← New Books Network
New Books Network
Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)
00:43:09
An interview with Peter Stansky
Loading summary
Transcript21 lines
- [00:02]
Credit Karma Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma. When it comes to your money, Credit Karma keeps you ahead of the game. You can count on Credit Karma to keep up with your financial needs as they evolve, helping you monitor your progress and giving you personalized recommendations so you can make strides towards your goals. Make sure you're on the right track no matter where you are on your financial journey. Intuit Credit Karma Karma you can count on Download Today.
- [00:30]
Onnit Alpha Brain Sponsor / Marshall Poe
Ever feel like your brain just won't click? Onnit Alpha Brain is a daily supplement engineered to support memory, focus and mental speed. Made with science backed ingredients, Onnit Alpha Brain helps you lock in, tune out distractions and stay sharp. See what your brain can really do. Visit onnit.com and shop Alpha Brain to unlock your next level. That's onnit.com hello everybody, this is Marshall Poe.
- [00:57]
Marshall Poe
I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today day. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:02]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is Morteza Hajizadeh, your host from Critical Theory Channel. Today I'm honored to be speaking to Professor Peter Ustansky. Dr. Peter Ustansky is Emeritus professor of History at Stanford University. He has published extensively on the cultural, political and literary milieu of 20th century Britain, including the unknown, Orwell in 1972, Orwell and the transformation and 1980 and both these books were finalists for the National Book Award. Today he's here to talk to me about the wonderful book he published with Stanford University Press called the Socialist George Orwell and War. Peter welcome to New Books Network.
- [02:48]
Professor Peter Ustansky
Thank you very much for having me.
- [02:50]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Can you briefly introduce yourself to our audience and tell us how you became interested in history and how you became a professor of history at Stanford University, and more importantly, how. I'm sure you're a big fan of George Orwell. Tell us where that love came from and how this book came about.
- [03:06]
Professor Peter Ustansky
Well, actually, in the book I have a sort of autobiographical introduction where I try to answer that question. I came to Stanford University because they offered me a job, which is very good of them. So, you know, I didn't know where I necessarily would end up teaching and writing. But as I say in the introduction, I became interested in Orwell. I read, as you know, 1984 was tremendously successful, and it was a selection of the Book of the Month Club in the United States. And my parents were members of the Book of the Month Club. I was a senior in high school when it came out, in secondary school, and so I think I read it then. But then when I was an undergraduate at Yale, I ultimately wrote a senior essay. I've always been interested, and it's been sort of a theme in the work I do, where literature, society, politics, culture intersect. But I've always been interested in it. As an historian, I'm not a literary critic. What I try and do with my work is to understand England better and use what work I do to that purpose. I've always been very interested, not connect with the British at all, in a sense, in the Spanish Civil War. And somehow I wrote a senior essay, senior thesis when I was undergraduate on four Englishmen who had been involved in the Spanish Civil War. The two who were killed there, Julian Bell, Virginia Wool's nephew, John Cornford, and then two, and Steven Spender, who didn't fight but was involved with the war, and then George Orwell. So I'd always been interested in Orwell, and there was a great upsurge, obviously, ever since animal farm in 1984. But actually, I think it was in 1952 or three, just when I was working on this, that Hamit Zakat, his wonderful book about the Spanish Civil War, was republished. It hadn't sold well for various reasons when it was originally published. And then some years later, the project emerged about writing an expansion. With my collaborator, William Abrams writing an expansion of that book, a book appeared that was published in 1966, Journey to the Frontier. Which was about Cornford and Bell, but then there was a different book about Orwell. It might or might not have been particularly biographical. And I discussed this in the thesis. It's a wonderfully complicated story I won't go into here, but sort of rather dramatic, the difficulties with Orwell's second wife, Sonia Brownell and Cop, and what Orwell thought about biography. But it was through an interest in English society and the Spanish Civil War that initially got me interested in Orwell. And then, as you mentioned, William Abrams and I published these two books, which were never meant to be a complete biography, and the two books, the second one Enders with his coming back from Spain. But in a way it also served to unblock the biographical log jam that had taken place because of Sonia's lack of cooperation. And it was always a question of how seriously Orwell said he didn't want a biography. But Richard Rees, his literary executor, said to us that he didn't think Orwell meant that very seriously. And he in fact urged us to write a book about Eric Blair, which, as you know, is Orwell's real name. He never changed it. George Orwell was his writing name. So in any case, you know, over the years I'd written been published in two little collections of essays and I've written pieces about Orwell, but then somehow there was a Orwell exhibition at the University of New Mexico and I was asked to give a talk about it and somehow the topic emerged that I would talk about. Joel. Well, Orwell and his relationship to war. Now, there's so much written about Orwell. Obviously this has not been neglected, but most attention, including what I've written myself, has been to the Spanish Civil War and to the Cold War. I don't think sufficient weight, although it's not ignored, has been given to the Orwell's connect being influenced by the First World War, when of course, he was an adolescent, and the Second World War. And so, if I may say so, I think the most original contribution of my short book is the discussion of those two wards.
- [09:03]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah. And you rightly called the book George Orwell and War. And that's something we'll talk about soon. It would be good if you could give us a little bit of background about George Orwell himself. He was born in India, his family maybe his influence of his family. And I'm really interested in understanding what he meant when he said that he was of a lower upper middle class. What did he mean by that phrase?
- [09:29]
Professor Peter Ustansky
Well, he very famously says, I'm a Member of the lower upper middle class, which means that I'm a member of the upper middle class but without money and class in England is tremendously important. Sometimes Orwell is characterized as being an outsider. I think this is quite untrue. I mean, he belonged to the official classes. And his father, as you probably know, was a civil servant at not a very high level, engaged in organizing the cultivation, totally legally the cultivation by the British government of opium in India. And so Orwell was. He had an older sister, he was born in India. But when he was six or seven months, he, his mother and his sister went to England, where he went and they went to Henry on Thames also. The very interesting thing. And to me it's a wonderful example of how quite legitimately current interests shape what we look at now. The basis for the family fortune, which was no longer existing in Orwell's by the time Orwell was there, but which gained the family its class status was his great grandfather, Charles Blair, who was a Jamaica slave owner. So in fact the family money came from plantations in Jamaica and from slavery. Orwell's grandfather was maybe Charles Baer, was his great great grandfather. I keep never getting it quite straight. But anyway, his grandfather was a vicar which has fairly high on the whole class status in Britain. But his father was, I think the tenth child and had no income. I mean, had to earn his keep as a civil servant. And they were never particularly well off. But nevertheless he had that class position. And that class position was. I know it was reinforced. He went on half fees to a prep school where people of his class were sent off when there were eight to these boarding schools. And of course he wrote a very famous essay about it, about how horrible it was, which he wrote in the 1940s, it's thought, it's not absolutely sure, called such, such Were the Joys. But nevertheless we interviewed cause she was still alive, the headmistress, whom he's very mean about in his essay, and Mrs. Vaughan Wilkes. And she said to us, my collaborator myself. Oh, Eric, I tried to treat him. Well, she must have known about the essay, but it wasn't published in England because of her still being alive because of libel until after her death, though it had been published after Orwell's death, but before our death in the United States. And in many ways I think he received a very good education there. But strangely enough, in Such Were the Joys, he says, I remember the sinking of the Titanic, of course, right now in the News, more vividly than the barrel of the mine during the second First World War. So in essay such, such were the doors. He doesn't, surprisingly perhaps doesn't talk much about the war itself, but interestingly, it was written just before the Second World War began. And a very important short essay called England My Country, Right or Wrong. He talks about. What should one call it, the militarism of his when he was at school, that he was a member of the cadet corps, that he had bought a rifle when he was 10. They provided. The first three years of the First World War, he was in his prep school, this prep school. These schools were designed both the prep school and of course, as we can say and talk about, he went on to Eaton. One reason for him being accepted on half fees was that he was a bright child who would give credit to the university by earning a scholarship which were given not on need but on intellectual merit, but that he would win a scholarship to a prominent public school. And as you know, he ended up in 1917, the last year of the war, going to eat. But these schools were, in many ways they gave good education, but they also existed to train the people who went there to become the rulers, not only of the state, but of the empire. And this was in Edwardian England. The empire was in trouble, the Boer War and so forth and so on. But at the same time, it was the height of imperial feeling. And so the whole. And Orwell belonged to an imperial family and at a very low level, but nevertheless an imperial family. And so my argument is that this inevitably helped shape him and gave him the patriotism of my title. And he was always intensely patriotic, which is something of a word that has ambiguous feelings. But at the same time, he was ultimately, and it was a gradual process, not an immediate project, not an immediate event. He was also a totally committed socialist.
- [16:10]
Morteza Hajizadeh
You made a lot of excellent points that I wanted to ask you, but it would be great if you could kind of expand on those points. I wanted to ask about his education in Eton College. As you mentioned, this is a very elite school, but I don't think Eton College intended want his graduates to become socialist in England, especially at that time. And so can you tell us about how. Yeah, so can you tell us about this gradual shift to socialism? Maybe how did his education influence him later on, and especially at that time when England was at war and it was the height of, as you mentioned, British imperialism was in a state of crisis as well. So how did this gradual shift come about?
- [16:58]
Professor Peter Ustansky
Well, I don't think it came about. I think Eaton at Eton, he didn't do Very well at Eton he didn't study very hard. There's a debate which is sort of a tangential point about whether he wanted to go on to university or not and it's generally said he couldn't afford to. But I think. And his tutor advised against it and his father was against it but I think ways could have been found of him going to Oxford or Cambridge I think. But anyway that's a what if proposition. I don't think he was particularly political. I don't think he would have been when he was in Eaton he was iconoclastic. I mean he questioned things and you know these were very bright, cynical and cynicism was beginning to in the early years of the war and of course, you know, my collaborator and I uncovered his very first publication which he wrote when he was a schoolboy which was always embarrassingly patriotic poem about how everybody should enlist and he may have been getting. He said to Cyril Connolly who had been with him both at prep school in Eton, Britain's got to emerge as a second rate power after the war. So I mean I think he was having some doubts. He wasn't a. He was never a figure of the right but I would certainly think he was more in the center or maybe didn't think that much about politics when he was a young man. And of course as you know he became a policeman, a police officer in Burma for five years and when he came back to England in 1927 again it said one reason he left the police, that he'd become anti imperialist. I think it's more accurate to say he was having doubts about imperialism. But his main motivation, and I think Orwell as artist is never sufficiently emphasized in my view is his main motivation when he quit the police force is that he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to commit himself to be a writer. He was moving gradually to the left but it wasn't a sudden conversion. And the same is true about his politics. I think the two things that made him more and more to the left. He wrote this book just before going to Spain for the Left Book Club the Road to Wigan Pierre where he saw the reported on the dreadful conditions of the working class brought about by the Depression. At the same time this famous and indeed notorious second section of the book. He's very critical of socialists for their style and they're being eccentric and they're not being particular, being sort of. Well, he's not quite patronizing the working class but there's this famous description of seeing these men in shorts and sandals and sort of middle class socialists. And he felt that middle class socialists frequently gave socialism a bad name. But nevertheless, because of the political conditions, he's now moving to the left. And then his socialism. But remember, democrat, the famous phrase is he wrote to Cyril Connolly, I've become a democratic socialist, as I understand it. But it was really the experience of Spain and the wonders of when he went to Barcelona in December 1936, how wonderful the atmosphere was that he saw the magnificent society according to him that socialism could achieve. And that's when he became a committed socialist. It's also when he became a committed anti communist because he saw how the Russians and the communists, in his view, correctly, of course, I think were destroying socialism. And that's why of course, he's Sometimes I characterize him, which is perhaps both unusual. He's both a premature anti fascist and he's a premature anti communist. And one reason that the Homage Catalonia did so badly and wasn't reviewed very much is that it took an anti communist line. And the majority opinion in England who were in favor of the republic were sympathetic. They weren't necessarily communists, but they were sympathetic to the communists trying to win the communists supporting the government, the Spanish government.
- [22:45]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And speaking of socialism, how did he define democratic socialism? And you mentioned that his involvement in the Spanish Civil War had an impact on this transition and an impact on his political beliefs. And he obviously, again, as you mentioned, he. He was not a big fan of Soviet Union, Russia at all. And he always, I think he also, in the preface to Animal Farm, I guess he once wrote that nothing has hurt the idea of socialism more than believing that Russia is socialist, is a socialist country. Can you talk about his idea of democratic socialism and the impact of the Spanish Civil War on the development of his thoughts?
- [23:31]
Professor Peter Ustansky
I don't think he ever. He wasn't a. He wasn't a theorist, he wasn't a plan maker. Well, in a way, during the Second World War we can talk about it, of course, he wrote this extremely important pamphlet which is getting attention, but maybe not as much attention as it should have. And it's wonderful, the title, the lion and the Unicorn, which of course are the heraldic beasts that support the royal coat of arms. And then after the Poland, Socialism and the English Genius. And which he argued erroneously, as it turned out, that in order to win the war, Britain would have to become a socialist society. As I say, as far as I know, he never really outlined a program, but he didn't believe the classic Marxist term is. I'm not a Marxist scholar. You Know, taking over the means of production. I mean, the state, the state running more and more things and the elimination of, to a considerable degree of, I think of private property, the capping of incomes, the elimination of the capitalist class. The egalitarian, what he wanted was what he felt was the egalitarianism that he found in Barcelona. Tipping had been abolished, senor. Had been abolished. It's a psychological. I mean, as I say, I don't think he was not a planner. I mean, he didn't have specifics, but his belief that if the working class weren't financially oppressed, that common decency would triumph. I mean, I think in a way, maybe he was a bit unrealistically. Well, he wasn't unrealistic in that. Again, we can talk more about it. He recognizes the great enemy of socialism, power. And of course, that's the great marvel of Animal Farm, but also of 1984, that the pigs, although perhaps with some defects to begin with, but to begin with, they established a socialist society, but then they were so determined to keep power that it transformed itself into a totalitarian society. And he thought, I think he's right, but it is not likely to happen that the only way that a socialist society can preserve itself wasn't ideological, but rather that those in control had to continually change. And the trouble is that those who make the revolution, who may start out with commendable ideals, nevertheless, power and you know, the famous. I know, as far as I know, never reposed to it. But there's the famous slogan or remark by Lord Acton, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And Orwell profoundly believed that. And that the only way that socialism could be preserved if the leaders of the state, the people who were running it, changed frequently other than Barcelona, his feelings about Barcelona when he arrived there, as I say he does, and just as it's the comradeship, there was a famous essay that he wrote looking back on the Spanish Civil War, where he shakes hands with the Italian militiaman who's in the same group. He says, nothing shatters the crystal spirit. So it's that socialism, according to him, and maybe he's overly idealistic, produces comradeship. And also, I haven't really thought that much about it. There's a personal driving in it, in that he wanted to be again, it's the ironies of what happens in British society. He wanted to be more with the working class. And the ROAD to Wigan Pierre has a wonderful description, rather romanticized description, of a working class family sitting around the playa. But the irony, of course, was when he was tramping, which he didn't really need to do for financial reasons, he was really doing it in order to find material to write about. He was taken in a sense accurately as an Etonian down on his luck and he kept up Etonians. Well, Cyril Connolly didn't realize at first that George Dorwell was his old friend Eric Blair. But Etonians. Richard Priest was a Newtonian. David Astor, who employed him on the observer, was he Newtonian. So in some senses he did profit from LH Myers, who gave him the money to take his health restoring after the Spanish Civil War visit to Morocco, was an Etonian. So in a sense he didn't reject his education. And actually, maybe I'm digressing too much, but in the lion, the Unicorn he famously says inaccurately that the public schools will be eliminated, but England will still be England as it was. As I say, I think in the book, in many ways he's a combination of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine and in fact the public schools weren't eliminated. But again, and this isn't a particularly Orwellian thing, but it's part of the way I see whether accuracy or not, British society, in that British society and the monarchy, which of course is now in interesting state of its history, the monarchy is a wonderful example in that and the public schools are wonderful examples that British institutions are incredibly capable of changing radically in order to stay as much the same as possible. And I think of course, his famous definition in the lion and the Unicorn, in which he says Britain is a family. I don't know if he says England. Bob says England is a family with the wrong people in control, good written aunts, bachelor uncles.
- [31:24]
Morteza Hajizadeh
This is one of his most famous writings, the lion and Unicorn, Socialism and the English Genius. Why did he believe that England had to become a socialist country?
- [31:38]
Professor Peter Ustansky
It was not as much famous. I think more and more attention is being paid to it. It was in the very end Darcy Moore just gave a talk actually to the Orwell Society on the lion and the Unicorn. It was in a series called Searchlight Books that Orwell was and Tosco Feivel and were the editors and Frederick Wahlberg or Seville Warburg, his publisher, published it. And he said that in order to mobilize society efficiently and give the working class feeling that they're fighting for what they want, in order to win the war, Britain will have to become socialist. But he was wrong. But there's no question, there's no question that Britain, the state, it moved towards socialism during the war to a certain degree and then that it even moved closer to socialism, not quite socialism, but certainly move much closer to socialism with Orwell's approval in the welfare state after the war. But. One of the books that he published in the Searchlight series, which I write about in a book I've written called the First Day of the Blitz, in which Richie Calder wrote that the first day of the Blitz, September 7, 1940, it's going to be as important in British history as Bastille Day was in France, in that the state realized that it had to be more proactive, it had to cope with the Blitz and also that it had to cope, it had to deal with everybody. Before the war, the feeling was that the state should only hope the deserving poor, the worthy poor, those who somehow had better character or were in financial difficulties, not through their own fault or whatever. But then the conception did grow during the war and all those part of it that everybody, all the inhabitants of the state have to be treated equally. And in a way that's a definition of socialism, that the rich should not be better off or have privileges, everybody should be at the same level, which of course hasn't happened. But I think that's an ideal of socialism that Orwell believed in, but he was never very specific. He does have a list of what he says will be true after the war, but most of them are inaccurate. The House of Lords will be eliminated. But it's one of my nephew was. My sister married an Englishman and my nephew is a member of that life peer the. The House of Lords, it's much weaker than it was, but it hasn't been eliminated, despite Orwell's prediction, as I say, the public schools haven't been eliminated. Despite public schools, the country homes haven't all become. I think he thinks they're rest homes or something. The National Trust is a wonderful example of a British institution that allows the upper classes frequently to stay in their houses. But there have been changes. But Orwell said that these changes will be inevitable and necessary. And in that sense he was wrong. But nevertheless he projects an ideal that I personally think is terrific. Not that it will ever be achieved.
- [35:55]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And earlier you mentioned that or JoJo has always been popular, but I guess in more recent, especially in the past seven or eight years, there has been a renewed interest in Orwell's writings, especially his fiction 1984 and Animal Farms. And I guess part of it has to do with the rise of populist politicians around the world and in the United States. But one thing that has always kind of Puzzled me was that a lot of people, right wingers, I mean conservatives, sort of appropriate, always writings or they say it's an Orwellian world, whereas we know that if they read some of Orowell's writings, you may not agree with them anyhow. But the question I have why is it that. Why is it that a lot of conservatives or even right wingers who constantly denigrate socialism sort of appropriate?
- [36:52]
Professor Peter Ustansky
George OWENSBORG well, yes, that's true. To hark back a little to what you began with. I mean the thing to me which is quite fascinating, 1984, an animal farm, Lewis Monad has said accurately, were probably the most important cultural documents of the Cold War. And to show the evils of Orwell never wanted Russia to be overthrown, the communist regime to be overthrown. He just wanted not to be influential outside of Russia. And Orwell said there's this extreme danger because of the love of power, of socialism being perverted, but it doesn't mean that it has to happen and it's still the world should be socialist. And when the right, particularly in the United States, tried to appropriate 1984 and it was published months before his death, but nevertheless he had time to issue with Life magazine and elsewhere denials. I'm a socialist, I'm a supporter of the Labour Party and I profoundly disagree with people saying it's a document to show that socialism is inevitably bad and evil. But that continued and it's inevitable and there are fights about this. There were fights about it in 2000, 1984, where Norman Podhoritz tried to co opt Orwell to the right and Christopher Hitchens was the figure of the left. And then ironically in 2003, where Hitchens had become more conservative, he was more the Orwell of the right. And Stephen Collini and others defended Orwell of the left. But let's see. I think I'm getting away from your basic question, but. But I think that now, to me it's quite wonderful and amazing. Not amazing. I think there are two reasons that particularly 1984 has had this fast rise in popularity and all the talk about AI is significant. I think now the Cold War aspect of it, it's there, of course, but it's less important. And now it's the power of the computer and how the computer can change things and control things and rewrite the past. I think that's what's captured the imagination. And also the other thing that's wonderfully ironic is Trump has been absolutely fabulous for Orwell and alternate facts when his press agent or press person talked about alternate facts and alternate reality and so forth and so on. Sales of 1984 skyrocketed. And the whole idea that you could. Which, of course, is a premise, of course. Well, maybe the zoom is part of it. We haven't quite gotten to the era of telescreens, but the feeling that these machines and other people know much more about us than we might wish, that sort of. Well, I wouldn't say it's apolitical, but it's obviously not the same as the Cold War. That aspect of 1984, I think, is a major factor in it being so intensely popular. And ORWELL, he died 70 years ago. He died in January 1950, more than 70 years ago. And he's probably better known now. Well, in the last five years of his life, he was very well known, but he's now probably better known than he ever was before.
- [41:29]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Professor Peter Stansky, thank you very, very much for taking the time to talk to us about your wonderful book, the Socialist Patriot, George Orwell and the works. Wonderful book.
- [41:40]
Professor Peter Ustansky
Yes, I hope somehow will be available if your listeners and here wish to purchase it. I don't think it'd be in bookstores, but I think it's on various sites, should be available. It's a short book, but it's also. At a mother's price.
- [42:01]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Yeah, it's a short book and it's very easy to read and it's highly informative. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time.
- [42:08]
Professor Peter Ustansky
Thank you for interviewing me.