Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Orwell's "Catalonia" Revisited (III)

Continuando com o texto de Daniels:

Orwell goes on to describe Barcelona as it struck him when he first arrived there.
It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches were here and there being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and every café had an inscription saying it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivised and their boxes painted red and black… . The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud.
Orwell also described the appearance of the people in the street:
In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no “well-dressed” people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of the militia uniform.
What had happened, you might ask, to the “wealthy classes”?
I believed that things were as they appeared, that this really was a workers’ State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers’ side.
What Orwell is describing is a totalitarian, completely politicized society, of which a Kim Il Sung might have approved. And so does Orwell:

Para mim, uma sociedade totalitária é uma sociedade completamente dirigida centralmente pelo Estado. Ora, todas essas pinturas, slogans, ocupações, etc. não eram dirigidas pelo Estado - era um processo dinamizado pelos vários partidos, sindicatos, etc. P.ex., a "disciplina revolucionária" que Orwell descreve parece-me tudo menos totalitária.

In other words, he thought that this totalitarian society was an improvement on the messy compromises of liberal democracy.

Esta passagem, obviamente, só faria sentido se considerássemos a Barcelona da altura como "totalitária". Ora, como Orwell considerava essa sociedade como o "socialismo democrático" e não como "totalitarismo" (e com razão - que raio de totalitarismo é esse, com vários partidos rivais e com um governo central fraquissimo?), a passagem não faz sentido.

Daniels também refere o apoio de Orwell à destruição e pilhagem de igrejas. Independentemente da opinião que se possa ter acerca disso, a Igreja era uma instituição rica e poderosa na Espanha de então. Essas destruições e pilhagens são perfeitamente compreensíveis a essa luz - quando um sistema considerado opressivo é derrubado, nada mais natural que as instiuições "priviligiadas" (ou consideradas como tal) verem os seus bens pilhados em massa. Penso que os bens do PC também foram confiscados na Roménia, os da União Nacional em Portugal, etc.

“Churches were wrecked and the priests driven out or killed”: the only regret that Orwell expresses is that it allowed Franco to represent himself to readers of the Daily Mail as “a patriot delivering his country from hordes of fiendish ‘Reds.’” But why the quotation marks? If it was not the Reds who drove out or killed the priests, who was it? The People, one and indivisible?

Não sei porque Orwell usou as aspas, mas imagino que seja porque "vermelhos" não quer dizer nada - no campo republicano havia anarquistas, trotskistas, comunistas, socialistas, liberais, etc. cada qual com a sua agenda.

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