|
Second Thoughts On James Burnham
"Second Thoughts on James Burnham" ("James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution", when published as a pamphlet) is an essay, first published in May 1946 in ''Polemic'', by the English author George Orwell. The essay discusses works written by James Burnham, an American political theorist. In the essay Orwell accepts that the general drift has 'almost certainly been towards oligarchy' and 'an increasing concentration of industrial and financial power' but criticises the tendency of Burnham's 'power-worship' and comments upon the failures in analysis that arise from it. Orwell biographer Michael Shelden: "Orwell was always at his best when he was on the attack, and his ''Polemic'' essay on Burnham is a brilliant criticism of the whole concept of power worship." Background Burnham (1905–87) was a former Trotskyist and professor of philosophy, who rejected dialectical materialism in favour of logical empiricism in 1940. In 1941 he published ''The Managerial Revolution''. In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polemic (magazine)
''Polemic'' was a British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" published between 1945 and 1947, which aimed to be a general or non-specialist intellectual periodical.Defunct magazines published in the United Kingdom Magazines established in 1945 Magazines disestablished in 1947 {{UK-mag-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
We (novel)
''We'' () is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin (often anglicised as Eugene Zamiatin) that was written in 1920–1921. It was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York, with the original Russian text first published in 1952. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarianism, totalitarian state that is rebelled against by the protagonist, D-503 (). It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre. George Orwell said that Aldous Huxley's 1931 ''Brave New World'' must be partly derived from ''We'', although Huxley denied this. Orwell's own ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949) and ''Animal Farm'' were also inspired by ''We'', as are many other contemporary dystopian novels. Setting ''We'' is set in the far future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State,The Ginsburg and Randall translations use the phrasing "One State". Guerney uses "The One State"—ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays By George Orwell
The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels, and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture." His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature. Orwell is best remembered for his political commentary as a left-wing anti-totalitarian. As he explained in the essay " Why I Write" (1946), "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." To that end, Orwell used his fiction as well as his journalism to defend his political convictions. He firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predictions Of Soviet Collapse
There were people and organizations who predicted that the Soviet Union (USSR) would dissolve before it happened in 1991. Arguably the first prediction can be credited to Ludwig von Mises which he made already during the Russian Civil War in 1920 in his '' Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth'' arguing that the socialist system itself would inherently eventually lead to collapse. Authors often credited with having predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union include Leon Trotsky in his work ''The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?'' (1936), Andrei Amalrik in '' Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?'' (1970), French academic Emmanuel Todd in '' La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère soviétique (The Final Fall: An essay on the decomposition of the Soviet sphere)'' (1976), economist Ravi Batra in his 1978 book ''The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism'' and French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse. Ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Conquest
George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 19173 August 2015) was a British and American historian, poet, novelist, and propagandist. He was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain but later wrote several books condemning communism. A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books included ''The Great Terror (book), The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s'' (1968); ''The Harvest of Sorrow, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine'' (1986); and ''Stalin: Breaker of Nations'' (1991). He was also the author of two novels and several collections of poetry. Early life and education Conquest was born in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, to an American father, Robert Folger Wescott Conquest, and an English mother, Rosamund Alys Acworth. His father served in an AFS Intercultural Programs, American Ambulance Field Service unit with the French Army ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nineteen Eighty-Four
''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984'') is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist and an anti-Stalinist, modelled Britain under authoritarian socialism in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and the practices of censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany. More broadly, the book examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future. The current year is uncertain, but believed to be 1984. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British and American author and journalist. He was the author of Christopher Hitchens bibliography, 18 books on faith, religion, culture, politics, and literature. He was born and educated in Britain, graduating in 1970 from the University of Oxford with a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. In the early 1980s, he emigrated to the United States and wrote for ''The Nation'' and ''Vanity Fair (magazine), Vanity Fair''. Known as one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Four Horsemen" of New Atheism (along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett), he gained prominence as a columnist and speaker. Hitchens's razor, His epistemological razor, which states that "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence", is still of mark in philosophy and law. Political views of Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens's political views evolved greatly throughout his life. Originally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brave New World
''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, '' Brave New World Revisited'' (1958), and with his final novel, ''Island'' (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared as an inversion counterpart to George Orwell's '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). In 1998 and 1999, the Modern Library ranked ''Brave New World'' at number 5 on its list of the 100 Best Novels in English of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for ''The Observer'', included ''Brave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sleeper Awakes
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism. Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the Utopian and dystopian fiction, dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as George Orwell bibliograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Servile State
''The Servile State'' is a 1912 economic and political treatise by Hilaire Belloc. It serves primarily as a history of capitalism, a critique of both capitalism and socialism, and a rebuke of developments Belloc believed would bring about a form of totalitarianism he called the "servile state". The "servile state" is a state in which the proletariat – defined as a majority of civil society dispossessed of the means of production – is compelled by positive law to work for those possessed of those same means. Belloc believed that capitalism is fundamentally unstable and therefore serves as a transitory state of affairs, viewing it as a disruption of the natural development of property and societal norms that arose during the Middle Ages. While Belloc writes about socialism – which he generally refers to as "collectivism" – as an alternative to capitalism, he believes that attempts at its implementation are ineffective and will only hasten and solidify the reintroduction of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
