in where he joined the Partido Obrero de Unificacin Marxista (POUM), or the Workers’ Party for Marxist Unity, and began his belief in socialism. When he arrived in Barcelona, he noticed an almost complete elimination of the social class structure: “Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Everyone called everyone else Comrade and Thou…. In outward appearance, the wealthy had practically ceased to exist…. In some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for” (qtd. in Lewis 55). He enjoyed the idea that everybody was equal, but he still showed resentment towards it. His inner conflict between these two ideas and his experiences as a member in the Spanish Civil War caused him to choose a median between the community ideals which he saw and the individual ideals which he missed: “I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in socialism, which I never did before” (qtd. in Chen).With the start of World War II, George Orwell began his fight against Nazism, fascism, and communism. In the eyes of many, communism became interchangeable with socialism, and he criticized writers of his time that were in support of Stalin and his “socialist” movement: “Why should writers be attracted by a form of Socialism that makes mental honesty impossible” (qtd. in Lewis 76)? In an attempt to pacify the radical communist movements and change imperialism, he spoke of a third method to reform the British Empire—a middle ground that would create a socialist community in Britain. John Newsinger wrote, “[He had a] call for a new socialist movement that would reject both Communist-style revolution and Labour Party reformism in favour of a third way to socialism, a third way that he continued to call revolutionary but that was adapted to modern conditions” (qtd. in Chen). Thr...
