The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

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National characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connexion with one another. Spaniards are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without making a deafening noise, the Chinese are addicted to gambling. Obviously such things don't matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing is causeless, and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about the realities of English life. This rhyme was played upon by Lewis Carroll, who incorporated the lion and the unicorn as characters in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass. Here, the crown they are fighting for belongs to the White King which, given that they are on the White side as well, makes their rivalry all the more absurd. Carroll subverts the traditional view of a lion being alert and calculating by making this particular one slow and rather stupid, although clearly the better fighter. The role of the Unicorn is likewise reversed (or mirrored, as in a looking-glass) by the fact that he sees Alice as a "monster", though he promises to start believing in her if she will believe in him. Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for the section caricature Benjamin Disraeli as the Unicorn, and William Ewart Gladstone as the Lion, alluding to the pair's frequent parliamentary battles, although there is no evidence that this was Carroll's intention. [2] See also [ edit ] For the academic journal, see The Lion and the Unicorn (journal). For the essay by George Orwell, see The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. If you cannot open a .mobi file on your mobile device, please use .epub with an appropriate eReader.

This might have been an exaggeration, for the purposes of galvanizing the British Left into making themselves important to the war effort. But when I look at the American socialist movement of 2021, I see plenty of parallels with the way Orwell describes his own countrymen. In the wake of Biden’s 2020 primary victory over Bernie Sanders, some leftists chose to affect an air of aloof disdain toward all of U.S. politics — even after Biden turned out to be the most progressive president since LBJ — thus removing themselves from relevance. Meanwhile, when you see Jacobin articles declaring that “QAnon-ers are correct about a lot of things”, you can more vividly imagine the type of leftists Orwell suspected might jump at the chance to appease fascism. And yet somehow the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring, finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like Eden or Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for Baldwin, one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air. The mishandling of England's domestic problems during the nineteen-twenties had been bad enough, but British foreign policy between 1931 and 1939 is one of the wonders of the world. Why? What had happened? What was it that at every decisive moment made every British statesman do the wrong thing with so unerring an instinct? In 1993, British Prime Minister John Major famously alluded to the essay in a speech on Europe by stating, "Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – 'old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'." [3] And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was re-arming. After 1936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was coming. After Munich it was merely a question of how soon the war would begin. In September 1939 war broke out. Eight months later it was discovered that, so far as equipment went, the British army was barely beyond the standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way desperately to the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles against tanks, with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even enough revolvers to supply all the officers. After a year of war the regular army was still short of 300,000 tin hats. There had even, previously, been a shortage of uniforms—this in one of the greatest woollen-goods producing countries in the world! There is no endgame for this sort of smug anti-Americanism. A leftist revolution to overthrow the country and establish a new one in its place is highly unlikely. And barring that, there’s really nowhere for anti-Americanism to go. People like their country. Eventually they’ll tire of the America-bashing and look for someone who will tell them that the place they live, and the people they live with, are a positive force instead of a negative one. And if the Right ever actually pulls its head out of its Trump-shaped ass and figures out how to stop bashing the U.S. Olympic team and shitting on military families and calling veterans “losers” and storming the damn Capitol building, then people who just a few years ago were marching in the street wearing pussy-hats or yelling “defund the police” may find themselves voting Republican. Thus might the Left’s greatest generational advantage in American political history be squandered.In the short run, equality of sacrifice, ‘war-Communism’, is even more important than radical economic changes. It is very necessary that industry should be nationalized, but it is more urgently necessary that such monstrosities as butlers and ‘private incomes’ should disappear forthwith. Almost certainly the main reason why the Spanish Republic could keep up the fight for two and a half years against impossible odds was that there were no gross contrasts of wealth. The people suffered horribly, but they all suffered alike. When the private soldier had not a cigarette, the general had not one either. Given equality of sacrifice, the morale of a country like England would probably be unbreakable. But at present we have nothing to appeal to except traditional patriotism, which is deeper here than elsewhere, but is not necessarily bottomless. At some point or another you have got to deal with the man who says ‘I should be no worse off under Hitler’. But what answer can you give him – that is, what answer that you can expect him to listen to – while common soldiers risk their lives for two and sixpence a day, and fat women ride about in Rolls-Royce cars, nursing pekineses?

The UK starts out the postwar period in a better position than the devastated countries of West and East Germany, France, and the USSR, but performs markedly worse over the next three decades. By the 1970s, British adults on average are barely richer than their Soviet counterparts! That’s a terrific failure. Nor did Britain maintain or regain dominance in manufacturing industries. Furthermore, I’d argue that this failure paved the way for Thatcherism, which seems like it was far from the best way to get Britain’s economy moving again.In 1993, British Prime Minister John Major famously alluded to the essay in a speech on Europe by stating, "Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – 'old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'." [3] See also [ edit ] The difference between Socialism and capitalism is not primarily a difference of technique. One cannot simply change from one system to the other as one might install a new piece of machinery in a factory, and then carry on as before, with the same people in positions of control. Obviously there is also needed a complete shift of power. New blood, new men, new ideas—in the true sense of the word, a revolution.