George Orwell wrote a statement on Nineteen Eighty-Four in mid-June 1949 following misunderstandings about his intentions in the book. These arose especially from an article in the New York Daily News which, he had been told, interpreted his novel as an attack on the Labour government. The statement was prepared and delivered by his publisher Fredric Warburg.
It has been suggested by some of the reviewers of Nineteen Eighty-Four that it is the author’s view that this, or something like this, is what will happen inside the next forty years in the Western world. This is not correct. I think that, allowing for the book being after all a parody, something like Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen. This is the direction in which the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary world situation.
Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist communities by the necessity to prepare for total war with the U.S.S.R. and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and the most publicized. But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours.
The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.
George Orwell assumes that if such societies as he describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four come into being there will be several super states. This is fully dealt with in the relevant chapters of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is also discussed from a different angle by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution. These super states will naturally be in opposition to each other or (a novel point) will pretend to be much more in opposition than in fact they are. Two of the principal super states will obviously be the Anglo-American world and Eurasia. If these two great blocks line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents and will not dramatize themselves on the scene of history as Communists. Thus they will have to find a new name for themselves. The name suggested in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase “Americanism” or “hundred per cent Americanism” is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish.
If there is a failure of nerve and the Labour party breaks down in its attempt to deal with the hard problems with which it will be faced, tougher types than the present Labour leaders will inevitably take over, drawn probably from the ranks of the Left, but not sharing the Liberal aspirations of those now in power. Members of the present British government, from Mr. Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps down to Aneurin Bevan will never willingly sell the pass to the enemy, and in general the older men, nurtured in a Liberal tradition, are safe, but the younger generation is suspect and the seeds of totalitarian thought are probably widespread among them. It is invidious to mention names, but everyone could without difficulty think for himself of prominent English and American personalities whom the cap would fit.
[Initialled] F. J. W.
Orwell was also asked for a statement by the United Automobile Workers and part of that statement ended up being published in the 25 July 1949 issue of Life magazine:
In a recent letter Orwell wrote: My novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is not intended as an attack on socialism, or on the British Labor party, but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable, and which have already been partly realized in Communism and fascism. I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive. I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.
A slightly different account was given by The New York Times Book Review on 31 July 1949 in the same column in which it summarised reactions to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s letter to the United Automobile Workers was quoted from once again:
My recent novel is not intended as an attack on socialism or on the British Labor party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been partly realized in communism and fascism … The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.
On 8 July 1950, Tosco Fyvel wrote to a Miss Goalby (who has not been identified) answering some questions about Orwell’s responses to the events in the last months of his life and the meaning of Ingsoc. ‘Certainly,’ he wrote, ‘Orwell believed in the old Liberal principles and the value of truth and ordinary decency. He was also firmly of the view that these principles demanded a democratic socialist structure of society. It is true that he was pessimistic about the extent to which these principles could prevail in most parts of the world. But I know that he was pleasantly surprised at the firmness with which the Labour Government here at home continued in office after mitigating the worst harshnesses of British society by means of the Health Service, the National Social Insurance Act, the nationalisation of the mines, the development of the depressed areas, and so on. All these measures were steps in the direction Orwell desired …. Even during his last weeks in hospital, Orwell was keenly interested in the coming election and the chances of his various friends among Labour M.P.s. He also said that one point in 1984 had been misunderstood by the critics. “Ingsoc”, the totalitarian society, was not represented as arising out of democratic socialism. On the contrary: his imaginary totalitarians who arose in England after an atomic war merely adopted the name of “English Socialism” because they thought it had popular appeal—in the same way as the Nazis, while allying themselves in 1933 with the Ruhr industrialists and smashing the German trade unions and Socialist Party, called themselves “National-Socialists” to dupe the German working class.’
Source: CW20-3646
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