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Toward European Unity

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Grnrchst (talk | contribs) at 10:35, 21 February 2025 (Added more information to background, content and analysis from assorted sources; this fleshes out Orwell's criticisms of Soviet socialism and British social democracy, his post-war visit to Germany, his thoughts on a socialist European federation and how the essay was received by his contemporaries.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Toward European Unity
AuthorGeorge Orwell
LanguageEnglish
SubjectEuropean integration, totalitarianism
GenreEssay
PublisherPartisan Review
Publication date
July–August 1947
OCLC549327968

Toward European Unity was a 1947 essay by George Orwell on the subject of European integration. In the essay, Orwell speculated about possible futures in which the world could fall to nuclear war or totalitarianism. He proposed the creation of a democratic socialist European Union as an alternative to such scenarios, although he also predicted that it would have to overcome opposition from imperial powers.

The essay represented both the culmination of Orwell's optimistic visions for a socialist future, which he had developed since the Spanish Civil War, as well as the beginning of his shift towards a deep-rooted pessimism that informed his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Background

Photograph of George Orwell sitting in front of a microphone
Orwell broadcasting for the BBC, during World War II

Orwell began his political career as an unaligned anti-fascist, which drove him to fight in the Spanish Civil War, during which he developed sympathies for socialism and an opposition to totalitarianism.[1] In Homage to Catalonia, he described the prevailing atmosphere of social equality that he experienced in the country; directly contrasting this "authentic socialism" with the authoritarian socialist practices of state control.[2] He believed that, in the Soviet Union, a "new form of class privilege" had been established by the Bolsheviks under the "sham" pretext of collectivism and egalitarianism.[3] Orwell came to identify all authoritarians, both fascists and state socialists, as enemies of his vision of democratic socialism.[4] His experiences in the war, during which the Catholic Church collaborated with the Nationalists, also instilled in Orwell a deep sense of anti-Catholicism;[5] he came to conclude the Catholic Church was inherently sympathetic to fascism and an obstacle to the establishment of socialism.[6]

By the outbreak of World War II, he was already preoccupied with "visions of a totalitarian future".[4] Nevertheless, Orwell momentarily continued to uphold his optimistic vision of socialism; in "Second Thoughts on James Burnham", a review of the titular author's works on managerialism, he criticised Burnham for his conservatism and pessimism.[7] But by the end of World War II, Orwell's health was deteriorating and his wife Eileen Blair had died. He subsequently retired to the Inner Hebrides of Scotland and slowly fell into a state of social isolation.[8]

After the post-war government of Clement Attlee was elected, Orwell prominently criticised it for failing to establish socialism after the war, noting it had focused only on minor democratic reforms.[9] Although a member of the left-wing of the Labour Party, Orwell aligned himself against the British Left's proposals for Britain to become a "third force" on the international stage, as he supported the dissolution of the British Empire and the establishment of a socialist European Union.[10] Orwell believed that pan-European democratic socialism served as the best alternative to the "false kind[s] of socialism" presented by British left-wing intellectuals and believers in Soviet socialism.[11]

As the Cold War began to take shape and Orwell grew increasingly disillusioned with the Attlee government, he gradually lost his optimism for a socialist future and began to accept that a professional–managerial class was on the rise. The events since the end of World War II persuaded him that totalitarianism had not yet been defeated, with both the United States and the Soviet Union demonstrating totalitarian tendencies. He began to think that socialist alternatives to a totalitarian future were unlikely.[12] Following a visit to post-war Germany and witnessing the destruction caused by the war, he wrote of his rejection of the Morgenthau Plan and his belief that a European Federation should take over the reconstruction of Germany.[13] In July 1947, he published his thoughts on the matter in the essay "Toward European Unity" in Partisan Review.[14]

Content

Orwell opened the essay by estimating the probability of the survival of civilisation over the 20th and 21st centuries, which he judged to be quite low due to the advancement of nuclear proliferation.[15] Orwell speculated about the possible scenarios for the future of the European continent: the United States as the sole global nuclear power could wage a preventive war with the Soviet Union;[16] other countries could develop their own nuclear weapons and wage nuclear warfare against each other, causing societal collapse;[17] or the status quo would be frozen and the world divided between a few large superpowers, which would each be highly totalitarian states.[18] Orwell believed the third to be the most likely and the worst possible outcome.[17]

As an alternative to this future, Orwell proposed the unification of western Europe under a system of democratic socialism.[19] He believed that the establishment of a free and equal society on a large scale, in which there existed no incentive to pursue power or profit, was only possible through the creation of a federal Europe.[20] In Orwell's mind, this socialist federation would be a way for Europe to maintain its independence from both American and Soviet hegemony.[21] He in turn foresaw four potential obstacles to this socialist society: the Soviet Union, which would desire to keep Europe under its control; the United States, which would be hostile to any form of socialism; the continuation of imperialism and support for it among the working class;[16] and the Catholic Church, which Orwell saw as an enemy of freedom of thought, social equality and societal reform.[22]

Orwell believed that the collapse of capitalism was inevitable, but couldn't predict what might follow in its wake.[23] While Orwell foresaw a potential future in which Russia underwent democratization and the United States moved towards socialism, he concluded that "the actual outlook, so far as I can calculate the probabilities, is very dark..."[16] He believed that totalitarianism was likely to rise throughout the Anglosphere, predicting that it would be promoted by local nationalists as a solution to a period of great crisis.[24]

Analysis

At the time of the essay's publication, many read it as an invective against the pro-Americanism expressed by Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary under the Atlee government.[21] "Toward European Unity" also marked a turning point for Orwell, from his previous socialistic optimism to an ever-increasing pessimism.[12] Although he continued to press for the establishment of a democratic socialist European Federation, which he considered essential for "the future of humanity", he came to view such as project as increasingly improbable towards the end of his life.[25] The publication of his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four marked the culmination of this pessimism, going further than either his essay on European integration or even Burnham's own predictions of a managerial revolution.[12] Burnham's conception of managerialism ultimately provided the foundation for Orwell's totalitarian dystopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four.[26]

References

  1. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 161.
  2. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 567–568.
  3. ^ Vaninskaya 2003, p. 91.
  4. ^ a b Kateb 1966, pp. 569–570.
  5. ^ Rodden 1984, pp. 48–49.
  6. ^ Farrell 2023, pp. 187–188; Rodden 1984, pp. 48–49.
  7. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 572–573.
  8. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 574–575.
  9. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 575–576.
  10. ^ Amenta 1987, pp. 161–162.
  11. ^ Vaninskaya 2003, pp. 91–92.
  12. ^ a b c Kateb 1966, p. 576.
  13. ^ Feigel & Miller 2020, p. 56.
  14. ^ Feigel & Miller 2020, pp. 56, 66.
  15. ^ Feigel & Miller 2020, pp. 56–57.
  16. ^ a b c Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  17. ^ a b Farrell 2023, p. 184; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  18. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 186n34; Farrell 2023, p. 184; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  19. ^ Feigel & Miller 2020, pp. 56–57; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  20. ^ Feigel & Miller 2020, p. 57; Vaninskaya 2003, pp. 91–92.
  21. ^ a b Shaw 2004, p. 113.
  22. ^ Kateb 1966, p. 575; Rodden 1984, p. 49.
  23. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 171; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  24. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 171.
  25. ^ Vaninskaya 2003, p. 89.
  26. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 180; Kateb 1966, p. 572.

Bibliography

  • Amenta, Edwin (1987). "Compromising Possessions: Orwell's Political, Analytical, and Literary Purposes in Nineteen Eighty-Four". Politics & Society. 15 (2): 157–188. doi:10.1177/003232928701500203.
  • Douglass, R. Bruce (September 1985). "The Fate of Orwell's Warning". Thought: Fordham University Quarterly. 60 (3): 263–274. doi:10.5840/thought19856031.
  • Farrell, John (2023). "George Orwell's Dystopian Socialism" (PDF). The Utopian Dilemma in the Western Political Imagination. Routledge. pp. 173–193. doi:10.4324/9781003365945-17. ISBN 978-1-032-43157-4.
  • Feigel, Lara; Miller, Alisa (2020). "='This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do': hopes and fears for a united Europe in Britain after the Second World War". In Habermann, Ina (ed.). The Road to Brexit: A Cultural Perspective on British Attitudes to Europe. Manchester University Press. pp. 44–68. ISBN 978-1-5261-4508-6.
  • Kateb, George (December 1966). "The Road to 1984". Political Science Quarterly. 81 (4): 564–580. doi:10.2307/2146905. ISSN 0032-3195. JSTOR 2146905.
  • Newsinger, John (1999). "The American connection: George Orwell, 'literary Trotskyism' and the New York intellectuals". Labour History Review. 64 (1). doi:10.3828/lhr.64.1.23.
  • Rodden, John (1984). "Orwell on Religion: The Catholic and Jewish Questions". College Literature. 11 (1): 44–58. ISSN 0093-3139. JSTOR 25111578.
  • Vaninskaya, Anna (2003). "Janus-Faced Fictions: Socialism as Utopia and Dystopia in William Morris and George Orwell". Utopian Studies. 14 (2): 83–98. JSTOR 20720012.

Further reading


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