Review: Orwell’s Ghosts; Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century by Laura Beers
Using Orwell’s work to scrutinise current issues such as cancel culture, misinformation, the rise of the right, neoliberal excess, and rampant inequality
Seventy-five years after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it has become commonplace to describe worrying political and technological developments as “Orwellian”. It is also simplistic, because there is much more to George Orwell’s work than the totalitarian state depicted in his final novel.
Unusually, his writing resonates with both the Left and the Right. For the Left, he is a social crusader for the working class and a staunch anti-imperialist. The Right lauds him for highlighting the flaws of Soviet-style communism and defending individual liberties. Across the spectrum, he is valued for advocating clear language to combat propaganda and manipulation.
Kamila Shamsie suggests that writers responding to today’s unsettling circumstances could benefit by asking, “What would Orwell write?” Accordingly, many recent works have cast an appraising eye on his life and legacy, dealing with subjects as various as the roots of his fictional dystopia, his love of roses and gardening, and the travails of Eileen, his first wife.
Orwell’s Ghosts by Laura Beers, a professor at American University in Washington, DC, is a noteworthy addition to the field. Beers uses Orwell’s work to scrutinise current issues such as cancel culture, misinformation, the rise of the Right, neoliberal excess, and rampant inequality. This makes it an effective intellectual springboard for engaging with the zeitgeist, although a more concise treatment of contemporary topics would have made the book more focused.
Beers sets the stage by outlining Orwell’s birth in Motihari, childhood in Oxfordshire, and schooling at Eton. Later, as an officer of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he witnessed the effects of imperialism firsthand, writing that “it is not possible to be a part of such a system without recognising it as an unjustifiable tyranny”. This attitude influenced his first novel, Burmese Days, where the protagonist secretly despises the system that sustains him. Beers rightly notes that while European empires have largely dissolved, the global systems of economic exploitation that Orwell condemned persist today.
After resigning from the force, Orwell trawled the seedy restaurants and dwellings that inspired Down and Out in Paris and London, then ventured to northern England to document the harsh living conditions described in The Road to Wigan Pier. His experiences of destitution drove home, among other things, what he saw as the socialist movement’s limitations and its romanticisation of the working class.
A seminal experience was his time as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, when he nearly died after a bullet struck his throat. As Beers asserts, Orwell’s Spanish sojourn solidified his commitment to liberty and social justice, and is crucial to understanding why he wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Homage to Catalonia, he is frank about his disgust with Leftist infighting, authoritarian tactics, and manipulation of public opinion. These issues remain only too relevant.
However, Orwell was no saint, and Beers does not shy away from his flaws. In Burmese Days and the essays A Hanging and Shooting an Elephant, his depictions of South Asians often rely on unsympathetic stereotypes, portraying them as passive victims. Elsewhere, as Kamila Shamsie says, when Orwell’s anti-imperialism clashes with his patriotism, “anti-imperialism ends up limping away, bloodied and defeated”. On balance, though, in the words of Paul Gilroy, his outlook is directed “against the injustice and inequality of the Empire’s racial domination”.
Then, there’s the secret list of colleagues sympathetic to the Soviet Union which Orwell handed over to the British Foreign Office in 1949, blackballing them from government employment. Beers argues that while Orwell abhorred censorship, he believed in barring authors he thought of as mendacious from public platforms because truthfulness was his highest virtue. Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
More problematic is Orwell’s attitude toward women. Feminist scholars have long criticised his tendency to privilege masculine interests and unflattering portrayals of female characters. Beers is blunt: “Orwell’s views on reproductive rights, his demeaning manner in writing about women, and his seeming casual acceptance of sexual violence cannot simply be dismissed as products of their time.” She questions how he would fare today, given the shift towards holding powerful figures accountable for their words and actions. Not well, one presumes.
However, she also asks if Orwell’s loathsome sexual attitudes mean we should disregard his defence of freedom and critique of authoritarianism. Clearly, there is much to value in his writing, both for understanding his age and making sense of our own. He emerges as the product of an especially English empiricism, suspicious of overarching systems of thought, keen on fair play, and unafraid to speak his mind.
For Terry Eagleton, Orwell was “at once traditionally English and politically revolutionary” with a version of socialism that preserved “traditional decencies”. This is also reflected in his distinction between patriotism and nationalism: for him, the former is the love for a particular place and way of life, while the latter is rooted in the desire for power and prestige.
As Beers puts it, Orwell’s vision of democratic socialism, which sought to erase class divisions and inequality, underscores the ongoing tension between individual liberty and social solidarity. He never provided practical steps to realise this dream, making him more of a trenchant moral critic than a constructive political thinker. In showcasing the dangers of unchecked power, his work reminds us to stay vigilant, think for ourselves, and resist the machinations of Big Brothers everywhere.
Sanjay Sipahimalani is a Mumbai-based writer and reviewer.