
George Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union - snake117
http://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL79.htm
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cabalamat
Actually, Orwell wrote an essay "Toward European Unity"
[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_t...](http://orwell.ru/library/articles/European_Unity/english/e_teu)
in which he explicitly argues for something like the EU:

> the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and
> where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other
> words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area.
> But the only area in which it could conceivably be made to work, in any near
> future, is Western Europe. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the
> tradition of democratic Socialism can only be said to exist — even there it
> only exists precariously — in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia,
> Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy. Only in
> those countries are there still large numbers of people to whom the word
> ‘Socialism’ has some appeal, and for whom it is bound up with liberty,
> equality, and internationalism. [...] Therefore a Socialist United States of
> Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
I wonder of the author of the posted article read much of Orwell at all, or
did much background research (though to be fair, finding this could have been
difficult)

~~~
cabalamat
> (though to be fair, finding this could have been difficult)

When you do a Google search on "Orwell European Union", the article is the 3rd
result.

Looks like the writer couldn't be bothered to JFGI.

------
derriz
The headline is supported by a single claim that Orwell would oppose being
ruled by an unelected bureaucracy.

Such a claim is disengenious. Of course nobody likes "being ruled" \- so on an
emotional level the EU must be a bad thing.

Also, this makes no sense unless supported by a claim that such a condition is
unique to living in the EU.

The only way to interpret "being ruled" in the context of the EU is that it
means having a hierarchical civil service (the EU commission). So why would
having a UK civil servant (instead of an EU one) decide how bananas should be
graded be considered a liberation from bureaucracy?

In fact, Orwell hated this kind of weaselly, ambiguous and emotionally
manipulatitve statement - particulary when use to advance a political adgenda.

~~~
notahacker
The article offers a secondary argument that Orwell didn't mind disagreeing
with other radical leftists, but again that's just as easily read the other
way: left-wing cheerleaders for Brexit like George Galloway are the modern
embodiment of pretty much everything Orwell hated about radical left wing
politics in Britain...

The "[Dead person] would have voted [x] on the EU" is the most facile form of
political argumentation we've had the misfortune to experience over the past
few month, and this is one of the weakest examples of this kind of argument
I've seen. And if you forced me at gunpoint to construct an argument from the
authority of a long dead person on Brexit, I'd probably pick someone whose
politics were a little more consistent, considerably more pragmatic and a lot
less a product of the very specific political climates of the era he found
himself in than Orwell.

------
danmaz74
> Orwell ends the review by stating that the best defence people have in a
> capitalist world is the democratic form of government.

The EU is part of a "democratic form of government": the Parliament is elected
directly by its citizens, while the Commission is nominated by the
democratically elected governments of its member countries.

What we miss is more accountability, which we could get if the Commission was
expressed directly by the Parliament, or elected directly by EU citizens.

~~~
m_mueller
While it's sort of democratic, IMO the EU totally went wrong on separating the
powers. The Commission is in many ways a Legislative body [1], without it
pretty much nothing happens in EU government. So it's an indirect indirect
democracy with screwed up checks and balances. Call that what you want, as a
Swiss I don't want anything to do with it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislativ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission#Legislative_initiative)

~~~
ProxCoques
And how is that any different from a civil service? Let me guess - you've
never seen an episode of "Yes, Minister", have you?

~~~
m_mueller
Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. Civil service has a very
specific meaning to me, am obligated to do it as a male Swiss.

------
moomin
I'm reasonably sure I could use Orwell's history in the civil war and
Trotskyists being accused of being leftists in league with the right to argue
the exact opposite of the article's headline.

~~~
ihsw
I'm pretty sure Stalinists/other commies would worship Hitler if he didn't
betray their beloved Stalin.

Personally I view the political spectrum as a donut rather than straight left-
to-right -- there is a point where the two become equal before diverging
again.

~~~
tormeh
So you resolve the forced one-dimensionality by making the dimension circular
rather than making more dimensions?

The left/right divide is one of my pet peeves...

~~~
Rexxar
I think we have a multidimensional doughnut. But maybe not all dimensions are
circulars.

------
slavik81
They tell an interesting story, but the only part of it that directly
addresses the title is the final paragraph.

Frankly, it would be a better piece if they cut that paragraph out and changed
the title. It was too brief to be convincing anyways.

------
dri_ft
I don't know whether Orwell would have voted to leave the European Union, but
I'm sure that the article's last sentence - "I think there is no doubt" that
he would - is wildly overconfident.

------
tormeh
I haven't read the article and I'm not going to dignify it with my view, but I
highly doubt its conclusion. The UK has a deeply undemocratic voting system
and one of the leaders in government surveillance. Someone who cares for
democracy and privacy can't possibly want Britain's institutions to be
unconstrained by the EU, however little the EU may help.

------
rbanffy
If someone is uncomfortable by "being ruled" by an unelected bureaucracy, then
question it and fix it. The very definition of "being ruled" here is open to
debate, as well as the role of elected officials both within nations and on
supranational bodies.

Orwell was a smart person. He'd see the EU would be problematic and that it
probably wouldn't be a perfect government on the first attempt. He would,
however, quickly notice how unpractical leaving is and vote against it.

~~~
j-pb
I feel like most people perceive it as a "unelected bureaucracy" because they
don't understand it, despite the eu spending a huge amount of resources trying
to educate people (there is a huge amount of free Hotlines and information
material in all languages of the eu).

The European pairlament is even elected directly with direct appointment of
the parliamentarians, which is more direct than in a lot of eu countries where
you only elect parties which in turn propose concrete politicians. While all
the other bodies are elected indirectly in the national elections.

The problem is that people neither understand nor care for the elections of
the pairlament, and thus they think that "they did not vote for this".

~~~
teamonkey
In the UK there is virtually no coverage of the European parliament. It's not
televised on any channel, you don't hear coverage on the radio or read it in
the papers like the UK parliament. People don't know who their who their
elected representative is. It's really no surprise that people think they have
no representation, despite the UK having significant influence.

~~~
misnome
Well, when asked to vote for representation "The People" elect Nigel Farage
who campaigns purely on a platform of "I will do nothing except vote against
everything", which I believe his record supports.

It's voting for non-representation.

~~~
SixSigma
As Daniel Hannan [1] (Conservative MEP for 17 years) says : "Uniquely, we have
managed to create a system that is anti-democratic - you only get to go there
when you have _lost_ an election. Only when, like: Chris Patten, Neil Kinnock,
and Jean-Claude Junkers, you have been expressly rejected by voters are you
invited to sit as an MEP" [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w#t=6m50s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcuKfcxo9w#t=6m50s)

~~~
tormeh
Which is because you can always have more power by becoming a leader of a
member state than a leader of some part of the EU machine. Becoming a MEP or
commissioner/MEP is not exactly a move towards power. Therefore it's usually a
path taken by those whose time in the national spotlight have passed or those
who have had to adjust their ambitions.

It's not anti-democratic that the players for the lower-rang positions are of
lower rang.

