Thursday, January 11, 2024

Orwell on Fascism And Democracy

 

George Orwell’s Fascism And Democracy (Penguin Books,2020)  shows how bourgeois democracy is preferable to Fascism and the degree of difference between them matters a lot. Nationalism has been more strong than socialism which is understood vaguely. The English people come together in case of crisis.   Communism has been a lost cause in western Europe.  Democracy is not a sham and  its values  cannot be dismissed as superstructure or illusion as doctrinaire Marxism maintains. 

He also writes that totalitarianism means the  end of literature . In democracy , the relative freedom enjoyed by people is more dependent on  public opinion than on law. Resistance to evil is necessary to vanish it. Western Europe , The Americas, China and India will evolve their own form of socialism which is not totalitarianism .The reinstitution of slavery has been observed during the Second World War due to German totalitarianism which held concentration camps. Britain under War cannot be complacent thinking that it cannot happen  here.

I n fact, except in case of China, Orwell's predictions have not come true and even there Socialism has turned authoritarian.       

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