent events in
Libya, Malaya, and the English Channel amply document such proposi–
tions. Most of Orwell's program, also, seems in general sensible as a first
step: nationalization of land, mines, railways, hanks and major indus–
tries; democratization of education; equalization of personal incomes;
freedom for India.
But most of us on the left, from liberals to Trotskyists, would agree
on some such program. The real question is Lenin's What Is To
Be
Done?
Specifically, what classes or social groups can be mobilized to win such a
program; what should he their attitude towards the existing political
regimes and economic systems in England and America? Although Orwell
seems to he politically closest to the left Labor Party group of Cripps and
Laski, he hardly mentions the workingclass in his hook and pins his hopes
instead on a new middleclass of technicians, doctors, state employees, etc.
which has made "the old classification of society into capitalists, prole–
tarians and petit-bourgeois almost obsolete." This tendency exists and
has often been noted. Nor is there any novelty in the conception of this
new "classless middleclass" as the heir of the future. But Orwell is as
deplorably vague about just
how
this new class will take over (and what
specific indications already exist that it will) as all the other prophets of
such a future have been. He seems to conceive of it as a gradual, osmotic
process proceeding steadily within the old social framework. This class–
less revolution marches under the banner of nationalism, furthermore.
Hence it is clear that Orwell, though, oddly enough, he never explicitly
says so in the hook, favors critical support of the existing Churchill war
government.
As one who thinks that only a socialist government can defeat totali–
tarianism either within or without, and that the only road to such a state
is for the workers to insist on replacing the antiquated capitalism repre–
sented by Roosevelt and Churchill with their own government, as such a
one I can see in the history of the last three years no evidence for Orwell's
easy confidence in this gradualist "revolution." He recognizes that before
his program can he put into effect, "there will have to he a complete shift
of power away from the old ruling class." But is any one today, including
Orwell, able to see any indication of such a shift in England in the last
two years? "Within a year, perhaps even six months," writes Orwell, "if
we are still unconquered, we shall see the rise of something that has never
existed before, a specifically
English
socialist movement.". This was writ–
ten at the end of 1940. Over a year has passed, and there are no signs of
the English socialist movement Orwell so confidently predicted. Despite
