As Orwell spent more and more time with the down-and-outs of England, he became convinced that the only remedy for the invidious problem of poverty lay in socialism, a political and economic philosophy arguing that only when the state controls the means of production and distribution will all members of a nation share its profits and rewards. Unlike capitalism, the philosophy holding that a nation's means of production and distribution should be privately owned and controlled, socialism argues that only government regulation of a nation's economy can close the gap between the rich and the poor. Although he was not a virulent anti-capitalist, Orwell did think that only with the gradual introduction of socialist ideas and practices into British