IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/62527.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

George Orwell and the Incoherence of Democratic Socialism

Author

Listed:
  • Makovi, Michael

Abstract

George Orwell's famous fictions, Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty Four were intended to advocate democratic socialism by portraying undemocratic forms of socialism as totalitarian. For Orwell, democracy was a political institution which would limit the abuse of power. But there are several problems with democratic socialism which ensure its failure. In Orwell's novel A Clergyman's Daughter, Orwell's views of economics and politics are inconsistent and conflicting in a way that ensures democratic socialism will not succeed on Orwell's terms. Democratic socialism in general is criticized according to F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom and John Jewkes's The New Ordeal by Planning, whose arguments differ crucially from those against market socialism by Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny. An economic analysis of the political institutions of democratic socialism shows that democratic socialism must necessarily fail for political (not economic) reasons even if nobody in authority has ill-intentions or abuses their power.

Suggested Citation

  • Makovi, Michael, 2015. "George Orwell and the Incoherence of Democratic Socialism," MPRA Paper 62527, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:62527
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/62527/1/MPRA_paper_62527.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/66282/1/MPRA_paper_66282.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/70111/1/MPRA_paper_70111.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/70160/1/MPRA_paper_70160.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Jewkes, 1978. "A Return to Free Market Economics?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-03542-7.
    2. Michael Makovi, 2015. "George Orwell as a Public Choice Economist," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 60(2), pages 183-208, September.
    3. Hayek, F. A. & Caldwell, Bruce, 2007. "The Road to Serfdom," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226320540 edited by Caldwell, Bruce, Febrero.
    4. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Makovi, Michael, 2016. "Labor Economics in a Planned Economy: F. A. Hayek and John Jewkes on the Impossibility of Democratic Socialism," MPRA Paper 70174, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Makovi, Michael, 2016. "Interest Groups and the Impossibility of Democratic Socialism: Hayek, Jewkes, and the Arrow Theorem," MPRA Paper 70173, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Makovi, Michael, 2016. "The Impossibility of Democratic Socialism: Two Conceptions of Democracy," MPRA Paper 70172, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Makovi, Michael, 2015. "Two Opposing Economic-Literary Critiques of Socialism: George Orwell Versus Eugen Richter and Henry Hazlitt," MPRA Paper 62528, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    6. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.
    7. Bryan Caplan & Edward Stringham, 2005. "Mises, bastiat, public opinion, and public choice," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 79-105.
    8. Tin Cheuk Leung & Kwok Ping Ping & Kevin K. Tsui, 2019. "What can deregulators deregulate? The case of electricity," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 1-32, August.
    9. Fu, Tong & Jian, Ze, 2020. "A developmental state: How to allocate electricity efficiently in a developing country," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    10. Rosenzweig, Mark R. & Wolpin, Kenneth I., 1984. "Externalities, Heterogeneity and the Optimal Distribution of Public Programs: Child Health and Family Planning Interventions," Bulletins 8435, University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center.
    11. Francis,David C. & Kubinec ,Robert, 2022. "Beyond Political Connections : A Measurement Model Approach to Estimating Firm-levelPolitical Influence in 41 Economies," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10119, The World Bank.
    12. Boone, Peter, 1996. "Politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 289-329, February.
    13. Grant H. Lewis, 2017. "Effects of federal socioeconomic contracting preferences," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 763-783, December.
    14. Deniz Igan & Prachi Mishra & Thierry Tressel, 2012. "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 195-230.
    15. Vincent Smith & Justus H. H. Wesseler & David Zilberman, 2021. "New Plant Breeding Technologies: An Assessment of the Political Economy of the Regulatory Environment and Implications for Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-18, March.
    16. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Levine, Ross, 2006. "Bank supervision and corruption in lending," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 2131-2163, November.
    17. Roberts, Donna & Orden, David, 1995. "Determinants of Technical Barriers to Trade: The Case of US Phytosanitary Restrictions on Mexican Avocados, 1972-1995," 1995: Understanding Technical Barriers to Agricultural Trade Conference, December 1995, Tucson, Arizona 50709, International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.
    18. Knight, J.B. & Sabot, R.H., 1988. "Lewis Through A Looking Glass: Public Sector Employment, Rent-Seeking And Economic Growth," Center for Development Economics 108, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    19. John C. Beghin & William E. Foster & Mylene Kherallah, 1996. "Institutions And Market Distortions: International Evidence For Tobacco," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1‐4), pages 355-365, January.
    20. Koichi Hamada & Asahi Noguchi, 2005. "The Role of Preconceived Ideas in Macroeconomic Policy: Japan's Experiences in the Two Deflationary Periods," Working Papers 908, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Orwell; Hayek; democratic socialism; market socialism; totalitarianism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • B24 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Socialist; Marxist; Scraffian
    • B25 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; Stockholm School
    • B31 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals - - - Individuals
    • B51 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian
    • B53 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Austrian
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J00 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - General
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J47 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Coercive Labor Markets
    • P10 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - General
    • P20 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - General
    • P30 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - General
    • P50 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - General
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:62527. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.