Central Planning Sows the Seeds of Tyranny
6 June 2024
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In the Media
Realities of Socialism polling referenced in The New Statesman
6 June 2024
Press Release
Economic Theory
11 November 2024
Christopher Snowdon writes for Quillette
IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon has written for Quillette discussing You Do Not Exist, his upcoming introduction to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Christopher wrote:
“By the 1940s, Orwell understood the dangers of giving too much power to a small group of people, but he never grasped that the seeds of the political oppression he feared were sown by the economic policies he supported. He was attracted to socialism because he believed it would liberate the masses and he never asked many questions about the economics of it.
“In 1948, Orwell could dismiss the experiment of Russian communism as being the fault of a gangster class subverting the revolution, but how would he have responded to the horrors of China’s Cultural Revolution and Cambodia’s killing fields?
“Had Orwell lived into his eighties and experienced the real 1984, he may have continued to believe that libertarian socialism could be realised if the right people were in charge. Many people on the Left clung to this hope. Some still do. But it is surely not implausible that a man who prided himself on being able to look facts in the face would have developed serious doubts about planned economies.”
Read the full piece here.
You Do Not Exist was released on the 75th anniversary of Nineteen Eighty-Four‘s UK publication, Saturday 8th June. Read a full copy here.
Christopher wrote:
“By the 1940s, Orwell understood the dangers of giving too much power to a small group of people, but he never grasped that the seeds of the political oppression he feared were sown by the economic policies he supported. He was attracted to socialism because he believed it would liberate the masses and he never asked many questions about the economics of it.
“In 1948, Orwell could dismiss the experiment of Russian communism as being the fault of a gangster class subverting the revolution, but how would he have responded to the horrors of China’s Cultural Revolution and Cambodia’s killing fields?
“Had Orwell lived into his eighties and experienced the real 1984, he may have continued to believe that libertarian socialism could be realised if the right people were in charge. Many people on the Left clung to this hope. Some still do. But it is surely not implausible that a man who prided himself on being able to look facts in the face would have developed serious doubts about planned economies.”
Read the full piece here.
You Do Not Exist was released on the 75th anniversary of Nineteen Eighty-Four‘s UK publication, Saturday 8th June. Read a full copy here.
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