In light of all the recent bad news, at a time when the war in Iraq is undergoing one of its darkest chapters, an essay by George Orwell--one of his last--can inspire hope.
When an article by George Orwell titled "Toward European Unity" appeared in the Partisan Review in the summer of 1947, the human race appeared to be running out of international political options. Two years earlier, the United States had inaugurated the nuclear era with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A year after that, in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill, that courageous leader of Britain and the Allies, warned that an Iron Curtain had descended and divided Europe. Ultimate international power was spliced into two opposing poles. "I would give the odds against the survival of civilization within the next few hundred years," Orwell wrote. The only hope for humanity, he argued, was the foundation of a United Socialist States of Europe.
If that didn't happen--and he didn't really think it would--Orwell saw three possibilities for the immediate future. The first involved the United States using the atomic bomb before the Soviets got their own, and starting a preventive war that would lead to many more years of destruction (this seemed to him the least likely outcome of the three. Interestingly, he claimed that "a preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy"). The second possibility saw the Cold War continuing until the Soviets did get the bomb. After a nuclear exchange between the major powers, civilization would have to start anew with a population of a few million. The third possibility, which later provided the setting for Orwell's novel, 1984 (1948), involved a cold war between two or three super-states, each unable to conquer the other without risking an atomic apocalypse. This, he wrote, would be the worst outcome of all, because the structure of these super-states would be "hierarchic, with a semi-divine caste at the top and outright slavery at the bottom, and the crushing out of liberty would exceed anything that the world has yet seen."
These were the dangers he foresaw. "The only way of avoiding them...is to present somewhere or other, on a large scale, the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area." To him, the place was Western Europe.
Orwell frankly admitted that it was unlikely that Europe would unite. In his essay, he starts making concessions before he puts forth his idea. He outlines four main obstacles to a united and socialist Europe: Soviet hostility to unity, American hostility, European nation's dependence on its foreign colonies, and the Roman Catholic Church.
Overall, Orwell's tone and outlook is pessimistic. But in the last paragraph of the essay, almost as an afterthough, he sees a chink of light:
Or again, it is even possible that if the world falls apart into three unconquerable super-states, the liberal tradition will be strong enough within the Anglo-American section of the world to make life tolerable and even offer some hope of progress. But all this is speculation. The actual outlook, so far as I can calculate the probabilities, is very dark, and any serious thought should start out from that fact.
And that's exactly what happened. The Anglo-American section of the world--along with the help of numerous allies--defeated the Soviet Bloc. Freedom prevailed.
The outlook for Orwell was much bleaker than it is for us. There is no reason to lose hope now.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa.
When an article by George Orwell titled "Toward European Unity" appeared in the Partisan Review in the summer of 1947, the human race appeared to be running out of international political options. Two years earlier, the United States had inaugurated the nuclear era with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A year after that, in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill, that courageous leader of Britain and the Allies, warned that an Iron Curtain had descended and divided Europe. Ultimate international power was spliced into two opposing poles. "I would give the odds against the survival of civilization within the next few hundred years," Orwell wrote. The only hope for humanity, he argued, was the foundation of a United Socialist States of Europe.
If that didn't happen--and he didn't really think it would--Orwell saw three possibilities for the immediate future. The first involved the United States using the atomic bomb before the Soviets got their own, and starting a preventive war that would lead to many more years of destruction (this seemed to him the least likely outcome of the three. Interestingly, he claimed that "a preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy"). The second possibility saw the Cold War continuing until the Soviets did get the bomb. After a nuclear exchange between the major powers, civilization would have to start anew with a population of a few million. The third possibility, which later provided the setting for Orwell's novel, 1984 (1948), involved a cold war between two or three super-states, each unable to conquer the other without risking an atomic apocalypse. This, he wrote, would be the worst outcome of all, because the structure of these super-states would be "hierarchic, with a semi-divine caste at the top and outright slavery at the bottom, and the crushing out of liberty would exceed anything that the world has yet seen."
These were the dangers he foresaw. "The only way of avoiding them...is to present somewhere or other, on a large scale, the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area." To him, the place was Western Europe.
Orwell frankly admitted that it was unlikely that Europe would unite. In his essay, he starts making concessions before he puts forth his idea. He outlines four main obstacles to a united and socialist Europe: Soviet hostility to unity, American hostility, European nation's dependence on its foreign colonies, and the Roman Catholic Church.
Overall, Orwell's tone and outlook is pessimistic. But in the last paragraph of the essay, almost as an afterthough, he sees a chink of light:
Or again, it is even possible that if the world falls apart into three unconquerable super-states, the liberal tradition will be strong enough within the Anglo-American section of the world to make life tolerable and even offer some hope of progress. But all this is speculation. The actual outlook, so far as I can calculate the probabilities, is very dark, and any serious thought should start out from that fact.
And that's exactly what happened. The Anglo-American section of the world--along with the help of numerous allies--defeated the Soviet Bloc. Freedom prevailed.
The outlook for Orwell was much bleaker than it is for us. There is no reason to lose hope now.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa.
