ORWELL RECONSIDERED
91
the capitalist system. Of course there may be at different times dif–
ferent things one can do--but there is, as
it
were, no standing ac–
tion for someone who rejects capitalism. And that is because capi–
talism is a pervasive system in a way which imperialism isn't. In
part the point is a purely formal one: it derives from the fact that
we call everything in a capitalist system "capitalism" though a
great deal of it may be quite unconnected with the undesirable as–
pects of the system and indeed would probably be exactly as it
is under any system. In part the point is not formal: in a capitalist
society the institutions of capitalism are strategically placed and
they contrive in varying degrees to color and affect most of what
happens throughout the society. But however we look at the prob–
lem, the answer is the same. There is no way of washing one's
hands of capitalism. And by this I don't just mean that one per–
son's contracting out of the system isn't going to make such a dif–
ference or isn't going to bring the system to an end. I mean that
there is no method of contracting out of the system. The person
who rejects capitalism is in a position closer to that of the pacificist
than to that of the vegetarian.
Of course there will always be people who won't accept the
"sensible" answer. Even if one can't get outside the system, they
argue, one can at any rate work oneself very close to the periphery,
and it is too convenient and easygoing an answer to say that because
one can't hope for total success, therefore one shouldn't try at all.
The thing is like a stain: one may not
be
able to remove it, but one
can at least get it paler.
Certainly this is what Orwell felt, and it would be hard-par–
ticularly for anyone who has no intention of following him-not to
admire him for it. What he proved to himself, and proved for the
benefit of anyone who cares to learn, is that a great deal of what is
clung to in bourgeois life, is clung to not on account of the pleasure
it gives but out of the fear of giving it up. The pleasures of the rich
should occupy a place of respect in the thoughts of any genuine
reformer: if only for the good utilitarian reason that the rich get
pleasure from them. But the so-called "pleasures" of the rich from
which none get pleasure and for the sake of which many suffer,
