The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

This is the third book I write about in my series about the great works of the past.

The Road is divided in two clear halves. In the first part, Orwell describes in detail the hard life conditions of English coal-miners. In the second he makes a political case: that although Socialism is the only humane way forward, there are various reasons why it appears unappealing. In other words, the Left has a multifaceted PR problem.

With this book, Orwell performs two remarkable feats: he goes beyond ideology to actually meet the people the Left should care about: the people of the working class. And he makes an interesting critique of his own side. The book becomes all the more remarkable at its 80 anniversary, where a number of changes and even reversals have taken place, while other observations still hold true.

Here’s the thing: Nothing I write here can substitute the experience of reading Orwell’s immersive descriptions of the coal-miners’ life. And his descriptions surely are nothing compared to actually being there, which in turn is nothing compared to living your whole life in such conditions.

Chapter after chapter, Orwell describes many aspects of the coal-miner’s life in painstaking detail. The long shifts, the miles long underground crouched walks to and from the working place, the lack of social security, the extremely low wages, the housing conditions, the gruesome accidents, injuries and illnesses, the horrors of unemployment.

Orwell draws our attention to the painful truth that our wellbeing is dependent on their suffering, and shines an indiscreet light on our desire to forget about the existence of those people.

Continuing his psychological exploration (not least a self-exploration) of the relationship between the middle-class and the working class, Orwell brings to light an other inconvenient truth: we don’t just want to forget about them, we are disgusted by them. We don’t experience them as kin.

I can definitely recognize that perception in me, a veil of untouchability that separates me from the other, that makes it very hard for me to imagine what it must be like to be them, to care.

The link between this instinct and a far-right world-view is obvious.

Orwell openly identifies as a Socialist. In this book he never really defines Socialism or other political currents. He seems to associate Socialism with simple human decency.

His critique of Capitalism is based on the assumption that it necessarily produces exploitation.

Given that Orwell doesn’t actually address these issues (and given, alas, my ignorance on the subject matter) I won’t discuss them here, other than making a few observations. Orwell is aware that things have improved:

One could extrapolate that under Capitalism things may become more tolerable over time (as has actually happened in the last 80 years). He doesn’t really address that. On the contrary, he seems to believe, paradoxically, that those hard life conditions are a necessary evil:

The “fancy” hints at irony, but I’m not sure his statement is completely cynical. Also see this statement:

Did Orwell believe that a Socialist state could make the lives of coal-miners tolerable (and, in particular, faster than Capitalism did)? It’s not clear to me. At any rate, Orwell probably didn’t really feel the need to mount an intellectual argument for Socialism, given that his book was directed to the Left Book Club.

What I can extract for myself from Orwell’s observations is this inconvenient truth: it’s hard for advantaged people (including advantaged people on the left) to see the humanity of the disadvantaged, and thus it would be even harder for them to admit that that advantage is unfair or even the cause of the suffering of the disadvantaged. In other words, there is a psychological mechanism that would make it hard for oppressors and exploiters to actually become fully aware of their role. Notice how I’m not implying that all advantages are unfair (privileges), or even that all unfair advantages (e.g. intelligence or attractiveness) are a form of exploitation or oppression. The question of what forms of advantage are unjust and why Socialism is the only remedy can’t be discussed here, because Orwell himself doesn’t really delve into the subject. What we can and should take away is that people who have comparatively good lives have a duty to struggle with the question of the nature of their advantages, and a struggle it is, because their (our) psychology would make it hard for them (us) to look at it objectively.

A further aspect of the Left’s PR problem discussed by Orwell, read in today’s context becomes kind of surreal. Reading Chapter XII of The Road I got the uncanny feeling that in the last 80 years a strange inversion must have taken place.

Did you notice the weirdness? While the Left today is rather associated with environmentalism and being skeptical towards/putting bounds on progress, what Orwell criticizes as one of the distasteful ideals of Socialism is now exactly what we attribute to (and regard as an advantage of) Capitalism! How could this happen? Well, probably 80 years of technological progress under Capitalism and the outcome of the Cold War helped. His observation about why Socialism would generate more progress now seems preposterous:

The remainder of the chapter could easily be republished today in the guise of a critique of Capitalism, and an extremely relevant one at that — I find it utterly amazing how much his arguments about the paradoxes of technological progress hit home. In a sense, our public discourse about this topic hasn’t advanced in 80 years.

Orwell’s questions in this chapter transcend politics. We are all “almost unconsciously” working to accelerate technological progress, but what kind of world is it tending to, and do we really want that?

Orwell addresses various objections to his view, like the idea that “there is always some greater difficulty ahead” (i.e. other planets to colonize!) and the possibility to “cultivate anachronisms as a spare-time hobby”. He mentions in passing that “the machine itself may be the enemy” but also acknowledges that “The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug — that is, grudgingly and suspiciously.” He hits the spirit of our time (consider the current public debate about AI) when he says that “any attempt to check the development of the machine appears to us an attack on knowledge and therefore a kind of blasphemy.”

Orwell’s position is clear: the choice is between Socialism or Fascism, and the only reason a sensible person would go for Fascism is because Socialism has got a bad rep.

As I said, I’m too ignorant to discuss the correctness of these claims, all I can say is that I’m not convinced, and that Orwell himself doesn’t really try to convince me — with the caveat that Orwell is right to point out that with my comfortable life I’m biased against being convinced, a bias that I have the duty to try to consciously overcome.

Orwell’s proposed solution is that the Left should stop trying to appeal only to the working class. Exploitation goes beyond class boundaries, and all those who are exploited should work together.

In other words, to be more effective, the Left should strip the utopianism and class-orthodoxy from its image.

What Orwell puts forward in this book is a very nuanced, complex argument, intended for a Socialist audience, in a context that is in many ways very different from ours. All these aspects make it very hard to summarize The Road to Wigan Pier correctly and discuss it fairly. The beauty and wit of Orwell’s writing made it impossible for me not to fill this article with an amount of quotes that exceeded my own text. I hope you could get something out of it nonetheless. I definitely recommend you read the book — you might come away with very different thoughts, especially if you are already left-leaning.

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