Homage to Catalonia

Orwell’s account of the six months he spent fighting with the POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War, and of what happened when the Communist-aligned factions turned on their own side in Barcelona in May 1937. The book’s lasting subject is not combat but the manufacture of a false record in real time — Orwell watched newspapers describe events he had witnessed, and the experience of seeing a lie become the official history is the direct ancestor of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Why it’s on the list: It sits in the Marxism and Collective Psychology section as the eyewitness case: the section’s other entries theorise how a movement’s internal logic turns on its own, and Orwell reports it from inside.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Marxism and Collective Psychology. A structured curriculum shared March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• George Orwell — the author, writing as a participant.
• Socialism — the movement he fought for and the factions that suppressed his own.
• Culture — the collective psychology the section is about.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.