Thursday, August 11, 2016

The robbers and the robbed

Spotted in The Christian World in 1937 -- on a page devoted to “What Writers and Thinkers are Saying": a quote from George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier:

“Probably we could do with a little less talk about ‘capitalists’ and ‘proletarian,’ and a little more about the robbers and the robbed. But at any rate we must drop that misleading habit of pretending that the only proletarians are manual labourers. It has got to be brought home to the clerk, the engineer, the commercial traveller, the middle-class man who has ‘come down in the world,’ the village grocer, the lower-grade civil servant and all other doubtful cases that they are the proletariat, and that Socialism means a fair deal for them as well as for the navvy and the factory hand. They must not be allowed to think that the battle is between those who pronounce their aitches and those who don’t; for if they think that, they will join in on the side of the aitches.” (Quoted in The Christian World, 1 April 1937, 13)

A curious spot to find Orwell, though it seems as relevant now as then (even if it should be taken to heart as much by those on the side of the missing aitches as on the other one). 

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