Review: The Road to Wigan Pier

Author: George Orwell

This book hit a chord.  80 years old, as relevant to the social and political milieu we find ourselves in.  Orwell (like me) admired the goals of socialism but was appalled by the socialists.  I am questioning my association with the political left, given what I perceive as the attack on liberty, justice and freedom at the altar of being ideologically pure.  Orwell preached a version of socialism that was respectful of race and religion.  Socialism aimed at the betterment of the working poor.  

I did find he idealized the Coal Miner, in a Nobel savage kind of way.  He perceived a weakening of the West, with the end result that they would become not more than a “brain in a jar”.  He correctly foresaw the rise of health and fitness culture “in order to exercise their courage, and do dumb-bell exercises to harden muscles which they would never be obliged to use”.  He saw progress as making our “environment safe and soft, and yet striving to keep yourself brave and hard”.

I read this in conjunction with Steve Pinker Enlightenment Now.  Juxtaposed together, it seems that a rising tide has raised all boats.  The lives as described by Orwell of the Northern English Coal Miners would be intolerable by our standards.  How much life has improved for the working poor?  The working poor just got on with it as best they could because they knew not differently.  The improvement in the lives of the working-class westerner is an achievement of modernity and liberal democracy.

Orwell believed that socialism was the best way forward.  He spent some time praising the achievements of Communist Russia.  History has shown the propaganda being feed to British Socialists was not true.  Whilst he was writing this, Stalin was starving millions of Ukrainians.  

He was scathing of the Socialists in his era writing “We have got to admit that if Fascism is everywhere advancing, this is largely the fault of Socialists themselves.  Partly it is due to the mistaken Communist tactic of sabotaging democracy, i.e. sawing off the branch you are sitting on”.  This was immediately before the Second World War.  To my mind the same thing is happening in our society, the political left has become ideologically driven with little tolerance for other perspectives.  What I am seeing is the left trying to shame and silence those that do not agree, rather than win the argument.  He is scathing of the virtue signalling upper class “socialists” who the minute their positions of power were threatened would return to the establishment.  He believed these people did the most damage to socialism, moving otherwise reasonable people towards the Fascists (One Nation).

What impact has this had on me?  I can see that many of the “class battles” Orwell describe, are still being fought today.  Maybe we need an inherent tension between the Capitalists and Socialists to maintain balance in society.  Personally, I have long admired the goals of socialism (Healthcare, Education, Law and Infrastructure), but like Orwell, I can no longer abide by the socialists and the puritanical ideology preached.