Christopher Hitchens on Orwell 08/17/2009

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to econ talk part of the library of economics and liberty I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution our website is econ talk org where you can subscribe find other episodes comment on this podcast and find links and other information related to today's conversation our email address is mail a deacon talk org we'd love to hear from you today is August 7th 2009 and my guest is Christopher Hitchens is the author of many books essays and articles including the book why Orwell matters which is our topic for today welcome to econ talk nice gonna have me you start by saying that Orwell was right about the three big issues of the 20th century imperialism fascism and Stalin of Stalinism give us a flavor of what he was right about well to take them in that order which is the order in which they occur and also I think probably the necessary order well wills first rebellion against power illegitimate Paris he thought of it was against the assumption that the world would be ruled indefinitely by white Europeans and that Indians Africans Chinese and Latin Americans people like that would just have to lump it he saw with great questions that that wasn't going to last very much longer anyway whether it was a justifiable or not he'd also as a colonial policeman in Burma was then part of the British Empire in Asia I seen the ugly side of it and I think a guest at the dirty secret that underlay the the master/slave relationship as Nietzsche calls it and the unpleasant sexual side of that which is available to you if you read his novel Burmese days our phrase it as crispy as I can the most ami show so of course I was with due regard to so the the values of that the best way of putting it would be that the most qualified and educated Burmese man would never be allowed as a member of the English club in town hardest you might try but the least educated Burmese woman would be admitted to the British colonial officers mansion by the back door as well at best to mistress in fact Florrie the the policeman in Orwell's novel burn these days has it turns out actually bought his woman has a concubine from her family so she's in effect effect something like a comfort woman or slave I think myself no one no one knows because there's no writing about it that survives of his no one knows why or well came back on leave and resigned his commission in that police force but I believe I do know the reason I think he thought if he went on doing it he would become a sadist and a racist and he'd already become a bit of both of those things and it's a great help if you're going to be an anti-fascist which he later becomes to have some insight into the horrible psycho dramatic nature of fascism it's the sexual warp that is part of it the thrill of domination and not just through of domination but the full of being dominated this is eternally present in Oliver wells writing gives him an insight that many others to in possess he understands immediately there's something utterly wicked and pornographic about fascism it has to resist it it's a life-and-death question he hardly even writes anything against it it's so obvious to him has to be opposed goes off to fight so and early in Spain and I thought that's number two you can cross off second of the to the imagination I want you to feel oppressed an opponent of fascism I want you to give a little background of his Spanish involvement will hurt sort of listeners who may not be aware here in Spain in 1936 the Spanish people elected a government that was broadly speaking as we call it Republican it was hostile to the traditional ancient Spanish Castilian Spanish monarchy critical of the power of the church and the undue economic influence of the church generally secular left-leaning a great a great threat to traditional Spain which replied in the form of a military coup organized from its African colonies by General Franco to put down Castilian sorry to put down Catalan Catalonia and Basque nationalism which were also part of the Republican cause restore the Catholic Christian centralized Madrid based unity of Spain honor but had gone again the traditional monarchist and feudal basis and wasn't ashamed in this enterprise to ask for the military help of Hitler and Mussolini which was what made it an international cause so those who had decided that Hitler and Mussolini had already gone far enough many of them were brave enough to take themselves physically to Spain to fight in the armies of the Republic as volunteers argent turn that's I was supported by well was one of those now so now I think I've hope I've tried to explain succeeded in explaining some of the transition which we know wills anti-imperialism anti-colonialism anti-racism and his anti-fascism an anti Nazism but here here's where he becomes an immortal theta instead of just a distinguished one within the civil war in Spain there was also civil war there was a civil war within the left because as a counterweight to support of Franco by Hitler and Mussolini the Spanish Republic turned for for arms and for money and for diplomatic support to Stalin's Russia which was believed by many people at the time many of the working class and many of the intellectual classes too to be a new utopia to have solved the problems of racism colonialism imperialism who needs any more to ask any any questions we already have a heaven on earth it's on the other side of the Ural Mountains far away but was ruled by beneficent godlike person out of whose bottom the Sun daily shines in Joseph Stalin Josef Vissarionovich to be actually the greatest Georgian of his generation he discovering that this was a huge lie and that those who believed it were capable of anything was all well third great achievement he did it while he was accused of something that must have wounded him very much accused of undermining the anti-fascist front by telling the truth put yourself in that position what am I supposed to do I if I tell the truth I'm going to be accused of undermining the left in its hour of need in Spain I'm gonna tell the truth anyway I'm gonna say what is obvious to me communism is a fraud at best and a monstrous tyranny more probably and I've seen it in action I know what it's like I'm not all your listeners will know who says well me wash was but some of them were well he's dead now he died the issue about 98 he was the greatest polish intellectual of the twentieth century ii did early by leisure color Karski and he wrote a famous book called a captive mind which is a big bestseller in the united states and 1950s when he he Milosh left Poland having been a communist left the Polish government moved to United States and the gastropod he's a book yeah we're famous paralysis I never cry yeah no but I'd know it you just say its name so well it's because I pronounce it as the poles dealing you know because I'm such a [ __ ] for this kind of thing Olaf oh yeah I mean a pole affiliate yeah because I'm w's being the being a special L in Polish that sir so you actually point out it's it's spelled Czeslaw Milosz but it's pronounced shares [ __ ] me wash anyway in the capture of mind he says that when he got hold of a pirate edition of 1984 which was being passed around in inside the communist party in poland in secret read by the cognoscenti they were all absolutely amazed how does this guy understand so well how the system works when they found out who the author was and that was an Englishman who had never been to the Soviet Union who had never been to a communist country if that's not possible he can't have got it so right without having lived under it there's something wrong here where do you think that Milosz is passing around a secret book within the inner party and the nationai t4 is about the passing round of a secret but within the other and this in 1951 that he writes this and about roughly 90 15 that the book comes out I think is probably one of the greatest compliments ever paid by one author to another well we'll never lives to see Milosz published this new wash I should say but in fact in Catalonia in Barcelona the capital of Catalonia well had lived under briefly a communist regime before most people had in Europe he he'd seen what the Communist Party was like in hyper Hague when it was in the saddle whenever thought it was on the winning side and he'd known what it was to live under a terror and have people disappear without explanation and have censorship and fear if only for a brief time it was a lesson for for life and for the rest of his life which was to consist of another decade and a bit he devoted himself to combating the the prevalent delusion among intellectuals which was that communism was the future and if you like that would be radiant in a nice future he said it's neither it's horrible and it will fail and thus the the closing years of his life would just been desperate veal fighting tuberculosis precede the publishing of a lot of very important anti-communist nurses but the two great classic novels Animal Farm and as he's dying 1984 so that's number three and number three is a synthesis of the previous two in other words I think in his 46 years you can think of his life as being all of the peace in that he was able to diagnose analyze and fictionalized and and critically oppose all the forms of the legitimate power of man over man that the 20th century was able to and the 19th had been able to furnish us and trumpeted a warning that we still listen to and still hear its it took really a rather an incredible thing how well-read people still read his books they still talk about his ideas those are the things he opposed tell us what he was Pro he was anti imperialist anti-fascist anti-stalinist what did he embrace what was he Pro we'll talk in a little bit I was to set it up we're gonna talk a little about whether it was a man to the left or the right it's not so easy to talk about what he was Pro given what he was opposed to it's not as a natural philosophy he was a natural egalitarian he didn't have much use for any form of privilege he was all an austere person one can picture him as the soldier actually probably a junior officer in say Oliver Cromwell's army was a bit of a Puritan strict but not humorless very suspicious of any anything overtly or too overly ornate or decorative such as monarchical the the flummery of religion which he was despised very fond of the English people there's a lot of talk about how he was quintessentially English though in fact the first book he ever wrote was a critique written in French of British oppression of Burma British economic exploitation of Burma how Britain underdeveloped Burma was called he spoke perfect French his most English centered novel that's called coming up for air it's about nostalgia for the English countryside in the Cheras Valley was actually written in Morocco well he fought in Spain and was wounded very nearly killed shot in the throat he was a policeman in Burma he was Grange he spoke several Burmese regional languages and also Hindi so he was extremely untypical as an Englishman but he liked the and here's a word one can't avoid in discussing him the decency of the English people he thought that they were humane that they were friendly that they had a an innate sense of fairness generosity he thought that in fact you they were so nice you could even make socialists of them because an English socialism would have to be free of the deformities lysis I secretly suspect he thought were largely imported by continental types who didn't have large cottages I'm afraid I think that that is true okay but he was a socialist he was socialist to the end of his life and he actually joined a very party ever joined was a group called the independent live out here a left splinter from the old level party there was associated with the writing and the resistance to Stalin of Leon Trotsky now that's why when he went to Spain instead of joining as most of the volunteers for the Republic did the International Brigade which was run as a front organization they're not everyone knew it by the WellPoint of course is not everyone knows it by being an astroturf organization instead of a grassroots run by the Communist Party he ended up in a small smaller more left more radical group called the partido of Brera new fuel monkey Star Workers Party of Marxist unification which was not exactly a Trotskyist Gruber was identified with the left opposition to start it and if he hadn't liked that odd coincidence drifted into that group he might not have been able to tell the truth as he saw it and as we now know it to have been true about what the communists were doing in Spain in those days and not just in Spain the midnight of the century as people used to refer to it the time of the Hitler Stalin pact or the rehearsal for it when the two great chatter sharin empires of Europe suddenly decide they have what is obvious to everyone or should have been more in common with each other than with democracy and make a formal military patch the worst moment of all there when it was broken of course Stalin just couldn't believe it it sort of the stranger moments in history right that when Hitler invades Russia Soviet Union I'm told that Stalin refused to believe the the accounts absolute truth Trotsky who predicted it he saw that after Neville Chamberlain had produced the sellout at Munich that's known to all whereas Trotsky put it the British conservatives would sell democracy everywhere in Europe if who were given them ten more years domination of India which was what Hitler was offering his Hitler's exchange proposal was leave Europe to me I won't attack you or your empire we do our own carve up to us he says now mr. Chamberlain has done that the next move is obvious mr. Hillary will now make a pact with mr. Stalin that's his logical next move he has been freed to do it and he just happens to add because Trotsky had this wonderful power sometimes of pressed into zealand by the way when this pact breaks down it won't be Stalin he breaks weird I mean if someone could have got 90% of that ride to get in 210 yeah I could incredible talk about the Spanish Civil War for a minute because for that generation it was the transcendent international event it's almost unimaginable to us today that intellectual elites volunteered to go fight and risk their lives when we think of all the causes that the intellectual elites have followed since then most of them don't involve personal risk they involve standing back from the fray and cherry-picking points and making easy Pat remarks say it's hard to imagine that the great writers of today would go to I mean the only thing I can think of that even vaguely analogous would be the the football player who volunteered to go to Iraq the beginning of the Iraq war Solman and no but no I can trump her so who was it about shaming her present gave up it was mental Ben Tillman yeah tell me and but I don't know what game you played he was famous sportsman it's a huge it was a sir he was killed enough cops yeah here's this fortunately by outside and he was a you know successful athlete but the idea that you're picking the wrong analogy the analogy is with the support of many European intellectuals and poets for the Greek war of independence the big revolution against from an empire in the 1820s where the most famous figure of course is George Nell Gordon better known as Lord Byron who died of Missolonghi not in battle but of disease but tried having tried to help raise the contingent to fight for the freedom of Greece but that was then yes and it was it was very much that is what gives birth to the idea of the Romantic movement which is a huge influence throughout this person why is it that that to me or what may be disagreeable in Spain by the way it isn't it is true of course there's a number of writers and intellectuals and poets in England very famously dal-rae Jordan Stephen spent at least visited Spain if they didn't fight John Cornford a great pert and contemporary of theirs was killed there as a member of the Communist Party innumerable other writers of less renown were associated with it but the ranks of the International Brigade were largely made up of Jewish garment workers from the East End of London Welsh coal miners Scottish coal miners from engineers from the Midlands people who had seen here's what I think is the crucial thing the labor movement of Germany the most important labor movement in history was successful best organized the Western okay go under to Hitler without a shot being fired we'd seen the same happen in in Austria May 9th a force in the the workers districts of Vienna reduced to rubble by artillery would barely resistance it seen one after another the great great achievements European socialism European labour movement just full of fascism and decided that not in Spain Spain we're gonna draw the line the working class the working class is gonna fight back now you know they shall not pass was the slogan opposed around this time there will be a fight they did prevent the fascists in taking the dred the death of hirama it's still a song and story a legend that no not all the compromises with and of the caused by Stalinism can take away the International Brigades for a while barred the road to fascism with their bodies in Spain no one has read the story properly can be I think unaffected by it emotionally or failed to think of it as being as Bernhard Knox the very classicists who went to fight that was still alive age -5 he said could convey to think about it whenever they think about it as being a personal as well as a political tragedy that they lost I like your is it your phrase well you seem to take on these people people of this prestige at the time literary prestige political prestige moral precedent class prestige if you wants all of this and say yes you're quite right we have to bother into fascism but you're quite wrong insane you have to do it as a communist that that's that's to become the loneliest person in the world yeah it's a little subtle for most people go to some risk complete license not just isolation but the worst kinds of calumny and slander which are indeed gonna fall on him he's gonna be accused of every kind of treason and treachery in line when he wrote his book 1984 first about the loneliness of Winston Smith the person who thinks he may be the only person left in the world has seen through a Big Brother it's working title was the last man Europe when he handed it in to Martin Secor at second world but that's what it was caught Martin said it was the first person in New York to read it and said I think we need another title but and I think he was right by the way but that's the way or well part of himself yes these without becoming a monomaniac or an egomaniac I mean to say without becoming to solipsistic about himself he remain always a fairly modest person but he could have fallen victim to temptation to think he was the lone prophet crying in the wilderness Jeremih know and listening it is it your praise the power of facing so is it yours no it's his I wanted to call my book a power of facing maybe explain that phrase well said when I think it's in his essay why I write he said that from a very young age he always knew what he wanted wanted to do which was to be an independent writer and he said he knew he had for this task already the following two bits of equipment um a certain literary ability and a power of facing unpleasant facts it's an oddly constructed phrase one might say the ability to face or write the awareness of for the oh I'm willing mr. dark come present it's just a power of facing I thought was just beautiful it's very good and his willingness to see facts that were not conducive to peace of mind or a docile party-line attitude or an ability to go along to get along he would always notice how that fats are stubborn things was John Adams put it by the way I'd like you to ask me a question about John Adams in a moment all right Jefferson well this is the same not to allow myself to longer throat-clearing here but having said I hope convincingly that on the three critical points of the training century he was right I should say the one critical aspect of the century I think he got wrong or didn't get right at hear it and that's the rise to prominence of America the United States of America and the American idea well we'll had reservations about America that were partly cultural he had a slight English snobbery about American mass culture though he admired aspects of it he'd like Mark Twain for example very much and he didn't like American films he didn't like American comic books thought they were bad influence on English youth he also saw that though the British Empire was bad that taking over of its colonies by America that was coming clearly might not be that wonderful either he was in touch with some good people in the United States the run partisan review group men like Dwight MacDonald Philip Roth wrote a letter from London for them they tried to encourage him to come to America probably to have his TB cured which should have been good and he wanted to make a trip down the Mississippi but he died before he could make it I wish we had had a well on the necessary but mostly rights what America is I have rather slight or rather condescending has to admit it if you didn't have it enough of historic sense of its rise and importance but here's something I think I'm the only person to have noticed at the opening of 1984 what is the what is the opening sentence of novel really don't have to I'm only asking rhetorically the opening sentence is it was a bright cold day in April and all the clocks were striking thirteen and so that's how the novel you suddenly know you're in another world when I wrote my book I didn't know that John Adams had said when he was trying to get the Declaration of Independence organized we have to make thirteen clocks or strike at the same time it won't work unless all 13 colonies join that segment didn't I hadn't known that but I had noticed it is in my book that in the dictionary of Newspeak that's the end of 1984 when he describes the the new language of totalitarianism the attempt to organize a dictionary to make certain thoughts unthinkable certain concepts are available to human mind by organized propagandistic language he gives an example of a sentence that couldn't be rendered in new speak and it's this we hold these truths to be self-evident that's up against I don't have to finish it for the Jeffersonian preamble could not be rendered it missed me no I you'll be wonderful if I could show that he knew that the first sentence is also an echo of John Adams because the the Jeffersonian is almost the bookend at the end because the the Newspeak dictionary is an appendix to them but I think he had studied and appreciated the American Rover and I know he was an admirer of Thomas Paine as all English pamphleteers and radicals were and so one of the many senses of the unfinished that one house with all well so awful that he drowns in his own exploded lungs of a poverty disease like a Dickensian death and totally avoidable at the age of 46 at the height of his part one of the one of the things is that we'll never get to hear how fruitful a proper engagement between him and America might have become talk about our Welles view of language which you also mention talked about quite quite a bit about in the book what was his contribution why does we're all still matter when we think of the language well we thought that a lot of the work of illegitimate power is done for it by slave volunteers who all they need to do is to use the what the French called the long du Bois the wooden tongue that the tongue that has removed all meaning from language in other words that you would describe say the forced confiscation and dispossession of agricultural workers as collectivization half the job is done if you if the government get it called that the half way there euphemism was the thing that he was best noticing so a euphemism I would define as the the the finding of a nice word for a nasty thing so oh there are so many I suppose the best the most famous one now so famous that no one ever tries it this would be collateral damage for civilian casualties no one would have I think the no bill to say that with a straight face anymore even to say these the word purge which we now of course think I was a hateful word we didn't at the time purge is at the cleansing yeah at Sanskrit for the mass murder or by show trial and disappearance and secret execution of your political opponents c'est appeasement remember at the time was the word that the Tories themselves used appeasement means the satisfied and peaceful calm peaceful composition of differences the slaking of certain it's it's a it's an agreeable word right so you saw me through history then it's become yes as the word collaboration knows doesn't ever help again the same quite the same rain is it as it once did so that's of course the Revenge of his journey from isn't that the euphemisms themselves become yeah as we would now if I was to describe you as ethically challenged you would know that there was a deadly sting to that because it was once a word that was used to soften the description of something disagreeable such as disability or crippled up to give it to us right so it was very was dead set against all that and he gave tremendous examples in his in his criticism his essays to misdirect criticism of the way in which propaganda imports itself into the language and putting people on their guard against him and he he taught not just to certain generation they're succeeding ones the importance of that they overestimated so many of his fictional euphemisms became the real thing Big Brother is not a right we think a big brother is a frightening phrase it's obviously was meant to be a term of familial warmth and affection absolutely by Big Brother but we now know it because of where well as a it's become synonymous with with evil and oppression precisely it's a little strange that people use his name as an adjective to mean the misuse of language well some of these Orwellian means it's yes the euphemisms like people say Kafka asked or something the Kafka would have hated it's true this is partner who I think I mean one can't probably avoid it but when if if you describe the person as no well in you pay them a compliment yeah if you describe a situation as a word and you're describing something that's very dark hell possibly and here's where the uses of pessimism may come in possibly so Jacque has to be without a door I think it may have been aisle trilling a generator was one of his contemporaries who said of 1984 the power of it was to completely foreclose any hope by the end there's nothing Winston Smith can possibly do he's been totally broken it's not just broken he's been recruited he loves me brother there's the last man in Europe the last dissident has been tamed the argument that many people made at the time I wasn't tortured why otherwise admire made this case this is a situation that encourages people to despair it teaches people that there's nothing you can do it's reactionary announcer others I think it's a bit more alive well I think I think those show mention genuinely yeah now there's more a little more life to the act to what all I was trying to do said no because if you if you can imagine it being that bad you can in fact imagine not overcoming it for preventing yeah was a it was a klaxon we don't think yourself into Winston Smith situation think of what you can do to stop yourself from collaborating and becoming someone in that situation and in that respect we can say that the book is genuinely historic because the impact that it had in the enslaved countries of the Soviet sphere among noticed intellectuals but people who later became leaders of independent trade unions and so forth can't cannot be overstated and how do we know that I've met people in checkers about him as it then was the Czech and Slovak lands in Poland in East Germany who were enormous Lee affected by reading Animal Farm and or 1984 in verse samizdat editions lore well was very insistent that he would allow these books to be translated and distributed originally in Ukrainian in fact the only intro you wrote in 1984 was for a pirate Ukranian edition produced by a group of rank-and-file Ukrainian socialists who had been prisoners of war were in a displaced persons camp in 1945 so you can have the book you can have the copy right here's my introduction here's why the book is not anti-socialist but it's anti stalin here's why it's on the side of freedom it's not cold war propaganda it's not it's not cut doesn't come from a supporter of British imperialism important itself by the way I think well this example was followed by pirate editions in every known language and I'm willing to bet you that something will happen in my lifetime and yours 1984 is not yet available in Chinese or not in mainland China but it will I predict there will be an addition event no doubt an animal farm has been produced as a musical in Beijing I'd love to see it I have not attended a performance it is not yet available um except the very Chinese person would now know how to get hold of some version on the internet and there will be a there'll be a North Korean version the will because some because no one has ever been able to go to North Korea as I have myself in one of the few without surveying the most perfected hideous version of totalitarianism that still survives and war that may ever have been attempted without immediately having recourse to a quotation from it's impossible to see it or even think about it without thinking about oh well this is the achievement of quite a high order it means that the relevance of the book will go on and it possibly become even more acute and I'll I'll add one more thing which is the animal farm is banned by the administrative education in almost every Islamic country in some cases because of its mention of pigs but not all mentions of pigs are forbidden by Islam pigs appears can be understood after all pigs are not represented exactly right like you know um no it's very clear and it was made very clear indeed by the prohibition on it in Iran that it is banned as a satire for absolutism it's banned in the same way as the Shah of Iran didn't like having public performances of Macbeth assertive gate has in these attacks upon itself it earns the compliments that are only accrued by great literature you've mentioned in passing something you talked about at length in the book which is the left's reaction to Orwell and I think the way you put it is it's it's a little strange that an anti-imperialist anti-imperialist a deep defender of the working class and a strong egalitarian should be almost caricature when talked about by the left so talk about why that is you sort of mentioned in passing already but talk about it more detail does it there's a deadly a trapdoor built into a large floor of the left mentality if I haven't mixed the metaphor but pressing around that I don't think I have it's this that there's the it's quite right to value solidarity it's quite right to value of fraternity and all of these things that keep the movement together in hard times but what this can undervalue or even a tree with suspicion is the person who thinks for himself or herself it can be suspected of being a traitor a blackleg someone who lets down the front solidarity it's necessary in a war or worse gives comfort to the other side they fried the the vulgar phrase for this which isn't the leftist phrase actually it's a sort of phrased in any public school more regimental or team spirit a conservative would recognize to know you don't give aid and comfort to the enemy you don't spread alarm and despondency among your own side as a tribal feeling rather than the leftist one but it is it's peculiar to the left in in that it can be like being a strikebreaker or someone who who is a traitor and scared by the wise well how do you finish that was not a mutiny by no means no what nor in a way as player click or scab herder or any of the other equivalent terms and the this has a another element of that's I would say a leftist one in its way which is and a form of leveling rather than a form of a gala terrorism but that says that people who do such things do so for the lowest motive that once you found the lowest motive for someone breaking ranks you've probably found the correct one in other words so that I in my own life time I met Claud Coburn who was a very very important journalist on the left in the 30s and subsequently until his death actually in the early 80s there was a considered a very admirable man despite his long long membership in the Communist Party and he was indeed a very brave and a humorous and very original writer but he believed that all others like him in Spain who had criticized the Popular Front and the Soviet role in it were consciously doing the work of Hitler conscious conscious leader King yes yeah that it was not that their work as it were objectively the I'm your readers children viewers I should say your listeners the audience can't see me doing my air quotes but objectively doing the work of the other side but no we're knowingly doing the work so an anti-communist is a fact is pro-fascist almost well by definition did by a certain metric the it must be served that's what the daily work has said they spread all kinds of other communist conspired slanders against all of them having the federal checking his motives his character anything rather than engaged with ant and made very spirited and quite successful attempts to make sure that his work from Spain did not see print it didn't get printed in the New Statesman which had a very strong fellow traveling wing of the time was the leading left cultural magazine in Britain noise to work for myself in the 30s it was you could say it had the combined effect in Britain and British English speaking worth the New Republic on the nation combined they they were strong enough to make sure that he never got published there was a place it wouldn't be the most important to publishing that the Left book club didn't publish him homage to Catalonia didn't get published in that quarter that could have done the the book in fact is hardly read by anyone till after the Second World War I'm in Catalonia which was his description of when Animal Farm was found her very very hard time indeed getting a publisher because of the efforts of someone we now know to have been a KGB agent in the British Ministry of information a man named Peter small it only alias smoker who tirelessly work to put around the idea among wartime publishers that Orwell in criticizing the great Soviet Ally was undermining the war effort against set them a line which actually that here is if you like a literary historical cultural irony which also seems to persuade to TS Eliot who though he was a friend of Orwell's and invited by Orwell to appear on his BBC show given every opportunity by him that he was a well-known reactionary to his views declined to publish on a farm on the grounds that was anti-soviet so that oil is in the position of being accused of selling himself out to the other side in order to get sales and publicity and is then denied these things by the same people said early well it's it's it's a trope that others have gone through yeah he got the last laugh but he was going to go through a trip it's a trope that's not unfamiliar to people who study this phenomenon of Stalinism in in culture and poet publishing in the Academy else well a double negation he got the last laugh but he wasn't alive to really hear much of it or enjoy much of it I guess know whether and he gave away actually he gave away to as I told you I mean was Ukrainian and polish and Serb anti-communists usually socialist social democratic groups gave him the right to publish him for free who would help of course eventually would have made some money out of 1984 but wouldn't make the changes that were required by the book-of-the-month Club in America and the Reader's Digest to Animal Farm for their nomination so signed away vast numbers of wrote his because he wouldn't amend the book to make it anti-communist in the way that they thought it ought to be good choice when I toured history not tortoise it's the quality of his dinner and his is flat but he really it's it's a strange thing he doesn't really seem to have cared I mean if you'd offered him a car say he wouldn't particularly know what to do with it if you'd said you could have a house trance videos on your living so actually the one I live in is so I want maybe nice to be immune from certain temptations yeah yeah I was intrigued to see in the book that Orwell had reviewed the Road to Serfdom what was his view of Hayek and Hayek so worries about totalitarianism the role played by Friedrich August von Hayek in British politics and 1944-45 is a forgotten episode now but it was at the time of huge importance Winston Churchill made a speech in the 1945 election he having vanquished the Nazi Empire helped to dissent having led the British people through very hard times saying that the plan of the Labour Party to institute national health care and our comparable socializing reforms might be all very well in its way but would in practice require and he said this advisedly and I would say ill-advisedly a Gestapo of bureaucracy to implement you couldn't have national health care without black-uniformed chat widget enforceable well the British working class is actually in no mood to be talked to in that tone of voice by then it had been through the slump after the first world war where it should lost the flower of its young man and the trenches on the Western Front for not very much gain through the general strike through the collapse of the bills to have all of these things by the way identified very much for Winston Churchill through the long conservative collapse in front of fascism through a bloody awful war would have been what housing they had have been bombarded with but Oliver hadn't even been allowed to join the armed forces they were so ill the 70 people with deficiency diseases things like Rik bad teeth poor eyesight I mean third-world health conditions they were pretty determined to vote that the end of the war bring the end of this sort of regime of neglect and then to be told that they were voting for a Gestapo was just a little much Churchill's rhetoric wasn't always as golden as some people think anyway it is said perhaps unjustly that that speech was suggested to Churchill by Hayek himself I have some reason to doubt it but he it certainly was influenced by what I could written in the Road to Serfdom and Hayek did have a physician as some kind of consultant at that point to conserve the central office to the research department over the Tory Party so he got blamed for what became known as the Gestapo speech and there's no doubt in my mind that the service which helped Churchill to lose that election though I'm pretty certain the Tories under any leadership would have lost that one of historical reasons at any rate at around that time David Astor the observer has the clever idea of asking pool world to review the Road to Serfdom by the way I just saved ultra peril chairs in parentheses it's the sort of difference a good editor can make his thing okay there's this book but it's relatively unknown Austrian one who'd make a good reviewer for it you think of war well because it leaps off the page when you see it in the collective or well or well on Hayek who thought of asking him to do that it it's short piece it's it shows that he's clearly read and understood the book and he begins by saying this is the wrong book at the wrong time the working class has been through fascism war slump mass unemployment he'd much prefers the risks that are run by state intervention to the risks that are posed by a continuation of less affair or capitalism as they used to know it and they've made up their minds to this however he then adds almost as an afterthought it would be stupid to ignore the point that Professor von Hayek is making people didn't save on produce said professor Hayek is making which is that if a certain share of the national income and the gross domestic product passes under state control past a certain point that will become a tyranny and the citizen will lose his Liberty and if he loses that he may also lose his welfare I mean the it's not unlike the Benjamin Franklin admonition you know don't trade Liberty for security because you may end up with neither I don't know if he'll be nice to think that was in the world's mind to it but anyway there it is and this at a time when the Social Democratic a day rate consensus among the British intellectuals including conservative ones is almost hundred percent so once again he manages to be the one who is just slightly out of step just not into who can see beyond the view that that welfare state Turia's and or conservative social democracy is the most one can you expect from the economy of society no you know as someone who would like to see the world move toward a smaller role for government and government spending it is remarkable how much freedom we have preserved I you know there's disputes about how free we really are half empty half full but it seems to me that the worst fears are not realized at least yet and yet government grows bigger every every few years in the United States and Europe it may start to reach a level where people are going to push back a little bit but it doesn't seem to be obvious how Lasky who dill socialists and strong adviser to the Labour Party in that same election who I think alternated in the chair the London School of Economics with hi I could be wrong about that used to say in response to Hayekian and Churchill in crucem look if you can plan for tyranny you can plan for state controlling plan for thought perhaps even plan for freedom as well I mean if you it's not inevitable the planning is only one way it straight I think a lot of people felt comforted by that and thought well freeing people from fear some simple terror that if they got sick that the end of their lives they couldn't wouldn't just be the end of their lives physically as healthy people but they wouldn't have a job or a house either everything would go they couldn't raise their children they couldn't educate they take that away by some government intervention are you saying people are less free or more more come on this this wet life I'm just waiting on working I think as with as did analogous concepts of the New Deal didn't begin to hit diminishing returns until quite late Churchill's view therefore was considered by many people alarmist and the Conservative Party went out of its way to drop it for a nominal well well was more worried by state control over things like the media and the war economy thankfully so yeah what when he thought of an over mighty state he thought of things like the nuclear state one at one of his very best short essays is written in 1946 maybe it could be late 45 it's post Nagasaki first to Oshima and it's called you and then nuclear bomb oh you in the ass from so it would have been called the atom bomb you in the atom bomb he gets a lot of work done in a few hundred words and he says of course the immediate fear is that of annihilation and apocalypse but there's another fear that one right pay attention to that no one's drawn attention to yet what if this kind of weaponry makes the state completely invulnerable so that no guerilla warfare no no insurrection no revolution could ever ever throw if the state would be armored behind us if he doesn't say plutonium but behind a shield that was impenetrable it would lead necessarily to a journey which would have the horrible idea of being on every wall an interesting issue yes I'm sure so he was certainly I mean as many leftist ab initio are supposed to be in Marxism is the first body ology to pronounce the idea in so many words of the withering away of the state of replacing the government of men with the administration of things as multiple severe were I think it's in the 1844 what might explain this this the size of this had been lost by the struggle to replace predatory and fascistic capitalism and imperialism with social democratic government where government was considered accidentally included for that reason but the idea was that wanted would have a weather eye to the over-mighty state suddenly at the end of the war the earth appears to be covered in military super powers whose rivalry does what all wells great inside may conceal a secret sympathy they have with one another and the common interest in maintaining a balance of terror though there were moments in the Cold War where one was forced to think that that might be what was going on that the Cold War become about itself only and no larger or nobler subject it was never quite through but it was never quite untrue either well certainly and there were certainly managers of it people like Henry Kissinger for example I would nominate and possibly house Anand Feld who felt far more sympathy with the managers of crisis in Beijing and in Moscow than they did with troublesome months in subordinate countries like Czechoslovakia or Vietnam so oh well was never completely wrong and even when he's wrong he's got : insight that needs to be retained so he was in your mind a leftist but he was also the radical certainly he was embraced by the right a radical certainly and because of his emergence out of family and a society that he had every reason to distrust when his father after all had made a living out of selling Indian opium under British Imperial auspices to China compelled to buy it and it's not it's very fascinating that there's no mention of any father in any of works very occasional very distant and it was very negative references even when he describes England as a family with the wrong members in control we okay we're a family but the wrong that was in control he he describes various poor relations and aren't so horribly Santa for nervous rich cousins and so on and to a war freak out out and deferred there's no father in this vast he called it Big Brother worse the den you see if it's big brother whereas obviously the analogy for the church a latarian dictatorship is that is the unchanging eternal father but he's already eternal he's already coped with that by an earlier sir in which he says that he is his initial problem with Christianity I think this is him such such were the choice his book about his prep school was that you had to love a father figure who you also had to fear an insuperable problem for Christianity of course that he saw he saw coming right away but so we know that he was fond of his mother we know that he couldn't bring herself to talk about his father and that his general attitude a family life was somewhat destroyed without a wider yes so because his his hatred for imperialism for British class snobbery and hypocrisy for the all their so-called and vices and circle virtues of your advisers of the suburban small-time aspirant those who hated the working-class but feared and rolled to class community above them he was not going to be able to express his dissent in a conservative form though he had no choice but to move to the left and to the underdogs of the work that's why it's interesting that when he sees that Hayek has a critique of the legitimate power even though it comes from the right wing that he's he's at once able to summarize in a few sentences what like 40 years and the pressure on these and the virtue evident and the relative well he strikes medidas all I guess as a truth teller which is part of the power of facing and part of the integrity you talk about in the book I forget now who it is he writes about but I just I came across it looking for something else the other night he's writing about someone whose religious opinions he finds a ridiculous even contemptible but he says there's something charming about the person who said if if befall Christians would like this guy the reputation religion might not be my mind sunk as low as it has I hadn't paraphrasing this poorly but he was always willing to be fair to an individual even if that person represented a cause or a party that you found objection we're almost out of time I want to turn to Christopher Hitchens who strikes me as a somewhat Orwellian figure used in a complementary way a mix of apparent contradictions someone who's taken political stands that I'm sure cost you some company maybe not at the level of worlds or maybe I don't know but do you see yourself in his footsteps no no I've had to write very firmly about this because I some people are very kindly said what you just said and others less kindly who said aha Hitchens wants the mantle of all world so forth which is that by which they don't intend the government it's now not well um maranatha and I say well both for whatever reason kindness in general still its obverse today when anyone might want to say this it wouldn't be true I mean the most conspicuous thing about oh well I think is his moral courage Hugh he never had a steady publisher never had a steady job you know her steady income he was always ill he was always insecure and he often had to risk and did risk his life I haven't had to do any of these things and I have a hard time filling the quota of stuff that people want me to write and publish I mean I always got something I was supposed to be doing that I for which there's a space already reserved once I've written it that wasn't always true I have to say but my struggle in the garret wasn't very epic what we're saying is and also Julio I would have been dead 14 years ago if I was him having had the last few years of their life rented very horrible but by poverty and illness and unhappiness so I've never had to find out how I would shape up if I was threatened with poverty or imprisonment or death or obscurity if I carried on the way I was I've never had to know what that would be like so you know was the compression who was hurt however I don't mind saying and I think it's clear to some people but ever since I've first read him everything he's had to say has weighed with me and if that didn't show I would be surprised he must be the person I most often quote or site quite unashamedly using it I hope as much for supporters for illumination I was thinking this morning of something actually while I was right trying to write my own memoir the job of the intellectual so-called public intellectuals we have some reason doomed to call it is a rule to be to say something along the following lines it's more complicated than that you mustn't simplify this it's more there's more complexity to the subject now that's what an intellectual should be doing to public discourse one thinks but then there are occasions when it seems to me that the reverse is the case that actually what the really thoughtful person should be saying to is actually it's simple technically mark do not make complexity here where no one is required I was trying to imagine what Barack Obama would say if he was asked about Salman Rushdie would he say of course I'm forced for expression over religious sensibilities every time he wouldn't be able to do this anyway that's he's never been asked but it his campaign to remake our relationship with the Muslim world no one's ever asked him the fatwa question could you just give a straight reply and note singer out I bet you he could not a tough one whereas the crooked thunder is boring clean I ever said about Salman Rushdie it was the only thing I wanted to say hey which was you have to be on his side there's no other side you can frost have been beyond do accuse me something complicated I understand what complexities who want to introduce but I'm here to repudiate them and say no no keep it simple well is very good in that way it's very hard to tell what the truth is and some people even say that you can't quite imagine that may not even be such a thing as objective truth that doesn't mean you shouldn't try for it but crucially it doesn't mean the following attempted corollary which is you wouldn't know a lie when you saw you may not be able to tell the truth every time not tell it I mean detective identify it but you sure can identify a lie and if you refuse yourself the lies I just won't tell any even if it suits me or my course I won't do it I'll make that simple enunciation it's amazing what you'll have to do instead this is some people might say simplistic but in that case then the word simplicity preserves an upgrade I was just brooding on this this morning and I realized that you've even able to think or argue in this way even if it's not very profound does have its utility and I get it at any range from the visible palpable relationship within the writing of all world between language truth and logic between plain honest speech transparent political positions detestation for euphemisms and falsification to get you a long way Lionel trilling says that in his introduction to homage to Catalonia the first time the book was ever published in the United States long after all were was dead he said that the great thing about laurel is he's not a hero he's uncomfortable for that reason because he sure what anyone can do with just a few resources the ability to write the power of facing unpleasant facts the refusal of the lie and if there's moral physical guts as we used to say in English schools coach you can peel away all the flummery of fascism colonialism Stalinism religion just like that and of course people hate this because they think only a hero can do this so they're excused they don't have to no no no the arnux is you could have done this too well a bit of effort a bit more self-criticism a bit more use of your faculties you feel about you I make this point in my book and Richard Posner wrote an excursion attack on me very clever as a result what do you mean he wasn't a hero and he went to Spain you took a bullet in the throat he threw up a job where he had no other job to go to he fought off illness he wrote three grade to certainly very great novels um I'm just a very great essays he's saying this is an ordinary guy well actually I think I can't have that both ways yes I think I can say that it shows how the qualities of heroism and virtue are accessible to ordinary people if they will absolutely keep driving themselves and not excusing themselves or making excuses for others this is why the court is that he convinces are gonna remain important to us as long as the English language is used which I don't know how far I'm trespassing now on your time but another little thing he got completely right when writing to his friend more garage and and writer in Bombay who'd been working for the BBC Indian Service and who was attacked in India for writing novels in English saying you're using the conquerors languages language with wife I was attached in England for being a babu it was sort of wannabe white man it was really a walk in disguise and door said pay no attention to this doesn't know the higher insulted you'll get insults of both sides of this but what what's gonna happen within it'll happen quite soon is there will be a whole Department of English literature written by Indians and great advances in the novel and in fiction in general in criticism will be made it'll be like American literature it'll be the whole solution itself here it must have written that to an end in the mid 40s now no literate person can go into a bookstore and not see or not have read or picked up by now something by Rohinton Mistry or Salman Rushdie or Hanif Qureshi or running out of the names well a victim said I've just forgotten their pal the denial what he's from Trinidad but yes and Shiva and I thought also from Trinidad but yes of the Indian diaspora of course and others who have sure haven't even heard of for Indians writing in Uganda for reading too sure in South Africa it's undoubtedly their names I don't know very interesting very clever to have noticed that that on their own the thing they prided themselves in most their language in the English could be outbid outdone outdone by people who they'd look down upon I mean it's really true Arundhati Roy appears disagreements with a lot of what she writes but she writes it very beautifully Geeta Mehta another great woman so yes language truth Nadja a certain attachment to historical irony I think is important understanding some of the laws of unintended consequences if you do this you can go a long way I guess today has been Christopher Hitchens thanks for being part of UConn talk this is econ talk part of the library of economics and liberty for more econ talk Cody can talk org where you can also comment on today's podcast and find links and readings for all agencies a day's conversation the sound engineer for econ talk is rich go yet I'm your host Russ Roberts thanks for listening talk to you on Monday you [Music] you

Channel: EconTalk

Views: 85,949

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Keywords: Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, Why Orwell Matters, EconTalk, Russ Roberts, imperialism, fascism, Stalinism

Id: W8Dg9T14c4k

Length: 69min 30sec (4170 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019