Give a brief, clear concept of what "Politics and the English Language" written by George Orwell is about.

In a brief summary, George Orwell's objective in " title="Politics and the English Language. George Orwell. www.orwell.ru"
href="http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit">Politics in the
English Language" is twofold. First, he intends to illustrate and prove that
the academic and political English language of his day was "in a bad way." His
contention is that meaning was being either intentionally or inadvertently obscured. In
the case of politics, the obscuring of meaning was intentional. In academia, it was
seemingly inadvertent.

One of his central points of
persuasion to gain credibility for his argument is that cause produces effects that
themselves also become cause of similar effects. This is relevant to a discussion of
language because of the theory that language is beyond control and that things just
happen to language along the way.

Orwell's major concern,
as reflected by his title, is how this obscuring of meaning is used in political
situations. A precise example of his concern and point regarding what he describes as
"The inflated style [that] itself is a kind of euphemism" is as
follows:

readability="15">

Orwell: Consider
for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He
cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good
results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like
this:
"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features
which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a
certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant
of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called
upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete
achievement."

Orwell offers
concrete steps for avoiding inflated stylistic euphemisms. The first and most important
is to visualize your meaning until you have it clearly in your mind and then select
words that best describe what you visualize. He gives a list of rules to use to help
steer away from the vague and euphemistic toward the specific and concrete, which is a
path illustrated by his paraphrase that
follows:

readability="14">

Orwell: Here is a well-known verse
from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw
under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither
yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of
skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Orwell: Here
it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of
contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive
activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a
considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into
account.

Orwell's rules for
clarity are:

readability="13">

1.  Never use a metaphor, simile, or other
figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long
word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always
cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the
active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if
you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules
sooner than say anything outright
barbarous.