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Toward European Unity

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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

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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] Orwell came to identify all authoritarians, both fascists and state socialists, as enemies of his vision of democratic socialism.[3] His experiences in the war, during which the Catholic Church collaborated with the Nationalists, also instilled in Orwell a deep sense of anti-Catholicism;[4] he came to conclude the Catholic Church was inherently sympathetic to fascism and an obstacle to the establishment of socialism.[5]

By the outbreak of World War II, he was already preocuppied with "visions of a totalitarian future".[3] 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.[6] 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.[7]

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.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10]

Content

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In the essay, 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;[11] other countries could develop their own nuclear weapons and wage nuclear warfare against each other, causing societal collapse;[12] or the status quo would be frozen and the world divided between a few large superpowers, which would each be highly totalitarian states.[13] Orwell believed the third to be the most likely and the worst possible outcome.[12]

As an alternative to this future, Orwell proposed the unification of western Europe under a system of democratic socialism. 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;[11] and the Catholic Church, which Orwell saw as an enemy of freedom of thought, social equality and societal reform.[14]

Orwell believed that the collapse of capitalism was inevitable, but couldn't predict what might follow in its wake.[15] 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..."[11] 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.[16]

Analysis

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"Toward European Unity" marked a turning point for Orwell, from his previous socialistic optimism to an ever-increasing pessimism. 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.[10] Burnham's conception of managerialism ultimately provided the foundation for Orwell's totalitarian dystopia in Nineteen Eighty-Four.[17]

References

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  1. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 161.
  2. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 567–568.
  3. ^ a b Kateb 1966, pp. 569–570.
  4. ^ Rodden 1984, pp. 48–49.
  5. ^ Farrell 2023, pp. 187–188; Rodden 1984, pp. 48–49.
  6. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 572–573.
  7. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 574–575.
  8. ^ Kateb 1966, pp. 575–576.
  9. ^ Amenta 1987, pp. 161–162.
  10. ^ a b Kateb 1966, p. 576.
  11. ^ a b c Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  12. ^ a b Farrell 2023, p. 184; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  13. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 186n34; Farrell 2023, p. 184; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  14. ^ Kateb 1966, p. 575; Rodden 1984, p. 49.
  15. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 171; Kateb 1966, p. 575.
  16. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 171.
  17. ^ Amenta 1987, p. 180; Kateb 1966, p. 572.

Bibliography

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  • 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.
  • Kateb, George (December 1966). "The Road to 1984". Political Science Quarterly. 81 (4): 564–580. doi:10.2307/2146905. ISSN 0032-3195. JSTOR 2146905.
  • Rodden, John (1984). "Orwell on Religion: The Catholic and Jewish Questions". College Literature. 11 (1): 44–58. ISSN 0093-3139. JSTOR 25111578.

Further reading

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