The Libertarian Tradition

Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell (1903–1950)

The Libertarian Tradition
Jeff Riggenbach

One doesn’t have to read far into the works of George Orwell to discover that he had no understanding of economics whatsoever and was not personally a libertarian in the sense we have in mind when we use that word today...

He was a permanently confused but authentically and radically antiauthoritarian democratic socialist. He was the kind of modern leftist few modern-day libertarians would have any trouble getting along with, making common cause with, collaborating with. George Orwell presents us with yet another case of a writer who was not himself a libertarian as we understand the term today, but whose last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, have earned him a place in the libertarian tradition.