Two Opposing Economic-Literary Critiques of Socialism: George Orwell Versus Eugen Richter and Henry Hazlitt

Michael Makovi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Orwell's famous fictions, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four criticized totalitarian forms of socialism from a Public Choice perspective, assuming that socialism would work as an economic system as long as the proper political institutions were in place to curb the potential for the abuse of power. This is contrasted with two novels by others who took the opposite approach: Richter's Pictures of the Socialistic Future and Hazlitt's Time Will Run Back. These two assumed that the political implementation of socialism would be perfect but that socialism would necessarily turn totalitarian because of the problem of economic calculation. These novels assumed away the Public Choice problem of institutions and the abuse of power and focused on the political implications of socialism as a purely economic system. Contrasting these two sets of novels shows how the Austrian and Public Choice schools criticize socialism in two entirely different ways.

Keywords: Orwell; Richter; Hazlitt; democratic socialism; market socialism; totalitarianism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B24 B25 B31 B51 B53 D70 P11 P20 P30 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-02-27, Revised 2015-08-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pke
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Related works:
Working Paper: Two Opposing Economic-Literary Critiques of Socialism: George Orwell Versus Eugen Richter and Henry Hazlitt (2015)
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