Joakim Andersen highlights lesser known aspects of George Orwell’s thought, including his analysis of the English nation, his critique of the British intelligentsia, and his pro-natalist stance promoting family-friendly policies.
George Orwell (1903–1950) is today best known for Animal Farm and 1984, and he was in many respects an unusual socialist. While many contemporaries supported the Soviet Union, Orwell instead chose to criticize totalitarianism and advocate for a European federation built on democratic socialism. He opposed both the excesses of the British class society and the British intelligentsia’s oikophobic tendencies. Orwell was also pro-natalist, even though the term was not used during his era.
In 1947, Orwell described the English people in the essay The English People. It is a captivating little text, even though he was later dissatisfied with it himself, and The Lion and the Unicorn is more imaginative. Orwell summarized the most prominent features of the English national character as “artistic insensibility, gentleness, respect for legality, suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated class distinctions, and an obsession with sports.” He identified feudal traits in English society, for better and worse. There was greater tolerance for privileges and titles than in most other countries, the goal for wealthy social climbers was to be absorbed into the aristocracy, and even large parts of the working class adopted its values and tastes. Orwell was not entirely immune to the aristocracy’s discreet charm; among other things, he wrote that “snobbishness is never quite separable from idealism.” At the same time, he believed that British class society was too rigid, and some leveling was needed.
Parts of the essay were directed at the intelligentsia, with its tendencies toward oikophobia and “power-worship.” Orwell’s unusual socialism was especially evident here through a positive valuation of the nation and an insight that “in Britain national solidarity is stronger than class antagonism.” That the nation rallied behind an aristocrat like Churchill during the war was not surprising. The British intelligentsia was unnational, with a tendency to worship power, and “tended to take their ideas from Europe and have been infected by habits of thought that derive ultimately from Machiavelli.” There are similarities between Orwell’s analysis of the intelligentsia and that of the significantly more reactionary Brazilian thinker Olavo de Carvalho. Orwell’s solution, however, diverged from de Carvalho’s; he believed that British anti-intellectualism contributed to isolating and alienating the intelligentsia.
In the essay, we encounter Orwell not only as a chronicler of the English national character, but also as a pro-natalist. In 1947, he warned that if birth rates did not sharply rise within 10 or 20 years, the population would “consist predominantly of middle-aged people. If that point is reached, the decline may never be retrievable.” The similarity to the Myrdals [Editor’s note: a prominent Swedish intellectual couple in the 20th century] is striking, and the issue remains relevant for those who have walked through city centers dominated by older Swedes and younger immigrants.
Like the Myrdals, Orwell focused in his explanation on economics and psychology. He argued that it was not a lack of love for children that prevented Britons from having them, but rather the opposite. Large families meant that children grew up poorer than their classmates. Orwell’s solution was not small child allowances, but a graded taxation system that favored families with children and allowed mothers to stay home with the younger ones. He also addressed the housing situation and free schooling.
Alongside the purely economic factors, values also played a role, and Orwell here advocated a form of culture war. He opposed a culture where it was acceptable for landlords to deny families with children, where abortion was seen as a trivial matter, and where advertisements promoted a hedonistic ideal in which the goal was to stay young for as long as possible.
All in all, it is a worthwhile essay, even though Orwell’s pro-natalism is mainly of historical interest. The real value lies in the description of the English temperament and the reflections on the intelligentsia.
(Translated from the original Swedish article)
Buy Joakim Andersen’s Rising from the Ruins: The Right of the 21st Century
