ABSTRACT
So far in this analysis of Orwell’s social and political thought we have been considering Orwell’s principal writings. I argued that Orwell was, above all else, a great writer and so if we wished to come to understand his political thinking, this is where we should start looking. Now I have to come clean and admit that there is one element of his thinking that cannot be explored through the principal agency of a major work: that is Orwell’s moral perspective. In fact, to come completely clean I should also admit that in my opinion this one element in his thinking is the most significant. This is not the customary view of Orwell, or indeed one that he himself held, but it is nevertheless the position that I will try to advance. It is true that one of his early novels, A Clergyman’s Daughter,1 was chiefly concerned with advancing a distinctive moral perspective, but this novel is generally regarded as Orwell’s least successful and one of which he claimed to have been ashamed.2 We shall not ignore the novel, even so, but neither will we be dealing with it exclusively by any means. Whatever its literary shortcomings, it provides important insights into Orwell’s moral thinking and gives us a lead into understanding how Orwell linked his moral and political thought, enabling us perhaps to classify his version of socialism. Let me start, however, by considering Orwellian socialism in relation to more conventional currents of contemporary socialist thought.
