Coronavirus shouldn’t be used as an excuse to expand the state

Since this is the nearest most of us have ever got to living under the Blitz, I’ve been re-reading George Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn. Written in London in 1940, it begins with the famous line: ‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.’ The first part of the book, titled ‘England Your England’ contains more quotable lines per page than anything not written by Shakespeare. It is here that Orwell explains why he loves Britain, warts and all.

The rest of the book, in which he makes the case for ‘democratic socialism’ is maybe less well known, but is characteristically clear and unambiguous. Socialism, he says, means that ‘the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee.’ He then offers a classically Marxist explanation for why such a system is superior to capitalism. Capitalist economies over-produce some products, leading to waste, while under-producing others.