George Orwell
Famous British author, social commentator and libertarian socialist who fought in the Spanish Civil War with the socialist POUM and held strong sympathies with the anarcho-syndicalist CNT.
Politics and the English Language - George Orwell
Orwell describes the unthinking emptiness behind the rhetoric spouted by the Stalinist hacks of his day: "... prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house."
His comments on the mechanical repetition of well-worn phrases as a substitute for critical thought-processes can still be applied to the majority of leftist and ultra-leftist writers and groups today.
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
George Orwell's famous 1938 account of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, from his point of view as a volunteer in the POUM militia.
Though the POUM were socialists, he wrote "as far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists."
His vivid descriptions of classless anarchist Barcelona following the revolution and terrorised Stalinist Barcelona after the counter-revolution are a timeless reminder that a 'revolutionary state' is a contradiction in terms.
Looking back on the Spanish War - George Orwell
“In essence it was a class war” - George Orwell reflects on his experiences as a volunteer militiaman in the Spanish Revolution and Civil War. Written in 1943.
[8,000 words]
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First of all the physical memories, the sounds, the smells and the surfaces of things.
Spilling the Spanish beans - George Orwell
George Orwell's 1937 essay on the deceptions in the British press which obscured the revolutionary character of events in Spain in favour of a simple story of 'democracy vs fascism', written after his participation in the revolutionary militias and his narrow escape from the Stalinist purges.
He concludes ominously with a prediction that such an ignorance of the real struggle can only lead to more slaughter, and predicts World War Two as the 'war against fascism', a cover for implementing a 'fascism, British variety' at home - with hindsight the British wartime economy could indeed be quite accurately labelled fascist (3,000 words).
Spilling the Spanish beans
