Yeah, that's whatever. I didn't mention anything about the politics of it, and wouldn't have because that's not what your post was about. Unless you weren't actually making your judgement on the quality of writing the way the post's content made it seem. If that's the case, well, maybe don't critique other writers lol.

My comment was about the quality of the writing. In that respect, I stand by it.

As a critique of the USSR, I don't know that it failed entirely, but I agree that it wasn't very successful. Not because it failed to teach anything, which I don't find relevant to whether or not it's successful as critique. It wasn't a good critique because it was too abstracted. Animal farm was a better critique because it wasn't abstracted much at all, it was a more direct framing of his perspective on the USSR's brand of communism.

Sometimes, if you're going to use fiction to frame arguments about real world things, you have to be way more obvious than you think. It's like political cartoons; if you don't put a name on the hats, people aren't going to be sure if the bloated ass is supposed to be capitalism, socialism, or anarchism. Oh, their personal prejudices will make them decide it's whatever ism they dislike the most, but that's not the same thing as presenting your own viewpoint in cartoon form.

Tbh? The amount of people that are even aware of 1984 being a political critique of the USSR at all is small. That's how far abstracted it is. It looks more like a critique of authoritarianism and/or the dangers of over policing speech. Which, in my opinion, is closer to what he was really trying to say, despite his actual leanings.

Most people I've ever discussed Orwell in general, or 1984 in particular, with totally miss that it's got aspects that point towards the USSR. If they even notice that it's accusatory of real world things at all, they tend to frame it as being anti big government overall. And, if you ignore Orwell's own beliefs, that would be the most fitting consumption conclusion to reach. That's where it falls as critique, imo. It simply doesn't work as a political statement unless the reader is into literary critique and political history.

Taken as a novel, it is too successful at world building to be a good allegory.

Shit, on a more casual level, it's been a while since any of the usual capitalist oligarchs have pointed to it as useful for their empowerment. Trying to use books to convince the hoipoloi of anything is a stretch to begin with; the target audience has to both read and think about what they read. That's a skill, it has to be learned, and that skill isn't something everyone tries to develop. I'd even argue that today, the students still reading it by assignment are going to see it as being relevant to capitalism in the opposite way. They'll look at all the supposed democracies leaning hard into authoritarian moves, the deep oligarchy behind them, and the outright fascism of it and see 1984 as prescient rather than being a critique of Orwell's own time. I've actually talked to kids reading it, and that is what comes up a lot.

Animal farm? Yeah, I would see your point a lot more. Might argue about it still being relevant to modern political discourse, but it was absolutely a hit piece lol.

However! I would definitely still say that his prose was excellent