178
WILLIAM PHILLIPS
spects, he was a representative man; in others he was distinctly
unrepresentative. Generally, Kafka was an outstanding example of the
idea, fairly common since Oscar Wilde, that literature expresses the
smaller truths, the untruths, the warped vision, of a writer's experience
more than it does the larger ones of society as a whole.
•
After the publication of the most recent, authorized biography of
George OrweIl by Michael Selden,
Orwell,
there's probably little left to
debate about his life. One matter, however, about his political beliefs,
stiIl remains unresolved. Was he a socialist? If so, what kind of socialist?
A
related question is what would his politics be if he were alive today -
after the demise of socialism in the former Soviet Union.
One reason why these questions are unresolved has to do with the
ambiguities of OrweIl's stated political views and the ambiguity of the
term "socialism" as it has been used by OrweIl and his interpreters. Some
conservatives claim Orwell today would be a conservative, perhaps a
neoconservative. Others think he would be a socialist, but what kind of
socialist is not clear. And a number of years ago, in the time of Vietnam,
Mary McCarthy castigated Orwell for being excessively and obsessively
anticommunist.
In any event, several things are clear. Orwell was definitely anticom–
munist: that is, he had no use for the Soviet Union or for the communist
parties it supported. In Spain, for example, he was disgusted with the
role of the communists in the civil war. It is also true that while he was
against the kind of socialism in practice in the Soviet Union, he still
called himself a socialist - though he was critical of the Socialist Party,
that is, the Social Democrats of Europe.
But there is no doubt that OrweIl used the word "socialism" loosely
- as it is used loosely even today by many people who refer to themselves
as socialists. OrweIl did not mean what Marx meant: the expropriation
of the private means of production and the complete overthrow of the
existing system of democratic capitalism. He seemed to mean some kind
of welfare state, given to some measure of care for the poor and the
underprivileged, plus as much political and inteIlectual freedom as is
possible in any stable society. He was opposed to wild, unregulated
capitalism. Socialism seemed to be a code word for a decent society.
This was not a unique position at the time. Many people, including
myself, were highly critical of the totalitarian society in the Soviet Union
that described itself as socialist, and somewhat uneasy with the fashionable
concept of socialism still hanging on to some leftist notions about creat-
