[...] an actual revolution, in Russia, with its abuses of power and privilege, necessarily disappointed him, because it contaminated the ideal. Orwell became not so much anti-revolutionary as anti-revolution. He used an ideal revolution to scourge an actual one--which is a negative form of messianism, really.

When I first read 'The Lion and the Unicorn', I was so blinded by flag-waving lines like 'And if the rich squeal audibly, so much the better', and 'The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Goering's bombing planes', that I missed this incoherence. To someone surrounded by alien acres of privilege, Orwell's relentless attack on privilege seemed a necessary, obliterating forest fire: 'What is wanted is a conscious open revolt by ordinary people against inefficiency, class privilege and the rule of the old . . . We have got to fight against privilege.' Nowadays, I'm struck by the fact that throughout his work, Orwell is much more vocal about the abolition of power and privilege than about equitable redistribution, let alone the means and machinery of that redistribution. There is a fine spirit of optimistic destruction in his work, a sense that if we all just work hard at that crucial, negating 'shove from below', then the upper-class toffs will simply fade away, and things will more or less work out in the interests of justice. In 'The Lion and the Unicorn', there is a suggestive moment when Orwell writes that collective deprivation may be more necessary than political programmes: 'In the short run, equality of sacrifice, "war-Communism", is even more important than radical economic changes. It is very necessary that industry should be nationalised, but it is more urgently necessary that such monstrosities as butlers and "private incomes" should disappear forthwith.' In other words, let's agree to be a bit vague about the economic stuff, like industrial policy; and let's keep the serious rhetoric for the lady in the Rolls, about whom we can be militantly precise. [...]