THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM: IV
T
award European Unity
GEORGE ORWELL
A
SOCIALIST
today is in the position of a doctor treating an all
but hopeless case. As a doctor, it is his duty to keep the patient alive,
and therefore to assume that the patient has at least a chance of
recovery. As a scientist, it is his duty to face the facts, and therefore
to admit that the patient will probably die. Our activities as socialists
only have meaning if we assume that socialism
can
be established,
but if we stop to consider what probably
will
happen, then we must
admit, I think, that the chances are against us.
If
I were a bookmaker,
simply calculating the probabilities and leaving my own wishes out
of account, I would give odds against the survival of civilization
within the next few hundred years.
As
far as I can see, there are three
possibilities ahead of us:
1. That the Americans will decide to use the atomic bomb while
they have it and the Russians h<.tven't. This would solve nothing. It
would do away with the particular danger that is now presented by
the USSR, but would lead to the rise of new empires, fresh rivalries,
more wars, more atomic bombs, etc. In any case this is, I think, the
least likely outcome of the three, because a preventive war is a crime
not easily committed by a country that retains any traces -of de–
mocracy.
2. That the present "cold war" will continue until the USSR,
and several other countries, have atomic bombs as well. Then there
will only be a short breathing-space before whizz! go the
rocket~,
wallop! go the bombs, and the industrial centers of the world are
wiped out, probably beyond repair. Even if any one state, or group
of states, emerges from such a war as technical victor, it will prob–
ably be unable to build up the machine civilization anew. The world,
therefore, will once again be inhabited by a few million, or a few hun–
dred million human beings living by subsistence agriculture, and prob–
ably, after a couple of generations, retaining no more of the culture of
the past than a knowledge of how to smelt metals. Conceivably this is a
desirable outcome, but obviously it has nothing to do with socialism.
