Orwell and Marxism

The failure of more than a handful of writers to explore the links between Orwell and the communists is not difficult to explain. The most obvious reason is that Orwell’s political identity prevents us from appreciating the full scope of his intellectual interests. Because he was a passionate anti-Stalinist, one of the doughtiest opponents not merely of the USSR but of the world communist movement as a whole, we tend to believe that he cannot have been influenced – except negatively – by the things which communists said or wrote.