I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1943-12-20), “Can Socialists Be Happy?” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper [as John Freeman]
    (Source)

The date given for this article varies: the issue of Tribune it was published in was 1943-12-24, but Orwell apparently received a check for the work on 1943-12-20. Note this was not the regular "As I Please" column Blair (Orwell) did for Tribune, which he also wrote for that issue, but a special article written under a different alias for unconfirmed reasons. The title is sometimes given as "Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun."

 
Added on 7-Jul-21 | Last updated 10-Jul-26
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