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March 28, 2024, 02:35:53 PM

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Why was Orwell SO prescient?

Started by bgmnts, February 10, 2018, 10:29:56 PM

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bgmnts

Just generally intrigued after i read 1984, everything seems to go off as he predicts, or most likely will do.

This may be a case of retroactively attributing prescience to his work by being a bit vague as to how similar his predictions are.

MoonDust

I'm not sure I agree these days whether 1984 is a book to be taken as a warning for us. I.e. a prediction of the future.

Actually, 1984 was a dark but nevertheless strikingly familiar parody of Stalinism, and the dangers of socialism when democracy is taken out of it and replaced with a privileged bureaucracy.

The world that Orwell describes is - I think - a world if a Stalinist version of socialism took over the world, not if capitalist democracies like ours eroded civil liberties.

The biggest evidence of this analysis of 1984 is Goldstein and his book being the biggest enemy of Big Brother. This is clearly reminiscent of Stalin's Russia making a state enemy out of Trotsky, and many people agree Goldstein's book is based on Trotsky's real book, The Revolution Betrayed, which, like Goldstein's book was written in exile and aimed to expose the lies and crimes of the Stalinist Big Brother.

Sure, there are elements of Big Brother that sounds familiar now, like the snooper's charter. But I don't think that was Orwell's intention. The level of state surveillance and not being able to trust anyone in 1984 already existed in Stalin's Russia (minus the telescreens) and if you changed some of the names of things one could easily be mistaken in thinking they're reading a novel based in 1950s Russia.

I think Huxley's Brave New World actually predicted the trajectory of western society better. A society with so much choice of stimuli and entertainment we're being numbed to the real issues and problems around us.

So to sum up;

1984 - prediction for Stalinism
Brave New World - prediction for consumerism

spamwangler

Quote from: MoonDust on February 11, 2018, 09:54:26 PM

1984 - prediction for Stalinism
Brave New World - prediction for consumerism

yea

marquis_de_sad

What a lot of people forget is that Nineteen Eighty-Four is a post-apocalyptic novel. That is, post global nuclear war. Keeping that in mind makes a lot of the nightmarish and, frankly, unlikely elements seem more plausible.

But this,

Quote from: MoonDust on February 11, 2018, 09:54:26 PM
Actually, 1984 was a dark but nevertheless strikingly familiar parody of Stalinism, and the dangers of socialism when democracy is taken out of it and replaced with a privileged bureaucracy.

is a reaching, I think. Does Orwell ever talk about democracy in Nineteen Eighty-Four? He seems far more interested in surveillance, censorship, nationalism, war, history and language than democracy or a privileged bureaucracy. You let your orthodox Trotskyism do too much of the work for you.

I think it's more likely that Orwell believed that Fascism and Communism essentially lead to the same thing. You can see that with the description of war in Goldstein's book,

Quote from: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical CollectivismIn one combination or another, these three superstates are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference.
(my emphasis)

It's worth noting that Britain is not part of Eurasia, with it's ideology of "Neo-Bolshevism", but Russia is. Orwell's experience of wartime Britain arguably had as much an influence on Nineteen Eighty-Four as his reading of the Soviet Union.

And I can't see how a book written in 1948 could be a prediction for Stalinism.

As for his prescience, people ignore the things that don't fit with today. Would anyone agree that the masses ("the proles") aren't subjected to propaganda or surveillance? Do people really think that if there isn't a word for something it can't be thought?

MoonDust

You make a point that obviously a novel written in 1948 can't be a prediction for Stalinism since that had long already existed.

But perhaps I wasn't clear. I said 1984 was a prediction for the world if taken over by a Stalinist regime. I didn't say it was a prediction for the later emergence of Stalinism. Which like I said, already existed in Orwell's time. As for Orwell thinking fascism and communism lead to the same thing, I somehow doubt this. Historically this "horse shoe" theory is only really espoused and taken seriously by moderates. Orwell certainly wasn't a moderate and was very radical in his leftism. Animal Farm is another example of his warning against a privileged bureaucracy, but it isn't a warning against communism in the purely economic sense; I.e. workers control of industry and exchange. You see in Homage to Catalonia that Orwell was very sympathetic to a workers revolution. He writes about revolutionary Catalonia like he's found heaven on earth.

I think you misunderstand Goldstein's quote. The preceding pages on that extract explain how the world's superpowers all have the same ideology and system of government. So the statement that the wars are irrespective of ideology is simply saying 1) ideological distinctions don't exist and 2) as is explained in the very quote you provide, there is actually no material basis for a war in the first place, since no one can defeat each other, and no one is ideologically opposed.

What you highlight in bold is in no way saying "fascists and communists ultimately behave the same". Not at all.

So actually, with respect, I think you're wrong that Orwell was saying communism and fascism have the same end point. If you look at Orwell's literary and political history I would be very very surprised if he thought this. He was a hardline socialist, with spatterings of a Marxist. He wasn't merely a social democrat. He fully supported the notion of workers taking control of things, which at least in broad definition, is communism.

It was anti-Stalinism or antitotalitarian rather than necessarily anti-communist theory per se, although he was in practice very critical of most communists.  I would draw back from describing him as a communist but it would be too simplistic to just call him an anti-communist - one recent book, 'Orwell and Marxism' has written about how much of his factual writings eg essays and reviews, could be considered to be in dialogue - often critically but taking their ideas seriously - with Marxist writers of his time.

He did also write this in June 1949, when contacted with queries about the politics of Nineteen Eighty-Four:

QuoteMy recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive. I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.

MoonDust

Very much agreed. I wouldnt say he was a full communist either, but you're right, he was certainly socialist and I would say more to the left of the Labour party, even if he supported them.

Wet Blanket

Quote from: MoonDust on February 12, 2018, 07:12:47 AM
So actually, with respect, I think you're wrong that Orwell was saying communism and fascism have the same end point. If you look at Orwell's literary and political history I would be very very surprised if he thought this. He was a hardline socialist, with spatterings of a Marxist. He wasn't merely a social democrat. He fully supported the notion of workers taking control of things, which at least in broad definition, is communism.

I don't think he was a hardliner in the way you suggest, his essays such as The Lion and the Unicorn take a dim view of such people.

As an example of what would likely have been the closest to his ideal, 'Homage to Catalonia' (which in itself, by the way, is probably the most illuminating of his other books in demonstrating the origins of the process which led eventually to his writing Nineteen Eighty-Four) offers a good possibility, where he writes about the beginnings of a workers' state there that he saw in 1936.  Estates and factories had been seized by the peasantry, industry and transport had been collectivised, workers' patrols had replaced police forces - essentially Orwell viewed this as a nascent society where the class system had been abolished, and he claimed that it was this that helped him believe more in socialism than ever before.

He generally took a very dim view of people who supported the USSR, not only because of the internal politics and repression of that state but because, as it had eventually aided the nationalist (ie Franco-backed) forces in the Spanish civil war - mainly for tactical reasons, as I understand it - it had also helped to crush the kind of society he'd been hoping would endure from the above events.  Indeed, the after-effects of the Spanish civil war, when several were imprisoned or killed for nothing worse than having fought on the wrong side was probably one of the inspirations, along with the Soviet and Nazi systems generally, for the repression and cruelty he writes about in the later chapters of Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Indeed, it's now known that Orwell and his wife Eileen - who had joined him in Spain - were both included on a Soviet wanted list as troublemakers, dissidents or Trotskyists, and had Soviet, or Soviet-backed, forces managed to capture them before they escaped, there's a distinct possibility that both could have ended up executed.

So Orwell had no time at all for the idea that the Soviet Union was a progressive cause, or anything to do with the kind of socialism he wanted, and he was usually inclined to take a very hard line with anyone he believed was defending it, or at least defending those elements of it which he disapproved of.

Orwell protested when American Redbaiters tried to use the book as part of their propaganda. He was aware that corporate America could have totalitarian aspects.

Yes, Isaac Deutscher, in his '1984 - The Mysticism of Cruelty' essay, records the words of a newsvendor in New York, given as a recommendation when offering him the novel - "Have you read this book?  You must read it, sir.  Then you will know why we must drop the atom bomb on the Bolshies!"  This was the kind of thing that Orwell was trying to address in his statement about the book quoted earlier.

Deutscher also makes the interesting observation that some of the things criticised in the book are clearly references to things that existed specifically in Britain at the time rather than having any obvious analogue with the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.  The "rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex" - Deutscher points out that the Stalinist press had rather different faults.  Julia, for that matter, is employed, if I recall correctly, in writing mass-produced cheap pornography for the proles, these being treated as just another commodity, like "jam or bootlaces".  So some of the satire is also aimed closer to home.

NoSleep

Orwell had seen how the propaganda machine worked whilst working in the BBC during WWII.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: MoonDust on February 12, 2018, 07:12:47 AM

I think you misunderstand Goldstein's quote. The preceding pages on that extract explain how the world's superpowers all have the same ideology and system of government. So the statement that the wars are irrespective of ideology is simply saying 1) ideological distinctions don't exist and 2) as is explained in the very quote you provide, there is actually no material basis for a war in the first place, since no one can defeat each other, and no one is ideologically opposed.

Ideological distinctions don't exist in societies based on the class system? Doesn't sound very Marxist to me. But I don't see why your explanation of it differs with mine. He says that there are now no ideological distinctions between the "first world" and the "second world". You don't think it's notable that the faction that eventually becomes Oceania is called Ingsoc? Ingsoc is short for English Socialism. A nation state plus socialism. A clear reference to national socialism.

Also worth noting as an aside that O'Brien claims to be the real author of Goldstein's book.

Quote from: Alternative Carpark on February 12, 2018, 12:10:09 PMSo some of the satire is also aimed closer to home.

Yes, which is something Orwell hints at by making the UK part of a bloc with the US. It's notable that the Soviet Union hasn't taken over the UK in the book, but is in fact still de facto at war with the USA.

Quote from: NoSleep on February 12, 2018, 12:24:19 PM
Orwell had seen how the propaganda machine worked whilst working in the BBC during WWII.

And he knew all about informing the state on people with the wrong political ideology, as he did it himself.

Dr Rock

Room 101 is his biggest misfire I reckon. People's greatest fears are too broad and weird that you could have a room that could confront almost anyone with them. What if you're scared of heights? Plane crashes? Sharks? Agoraphobic? 

marquis_de_sad

Maybe nothing in Room 101 is real, aaaaahhh

I've not read the Times Literary Supplement review of Nineteen-Eighty Four from when it was published in 1949, but it must have made some reference to the reviewer's reservations about Room 101, because Orwell wrote shortly afterwards to Julian Symons, who'd written the review, and said:

QuoteI must thank you for such a brilliant as well as generous review.  I don't think you could have brought out the sense of the book better in so short a space.  You are of course right abt the vulgarity of the 'Room 101' business.  I was aware of this while writing it, but I didn't know another way of getting somewhere near the effect I wanted.

MoonDust

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on February 12, 2018, 12:40:35 PM
Ideological distinctions don't exist in societies based on the class system? 

Huh? When did I ever say or imply that? I'm going off what was written in Goldstein's book, which is fictional by the way, not a real political text. I'm obviously talking about the fictional world in 1984, not our world, in that text of mine you quoted...

As to other users saying Orwell being pro workers state but critical of the USSR. I agree and that's what I was getting at. By Stalinist state I meant the USSR. More specifically the USSR after Lenin's death and Stalin's political coup. Apologies for confusion. I distinguish Stalinism and the USSR because I see them as two separate things. The USSR existed before Stalin took power and would have existed under that same name if he didn't. Hence why I specifically say Stalinism. Though of course Orwell himself might have considered the two terms interchangeable. But that's just a minor point. The point is as what's been agreed. 1984 wasn't critical of the workers state, it was critical of such a state when political control is in the hands of a privileged few.

gib

Quote from: MoonDust on February 12, 2018, 07:12:47 AM
So actually, with respect, I think you're wrong that Orwell was saying communism and fascism have the same end point. If you look at Orwell's literary and political history I would be very very surprised if he thought this. He was a hardline socialist, with spatterings of a Marxist. He wasn't merely a social democrat. He fully supported the notion of workers taking control of things, which at least in broad definition, is communism.

I was once told that Orwell was a member of the British Communist Party all his life. Any idea if that's true?

Wet Blanket

Quote from: Alternative Carpark on February 12, 2018, 12:58:54 PM
I've not read the Times Literary Supplement review of Nineteen-Eighty Four from when it was published in 1949, but it must have made some reference to the reviewer's reservations about Room 101, because Orwell wrote shortly afterwards to Julian Symons, who'd written the review, and said:


I subscribe to the TLS which gets me access to the archive, let me have a skeg...

QuoteThe sobriety and subtlety of Orwell's argument, however, is marred by a schoolboyish sensationalism of approach... the most serious of these errors in taste is the nature of the torture which breaks the last fragments of Winston's resistance.... this kind of crudity will never do: however great the pains expended on it, the idea of Room 101 and the rats will always remain comic rather than horrific

MoonDust

I would also disagree that IngSoc is a reference to national socialism. Again, because the society of IngSoc clearly resembles that of Soviet Russia under Stalin. Right down to the physical description of Big Brother. He sounds like Stalin. (Incidentally the description of Goldstein sounds like Trotsky).

National socialism is essentially Nazism. The world of 1984 sounds more totalitarian in the communistic sense, not fascist sense.

Actually, I think English socialism is more an allegory for the "socialism in one country" theory espoused by Stalin. I.e. the idea that there is an inherent Russian socialism, and a socialism which completely abandons internationalism in favour of keeping socialism within your own borders. Although there are nationalist traits to this, it is NOT national socialism. National socialism has more to do with ultranationalism and fascism and little if anything at all to do with actual socialism.

MoonDust

Quote from: gib on February 12, 2018, 01:16:20 PM
I was once told that Orwell was a member of the British Communist Party all his life. Any idea if that's true?

He might have been at one point, I'm not sure. But if he was I doubt it was all his life because I'm pretty sure he wrote about supporting the Labour party and I think even the Independent Labour party.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: MoonDust on February 12, 2018, 01:10:09 PM
Huh? When did I ever say or imply that? I'm going off what was written in Goldstein's book, which is fictional by the way, not a real political text. I'm obviously talking about the fictional world in 1984, not our world, in that text of mine you quoted...

If I didn't know it was a fictional text, why would I mention that the character O'Brien claims to have written it? Did you stop reading my post after the first two sentences?

The stuff about ideological differences was to hint that your conception of Nineteen-Eighty Four as simply expressing the Trotskyist line on the Soviet Union might not be sound.




Just as I was about to post I see you've replied to the substance of my previous post. Your theory that Britain in Nineteen-Eighty Four only resembles Soviet Russia conveniently ignores all the times it resembles wartime Britain, which has already been mentioned. A novel can be about more than one thing.

I think it's a mistake to read Nineteen-Eighty Four as a serious allegory of real history or of the future. It's a post-apocalypic dystopian science-fiction novel, and like most novels of that type, is sprinkled with unsystematic socio-political observations of the author. Orwell was influenced by Trotsky's critique of the Soviet Union, but Nineteen-Eighty Four is about a lot more than that, and his comment on Room 101 shows that he was more interested in emotional impact than realism.

NoSleep

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on February 12, 2018, 12:40:35 PM
And he knew all about informing the state on people with the wrong political ideology, as he did it himself.

Did he catch them drinking lager?

MoonDust

Of course it can be about more than one thing. I was picking up on that one point of yours saying IngSoc is a reference to national socialism. Which it isn't.

You appear to agree the politics of Oceana is similar to that of the USSR, so I assume you have just misunderstood what the real life ideology of national socialism is, which was the ideology of the Nazi party. It wasn't an ideology of socialism in one country, which I can understand how one might think that with English socialism = ingsoc.

But just because it's got a nation's name appendaged to it it doesn't mean it's allegorous to national socialism there.

You're right, obviously there are many themes in 1984 and it is more than anything a fictional novel set in a fictional future. But I would still say there are still themes in it which are allegorous to Orwell's contemporary political world, the main ones being big brother is clearly a reference to Stalin, and Goldstein is clearly a reference to Trotsky. I would also add the constant changing of history is clearly a reference to Stalin too, as even in his day, opponents of the USSR were well aware that Stalin doctored images and documents to erase people and events which didn't fit with his current policy. For example when he purged party members he would order all photos of himself pictured with said party member be doctored. This sort of stuff is clearly happening in the Ministry of Truth, and if it weren't for Stalin doing that I doubt Orwell would have invented it because no other government in history had gone to such lengths before. A lot of 1984 is based on actual events, at least politically. But of course these aren't the main points of the novel, they're merely the backdrop in the more personal story of Winston.

MoonDust

By based on, I actually mean inspired by. Sorry. I'm on my phone and it's awkward to edit.

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: MoonDust on February 12, 2018, 01:46:35 PM
Of course it can be about more than one thing. I was picking up on that one point of yours saying IngSoc is a reference to national socialism. Which it isn't.

Oh, it isn't? Not, "I disagree," it just isn't. My interpretation doesn't fit with Trotskyism, so it just isn't.

Orwell often used the word 'totalitarianism' to refer to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as a single tendency. Why shouldn't we see this perspective in his fiction?

Quote from: As I PleaseThe fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.  Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world.  Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom—that is the idea, more or less.

This could be a pitch for Nineteen-Eighty Four.

MoonDust

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on February 12, 2018, 02:07:40 PM
Oh, it isn't? Not, "I disagree," it just isn't. My interpretation doesn't fit with Trotskyism, so it just isn't.


Mate, seriously, what you on about? Just because I mention Goldstein is an allegory of Trotsky that doesn't meant that literally everything I say about 1984 is a Trotskyist opinion. Ingsoc literally is not a reference to Nazism. Like at all. That isn't a Trotskyist opinion, or an opinion of any "ism". It really is as simple as "it isn't". It has long been agreed that Oceana is a parody of Soviet Russia, not Nazi Germany.

At the risk of sounding patronising I'm beginning to think a) you have completely misunderstood 1984 or b) you are genuinely confused about what national socialism means.

National socialism is the same thing as Nazism.

1984 is not about or a warning about Nazism.

It's really that simple.

And just so we're clear, this is not Trotskyist opinion. Though why you'd think it is is beyond me. I happen to be a Trot, yes, but that doesn't mean everything I disagree with is inherently because of my Trotskyism.

If I disagree with a creationist about how the earth was formed that's not me being a Trotskyist is It?

marquis_de_sad

Quote from: MoonDust on February 12, 2018, 02:18:50 PM
If I disagree with a creationist about how the earth was formed that's not me being a Trotskyist is It?

Reminder that we're talking about a novel, not science.

I've given a number of examples where Orwell complicates the idea that Oceania is the Soviet Union. That's complicates. I'm arguing he does so to make the novel more troubling to the reader. I'm arguing that it's not an accident that Russia is not part of Oceania and that the ideology of the bloc that Russia is part of is called "Neo-Bolshevism". And that the name "English Socialism" would have connotations of "national socialism' to the reader.

My position — and I'm hardly the first to take it — is that Orwell wants to suggest that the world of Nineteen-Eighty Four is first and foremost a totalitarian society, that despite the overt references to the Soviet Union the same thing could happen in Germany or Britain or the United States. And it could come from communism or fascism. You don't have to agree with Orwell on this, nor with my interpretation of his novel, but there's no right answer. You're making use of your understanding of Nazism, but why do you think Orwell necessarily shares it? This is why I mention your Trotskyism, because you seem to think the official Trot line on Nazism is not only the last word on the matter, but is an interpretation that everyone (including Orwell) agrees with.

If it helps, I don't personally agree with the horseshoe theory of politics and I reject the concept of totalitarianism. But I didn't write Nineteen-Eighty Four.

MoonDust

I realise that's why Orwell set it in Britain and not Russia. He was highlighting that such totalitarianism can happen anywhere.

I am however still confused about your fixation on my Trotskyism. Saying national socialism is Nazism and not a branch of socialism is NOT a Trotskyist position. It's a well established fact. Ask any scholar of Nazi Germany or political history, no matter their personal politics, what national socialism was and they will all say it was the official ideology named and adopted by the Nazi party.

That's literally all I'm saying with regards to what national socialism is.

No where yet have I typed a Trotskyist interpretation of Nazism. I've merely pointed out the simple fact that national socialism and Nazism are one and the same thing.

Stop saying that that's a strictly Trotskyist viewpoint, because it isn't!

I think Ingsoc is basically Orwell's fear at the prospect of something calling itself socialist being perverted by those with a totalitarian agenda, something he alludes to in the bit quoted earlier when he expresses his belief that "totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere".  So whether we think of this as National Socialism ie Nazism, or Communism on the Stalinist model, or a mixture of the two, it still amounts to something that calls itself socialist but is actually so only in name, at least as far as he's concerned, which is probably the main point.  It's not necessarily a case of saying that Nazism and Communism are identical in the ideological sense - one springs from nationalism as an inspiration, the other, as a theory at least, is motivated by ambitions of abolishing class divisions - but of demonstrating that the societies that had proclaimed themselves as being those - in the case of the examples we're talking about here, Nazi Germany and the USSR - had been similarly oppressive, centralised, harsh, unjust, authoritarian, intolerant of dissent, ruled by fear, and sadistic, in practice.

O'Brien does mention "the German Nazis and the Russian Communists" as predecessors of their regime, at least in terms of precedents for dealing with dissidents, when torturing or 're-educating' Winston, so it's quite possible that Orwell also had Nazism in mind as an inspiration for some aspects of the society he was writing about.  Really, any society which imprisoned or tortured dissidents, and tried to insist that only its version of events was the truth, and tried to set limits as to what you were allowed to think or say politically, could provide some inspiration in theory.