Great analysis by Gerald Frost on The New Criterion here…
An excerpt:
The contradictions have frequently been noted: he was a socialist intellectual whose finest achievements included a mordant critique of the hypocrisy and double standards displayed by the socialist intellectuals of his day; a patriot who held most of his country’s institutions in contempt; a passionate defender of historical truth who chose to write under an assumed name and who occasionally told lies; a self-styled champion of decency who backed causes that, had they prevailed, would have produced outcomes in which decency would have been difficult to discern; an atheist who decreed that his funeral should be conducted by the Church of England and that he should be buried in a rural parish churchyard. It is often the contradictions in an individual’s character that give it distinction; in the case of Orwell, these were more marked and more numerous than in most, but it is not clear whether he was even aware of them. Yet it is these which explain why he is claimed by those on opposing sides—by socialists and libertarians, by conservatives as well as radicals, by patriots and internationally minded progressives. In a sense, he is up for grabs. All sorts of people can identify with him and claim him—or almost claim him—for their own and are keen, even desperate, to do so. The “almost” is important: many of his admirers feel that if only he had fully grasped the implications of the part of his work of which they happen to approve there would be no doubt about the matter. Admirers, including this one, are eager to read the latest interpretation of his thought in the forlorn hope that this will confirm that he really would have been on their side; it is a difficult habit to kick.
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… Seven years later, in a review of Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom in The Observer, which is curiously not mentioned in most of the Orwell biographies, he conceded that the negative part of Hayek’s thesis was correct: “It cannot be said too often—at any rate it is not being said nearly often enough—that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of. ” For good measure, he added: “Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war.” Well, that would seem to as unambiguous as you could wish for.
But Orwell’s review also dealt with a book by the Soviet sympathizer and left-wing Labour MP Konni Zilliacus, who blamed imperialism and capitalism for the two world wars and much else. Orwell had no difficulty in agreeing with Zilliacus that capitalism led to the creation of monopolies (Orwell did not seem to mind state monopolies), to food lines, and to war. It was a depressing thing: both writers were probably right. Then, equally typically: “There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.” Yet only a sentence earlier he had endorsed Hayek’s denunciation of central economic planning, which allowed no such possibility. When it came to recognizing unpalatable truths, it seems that Orwell had as much difficulty as the next man.
Such unresolved contradictions permeate Orwell’s thought and writing: they explain why he retains admirers on different sides of the political spectrum. We go on reading about him in the hope that these can somehow be resolved in a way that would finally put him irrevocably on our side; the fact that this can never be achieved only increases our desire for more. Orwell’s reputation as a moral giant survives, but the interest in him would surely not have survived if his courage in grappling with the moral and political complexities of his age had not been combined with a capacity to grasp the wrong end of the stick and hang on with great tenacity.