George Orwell on 'Fear of the Mob' 1.16.09

Few know it, but George Orwell wrote an autobiographical sketch of his time spent living and working in the slums of European cities, and Down and Out in Paris and London is the result. Here he's reflecting on the modern-day slavery of the life of a Parisian plongeur, or dishwasher. It seems needless, to have free (-ish) men sweating away their entire lives in underground cellars to wash dishes for the rich to eat 'well' in a hotel. More odd still though, to Orwell, is this fear of the uneducated, poor-and-hungry, mob:

"Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, ans though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and poor are diferentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the theif? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon's poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line "Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres" by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man's experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. "Anything," he thinkins, "any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose." He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in facdt loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as "smart" hotels."

Unfortunately for those living in poverty, the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality of individual liberty and freedom to work work work in our country's consciousness doesn't help Orwell's realization to take root.