Depends on how much we relax the definition. For example even H. G. Wells, Jack London, Aldous Huxley and I think Douglas Adams were some kind of socialists. Charles Dickens was at the very least a social democrat.
In terms of explicit Communists you'd find quite a lot of Russian ones post and pre-revolution:Maxim Gorky, Alexandr Bogdanov, Arkady Gaidar, Alexandr Zamyatin, Mikhail Zoshenko and my fave Vladimir Mayakovsky, among many others. In terms of children's literature the Soviet writers Samuil Marshak and Korney Chukovsky, and the one and only Gianni Rodari from Italy (seriously if you have kids have them read his stories and short novels).
The great Rabindranath Tagore also had at the very least communist sympathies and highly praised Soviet society (especially in terms of education and child care) after his visit to the USSR.
Here's also a helpful Wikipedia entry:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_literature
That would be news to me considering his close friendship with Lenin, his material support to the Bolsheviks pre revolution and being the most celebrated Soviet author while alive. There are rumours he was poisoned by Stalin and some evidence to suggest at least a mild personal antipathy toward Stalin on Gorky's behalf, but unless the entirety of Bolshevism=Stalin that's neither here nor there. Oh and do check out the hilarious Ilf & Petrov and Yuri Olesha (not sure if there are English translations of Olesha though) even if their communist credentials are shaky.
There are many good communist authors but they're mainly European, and especially Russian (especially Maxim Gorky etc). But also you can bet that almost any French writer (or intellectual in general) post WWII was some kind of leftist at the very least, and Germany had some good writers too (Bertolt Brecht for example). Lots of good poets too (Ritsos, Kavadias and many others in Greece, Mayakovsky in Russia, and more I can't bother to write out now).
And wrote one of the most reprinted, popular, impactful, damaging anti-communist works of all time? I don't think so.
If that man is to be considered a socialist then the term loses all meaning. Traitors do not get to be called the thing they betray in memoriam and he hardly did anything significant for the cause in his life to justify overlooking his attacks. He did not die anything but a bitter anti-communist.
Apologies for this lengthy reply but I really must try and disabuse people of claiming him.
And playing that game with liberals as a gotcha is fruitless, 1984 is transparently an attack on the USSR (and the notion of a DoTP in general) and any attempt to make it into anything else is pointless, millions of people have been taught to interpret it as an anti-communist work and been able to to the point it is mandatory school curriculum in the imperial core. He fought with leftists in Spain but he was at the end of the day an anti-communist as because the communist faction supported by the USSR gained the upper hand he fled and waged for the rest of his life a private war against communism and the Soviet Union, trying to destroy it in favor of a kind of gentlemanly "English Socialism" which would conform with his bourgeois morals (he was after all bred as a member of the upper class in the bosom of British imperialism). Whatever he might have been when he picked up a gun in Spain, by the time he did anything of note (publishing his book) he was a rabid anti-communist willing to snitch to British authorities and should be remembered and roundly condemned as such. We must remember this man lived through the rise of fascism, fought it as a youth, and came to know of its atrocities and what did he write a book repudiating? The force that stopped it.
He is not a socialist who:
repudiates actually existing socialism,
endorses the foremost imperialist nation and oppressor (at the time of his writing while the US was an ascendant power it cannot be argued that Britain was along with other European powers like France still the slavemaster of the global south, still the foremost colonizer, the heart of empire, an empire admittedly that did begin to fall apart thanks to the Axis powers invasions which precipitated many independence movements),
snitches to that foremost anti-communist power,
is homophobic and bigoted in other ways,
writes a famous anti-communist work cited so much and poisoning so many brains that his name has come to be a term for liberals representing a controlling system.
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Depends on how much we relax the definition. For example even H. G. Wells, Jack London, Aldous Huxley and I think Douglas Adams were some kind of socialists. Charles Dickens was at the very least a social democrat.
In terms of explicit Communists you'd find quite a lot of Russian ones post and pre-revolution:Maxim Gorky, Alexandr Bogdanov, Arkady Gaidar, Alexandr Zamyatin, Mikhail Zoshenko and my fave Vladimir Mayakovsky, among many others. In terms of children's literature the Soviet writers Samuil Marshak and Korney Chukovsky, and the one and only Gianni Rodari from Italy (seriously if you have kids have them read his stories and short novels).
The great Rabindranath Tagore also had at the very least communist sympathies and highly praised Soviet society (especially in terms of education and child care) after his visit to the USSR.
Here's also a helpful Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_literature
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That would be news to me considering his close friendship with Lenin, his material support to the Bolsheviks pre revolution and being the most celebrated Soviet author while alive. There are rumours he was poisoned by Stalin and some evidence to suggest at least a mild personal antipathy toward Stalin on Gorky's behalf, but unless the entirety of Bolshevism=Stalin that's neither here nor there. Oh and do check out the hilarious Ilf & Petrov and Yuri Olesha (not sure if there are English translations of Olesha though) even if their communist credentials are shaky.
there's a few communist authors I hear people talk about. A few are Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao
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There are many good communist authors but they're mainly European, and especially Russian (especially Maxim Gorky etc). But also you can bet that almost any French writer (or intellectual in general) post WWII was some kind of leftist at the very least, and Germany had some good writers too (Bertolt Brecht for example). Lots of good poets too (Ritsos, Kavadias and many others in Greece, Mayakovsky in Russia, and more I can't bother to write out now).
Just off the top of my head:
Honestly, if you think of a writer in the last century or two and search, chances are they have expressed socialist leanings.
And wrote one of the most reprinted, popular, impactful, damaging anti-communist works of all time? I don't think so.
If that man is to be considered a socialist then the term loses all meaning. Traitors do not get to be called the thing they betray in memoriam and he hardly did anything significant for the cause in his life to justify overlooking his attacks. He did not die anything but a bitter anti-communist.
Apologies for this lengthy reply but I really must try and disabuse people of claiming him.
And playing that game with liberals as a gotcha is fruitless, 1984 is transparently an attack on the USSR (and the notion of a DoTP in general) and any attempt to make it into anything else is pointless, millions of people have been taught to interpret it as an anti-communist work and been able to to the point it is mandatory school curriculum in the imperial core. He fought with leftists in Spain but he was at the end of the day an anti-communist as because the communist faction supported by the USSR gained the upper hand he fled and waged for the rest of his life a private war against communism and the Soviet Union, trying to destroy it in favor of a kind of gentlemanly "English Socialism" which would conform with his bourgeois morals (he was after all bred as a member of the upper class in the bosom of British imperialism). Whatever he might have been when he picked up a gun in Spain, by the time he did anything of note (publishing his book) he was a rabid anti-communist willing to snitch to British authorities and should be remembered and roundly condemned as such. We must remember this man lived through the rise of fascism, fought it as a youth, and came to know of its atrocities and what did he write a book repudiating? The force that stopped it.
He is not a socialist who:
Source: Asimov's famous take-down of 1984, near the start
Yeah, he’s an anti-communist, and his socialism is bitter and twisted. But even Asimov commented that he had all the energy of a sectarian leftist.
Also, if you twist your head and squint your eyes, 1984 is a communist utopia.
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