Orwell's Revenge (42 page)

criminality among the proles:
See 1984, p. 72.

abolished long ago:
See
1984,
p. 207.

property had been an obstructive nuisance:
“Charles Dickens” (1939),
Essays,
I, p. 65.

officially labeled a swindle:
Coming Up for Air,
p. 13.

Fronky:
As a child, Eric Blair “invented an imaginary friend with whom he could play freely. For some unknown reason he called the friend ‘Fronky.'” Shelden, p. 19.

The Market

like guardsmen naked on parade:
I am quoting from
Aspidistra,
p. 105.

generally crowded and noisy:
1984,
p. 128.

staggering/eats of memory:
1984,
p. 85.

forecasts, and lucky amulets:
1984,
p. 85.

then the handle came off:
1984,
p. 70.

shopping means rations:
1984,
pp. 27, 40, 59, 71, 163, 270.

and vouchers:
1984,
p. 32.

private property has been abolished:
1984,
p. 207.

criticism of markets, money:
In Orwell's socialist Utopia, “[m]oney, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.”
Lion,
p. 75.

money-business, and money-morality:
Aspidistra,
pp. 14, 48-49. According to my computer, “money” appears some 366 times in the book, an average of one and a half times on every page.

area huge racket:
Coming Up for Air,
p. 13.

insurance is a swindle:
Coming Up for Air,
p. 13.

frantic struggle to sell things:
Coming Up for Air,
p. 149.

is an obstructive nuisance:
“Charles Dickens” (1939),
Essays,
I, p. 65.

torture millions of one's fellow creatures:
Private property cannot be reconciled with “economic justice.” “Review,
Communism and Man,
by F.J. Sheed” (1939),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 384.

by means of idiotic wills:
“Charles Dickens,” p. 51.

Orwell writes in a 1940 letter:
“Letter to Humphry House” (1940),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 532.

he declares in a 1946 essay:
“Some Thoughts on the Common Toad” (1946),
Essays,
III, p. 368.

Capitalism is a tyranny:
“Writers and Leviathan” (1948),
Essays,
III, p. 461.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee:
“Spilling the Spanish Beans” (1937),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, pp. 273-274; see also “Review,
Russia under Soviet Rule,
by N. de Basily” CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 381: “If even a few
hundred thousand people can be got to grasp that it is useless to overthrow Tweedledum in order to set up Tweedledee, the talk of ‘democracy versus Fascism' with which our ears are deafened may begin to mean something.”

Indeed, for many years Orwell's every mention of capitalism is paired with one of fascism. For example: Fascism “is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism when the pinch comes.” Quoted in Shelden, p. 218. Fascism is simply capitalist democracy with the “barriers down” and with the “motives out in the open.” “Raffles and Miss Blandish” (1941),
Essays,
I, p. 144. “It is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist' while attempting to preserve capitalism.” “Letter to Geoffrey Gorer” (1937),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 284. The liberal bourgeoisie “are the supporters of Fascism when it appears in . . . modem form.”
Homage to Catalonia,
p. 48. p. 89

the one is robbing the other:
“Review,
The Communist International,
by Franz Borkenau” (1938), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 350.

the capitalist affluence of his patrons:
“Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali” (1944),
Essays,
IV p. 30. Indeed, Dali's art casts a “useful light on the decay of capitalist civilisation” (p. 26).

nothing but saleable drivel:
“As I Please” (1944),
CEJL,
Vol. 3, p. 250. See also “The Prevention of Literature” (1946),
Essays,
III, p. 336 (“The independence of the writer and the artist is eaten away by vague economic forces”).

money controls opinion:
“Why I Joined the Independent Labour Party” (1938),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 337.

that capitalism has yet produced:
Aspidistra,
p. 51. Advertising, which accounts fully for the “silliness” of the English press, “arises from the fact that newspapers live off advertisements for consumption goods.” “The English People” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 35. “While the journalist exists merely as the publicity agent of big business, a large circulation, got by fair means or foul, is a newspaper's one and only aim,” he writes in a “A Farthing Newspaper” (1928),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 14.

monopoly on radio and the films:
“The Prevention of Literature,” p. 335.

who are only one degree better:
“As I Please” (1946),
CEJL,
Vol. 4, p. 242.

theoretical rather than actual:
“The English People” (1944),
CEJL,
Vol. 3, p. 11.

the same way as a state censorship:
“Freedom of the Park” (1945),
CEJL,
Vol. 4, pp. 39-40.

an instinctive hatred of intelligence:
“The British Crisis” (1942),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 209.

the flexible glass mentioned by Petronius:
Wigan Pier,
pp. 206-207.

Gordon Comstock reflects bitterly in Aspidistra:
Aspidistra,
p. 54.

that it kills thought:
Aspidistra,
p. 49.

The free market is the enemy too:
“Review,
Workers' Front, by
Fenner Brockway” (1938),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 305.

high degree of economic equality:
In
1984,
p. 190, he declares (through Blythe) that social inequality would largely disappear (and “freedom” would materially advance) in “a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motorcar or even an airplane.”

freedom of speech and the press:
“Democracy in the British Army” (1939), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 405.

censorship or the Secret Police:
“Review, The
Calf of Paper,
by Scholem Asch” (1936),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 249: “You can't ignore Hitler, Mussolini, unemployment, aeroplanes and the radio.” The theme of Mark Twain's books, says Orwell, is: “This is how human beings behave when they are not frightened of the sack.” “Mark Twain—The Licensed Jester” (1943),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 325. Regular employment as a “cog” in the capitalist machine is equally bad. “Review,
Red Spanish Notebook,
by Mary Low and Juan Brea” (1937),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 287.

industrial America that was to follow:
See also “Riding Down from Bangor” (1946),
Essays,
III, p. 406: Nineteenth century America “was a better kind of society than that which arose from the sudden industrialization of the later part of the century . . . uncorrupted.”

wildness of spirit:
“Review,
Herman Melville,
by Lewis Mumford” (1930),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 21.

a buoyant, carefree feeling:
“Riding Down from Bangor,” p. 406.

may not be again for centuries:
“Mark Twain—The Licensed jester,” p. 325.

irresponsible, ungenteel ways:
“Review,
Herman Melville,
by Lewis Mumford,” p. 21. See also “Riding Down from Bangor,” p. 407: “There was room for everybody, and if you worked hard you could be certain of a living.”

had hardly come into being:
Thus, “nineteenth-century America was capitalist civilisation at its best.” “Riding Down from Bangor,” p. 407.

Chapter 7

servant in a white jacket:
1984,
p. 169.

the soundless carpet:
1984,
p. 169.

towered over the smaller man:
1984,
p. 170.

seconds marched past:
1984,
p. 170.

cringing love at the first smile:
“Such, Such Were the Joys” (1947),
Essays,
I, p. 25.

his somersault when there was no whip:
“As I Please” (1944),
CEJL,
Vol. 3, p. 181.

the vagueness of his own motives:
1984,
p. 170.

elimination of Blytheism:
1984,
p. 54.

a line of type cast solid:
1984,
p. 54.

two blank discs instead of eyes:
1984,
p. 54; see also “Politics and the English Language” (1946),
Essays,
I, p. 166.

The lessons . . .:
1984
, p. 47.

assumed personality even for a moment:
1984,
p. 171.

glasses on his nose:
1984,
p. 170.

the Polynesian islander swam:
Wigan Pier,
p. 206.

The Ministry

in a planned centralised society:
“Review,
A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays,
by Herbert Read” (1945), CEJL, Vol. 4, pp. 4849.

could be enormously accelerated:
Wigan Pier,
p. 207.

is in decay:
“No, Not One” (1941),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 171.

dissolving:
The blurb on the 1941 dust jacket of The
Lion and the Unicorn
stated: “This original book is a study of England and of England's special problems in an age when private capitalism is dissolving into a classless, ownerless society” This was written by Orwell himself. See Lion, p. 30.

disappearing:
“The Proletarian Writer: Discussion between George Orwell and Desmond Hawkins” (BBC broadcast, 1940),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 41; “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” (1946),
Essays,
II, p. 335.

doomed:
“London Letter to
Partisan
Review” (1942),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 235 (“obviously doomed”); “Literature and Totalitarianism” (1941),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 135 (“the period of free capitalism is coming to an end”).

and dead:
“London Letter to
Partisan Review”
(1941),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 117;
Lion,
p. 118: “Laissez-faire capitalism is dead.”

and it will not return:
“London Letter to
Partisan
Review,” p. 117.

monopoly spreads year by year:
“The British Empire,” one of Orwell's characters declares, “is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the English rather than to gangs of Jews and Scotchmen.”
Burmese Days,
p. 40. Orwell's own father, Richard Blair, spent a lifteime dutifully maintaining the monopoly opium trade in colonial Bengal and China. Shelden, p. 14.

Orwell writes in 1928:
‘A
Farthing Newspaper” (1928),
CEJL,
Vol. 1, p. 13. In his 1945 essay on antisemitism, the first thing Orwell does is defend Jews against the charge that they have monopolized British business: “The Jews seem, on the contrary, to have failed to keep up with the modem tendency towards big amalgamations and to have remained fixed in those trades which are necessarily carried out on a small scale and by old-fashioned methods.” “Anti-Semitism in Britain” (1945),
Essays,
III, p. 285.

the milkman out of existence:
“Bookshop Memories” (1936),
Essays,
III, p. 34.

It cannot deliver the goods:
Lion,
p. 73.

Orwell announces in 1940:
“Notes on the Way” (1940),
CEJL,
Vol. 2, p. 16.

and in fact cannot happen:
“Notes on the Way,” p. 16.

much appeal any longer, he writes elsewhere:
“London Letter to
Partisan
Review,” p. 120.

in a BBC broadcast:
“Literature and Totalitarianism,” p. 137. See also “London Letter to
Partisan
Review,” pp. 117-118: “Centralised ownership and planned production are bound to come.”

waste and obstruction, is obvious:
Lion,
pp. 74-76.

embraces a form of socialism:
“Either we turn this war into a revolutionary war . . . or we lose it. . . . [I]t is certain that with our present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces, physical, moral or intellectual, cannot be mobilized.”
Lion,
p. 114. See also “London Letter to
Partisan
Review,” p. 113: “Nearly the whole of the press is now ‘left' compared with what it was before Dunkirk—even
The Times
mumbles about the need for centralised ownership and greater social equality”