I can't express what has happened over the course of the past 50 or so years better than George Orwell expressed it some time before it even happened, so here is a fine, succint juxtaposition between past and present from The Road To Wigan Pier:


Orwell then says that the image:

Orwell then predicts the "Utopian" socialist future:

So, he was wrong about the dogs and horses. But I'm impressed how Orwell predicted the dissappearance/decline of the British working class which "progress" would bring about (even if it didn't call itself socialism, it seemed to play the same role he imagined socialism playing), and the growth of the service sector.

Now here are my questions: is it possible that some parts of the left have actually started fighting for a return to a past which their ideological predecessors hated (and condemned on the likes of Orwell for romanticising, much as I'm inclined to accuse him of doing).

Could it be said that capitalism has in fact acheived what the communists of the 1930's dreamt of? What should we make of this? What implications does it hold for the future.

Ideology should surely not be static, shouldn't we be constantly adapting and changing, and, if so, considering that the world has changed so much over the past 50 years, are the ideas, labels and battles of 50 years ago still relevant today (even if perhaps the underlying values have remained the same in some cases).

Could we in fact say that anyone who still clings to old labels of right and left is harking back to society which no longer exists. When the left fights to retain traditional industries and to hold back the "excesses" of market capitalism, is it not somehow harking back to an age which the left at the time dreamt would one day be replaced by one much more like the age we now live in?

And many more questions I'm sure can arise from this. That's just to get you started. I guess hwat it really is that interests me is how capitalism has acheived what Orwell thought the socialists would (ok, not all the details, but mostly). Therefore, looking over our history here in the west at least, can we really deny that overall capitalism has been a progressive force rather than a conservative force?

Well, I don't think the ideals of communism have been realized. Marx really only talked about what a communisitc society would actually consist of very briefly, to my knowledge. It was a utopian society where a person lived a natural life, cutting down wood, going fishing for his supper, presumably building his own house. It sounds kind of rustic.

One of Marx's main concepts was the idea of alienation, whereby under capitalism the proletariat become like automatons performing labor under completely meaningless and monotonous jobs. For some reason, building things outside of a factory like an artisan in Medievel times is more humanistic.

However, aren't most people today employed in pretty monotonous and boring jobs? Yes, they are, so Marx's ideal has not been reached. Also, wealth is distributed very unevenly and Marx wanted communal ownership.

As for your comment about liberals wanting to turn back the hands of time, I think that in the United States, liberals mainly want the government to tax the rich more and for the government to provide more and better services to the poor and middle class (Medicare, Social Security, better schooling, etc). I don't think liberals of the US have any ambitions to alter the KINDS OF JOBS that we work at.

Europeans on continental Europe may be more "retroactive" in this sense (as you seem to be implying with your argument). They may be trying to avoid an American society of "McJobs." You'll have to ask them though, I'm just an ignorant American after all.


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In Europe, I think that the progress we've had is not because of Capitalism, but because of non-Marxist Socialism/Trade Union stuff. The British system is a good example: all the big advances of British standard of living happened under Labour governments. The working class get free health, education, etc, because of Labour, a socialist party (they're not now, but they were when they did these things).

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If you compare Western Europe to the parts of Europe that fell behind the Iron Curtain, can you really tell me that capitalism is not a factor in the wealth of western Europe? Perhaps it's not the only factor, but you can't overlook it. Also, what you now retrospectively call non-marxist socialism wasn't always considered socialism at the time, in fact there were those on the left saw it as a ploy to tempt workers away from the revolutions that were sweeping many parts of the globe. What you describe as non-marxist socialism still placed itself firmly on the side of western capitalism at the time of the cold war, because those "socialists" knew that the only way their dreams could be acheived would be by using the wealth a capitalist economy could generate. Now, I believe there is the same divide on the left today - there are those who embrace liberal western values and respect private property and some degree of individual liberty, and there are those who do not. I feel like the gap is between the two camps is growing.

Now, you say New Labour is not socialist any more, but that's my point - these moderates on the left are accused of "selling out", just like Clement Attlee and the founders of the British welfare state were accused of "selling out" the revolution, in order to gain US support, in the years after WW2. But they recognised that they had to move with the times, and that's what the left today needs to do - the keynesian economics that provided short-term solutions between WW2 and 1980's have simply failed to live up to the challenges of the modern world, you can see this everywhere, those old policies crumbles in Britain and the US (among other country's) and have left country's which have not rejected them, such as Japan, Italy and France with chronically ill economies. The lesson is to learn the lessons of the "non-marxist socialists" after WW2 and accept that to implement your dream of a better life for the working man, you cannot reject the modern capitalist world or else you will end up like so many others who tried it after WW2.