Of course, if the project of replacing oldspeak with newspeak succeeds, to the point where nobody will speak anything else, then (goes Orwell’s theory) there will be no more dissidents, because everyone will find it impossible to express dissident thoughts. And then there will be nothing for the Ministry of Love to do. Which, all alone, might be enough to destroy the system. Because, as O’Brien explains it, the whole system is based on sadism. “How does one man prove his power over another?” “By making him suffer.” Take that away, and what fun is it to be an Inner Party member?!
Is it possible that Goldstein not only exists, but that he is, in fact, the top dog of the Inner Party?
Someone had to overthrow the system. Notice that the appendix refers to Newspeak in the past tense. I figured it was the proles; you cannot ignore 85% of the population.
No. It’s too collegial to have one. The symbolic Stalin (Big Brother) precludes any real one.
There is nothing in the text to suggest this, and nothing in the story that requires it.
Given that the revolution is still in living memory, it seems likely to me that Goldstein did in act exist, but has been dead for some time. He probably is a Trotsky analogue.
IIRC, during the Spanish civil war, Orwell joined a pro-communist organistation that was later denounced by the Russian communisists at “Trotskyist”. Orwell had direct experience of how Stalin operated, he was in real danger from the pro-Russian communists, despite the fact he went there to fight the fascists.
Personally, I figure sooner or later doublethink will fail, in the sense that some Inner Party member will look at, say, electrical engineering and since he can’t understand it, will declare it “crimethink”. If that member can form a sufficiently powerful faction (and the novel vaguely described factional fighting within the Party), electrical engineers will start to get vaporised in a manner somewhat akin to the “Doctors’ Plot” insanity near the end of Stalin’s rule. As a result, Oceania will lose the skill of electrical engineering, and with it the ability to maintain the telescreen network and other surveillance methods the Party uses to monitor and propagandize the population.
In fact, the increasing rate of decay is noted in the novel (“Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years”) and if Eastasia and Eurasia actually exist and have systems of government comparable to Oceania, it’ll be a game to see which state’s infrastructure collapses first.
But as Goldstein (or Big Brother, whoever wrote his manifesto) said, that’s exactly what you can do. The threat never comes from the proles, but from the outer party. Keep the proles happy and the outer party destitute and in check, and you have a stable society. Looking back at most revolutions, this very much holds true, in my opinion.
The Botherhood is a society dedicated to pulling into that parking space that you totally had staked out, practicing the drums at all hours of the night, going into the 12-items-or-less line with 20 items, always bumming smokes while never buying any of their own and burping the alphabet.
Actually, the book says: “Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again.”
This middle, however, does not automatically correspond to the Outer Party. It may consist of a mix of overly ambitious Inner Party members, energetic Outer Party members and politically-active Proles who collectively, if they could overthrow the ruling IP with the help of the masses, would take command and put the masses back in their place. The Middle is by definition that which seeks to depose and replace the High. Just because Orwell described three political strata (high, middle, low) and three social strata (IP, OP, Proles) doesn’t mean a strict correspondence, nor does he imply such at any time. The OP is merely described in the book as the IP’s “hands”, not its would-be successor.
For that matter, even with the IP are, I’m sure, people who have important job titles but no real power, that being restricted to a much smaller subset (the IIP, as it were) and the struggles over this power is what leads to factional fighting and vaporisations within the IP, notably that of “Comrade Withers, a prominent member of the Inner Party”, mentioned in chapter 4.
The stability, if it can be called that, stems from the IP’s policy of not letting a new Middle form. Ambitious IP members get promotions, intelligent proles get eliminated… but there’s no effort I’m aware of to pre-emptively eliminate the OP.
I remember wondering if the year were even really 1984.
In “this perfect day”, the reader eventually discovers the truth.
[spoiler] The “free world” exists, but is arguably worse than the world in which the characters live. Besides, all discreet clues to discover those free areas are deliberatly put in by the government in order to figure out who are the “dissidents” and/or get rid of them by letting them join those “free areas”, that are a kind of “safety valve” for society at large.
Ultimately, though, the main plot device is that in fact the most persistent and efficient of those dissidents are eventually coopted by the “rulers”, a device I saw being used in 3-4 other novels/short stories, generally with an “unhappy end” (That is, the main character joining the oppresors. Not the case in " This perfect day", though). [/spoiler]
This is a slight tangent but one of the reasons I am leery about the death of print is imagine how easy Winston Smith’s job would be if all of their historical news and data was online?
Excellent point.
The book is told wholly from Winston’s perspective, albeit in the third person.
We don’t know if Goldstein exists, or ever existed.
We don’t know if Eastasia or Eurasia exist.
We don’t know if the world is divided into three countries or thirty or divided at all.
We don’t know if Big Brother exists.
We don’t know if it’s really 1984 (Winston admits he’s only guessing anyway)
The only things we know for sure are the events that immediately transpire in the film as well as Winston’s rather poor memories of his childhood. So in fact there’s no right answer.
Which is, of course, very much the point, isn’t it?
Actually, the name is probably inspired by Eduard Bernstein, a protege of Marx and Engels and one of the original leaders of the nineteenth century socialist movement. He was the original “Revisionist”, for daring to point out that Marx’s predictions weren’t coming true and for proposing that working for reform within the existing system was an alternative to the Revolution.
But poor Winston Smith has been through soooo much. He deserves to have something to make his life a little easier.
It’s necessary to have intelligent functionaries to do the routine work of the bureacracy, but they’re the class most likely to foment rebellion. So the Outer Party is best described as a concentration camp for the middle class.
Well, that was Julia.
I thought my thread had died until i just reviewed my posts.
Thank You.
Quoth Quimby:
It’d make his job well nigh impossible. When your important information is in print, you can just burn down the Library of Alexandria, and it’s all gone down the memory hole. But let one picture leak onto the Web that you’d rather not let out, and it’s going to be passed on from one hard drive to another until the end of eternity.
As I saw it, elimination of the OP is precisely what is dangerous. Eliminate it and another group has to rise/descend to take its place…you always need a middle class, the middle managers, the petite bourgeoisie.
They are the ones who are dangerous to the powers that be, because they are clever enough to control the masses and turn them. By controlling every aspect of their lives, far more than need be the proles, they are kept in check.
So my take is that the existence of the outer party is vital to BB, because it acts as a threshold to stop an autonomous middle class from forming.