Political Stability of the 1984verse

[Samuel]

I doubt the Inner Party will have a lack of members. I believe O'Brien even mentions that the Inner Party has no problem recruiting members from the Proles if they had the proper exam results (there was some exam or series of exams that all citizens took at the age of 16, regardless of class), so the Inner Party seems to be looking to bolster its ranks from anyone with a proper mindset, and with ALL of its populace to draw on, they will have plenty of human resources.

No, they simply kill ambitious and smart proles- they don't take them into the structure.

Or they just say that while taking them to a completley different part of Oceania to be trained and added to the Inner Party.

The party is local- it gets its recruits from the area it operates in to avoid feelings of being controlled by outsiders.

[open_sketchbook]

I always figured the Inner Party tests at sixteen were meant to find the psychopaths, instead of or in addition to the bright or ambitious. Having upper echelons comprised of people who have enlightened self-interest to the total detriment of empathy would seem to be the only way for doublethink to work in with the actual decision-makers.

[Patrick Degan]

It is interesting to consider the possibility, alluded to in this thread by a couple of posters and supported somewhat by the text of Goldstein's book, that Oceania may just be a sealed-off totalitarian Britain and that the war isn't real. After all, the Party has total control of all information and nobody is ever allowed, as far as we know, to leave the country. We never meet actual veterans of the war, or any soldiers rotated back on leave from the front lines, and a "hero of the Malabar Front" is simply created out of wholecloth to replace a declared unperson. We hear that there's a lot of tea lately because Oceania supposedly conquered India, but there's no evidence to back this other than Julia's supposition. It is more than reasonable to suppose that all there is of Oceania is "Airstrip One" (Britain) and that a good chunk of the world is devastated and global civilisation is actually gone, or Britain is being blockaded and is therefore cut off from the rest of the world. The war could be entirely a manufacture of state propaganda to keep the masses used to privation, feed them an alleged external threat which only the Party can protect them from, and fulfills the need to experience triumph and confirms the omnipotence of Oceania. As Goldstein's book suggests, it would be no different than if an actual global war was taking place, either hot or cold. The Party has the army toss the occasional rocket-bomb toward the cities, doubtless the launch crews being told it's a test within a missile range, and it's an occasional enemy attack with a 'steamer to make the reality of the war, always "in measurable distance of its end", convincing. Along with the executions of prisoners, who could be proles or thought-criminals beaten or drugged and dressed in foreign uniforms. For all we know, the masses are simply shown the same execution films at the Two Minutes Hate rallies every week and only the occasional live execution is actually staged for a crowd. The effect on a totally controlled populace would be the same, and therefore again, War is Peace and Ignorance is Strength. Oceania is the World.

[Shroom Man 777]

I can't wait to see how 1984 compares to the closest real-life analogue we have to it, namely North Korea. When it's regime collapses sometime in the near future and we can finally hear the stories of the Proles of Pyongyang, listen to interviews of actual authority figures, and finally find out how their mechanism of oppression actually works and how 'Orwellian' (buzzwords lol) it is. It would be an awesome case study.

[Swindle1984]

Regimes can survive through even the worst resource shortages. Look at North Korea. Who knows what is going on in that mad state, where information is tightly controlled and the populace's knowledge of the outer world is dubious at best, where they are probably fed propaganda to make them believe that they are in a perpetual war against other world powers, etcetera etcetera.

For all we know, "Oceania" could just be a totalitarian Britain that's in a similar situation as North Korea is today, with neighboring countries (like France or something) blockading it with a de-militarized zone and having a perpetual state of cold war with it, like how the Koreas are basically just having a half-century long ceasefire, and stuff.

Really, the fact that the Party controls the reality experienced by the oppressed masses means that no one can be sure of anything, and that the only certainty there is in their world is the Party. They win.

When Kim Jong Il screams, there are storms!

I've always thought of North Korea as the closest real life has ever come to imitating 1984.

[Vultur]

Things that could kill them off:
-Resource shortage leading to a collapse of civilization, mass deaths, and loss of communication.

-Random events. If they last long enough (and it's supposedly intended to last forever), something natural will get them. Supervolcano. Asteroid. Ice age (if they're stepping down industry, the world might enter a natural cooling cycle without presence of man-made CO2).

-Rebellion. Supposedly Oceania controls the entire Americas. If this is true, I give them 50-100 years MAX. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY to survey/scan/etc. the entire expanses of open land in the Americas. Fairly large settlements could be completely missed in the western US or the Amazon Basin or parts of Canada or whatever. I'm honestly not sure how they could prevent rebel settlements being formed -- there's just no way to do surveillance on all that land, nor would they have the manpower or technology (like spy satellites). If they really hold the Americas, this WILL kill their system -- I doubt such a inward-turned society, trained only in fake war, could survive determined, real guerrilla attacks even from a vastly inferior force in numbers and technology. Burn the cities, and the Party will die.

-Coup. Some very high up Inner Party guy develops doubts, then rebellious attitudes, like Winston Smith did. He finds the nuclear launch codes (I'm pretty sure 1984verse has nukes, they're just not using them at the moment) and blows the hell out of every major city in Oceania.

[K. A. Pital]

North Korea's system has been well investigated in Lankov's work. It's basically a smaller version of Maoist China (thankfully not Pol Pot's Cambodia), but very poor and cut-off from the entire world.

A sort of Mao's "Mini-Me" which outlived the Greater Brother.

[Bilbo]

It is interesting to consider the possibility, alluded to in this thread by a couple of posters and supported somewhat by the text of Goldstein's book, that Oceania may just be a sealed-off totalitarian Britain and that the war isn't real. After all, the Party has total control of all information and nobody is ever allowed, as far as we know, to leave the country. We never meet actual veterans of the war, or any soldiers rotated back on leave from the front lines, and a "hero of the Malabar Front" is simply created out of wholecloth to replace a declared unperson. We hear that there's a lot of tea lately because Oceania supposedly conquered India, but there's no evidence to back this other than Julia's supposition. It is more than reasonable to suppose that all there is of Oceania is "Airstrip One" (Britain) and that a good chunk of the world is devastated and global civilisation is actually gone, or Britain is being blockaded and is therefore cut off from the rest of the world. The war could be entirely a manufacture of state propaganda to keep the masses used to privation, feed them an alleged external threat which only the Party can protect them from, and fulfills the need to experience triumph and confirms the omnipotence of Oceania. As Goldstein's book suggests, it would be no different than if an actual global war was taking place, either hot or cold. The Party has the army toss the occasional rocket-bomb toward the cities, doubtless the launch crews being told it's a test within a missile range, and it's an occasional enemy attack with a 'steamer to make the reality of the war, always "in measurable distance of its end", convincing. Along with the executions of prisoners, who could be proles or thought-criminals beaten or drugged and dressed in foreign uniforms. For all we know, the masses are simply shown the same execution films at the Two Minutes Hate rallies every week and only the occasional live execution is actually staged for a crowd. The effect on a totally controlled populace would be the same, and therefore again, War is Peace and Ignorance is Strength. Oceania is the World.

Sounds like the world of "V is for Vendetta".

[Bounty]

Concerning natural resources: I don't think 1984-verse actually uses up much of them. The population of Oceania is ~300 million (6 million Inner Party members are 2% of the total), so unless the two other factions, assuming they exist, have significantly larger numbers that's less than a billion people worldwide living on tight rations. There is industrial production; wasting its output is what collective oligarchy is all about. But considering the state of the cities, and the fact that the supposed "war effort" can be kept at an extremely low level, that production can't be much more than the bare minimum needed to keep society running. If 1984-verse is going to fall, I suspect it'll fall before resources run out.

All the talk about "revolutions" seems highly suspect to me. Oceania isn't stable because the people don't have the means to rebel, it's stable because rebellion hardly even occurs to them. The proles have the manpower, but they don't have access to information or communication except for the propaganda fed to them by the Party. Individual proles remember life before the wars, but they don't seem to see the contrast with their present-day situation; they don't have an impetus to rise up. The only ones who have the leisure time and the perspective to start a revolution is the Outer Party and even the ones there that aren't successfully brainwashed are still under round-the-clock (or at least potential round-the-clock) surveillance. The Inner Party certainly doesn't have much reason to upset the status quo; even a successful revolution will leave them with a world that is pretty much broken beyond repair with an apathetic population and no genuine basis for political reform.

There's just no way to bring together the numbers, the vision and the momentum needed to do a successful coup. And even if you do, and if the description of the world in Goldstein's book is correct, the other two Inner Parties won't be happy about the status quo getting upset.

[Bilbo]

Concerning natural resources: I don't think 1984-verse actually uses up much of them. The population of Oceania is ~300 million (6 million Inner Party members are 2% of the total), so unless the two other factions, assuming they exist, have significantly larger numbers that's less than a billion people worldwide living on tight rations. There is industrial production; wasting its output is what collective oligarchy is all about. But considering the state of the cities, and the fact that the supposed "war effort" can be kept at an extremely low level, that production can't be much more than the bare minimum needed to keep society running. If 1984-verse is going to fall, I suspect it'll fall before resources run out.

All the talk about "revolutions" seems highly suspect to me. Oceania isn't stable because the people don't have the means to rebel, it's stable because rebellion hardly even occurs to them. The proles have the manpower, but they don't have access to information or communication except for the propaganda fed to them by the Party. Individual proles remember life before the wars, but they don't seem to see the contrast with their present-day situation; they don't have an impetus to rise up. The only ones who have the leisure time and the perspective to start a revolution is the Outer Party and even the ones there that aren't successfully brainwashed are still under round-the-clock (or at least potential round-the-clock) surveillance. The Inner Party certainly doesn't have much reason to upset the status quo; even a successful revolution will leave them with a world that is pretty much broken beyond repair with an apathetic population and no genuine basis for political reform.

There's just no way to bring together the numbers, the vision and the momentum needed to do a successful coup. And even if you do, and if the description of the world in Goldstein's book is correct, the other two Inner Parties won't be happy about the status quo getting upset.

Assuming that the world is as described with the three super powers and all then the greatest chance of change would be from a movement that begins in the independent zone. These are the areas outside the control of the big 3 and they do amount to a very sizable portion of the population.

My guess is that the three way "war" is more about wasting resources AND beating down the independents to make sure nothing else rises up to challenge the big 3.

As for population I would expect East Asas an Eurasia to both have larger pops than Oceania, but that is just my gut feeling. I would imagine that even when counting the independents the planets population is still around 2 billion.

[Solauren]

Did if ever occur to any of your that the war, shortages, etc, was all, ALL a massive lie?

Consider this; We specifically see the hero altering all information to reflect a change in agricultural yield.

That could be used to high bountiful harvests, which are then stored.

That could be the entire point of the altering, besides making Big Brother look omniposcient. It's so that there is a 'resource scare', the party just opens up reserves, and the masses don't notice.

They only have to keep that up for 2 - 3 generations, and at that point, the population is so brainwashed and conditioned, no one would even think of rebelling.

Case in point, remember the kids turning someone in for having the wrong shoes?

[Bounty]

Did if ever occur to any of your that the war, shortages, etc, was all, ALL a massive lie?

Apart from pretty much everyone in this thread? No, apart from those I don't think anyone considered that a novel about the malleability of truth could possibly present a biased picture of the world.

The closest there is to a verification of Goldstein's book - verification that there may be an actual "war", in whatever form, and actual if artificial shortages - is O'Brien admitting it is factually correct. An agent of the Party, yes, a man who has lied before and perfected the art of holding two contradictory thoughts and treating them both as absolute truth, yes. But working from Goldstein's description at least gives us something concrete to speculate on which has the benefit of fitting the world as described by Smith. For all we know it's just London and a path of countryside that's under IngSoc control, but that wouldn't be a very interesting thread, now would it?

[Guardsman Bass]

How much do they actually monitor the proles? I thought that they pretty much ignored them as long as they continued working.

[Norseman]

How much do they actually monitor the proles? I thought that they pretty much ignored them as long as they continued working.

Pretty much, all they do is keep an eye out for proles that could cause trouble, and then make them quietly drop off the face of the earth.

[Pulp Hero]

Proles don't live with the telescreens. The most they have to worry about are secret police among them to root out uprisers.

But whole point, is to make it seem to someone in Oceania that the secret police are EVERYWHERE, when in fact there are likely very few of them. Just stage some dramatic false arrests along with the occasional real one, and everyone thinks your god. Especially when the proles are all uneducated and drunk.

[Jalinth72]

It is interesting to consider the possibility, alluded to in this thread by a couple of posters and supported somewhat by the text of Goldstein's book, that Oceania may just be a sealed-off totalitarian Britain and that the war isn't real. After all, the Party has total control of all information and nobody is ever allowed, as far as we know, to leave the country.

Unless the rest of the world is a bunch of identical dictatorships, they couldn't afford to have the proles as politically ignorant and unsupervised as they are. It isn't that difficult to build a radio and it is difficult to sucessfully and continually jam all outside radio frequencies. North Korea would be the closest proxy and any reports we have from that country show that the party dominates the population top to bottom. In Goldstein's book, they mentioned that war was the main method of ensuring the ruling class faced reality. A 1984 style UK would be ripe for external invasion.

As far as how long it could endure, a very long time if they truly have a "triumvirate" of three fascist states in existence with 100% of the nukes and the non "core" world reduced to sweatshopdom. The most likely risk is one of the states failing internally for whatever reason (resource exhaustion, the Inner Party calcifying and no longer picking up the truly ambitious and talented, the Thought Police becoming infected by the general bureaucratic malise and missing out on the politicization of the proles, etc...) in which case the tripod becomes an unstable duopoly and I would expect the system would fall - either peaceful or via a nuclear exchange - within a couple of decades.

My main issue with 1984 is how they ensure even basic technical education is transferred generation to generation so that the basic video and audio monitoring system remains intact. Ultra political education tends to produce very rote type learning. In Smith's time, enough "Oldthinker" educated or influenced population should remain to keep things intact. But 30 years down the line, only post-Revolution will be left working and can they produce enough competent electricians, etc... to allow the Thought Police to work efficiently.

My other issue is how the hell can a society without computers successfully swap one set of history with another (the war switching between Eastasia and Eurasia) in a week with the facts tying together in a tenable fashion. Even if they had today's computers w/o the information overload, it would be very difficult to make work.

[Junghalli]

My other issue is how the hell can a society without computers successfully swap one set of history with another (the war switching between Eastasia and Eurasia) in a week with the facts tying together in a tenable fashion.

Why does it necessarily have to be tenable? The Party people are supposed to just not think like that (doublethink), and the Proles are probably told only the most basic "facts" and little else. Judging from the way they seriously tried to pass off all the propaganda about the previous war as enemy sabotage I doubt believability was really terribly high on their priority list. Why should it be - the very idea that the populace can dare question anything the Party tells them is totally anethema to their system.

Personally I'm rather interested in how the novel-writing machines are supposed to work.

[Pulp Hero]

Even if half the population thinks they are at war with Eastasia and half thinks they are at war with Eurasia, they are so desensitized the constant swapping back and forth no one cares, because in their minds the other two nations are just "those damn foreign countries with people not like us."

[Patrick Degan]

Unless the rest of the world is a bunch of identical dictatorships, they couldn't afford to have the proles as politically ignorant and unsupervised as they are. It isn't that difficult to build a radio and it is difficult to sucessfully and continually jam all outside radio frequencies. North Korea would be the closest proxy and any reports we have from that country show that the party dominates the population top to bottom. In Goldstein's book, they mentioned that war was the main method of ensuring the ruling class faced reality. A 1984 style UK would be ripe for external invasion.

Yes, but you forgot the rest of what is outlined in that chapter of The Theory And Practise Of Oligarchial Collectivism:

But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life -- the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace.

War, in 1984-world, has utterly ceased to be a mechanism to tie the rulers to reality. In fact, it's made clear that by becoming continuous, war has effectively eliminated reality and sanity from any operation of the Party's rule over society. This is why there is the distinct possibility that the war is, in fact, false and that Oceania is alone in the world —as much as the possibility exists that the world is indeed as described in Goldstein's book, with three superstates in a perpetual state of war with one another.

[Shroom Man 777]

Does Golstein's book actually condemn the Party? It just seemed as though it just explained the principles of the Party, and that those of the Inner Party might actually use the book as a kind of manual so that they'll know what they're doing.

The whole thing with Winston might be an experiment to confront a dissident layman with the truth and seeing if he could still be controlled, to test if the Party's reality control is as good as they think it is. Like... fool-proofing or something.

Like Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2! SOLID SNAKE SIMULATION! S3!

[Patrick Degan]

Does Golstein's book actually condemn the Party? It just seemed as though it just explained the principles of the Party, and that those of the Inner Party might actually use the book as a kind of manual so that they'll know what they're doing.

The whole thing with Winston might be an experiment to confront a dissident layman with the truth and seeing if he could still be controlled, to test if the Party's reality control is as good as they think it is. Like... fool-proofing or something.

No, Goldstein's book is a trap —the only persons ever likely to get a copy are potential thought-criminals (by definition).

[Sidewinder]

Their situation is infinitely better than North Korea, though. Oceania is much bigger and has more resources, more arable land, more industry, etc. If any of that stuff in the book can be believed, at least. So, if Norkland can last fifty years, then Oceania can probably last a century.

North Korea had a Big Brother to prop it up (the former Soviet Union), and has another Big Brother propping it up (China). Assuming Oceania even exists and the government of Airstrip One (the former UK) isn't just saying has a superpower's support so its (Airstrip One's) population will continue to support it, who's the Big Brother propping up Oceania? That superpower might fall one day, like the former Soviet Union; it might buy some time with market reforms, like China, which might or might not fall (the Chinese government itself knows time is running out, and is working on permanent solutions, with mixed results).

[Darth Smiley]

The most likely method for any sort of collapse is that education system becomes incapable of producing enough competent technicians, engineers, and other trained professionals that the Party can't maintain the technology level to maintain the effective Though Police or fight the war. Barring that...sooner or later someone is going to push the "Fuck, nuke'em all button" out of believing their own bullshit or some other reason, and that would send the whole things crumbling down. The question is whether or not the weapons they've developed and stockpiled at that point are enough to simply crumble the system or utterly eradicate humanity.

[Bounty]

The most likely method for any sort of collapse is that education system becomes incapable of producing enough competent technicians, engineers, and other trained professionals that the Party can't maintain the technology level to maintain the effective Though Police or fight the war.

I doubt that'll ever become a serious problem. The technology level of 1984-verse is barely above the 1950's, and it shouldn't be that hard to train a mass of technicians who can maintain it by rote and a smaller, better-monitored group of people capable of fully understanding the principles. As the book says, Minitruth at a minimum still has access to scientific research; you can't "eradicate the biological side of the orgasm" without people who understand biology.

sooner or later someone is going to push the "Fuck, nuke'em all button" out of believing their own bullshit or some other reason

One of the book's key points is that everybody already believes their own bullshit. The key to Ingsoc is not that people don't know the truth, it's that their concept of truth has been rebuilt from the ground up. Inner Party members realise the charade behind the "war" but they have been conditioned to entertain that notion, and make decisions based upon it, while at the same time believing utterly that the war is completely real.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's really hard to visualize the notion of doublethink on that scale, but we can actually see it in action in modern day global politics.

No, Goldstein's book is a trap —the only persons ever likely to get a copy are potential thought-criminals (by definition).

But it would be appropriate if the trap was also the truth, that they would show the truth to potential thought-criminals and then break them down in Room 101 and reduce them to doublethinking drones to show the true success of their methods.

I mean, it's the best way of making sure your techniques in brainwashing people are working in perfect order. You get some suspicious shmuck like Winston, put him in an elaborate charade where he thinks he's raging against the machine and you introduce him to The Truth in the form of Goldstein's book, which shows reality for what it is. And then you ruin Winston's shit, subject him to the horrors of Room 101 and have O'Brian give him a personal heart-to-heart talk. In the end, despite reading and learning the truth from Goldstein's book, Winston still ends up being a doublethinking drone.

It's the ultimate victory of IngSoc and it's, like, the best way of proving that doublethink works. Confronting the person with the truth and then breaking him down to the point where, despite knowing the truth, he still ultimately ends up accepting the Party's reality wholeheartedly and... loving Big Brother.

The Inner Party members probably know what's in Goldstein's book, the Inner Party members know that they're an oligarchic manipulative bunch of totalitarian bastards, but the doublethink allows them to buy into their own crap as well.