Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell (1903–1950)
![The Libertarian Tradition](https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_650w/s3/static-page/img/The-Libertarian-Tradition_750x516_20141125.jpg.webp?itok=iHqUK2Ig 650w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_870w/s3/static-page/img/The-Libertarian-Tradition_750x516_20141125.jpg.webp?itok=mlXdvF6O 870w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_1090w/s3/static-page/img/The-Libertarian-Tradition_750x516_20141125.jpg.webp?itok=wZXBsGL0 1090w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_1310w/s3/static-page/img/The-Libertarian-Tradition_750x516_20141125.jpg.webp?itok=-XsTNMph 1310w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_1530w/s3/static-page/img/The-Libertarian-Tradition_750x516_20141125.jpg.webp?itok=XAYEeV4W 1530w)
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.