Is it time to consider social democracy? – Part 3

George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm most notably, is also known for his essays on politics. In 1946 in “Politics and the English Language,” he wrote: “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” It was his opinion that deteriorated and vague language was what had brought political thought to its lowest level.



George Orwell

Orwell was a democratic socialist who lived the life he was hoping to provide salvation for, going as far as Burma where he described himself as being in a land “…whose people did not want him there.” Jennie Yabroff in a 2008 article in Newsweek says that is where the writer learned to hate all forms of imperialism. Orwell’s life of denial to help others eventually landed him on the Scottish island of Jura where he died of tuberculosis after finishing 1984.

Animal Farm had given him financial security, but he lived as a tramp and beggar, working for low wages in England and France. He picked hops as a migratory laborer and once tried to get himself arrested as a drunk so he could find out about life in prison. All of this to prove the inequality of life then for those in need.

That was over sixty years ago and we still haven’t come close to doing something about the great separation between wealth and poverty.

Read Part 1 and Part 2.