The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

dropping the virtues, 1532–1958 377hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now [March 11, 1940]contending for our souls.” 19 Dickens’s “good-tempered antinomianism”is not quite a self-description accurate for Orwell. I mean the “goodtempered”part. Orwell was very fierce against party lines, which is why hehas been so easy to appropriate for left and right and middle, since he wasagainst all of them, and in favor of all of them, selectively. It reminds one ofAusten updated. No systems, says Orwell, for we have in the 1930s and 1940sseen the consequences of ethics subordinated to systems. In August 1944 onefinds him blasting away at right-wing Colonel Blimps who find war lovelyalways. But at the same time he blasts away at war resisters who find even awar against fascism objectionable. 20The ethical word continually on Orwell’s lips—compare Austen’s “amiability,”combined with “serious reflection”—is “decency,” especially the“common” kind, combined with social criticism. He found “decency” in allmanner of common folk, down and out in Paris and London, in the minersor workless workers on the road to Wigan Pier. Such a democratic thoughtwould never have occurred to Austen, who was no Romantic.It seems to Orwell that “in the chaos in which we are living”—no intemperateview of the early 1940s—“even the prudential reasons for commondecency are being forgotten.” 21 Saying the obvious was the first duty of anintelligent person. What enrages him about the Left Book Club in Londonand the Stalinists in Spain, and everywhere the fascists and imperialists andColonel Blimps, is precisely their cynical or stupid advocacy of somethinghigher by way of ethics. The revolution must be served, said the Communists,for reasons of higher hope. Therefore we can run show trials in Spainto execute anarchists and other enemies of Comrade Stalin. King and countrymust be saved, said the Establishment, for reasons of higher faith. Thereforewe can run wars and empires to tame and slaughter the wogs, whobegin at Calais.Transcendent hope and faith were the problem. Austen seems to take asimilar view. Bad transcendentals lead in Austen’s view to risible foolishness,as in Sir Walter Elliot’s faith in family and blood lines. In Orwell’s more seriousworld they lead to totalitarianism, as in the Spanish Communists’ hopefor a Stalinist revolution.Though Orwell remained true to the label of socialist, he admired peoplelike Arthur Koestler who converted from party-line Stalinism when theyrealized that it entailed the rape of decency. Orwell was defending Dickens,