> Criticising Soviet communism was at one time considered to be siding with the right wing.
Orwell was ready to criticise pretty much any version of left wing
politics you like, including his own. In the canon of rude things
people have said about socialists, Orwell has a good many of the best
lines.
I don't think he was ever really emotionally compatible with the
movement that yearned, and still yearns, for unity of purpose and of
action in a spirit of brotherhood. His lack of such compatibility was
what made him useful as a theorist and a commentator. But it was
always going to be intolerable to the types one hears in Doris Lessing
novels, hissing at dissenters that the Party does not exist to provide
them with a forum for their *opinions*.
Dominic
--
// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
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