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The comment by T. S. Eliot reminds me of one of Orwell's critiques of Charles Dickens. Namely, that whilst he is very insightful about the ills of society, he o
by n4r9 3y ago
The comment by T. S. Eliot reminds me of one of Orwell's critiques of Charles Dickens. Namely, that whilst he is very insightful about the ills of society, he offers no better solution than to hope for "good rich men".
> The truth is that Dickens's criticism of society is almost exclusively moral. Hence the utter lack of any constructive suggestion anywhere in his work. He attacks the law, parliamentary government, the educational system and so forth, without ever clearly suggesting what he would put in their places. Of course it is not necessarily the business of a novelist, or a satirist, to make constructive suggestions, but the point is that Dickens's attitude is at bottom not even destructive. There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown. For in reality his target is not so much society as ‘human nature’. It would be difficult to point anywhere in his books to a passage suggesting that the economic system is wrong as a system. Nowhere, for instance, does he make any attack on private enterprise or private property ... His whole ‘message’ is one that at first glance looks like an enormous platitude: If men would behave decently the world would be decent.
I can't help but feel like Eliot's "public-spirited pigs" are the same thing as Dickens' "good rich men".
https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/dickens/english/e_chd https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/dickens/english/e_chd
- brazzy 3y agoWhat's Orwell's own solution, though? The whole point of Animal Farm is that the existing order was overthrown, with the best of intentions, and some unscrupulous individuals, with support from naive idealists and selfish opportunists, turned the new order into something no better than before. Sounds to me like an argument towards an argument exactly for focusing on "public-spirited pigs" and how to get them into power, rather than how to overthrow the existing order with something you don't know will work out or revert to something worse.
- FreshStart 3y agoIt's a argument for better system design, aka a meat grinder driven by pigs for the pigs and a stationary government part with almost no power to act on its own, except in limiting decay to the meat grinder and restoring it's full functionally once it breaks down. A good working government is a horrible device for the power fool taxing them and reasoning them on all levels.
- tycho-newman 3y agoVanguardism on the left has been heavily critiqued by the Left. You should read Peter Kropotkin on mutual aid. We do not need to depend on public spirited pigs.
- brazzy 3y agoDepend on, in the sense of hoping they just magically turn up and make everything right, no. But you cannot have a well working society without them. The key is, then, to set up a system that improves the chances of having them in charge, rather than selfish ones.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoOr don't enable institutions that attract the worst elements of society and put them in positions of power over others. The nature of hierarchies is that they distill the power hungry at their top, and lust for the subjugation of others is fundamentally at odds with effective leadership. The taller the hierarchy, the greater the distillation, because those not driven by an intrinsic desire to hierarchy-climb will be weeded out.
- mind-blight 3y agoI would recommend reading The Tyranny of Structurelessness. It's a great analysis of the feminist movement of the 70s by one of its members. Specifically it critiques the push to avoid explicit hierarchies within that movement as inevitably enabling implicit hierarchies that favor the in-crowd
- esperent 3y ago> What's Orwell's own solution, though? Democratic socialism. Humanism. Anti-fascism. In his early years, anarchism. But I think not so much in his later writings (correct me if I'm wrong). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
- CWuestefeld 3y agoIt's important to note that Orwell was a socialist. But he was an intellectually honest one. He pointed out the potential pitfalls of his values, as a means to seek a means to overcome them. (asserting my own beliefs now) The fact that most of a century has passed during which we've seen those pitfalls repeated many times since, and no effective mechanism for protecting against them has surfaced, I think that the project of socialism must be abandoned.
- mcv 3y agoI completely disagree with your last point. Social democracy has been wildly successful. Many socialist ideas work very well. The big problem with most "communist" countries is that they forgot the most important aspect: giving the workers a voice. They're supposed to be in the dictatorship of the proletariat phase towards communism, but none of them give power to the proletariat. They're a dictatorship of an elite, and there's nothing socialist about that. And in the past century we've also seen the harmful influence of extreme capitalism on democracy, including social democracy. Clearly the power of money on politics needs to be limited. But tue hardest problem is how to ensure that the voters are well informed. They need reliable news media, but the two obvious ways to finance that are through capitalism and the state, both of which are suspect.
- CWuestefeld 3y agoSure. You're talking about two different things here. When you're saying "social democracy", you're talking about "capitalism with a safety net". When you're talking about "Communist" countries, you're talking about a system in which the government controls the means of production. These are related but distinct ideas. The thing is, in the "government controls the means of production", you necessarily cede to the government sufficient control of everything - news media and everything else: that is, by definition, totalitarianism. The government can easily use this to prevent "bad views" from being aired. It doesn't even require evil intent. The gov't can think it's doing the right thing by protecting people from "misinformation" - you can see this debate today in America, and I understand there's a debate today in Germany about actually banning an overly-right-wing political party. And when a government comes to view itself as being truly good, the only legitimate defender of the people, it'll be very tempting for them to stomp on media and even voting freedom even with those good intentions.
- gooseus 3y agoI think Dickens and Elliot are somewhat right and Orwell even demonstrates it in Animal Farm... there was a "public-spirited pig" bending the revolution toward fairness and decency, but it only took one other pig with a monopoly on physical force to overthrow him in an instant. Without "good people", human nature will corrupt any system. It's the structure of the political and legal systems that really determine how well and fairly those resources are distributed. If you have a political system without checks and balances writing laws, and/or a legal system that does not apply the law equally to all its citizens, then you're going to have a bad time, no matter the economic system you use.
- mock-possum 3y agoI think it also shows how tyranny manifests through a series of small pushes. Napoleon didn’t establish an autocracy as soon as old major died - it took him all the way until the end of the book to let the mask drop fully. There were dozens of small ways the other animals could have resisted his rise to power along the way - missed opportunities for good people, aka “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.”
- pg_1234 3y agoThe Dickens/Elliot argument is simply the more acceptable form of an argument that in it's less acceptable form would be "slavery would be fine if slave-owners were just nicer to their slaves". All are a from of argument that some people should be be placed in a position of irrevocable power over others (by accident of birth into a privileged race or class) ... and that's all OK if they treat their underlings well. Not that "well" should ever be as well as those on top treat themselves ...
- brazzy 3y agoNo. The argument is not that some people should be placed in a position of power, let alone an irrevocable one. The argument is that that you cannot organize a society without having some people in positions of power of some sort. And if you explicitly try to avoid that, you'll end up with someone grabbing it anyway. So it's better to instead think of how you can set up your society to explicitly give the greatest power only for a limited time, with transparency and accountability, and ideally find a way to give it only to competent and well-meaning people.
- n4r9 3y agoHis politics are set out in some detail on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Politics He also wrote quite a lot about his political views, which were sharpened after visiting anarchist Catalonia and fighting in the Spanish civil war. See e.g. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... > The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.
- bnralt 3y agoWhen he was in his 30's he joined up with Trostkyists to fight in Spain, but said he would have preferred to have joined the anarchists. Despite his capabilities as a writer, I wouldn't really turn to him for political advice.
- r00fus 3y agoNot understand - I know a bunch of anarchists and their view of anarchy is definitely not "helter skelter". What specifically would you critique about Orwell's politics?
- brazzy 3y agoThe most convincing depiction of anarchy I have seen is Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, where they have deep social conventions that make claiming any kind of power over others taboo. But that never seemed to me a sufficient safeguard against power-hungry people finding ways around it - let along external enemies.
- mind-blight 3y agoI loved the Dispossessed. I agree with the critique that her portrayal of anarchy is a bit utopian and glosses over what happens with unscrupulous actors. But, I appreciate that her point was about the problems that can exist even in the breast case scenario
- d0gsg0w00f 3y agoThank you for digging up the quote and summarizing the sentiment. I've never been able to put my finger on this aspect of Dickens. I personally share the same philosophy that morality swings above its weight in the grand scheme of society. It's fully within our control as individuals and therefore a worthy target for literary influence.
- philipov 3y ago> If men would behave decently the world would be decent. Which in turn reminds me of Federalist No. 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. "
- jgalt212 3y agoWithout men, there would be no wars nor skyscrapers. -- Anonymous
- Xorakios 3y agoit's an awesome aphorism, and continues (there are lots of versions and alleged authors): Without men, there would be neither wars or skyscrapers; neither destruction or creation; neither hate nor love. We are not angels but we need not be devils, but without the devils as examples, how to choose right from wrong? There is also: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/97379851-without-the-mob-there-is-no-circus https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/97379851-without-the-m...
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThe corpus of literature on designing systems to function smoothly and reliably when filled with mediocre decision makers is neither large nor well known nor inspiring. Hence, most people understandably ignore it or never even read it at all. But these concepts are absolutely critical to ensuring the real world functions.
- candiddevmike 3y agoThis would be a good thing to frame/teach in the context of business management
- hammock 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes?
- scrubs 3y agoGood points. The New Yorker made somewhat the same points on Alger Horatio say in context of ragged dick. Horatio never dealt with racism or class hierarchies. And his villans are simplistic. There was no murder or rape. And it was implied that fraudsters (as one example) knew they were doing wrong almost as if they had internalized morals but ultimately never followed them. So again no serious engagement of human nature. Moreover dick was helped by a Christian rich person --- to the good in intent and result--- but it leaves a lot left unexplored too. In this way lord of the flies is another take worth reading