sleeper
Former LOD President
I just finished reading this book over the weekend. I'm kind of disappointed.
In the "about the author" section at the beginning, it states that George Orwell (or rather the man that wrote using George Orwell as a pen name) despised communism but was himself a socialist. I can kind of see that reading the book.
He paints a grim picture of what the world would be in a fictional future 1984, but fails to provide a logical and consistent picture of how it got that way. He said that technological advances, machines and whatnot, were beginning to make it possible to meet all of humanities needs and would allow them all to live at the same level, that class distinctions would become unnecessary despite differences in ability. Then the upper-class people devise some grand scheme in which perpetual war is used to bleed off surplus production and to keep people in check, for the specific purpose of retaining and expanding their power. Somehow this morphs into a world where everyone is watched all the time, and even thinking against the prevailing political leaders is not allowed.
Throughout the book he lambasts capitalism and espouses socialism. He does this while painting a grim picture of what life can potentially become if socialism is left to run it's course, yet he seems to be connecting it to capitalism. He makes mention of a revolution that shifted the nation ("oceania") from capitalism to "ingsoc." Ingsoc is supposedly short for "English socialism", and it clearly (in the book) led up to the totalitarian state portrayed in the book, yet the author still tries to portray totalitarianism as succeeding capitalism, without any period of socialism in between. He repeatedly refers to the ability for all men to be at the same level, with adequate production for all, and indicates that the reason this is not so (in the book) is the greed of the upper class. The totalitarian state portrayed in the book is said to come from the desire of the upper classes in capitalist times to retain power in the face of the technological ability to abolish classes in society.
This doesn't sit quite right, and in fact, history has proven his predictions wrong. We can see what became of socialism by looking at Cuba, China, and most of all, the USSR. Capitalim clearly begets freedom (ie: USA, while we're not necessarily "free" we are the closest to it in the world), while socialism in practice becomes communism, and everyone must be strictly controlled for the system to remain in place.
There were a few eerily accurate predictions in the book, but how everything connects as far as cause and effect goes is innacurate and misleading. Overall i think the book was far too simple. Simple in concept, simple in structure, and simple in plot.
In the "about the author" section at the beginning, it states that George Orwell (or rather the man that wrote using George Orwell as a pen name) despised communism but was himself a socialist. I can kind of see that reading the book.
He paints a grim picture of what the world would be in a fictional future 1984, but fails to provide a logical and consistent picture of how it got that way. He said that technological advances, machines and whatnot, were beginning to make it possible to meet all of humanities needs and would allow them all to live at the same level, that class distinctions would become unnecessary despite differences in ability. Then the upper-class people devise some grand scheme in which perpetual war is used to bleed off surplus production and to keep people in check, for the specific purpose of retaining and expanding their power. Somehow this morphs into a world where everyone is watched all the time, and even thinking against the prevailing political leaders is not allowed.
Throughout the book he lambasts capitalism and espouses socialism. He does this while painting a grim picture of what life can potentially become if socialism is left to run it's course, yet he seems to be connecting it to capitalism. He makes mention of a revolution that shifted the nation ("oceania") from capitalism to "ingsoc." Ingsoc is supposedly short for "English socialism", and it clearly (in the book) led up to the totalitarian state portrayed in the book, yet the author still tries to portray totalitarianism as succeeding capitalism, without any period of socialism in between. He repeatedly refers to the ability for all men to be at the same level, with adequate production for all, and indicates that the reason this is not so (in the book) is the greed of the upper class. The totalitarian state portrayed in the book is said to come from the desire of the upper classes in capitalist times to retain power in the face of the technological ability to abolish classes in society.
This doesn't sit quite right, and in fact, history has proven his predictions wrong. We can see what became of socialism by looking at Cuba, China, and most of all, the USSR. Capitalim clearly begets freedom (ie: USA, while we're not necessarily "free" we are the closest to it in the world), while socialism in practice becomes communism, and everyone must be strictly controlled for the system to remain in place.
There were a few eerily accurate predictions in the book, but how everything connects as far as cause and effect goes is innacurate and misleading. Overall i think the book was far too simple. Simple in concept, simple in structure, and simple in plot.
