"Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
ich hätte einige Fragen (...)
1. Ich kann im Haushalt 2004/2005 keine Konzessionsabgabe der BWB finden. Wird eine solche nicht mehr erhoben, oder falls sie erhoben wird, wie hoch ist sie?
2. Die Gewinnablieferung der BWB an das Land ist für 2004 mit 7 Mio. EUR, für 2005 mit 10 Mio. EUR angesetzt. Frage: Wie hoch war die Gewinnablieferung im Jahr 2003? Wie hoch war die tatsächliche Gewinnablieferung in 2004?
Das letzte veröffentlichte Jahresergebnis der BWB stammt von 2003 und beträgt 116 Mio. EUR. Wie erklären sich die vergleichsweise niedrigen o.g. Gewinnablieferungen?
3. Im November 2003 rechnete die Senatsverwaltung für Finanzen auf Anfrage der SPD-Fraktion im Abgeordnetenhaus ein Rückkaufszenario für die privatisierten Anteile der BWB durch. Ein sofortiger Ausstieg aus dem Konsortialvertrag hätte nach diesen Berechnungen Ende 2003 eine Rückzahlung von rund 2 Mrd. EUR bedeutet. Wie hoch wäre die entsprechende Rückzahlsumme, wenn das Land heute entsprechend diesem Szenario den Vertrag kündigen würde?
Vielen Dank für Ihre Bemühungen ..."
Donnerstag, 31. März 2005
Dienstag, 29. März 2005
Von: SENWAF Pressestelle An: Jörn Boewe
" ... zu 1: das wäre der Rückkauf der Anteile von den privaten Anteilseignern
zu 2: Nutzen für das Land Berlin: Know-how der privaten Anteilseigner wurde bei der BWB eingebracht
zu 3: wirtschaftliche Folgen:Entwicklung der Wasserpreise- Die Tarife ergeben sich aus der Wassertarifverordnung, die unabhängig davon Geltung besitzt, ob das Land Berlin 100% Eigentümer ist oder nur zu 50,1%.
Arbeitsplätze - Mit dem Teilprivatisierung ging ein Kündigungsschutz bis 2015 einher. Die Arbeitsplatzsicherung ist somit gewahrt. Ein mit den notwendigen Effizienzsteigerungen einhergehender Personalabbau erfolgt über verschiedene sozialverträgliche Instrumente, wie z.B. Altersteilszeit und Abfindungen.
Entwicklung der Investitionen - Im Rahmen der Teilprivatisierung wurde eine bestimmte Investitionssumme über einen Zeitraum von 10 Jahren vereinbart, um insbesondere die hohe Wasserqualität im gesamten Einzugsgebiet zu sichern und Rohrschäden zu minimieren.
Vergabe von Aufträgen: Die Vergabe von Aufträgen erfolgt ebenfalls unabhängig von der Gesellschafterstruktur. Vielmehr erfolgt dies mit Blickpunkt auf die Kostenminimierung und Effizienzsteigerung der BWB und damit einhergehend mit Blickpunkt auf die Tarifstabilität
Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Erlöse: Das Land Berlin hat mit dem Verkauf einen entsprechend hohen Verkaufspreis erzielt. Die BWB wird auf Basis der Wassertarifverordnung weiterhin entsprechende Gewinne erwirtschaften. Diese werden, soweit keine disproportionale Gewinnverteilung erfolgt (siehe hierzu 4.), entsprechend der Gesellschafteranteile aufgeteilt
Zu 4: Die disproportionale Gewinnverteilung basiert auf dem Konsortialvertrag. Das Land Berlin hat im Gegenzug einen entsprechenden Verkaufspreis im Jahre 1999 erzielt. Eine disproportionale Gewinnverteilung erfolgt insbesondere im Hinblick auf verträgliche Tarifsteigerungen bzw. auf Tarifstetigkeit und somit zugunsten der Tarifkunden. Die disproportionale Gewinnverteilung wird planmäßig bis 2007 erfolgen, wobei erstmals in 2004 eine stattgefunden hat ..."
zu 2: Nutzen für das Land Berlin: Know-how der privaten Anteilseigner wurde bei der BWB eingebracht
zu 3: wirtschaftliche Folgen:Entwicklung der Wasserpreise- Die Tarife ergeben sich aus der Wassertarifverordnung, die unabhängig davon Geltung besitzt, ob das Land Berlin 100% Eigentümer ist oder nur zu 50,1%.
Arbeitsplätze - Mit dem Teilprivatisierung ging ein Kündigungsschutz bis 2015 einher. Die Arbeitsplatzsicherung ist somit gewahrt. Ein mit den notwendigen Effizienzsteigerungen einhergehender Personalabbau erfolgt über verschiedene sozialverträgliche Instrumente, wie z.B. Altersteilszeit und Abfindungen.
Entwicklung der Investitionen - Im Rahmen der Teilprivatisierung wurde eine bestimmte Investitionssumme über einen Zeitraum von 10 Jahren vereinbart, um insbesondere die hohe Wasserqualität im gesamten Einzugsgebiet zu sichern und Rohrschäden zu minimieren.
Vergabe von Aufträgen: Die Vergabe von Aufträgen erfolgt ebenfalls unabhängig von der Gesellschafterstruktur. Vielmehr erfolgt dies mit Blickpunkt auf die Kostenminimierung und Effizienzsteigerung der BWB und damit einhergehend mit Blickpunkt auf die Tarifstabilität
Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Erlöse: Das Land Berlin hat mit dem Verkauf einen entsprechend hohen Verkaufspreis erzielt. Die BWB wird auf Basis der Wassertarifverordnung weiterhin entsprechende Gewinne erwirtschaften. Diese werden, soweit keine disproportionale Gewinnverteilung erfolgt (siehe hierzu 4.), entsprechend der Gesellschafteranteile aufgeteilt
Zu 4: Die disproportionale Gewinnverteilung basiert auf dem Konsortialvertrag. Das Land Berlin hat im Gegenzug einen entsprechenden Verkaufspreis im Jahre 1999 erzielt. Eine disproportionale Gewinnverteilung erfolgt insbesondere im Hinblick auf verträgliche Tarifsteigerungen bzw. auf Tarifstetigkeit und somit zugunsten der Tarifkunden. Die disproportionale Gewinnverteilung wird planmäßig bis 2007 erfolgen, wobei erstmals in 2004 eine stattgefunden hat ..."
Dienstag, 22. März 2005
Von: Jörn Boewe An: SENWAF Pressestelle
"Vielen Dank für Ihre Antwort, nur ein paar Einzelheiten wüsste ich ganz gern noch etwas genauer:
1. Sie sprechen vom "für das Land Berlin günstigeren Fortführungsszenario". Welche anderen (ungünstigeren) Szenarien gibt es denn aus Sicht der Wirtschaftsverwaltung sonst noch?
2. Welchen Nutzen hat der Teilverkauf der BWB dem Land Berlin gebracht?
3. Wie bewertet der Wirtschaftssenator die wirtschaftlichen Folgen der (Teil-)Privatisierung der BWB, insbesondere hinsichtlich
- der Entwicklung der Wasserpreise
- der Arbeitsplätze
- der Entwicklung der Investitionen
- der Vergabe von Aufträgen an die regionale Wirtschaft, vor allem bei Wartung und Instandhaltung
- der Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Erlöse für das Land Berlin?
4. Zu letzterem Punkt würde mich noch interessieren, in welcher Höhe das Land Berlin zugunsten der privaten Teilhaber im Zuge der disproportionalen Gewinnaufteilung auf wirtschaftliche Erlöse bislang verzichtet hat und wie die Prognose für die nächsten Jahre aussieht ..."
1. Sie sprechen vom "für das Land Berlin günstigeren Fortführungsszenario". Welche anderen (ungünstigeren) Szenarien gibt es denn aus Sicht der Wirtschaftsverwaltung sonst noch?
2. Welchen Nutzen hat der Teilverkauf der BWB dem Land Berlin gebracht?
3. Wie bewertet der Wirtschaftssenator die wirtschaftlichen Folgen der (Teil-)Privatisierung der BWB, insbesondere hinsichtlich
- der Entwicklung der Wasserpreise
- der Arbeitsplätze
- der Entwicklung der Investitionen
- der Vergabe von Aufträgen an die regionale Wirtschaft, vor allem bei Wartung und Instandhaltung
- der Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Erlöse für das Land Berlin?
4. Zu letzterem Punkt würde mich noch interessieren, in welcher Höhe das Land Berlin zugunsten der privaten Teilhaber im Zuge der disproportionalen Gewinnaufteilung auf wirtschaftliche Erlöse bislang verzichtet hat und wie die Prognose für die nächsten Jahre aussieht ..."
Von: SENWAF Pressestelle An: Jörn Boewe
Von: SENWAF Pressestelle
An: Jörn Boewe
" ... Die von Ihnen genannten Zahlen kann ich so nicht nachvollzeihen, aber das Land Berlin hat sich im Bezug auf die Wasserbetriebe für das für das Land Berlin günstigere Fortführungsszenario entschieden.Ob Herr Sarrazin sich verrechnet hat oder in welchem Kontext er diese Äußerungen getan hat, müssten sie bitte ihn selbst befragen.Mit freundlichen Grüßen ..."
An: Jörn Boewe
" ... Die von Ihnen genannten Zahlen kann ich so nicht nachvollzeihen, aber das Land Berlin hat sich im Bezug auf die Wasserbetriebe für das für das Land Berlin günstigere Fortführungsszenario entschieden.Ob Herr Sarrazin sich verrechnet hat oder in welchem Kontext er diese Äußerungen getan hat, müssten sie bitte ihn selbst befragen.Mit freundlichen Grüßen ..."
Freitag, 18. März 2005
Die Berliner haben Wasser im Überfluss ...
Die Berliner haben Wasser im Überfluss, doch die Kubikmeterpreise, die sie dafür zahlen, gehören zu den höchsten in Europas. Der Preise gingen nach oben, nachdem die Stadt die Hälfte ihrer Anteile an den Wasserwerken an zwei transnationale Konzerne verkaufte.
Damit die beiden Konzerne kein unternehmerisches Risiko eingehen mussten, garantierte ihnen die Stadt eine Mindesrendite. Diese soll - egal wie die Geschäfte laufen - immer 2 Prozent über der Rendite langfristiger Bundesanleihen liegen. Im Moment sind das etwa 8,2 Prozent.
Berlin erzielte 1999 für die 49,9 Prozent Anteile einen Verkaufspreis von knapp 1,69 Milliarden Euro. Die Renditegarantie gilt für 28 Jahre und sichert den beiden Konzernen Einnahmen, die auf das heutige Datum "abgezinst" - wie das die Buchhalter nennen - einer Summe von 3,25 Milliarden Euro entsprechen.
In einem Papier, das wohl nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt war, aber irgendwie dieser Tage in meine Hände fiel, hatte der Finanzsenator Ende 2003 augerechnet, dass es ca. 2 Mrd. EUR kosten würde, wenn man die privatisierten Anteile von den beiden Konzernen zurückkaufen würde.
Die Erfüllung des Vertrages mit den privaten Shareholdern, so Sarrazin seinerzeit, würde Berlin dagegen 3,25 Mrd. kosten.
Also nochmal:
Fortführung des Vertrages - 3,25 Mrd. EUR
Ausstieg und Rückkauf der Wasserbetriebe - 2 Mrd. EUR.
Die Stadt, deren Finanzen ja nicht so rosig aussahen, würde also eine gute Milliarde einsparen.
Ich meine, das waren ja zwei ziemlich klare Alternativen.
Die Sache begann mich zu interessieren.
Ich schrieb eine Anfrage an die Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft, die sich unter der Führung von Senator Harald Wolf befand, eines PDS-Mannes, der 1999 noch als Oppositionsführer im Abgeordnetenhaus gegen die Privatisierung oder zumindest gegen die dubiose Geheimniskrämerei, mit der sie durchgezogen wurde, gekämpft hatte.
Ich schloss meinen Brief mit der Frage:
"Kann man also sagen, dass die Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft die Variante verfolgt, bei der Berlin eine Milliarde draufzahlt und am Ende ohne Wasserwerke dasteht?
Wenn ja - warum eigentlich?"
Damit die beiden Konzerne kein unternehmerisches Risiko eingehen mussten, garantierte ihnen die Stadt eine Mindesrendite. Diese soll - egal wie die Geschäfte laufen - immer 2 Prozent über der Rendite langfristiger Bundesanleihen liegen. Im Moment sind das etwa 8,2 Prozent.
Berlin erzielte 1999 für die 49,9 Prozent Anteile einen Verkaufspreis von knapp 1,69 Milliarden Euro. Die Renditegarantie gilt für 28 Jahre und sichert den beiden Konzernen Einnahmen, die auf das heutige Datum "abgezinst" - wie das die Buchhalter nennen - einer Summe von 3,25 Milliarden Euro entsprechen.
In einem Papier, das wohl nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt war, aber irgendwie dieser Tage in meine Hände fiel, hatte der Finanzsenator Ende 2003 augerechnet, dass es ca. 2 Mrd. EUR kosten würde, wenn man die privatisierten Anteile von den beiden Konzernen zurückkaufen würde.
Die Erfüllung des Vertrages mit den privaten Shareholdern, so Sarrazin seinerzeit, würde Berlin dagegen 3,25 Mrd. kosten.
Also nochmal:
Fortführung des Vertrages - 3,25 Mrd. EUR
Ausstieg und Rückkauf der Wasserbetriebe - 2 Mrd. EUR.
Die Stadt, deren Finanzen ja nicht so rosig aussahen, würde also eine gute Milliarde einsparen.
Ich meine, das waren ja zwei ziemlich klare Alternativen.
Die Sache begann mich zu interessieren.
Ich schrieb eine Anfrage an die Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft, die sich unter der Führung von Senator Harald Wolf befand, eines PDS-Mannes, der 1999 noch als Oppositionsführer im Abgeordnetenhaus gegen die Privatisierung oder zumindest gegen die dubiose Geheimniskrämerei, mit der sie durchgezogen wurde, gekämpft hatte.
Ich schloss meinen Brief mit der Frage:
"Kann man also sagen, dass die Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft die Variante verfolgt, bei der Berlin eine Milliarde draufzahlt und am Ende ohne Wasserwerke dasteht?
Wenn ja - warum eigentlich?"
Donnerstag, 18. November 2004
Windenergie in Berlin und Brandenburg
Fährt man über das flache Land in der Mark Brandenburg, sieht man sie heute allerorten: Moderne Windkraftanlagen mit Wirkungsgraden von 45 bis 50 Prozent. Die Energie, die hier ins Netz gespeist wird, entspricht der Leistung zweier Atomkraftwerke. Bei der Zukunftsbranche Windenergie gehört Brandenburg zu den Spitzenreitern der deutschen Bundesländer.
Eine Windkraftanlage kann an einem guten Standort schon in zwei Monaten ihre für Herstellung, Betrieb und Entsorgung verbrauchte Energie erzeugen und ist am Ende ihrer Betriebszeit einfach abzubauen und zu recyclen. Bei Ihrem Betrieb entstehen keine externen, sozialen Kosten wie bei der Nutzung fossiler oder atomarer Energie - keine Tankerunfälle, Verstrahlungen oder sonstige Umweltverschmutzungen - deren Kosten später von der Allgemeinheit getragen werden müssen.
Und: Windenergie schafft Arbeitsplätze. Mehr als 2000 Menschen stehen bei der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Windbranche derzeit in Lohn und Brot - bundesweit sind es etwa 45.000. Bis 2010 soll sich diese Zahl mehr als verdoppeln. Für Europa rechnen Branchenexperten bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts mit einer halben Million Jobs.
Einer der großen Player in der Windenergiebranche ist die Berlin-Brandenburger Firma ENERTRAG. Das Unternehmen hat sich auf Planung, Bau, Finanzierung und Betrieb von Windkraftanlagen spezialisiert und betreibt heute 237 Anlagen mit einer Jahresstromproduktion von 671 Millionen Kilowattstunden - ausreichend für 440 000 Menschen.
Die ENERTRAG hat mittlerweile Niederlassungen in Großbritannien, Frankreich und den Niederlanden - doch die Wurzeln des Unternehmens liegen in Nordostbrandenburg.
Mit dem Windfeld Uckermark betreibt die Gesellschaft hier seit drei Jahren das ertragsstärkste Windkraftprojekt Europas.76 Windmühlen erzeugen Strom für 73 000 Haushalte und sichern damit sieben Prozent der Stromversorgung für die beiden Landkreise Uckermark und Barnim.
Der technische Fortschritt ist enorm. Modernen Windturbinen arbeiten leise und effektiv, eine einzige 1,5 MegaWatt-Anlage kann je nach Standort 1 000 bis 2 000 Vier-Personen-Haushalte versorgen. 2,5 Prozent hat die Windenergie im Jahr 2000 zur nationalen Stromerzeugung beigetragen - 2020 könnten es bereits 25 Prozent sein.
Eines steht allerdings fest: Ohne breiten Konsens in der Gesellschaft wird der Ausbau der regenerativen Energien nicht funktionieren.
Eine Windkraftanlage kann an einem guten Standort schon in zwei Monaten ihre für Herstellung, Betrieb und Entsorgung verbrauchte Energie erzeugen und ist am Ende ihrer Betriebszeit einfach abzubauen und zu recyclen. Bei Ihrem Betrieb entstehen keine externen, sozialen Kosten wie bei der Nutzung fossiler oder atomarer Energie - keine Tankerunfälle, Verstrahlungen oder sonstige Umweltverschmutzungen - deren Kosten später von der Allgemeinheit getragen werden müssen.
Und: Windenergie schafft Arbeitsplätze. Mehr als 2000 Menschen stehen bei der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Windbranche derzeit in Lohn und Brot - bundesweit sind es etwa 45.000. Bis 2010 soll sich diese Zahl mehr als verdoppeln. Für Europa rechnen Branchenexperten bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts mit einer halben Million Jobs.
Einer der großen Player in der Windenergiebranche ist die Berlin-Brandenburger Firma ENERTRAG. Das Unternehmen hat sich auf Planung, Bau, Finanzierung und Betrieb von Windkraftanlagen spezialisiert und betreibt heute 237 Anlagen mit einer Jahresstromproduktion von 671 Millionen Kilowattstunden - ausreichend für 440 000 Menschen.
Die ENERTRAG hat mittlerweile Niederlassungen in Großbritannien, Frankreich und den Niederlanden - doch die Wurzeln des Unternehmens liegen in Nordostbrandenburg.
Mit dem Windfeld Uckermark betreibt die Gesellschaft hier seit drei Jahren das ertragsstärkste Windkraftprojekt Europas.76 Windmühlen erzeugen Strom für 73 000 Haushalte und sichern damit sieben Prozent der Stromversorgung für die beiden Landkreise Uckermark und Barnim.
Der technische Fortschritt ist enorm. Modernen Windturbinen arbeiten leise und effektiv, eine einzige 1,5 MegaWatt-Anlage kann je nach Standort 1 000 bis 2 000 Vier-Personen-Haushalte versorgen. 2,5 Prozent hat die Windenergie im Jahr 2000 zur nationalen Stromerzeugung beigetragen - 2020 könnten es bereits 25 Prozent sein.
Eines steht allerdings fest: Ohne breiten Konsens in der Gesellschaft wird der Ausbau der regenerativen Energien nicht funktionieren.
Montag, 25. Oktober 2004
George Orwell: Why I Write
Why I Write
1947
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious -- i.e. seriously intended -- writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had "chair-like teeth" -- a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's "Tiger, Tiger." At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished "nature poems" in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed -- at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week -- and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous "story" about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my "story" ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: "He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf," etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The "story" must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost --
So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling "hee" for "he" was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in -- at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own -- but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen -- in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all -- and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money .
Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
Political purpose -- using the word "political" in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature -- taking your "nature" to be the state you have attained when you are first adult -- I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, "I am going to produce a work of art." I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. "Why did you put in all that stuff?" he said. "You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism." What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write. Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
source: George Orwell Resources
1947
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious -- i.e. seriously intended -- writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had "chair-like teeth" -- a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's "Tiger, Tiger." At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished "nature poems" in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed -- at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week -- and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous "story" about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my "story" ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: "He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf," etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The "story" must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost --
So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling "hee" for "he" was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in -- at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own -- but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen -- in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all -- and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money .
Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
Political purpose -- using the word "political" in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature -- taking your "nature" to be the state you have attained when you are first adult -- I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, "I am going to produce a work of art." I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. "Why did you put in all that stuff?" he said. "You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism." What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write. Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
source: George Orwell Resources
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