Still on the Road with George Orwell

It is difficult to describe my recent fascination with Orwell's early autobiographical works, especially The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). In part I suspect it's the way he describes what he observes with such clarity. His insights are so profound that they continue to resonate all these years later. Few authors can awaken a reader's sense of smell the way Orwell does. His description of English class prejudice, for example, focuses on the way the middle classes react to the scents associated with the working classes, something he notes few others have paid much attention to. And although he doesn't back his observations with science, we know, as Orwell himself observes, that memories and odors are closely linked. When he describes the living conditions he encounters among the unemployed in northern England between the world wars, the odors of the slums -- the bodies, the food, the excrement -- seem to emanate from the page. It's similar in Homage to Catalonia (1938) when he describes his first impressions of approaching the front: "We were near the front line now, near enough to smell the characteristic smell of war -- in my experience a smell of excrement and decaying food."

For the historical record, it's hard to beat Orwell's accounts. He seems to notice everything, and gets it all down on the page with alarming accuracy. He assumes the character of the objective observer, even as he introduces many of his most subjective reactions. He wants to show us something of importance and let us react to what we've been shown. But at the same time he is not averse to stepping out of character to deliver his own opinions, as he does at the conclusion of The Road to Wigan Pier, when he sermonizes on what exactly he thinks is wrong with Socialism, or more properly, with Socialists and the sorts of people who have aligned themselves with Socialism. That is when his insights are most fascinating, and his criticisms most telling.

Orwell's analysis of the Western world as it drifted toward Fascism and what we know would eventually culminate in the outbreak of World War II is worthy of study. He saw the apparently unsolvable problem of chronic unemployment that was resulting from the growth of industrialization and what appeared to be the ineptitude of politicians and capitalists. But he also recognized the complex complications of social class as well as economics, and explained why those who were economically aligned with the working class, identified themselves with the upper middle class, and thus identified politically with those who were profiting from exploiting their labor and holding down their wages. If this sounds familiar, you might want to take a closer look at some of these now ancient observations:

And what about that far larger class, running into millions this time -- the office-workers and black-coated employees of all kinds -- whose traditions are less definitely middle class but who would certainly not thank you if you called them proletarians? All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it? When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working-class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist Party.

I wish this didn't sound so appropriate to the current political situation, and I wish there were someone as perceptive as Orwell to point this out to the poor sods who think forming tea parties or occupying pubic parks was going to do any good. So long as we have a choice of millionaires to govern us, those of us not millionaires don't really have much of a choice. Here again is Orwell:

Probably we could do with a little less talk about 'capitalist' and 'proletarian' and a little more about the robbers and the robbed. But at any rate we must drop that misleading habit of pretending that the only proletarians are manual labourers. It has got to be brought
home to the clerk, the engineer, the commercial traveller, the middle-class man who has 'come down in the world', the village grocer, the lower-grade civil servant, and all other doubtful cases that they are the proletariat, and that Socialism means a fair deal for them as well as for the navvy and the factory-hand. They must not be allowed to think that the battle is between those who pronounce their aitches and those who don't; for if they think that, they will join in on the side of the aitches.

I don't know what the current equivalent to "the side of the aitches" would be, perhaps all of us with our many college degrees, but it seems to me the point is still well taken. Of course, Orwell goes into much more detail than this, but his conclusions are well worth pondering. Unfortunately, I doubt very many of us are ready to accept what would necessarily follow. Better just to hope that the rich folk will look kindly on us and let us have a few more scraps from the table if we're good and keep voting for them. What was it Pete Townsend said? Something about a parting on the left and a parting on the right. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. After all this time maybe even Orwell would have to agree.