Author George Orwell pictured above noticed that poor people seemed to suffer a lot in their daily lives.

Even in Canada, a first world country, I still see a lot of poor people and they often spend time doing inconvenient activities and they suffer indignities regularly. They wait in line ups at the whim of others. Poor people stand at the bus stop waiting for the bus in the freezing wind for an hour to get to work, or line up at the bottle return depot for half an hour to get their $3.00 in bottle returns.

They seem to feel as if they are victims to a mysterious authority and live their lives as if they do not have permission to do a lot of things that other people do, because they don’t have the freedom, time or money, because of the exhaustion and desperation they feel from eking out their daily survival.

Back in the 1930's George Orwell wrote in his book The Road to Wigan Pier:

"A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon." George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier

Political Agendas

Jordan Peterson, a professor at The University of Toronto, says that socialism or communism is not the answer to the plight of the poor. He questions the motivations of socialists and communists and says that their motivations have more to do with the hatred of the rich than a love of the poor. He says that in his experience a lot of socialists are the tweed wearing intellectuals who don’t associate with the poor, but take up their cause because they hate the rich. He cites George Orwell’s book - ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ as a case study. Orwell saw the need for a free society but had similar reservations about the intellectuals who were socialists, as they were leading the revolts, not the people who were affected. He felt that socialism per se would be good if socialists weren't more in love with their philosophy than giving the working class a free and open society.

Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier after spending a few months living with coal miners in the 1930’s. Orwell was a member of the "lower upper middle class", and saw the unfairness and discrimination that Britain’s class system was based on. He went to live with the coal miners and observe their brutal working and living conditions first hand, to gain a contrast between his life of privilege and their lives.

Orwell says that the coal miners were housed in a barracks type accommodation with 50 units side by side, with only one outdoor bathroom around the back for all 50 units. Hence, the inconvenience of waking up in the chill of the night to use the washroom, heading outside around the block and lining up behind the others and waiting your turn.

He remarked that he wouldn’t have lasted two weeks doing the physical labour that was demanded of the miners during their work day. He said working in the mines was a seven hour shift, but it didn’t include the “commute”, which involved, first of all going down into the mine shaft, and then heading to work along the 4 foot high dark tunnel, through which they had to hunch forward caveman like for the 3 mile length of the tunnel to get to the work site, and after digging in the pit for seven hours of grueling sweaty labour, where it was hard to breathe in the middle of black coal dust, they had to turn around and with their backs hunched, head back down for a three mile distance to get themselves back out of the mine.

The visit to the mine helped develop Orwell's political conscience, which includes an argument for Socialism and the need for safer working conditions and living standards, but had reservations about socialists and communists.

Orwell notes that the coal miners were working so the rest of England can heat their homes, but their work, as well as a lot of manual labour seems to go unnoticed.

“It is so with all types of manual work; it keeps us alive, and we are oblivious of its existence.”

He comments that there are numerous statutes of politicians and bishops, but as if food didn’t exist, there are none of ordinary cooks or gardeners who supply the most essential commodity - the food.

“it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior”. George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier

He felt that the socialists with their feelings of intellectual superiority didn’t have much interest in hanging out with the working class, but preferred to hang around with each other and remain superior, while damning the rich for exploiting them, yet profiting from their labour as well.

As Orwell eloquently states, people are all the same, no matter how superior they feel.

"The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system." George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier

I feel that crypto-currency and platforms such as Steemit, are a big step towards eradicating the "Orwellian Society" of the past which is destructive to a free and open society and the corruption that upholds them.

With Steemit, anyone with a phone anywhere in the world, can participate on the platform and improve their situation. They can contribute their voice, often in their own language, and earn some money and make some friends and share their gifts in a system that is fair.

photos - courtesy of Pixabay