Socialism’s Magnetic Force

When writing yesterday’s “On the Square” column, Occupy Wall Street’s Empty Anger , I reread parts of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier . The crowd at Zuccotti Park reminds me of the famous lines from the book in which Orwell describes the developed form of socialism as “a theory confined entirely to the middle classes.” After describing such socialists, and not kindly, he remarks on

the horrible—the really disquieting—prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

He then describes riding on a bus when

two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple.

Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured “Socialists,” as who should say, “Red Indians.”

Not a cheery view of socialism, but then Orwell was himself a socialist. Seventy years later, we can feel his pain (I don’t mean that sarcastically). He would write similarly, I think, of Occupy Wall Street, and for the same reason.

You can find the chapter in which these lines appear here .