Why Are You a Socialist?

Abstract

Abstract:I became a teenage socialist after reading George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier. It was the second of his books I picked up, after Down and Out in Paris and London, which appealed to me after working a few bad jobs. While my situation as a dishwasher making some extra cash to buy CDs and magazines was not the same as the miners and porters toiling in the 1930s—I could, and did, quit anytime I wanted—I recognized something of what Or-well was describing in the abuses and exploitation I had seen and experienced in the kitchens, and I was looking for a politics that could fight such injustice.