"1984" Thought Experiment: how would the dystopia end?

When will Oceania collapse? When the Inner Party and Thought Police discover that they can use their power to get their friend a cup of coffee and to get back at the jerk that stole their girlfriend back in high school.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
 
Yes, and we can play along, but O'Brien might be lying himself, which is the point of the book. There's no such thing as truth in such a world.

There is no truth outside what the Party says is the truth, is the point.

And O'Brien had no reason to lie at that point. He said that the book was written by a committee of Inner Party members of which he was a member and that it is an accurate description of the world (although he says the revolutionary programme outlined in it is nonsense). This means that the Inner Party really is supremely cynical - all they care about is power, there is no ideology they follow, they just want to rule in all perpetuity and will use whatever means necessary to ensure that they do. This is both their strength and their weakness., because in my opinion this means they have little to keep them united (no ideology, no religion, no sense of clan/family loyalty, etc.). The Book mentions that "weaklings" are purged from the Inner Party (I guess they mean people who realize this whole system is completely mental) and occasionally reinforced with promoted ambitious members of the Outer Party.

I do think that the Book is pretty accurate and it was made so in order to look and feel authentic to the prospective rebels. After all, all of them eventually get re-educated or vaporized, so there is no need to invent some other fiction, which the suspicious subversives might discover. The goal of the Inner Party here is to keep the notion that there is an Underground revolutionary movement alive, because it attracts all the people they want to get rid of as light-bulb attracts flies. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, only the light is a trap.

Yet the Thought Police primarily polices the lower party members. The point is that the Proles are not assumed to be a threat to begin with.

Well, given the status of the Proles as the almost uneducated underclass, coupled with the previously mentioned problem of communications blackout, I don't think a bottom-up revolution would have much of a chance.

Who knows, perhaps Prole riots (sounds awfully like drone riots from SMAC...) do occur in various parts of Oceania from time to time, when supplies of Victory gin are held up on the way or the starvation gets really tough, but I would say the Party would simply storm in, suppress it, vaporize the ringleaders and their families, and go on.

This is actually practised in North Korea - suspected anti-regime agitators are often deported with their whole families, sometimes even the inhabitants of their house or street. It's a brute force approach, but it works.

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This leads me to believe, that aside from systemic threats (such as resource scarcity or perhaps some sort of total economic breakdown due to absolute infrastructure collapse resulting from neglect), there might be a possibility of a top-down revolution.

The Inner Party wanted to "end history" by making inequality perpetual. According to their view, there has always been the ruling class, which uses the middle class to rule the lower class. Regime changes happen when the middle class enlists the lower class to overthrow and supplant the upper class.

That's why the Outer Party is so heavily policed; the inner party sees it as the main threat to its perpetual rule. What I think is more likely is that the Inner Party develops factions, one of which eventually attempts to enlist the support of the Outer Party members and the Prole masses to defeat the other factions. This would be especially dangerous if the rebelling faction actually had the support of the Thought Police leaders and the military (whatever that is).

After all, the Prague Spring was basically a result of factional dispute in the Communist party, where the reformist faction enlisted public support to win power. Then it got sort of out of hand when the public misunderstood the level of liberalization that was originally planned for them...

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When will Oceania collapse? When the Inner Party and Thought Police discover that they can use their power to get their friend a cup of coffee and to get back at the jerk that stole their girlfriend back in high school.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Yes. Orwell relies on the assumption that the Inner Party remains always absolutely dedicated to their project and that factional struggle within the Inner Party never threatens the whole Party organization. That's... debatable, given the human nature.

On the other hand, I think there has been some staged trials with the original Inner Party member (Winston remembers that), who were then executed (an Oceanian parallel to Stalinist purges or the trials with "traitors" of Communism which were staged in various Eastern Bloc countries throughout the 1950s).
 
There was factional struggle inside the Soviet elite even in Stalin's later years, though. Of course, it still presented a show of unity to the outside world.
 
There was factional struggle inside the Soviet elite even in Stalin's later years, though. Of course, it still presented a show of unity to the outside world.

The most dangerous guys is the one who controls the secret police. Which is why every prudent totalitarian regime has several secret police services all constantly watching each other for signs of counter-revolutionary activity :lol:
 
The most dangerous guys is the one who controls the secret police. Which is why every prudent totalitarian regime has several secret police services all constantly watching each other for signs of counter-revolutionary activity :lol:

Yet it hardly is watertight. Any regime, democratic or dictatorial has to rely on a certain set of supporters who will only support leaders if they are rewarded by their leaders.

Considering the horrible state of the Oceanic economy, chances may be that the Upper hierarchy will be depleted of all the stuff they need to buy their minions' loyalty (including the upper party itself), and that renegade upper party members will enlist the support of lower party members and proles by giving them more freedoms upon their victory, in exchange for their power.
 
I do think that the Book is pretty accurate and it was made so in order to look and feel authentic to the prospective rebels. After all, all of them eventually get re-educated or vaporized, so there is no need to invent some other fiction, which the suspicious subversives might discover. The goal of the Inner Party here is to keep the notion that there is an Underground revolutionary movement alive, because it attracts all the people they want to get rid of as light-bulb attracts flies. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, only the light is a trap.

I agree here, the book was made as real and clear properly to attract and highlight the potential rebels, so that they could be more easily eliminated.
They also need an underground internal enemy to be able to justify the tight control on information and the occasional vaporization.
That's why they do not eliminate the rebels straight away but first re-educate them and keep alive for a while.
It's all propaganda aiming to:
- demonstrate that there is a cruel internal enemy which threaten the life of all people (notice that accusations includes the spread of syphilis) not only the state
- show that rebels are misguided or crazy people and they always repudiate their ideas against the party
- demonstrate that the party, ultimately, will always win


The system is well built to avoid any internal challenge and eliminate it before coming dangerous.

As you well argued revolution from the bottom is not likely as well as total military defeat (because of the 3-ways war which guarantee military equilibrium... at least to a good extent).


The most likely cause of collapse is entropy: production system will degrade, resources are finite, etc.

The state system to continuously spy the population and "change the past" is destined to absorb more and more people from productive activities as well as resources.

The infrastructure to control the population needs huge resources, continuous maintenance, and strong dedication from the controllers.

Who repairs those kind of two ways TV?
Without the right maintenance there will be more and more blind spots... whoever worked in large infrastructures knows that the maintenance cost for legacy systems grows continuously.
Having an education based on ideology will also reduce the pool of people capable of understanding how the system work, so there will be more and more part of the infrastructure left to decay and dysfunctional.

The more blind spots in the surveillance system, the more people will have private space to think more freely or engage in activities not sanctioned by the party.

The more they can get away without punishment, the more they will feel free; the same process will effect the controllers which will "let pass" many small acts which would have been previously sanctioned.

A continuous downward spiral in the ubiquitousness of the surveillance system and the inner party will loose their capacity to control the outer party... the beginning of the end for the regime.


Yes. Orwell relies on the assumption that the Inner Party remains always absolutely dedicated to their project and that factional struggle within the Inner Party never threatens the whole Party organization. That's... debatable, given the human nature.

Inner party members have more intellectual freedom than the outer party.
They know the reality and they like it: the only way to continue enjoying the perks of inner party is to make sure the party will remain in power.
There can be factions and personal ambition but my view is that all the outer party members have the same level: there is no struggle to get more privileges or more power, all have the same.
There isn't even a top position as leader for which people can fight for: the leader is a fictional figure!
There cannot be alterations to party policies that inner members can fight for: there is only one policy, the survival of the party.
It's all routine and, if they do their part, they get rewarded.

Naturally you could have a very hard core faction trying to really win the war, but probably the most fanatic would be eliminated earlier on.


Anyway all of this is based on the assumption that the leaders of the 3 superpowers do not have an explicit agreement.
If they had a specific agreement, then I could envision an evolution in direction of the world described in the novel "The penultimate truth" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penultimate_Truth)



There was factional struggle inside the Soviet elite even in Stalin's later years, though. Of course, it still presented a show of unity to the outside world.
Yes that's true.
However the internal factional struggle happened when it was getting clear that the top position was getting available, factions started the hidden struggle for succession to the top position.
In Oceania there isn't really a leader, Big Brother is not necessary a real figure.
 
…and you don't really know that, because only the lower echelons of the Party are met in the book.
 
…and you don't really know that, because only the lower echelons of the Party are met in the book.

You are right... We don't know about the reality of Big Brother.
There is a dialogue in minlove between Wilson and O'brien about it.
In synthesis it doesn't matter if he really exists, Big Brother is mostly an idea and exists in the mind of the people.
His biography, personality, and image are,shaped by the party and they are fictional at the time of the events in the book.even if a real person exists or existed behind it.

O'Brien describes Big Brother as a figure who will never die. When Smith asks if Big Brother exists, O'Brien describes him as "the embodiment of the Party" and that he will exist as long as the Party exists. When Winston follows up his question by asking "Does Big Brother exist the same way I do?", O'Brien replies "You do not exist."



Anyway the members of the inner party are not immune to corruption (as stated by Julia) and that can be a sign showing the potential for breaking down of the inner party capacity for unity
 
I think Big Brother is particularly interesting when for this topic, because he seems to represent an unaddressed shortcoming of the Party's system of ideological control. The need for even the most loyalty citizen to focus his adoration on a particular individual, even a distant and impersonal figure like Big Brother, suggests a less than total identification with the collective, with the Oceanic state in itself. The individual citizen must be alienated for the party to retain total control- organic community is a location of autonomy, thus revolt- but their unwillingness to present the mediator as an unadorned party-state suggests an inability to overcome a striving for some personal community, however loose and imagined, an unwillingness of the populace to sacrifice themselves entirely to the state. One could make the argument that the party is gradually depersonalising Big Brother to the point where he is indistinguishable from the state- he certainly doesn't represent any flesh-and-blood human any more- but it's not obvious that this is progressing, and may well have reached a point of stagnation. It's significant, I think, that the culmination of the book sees Winston declaring an absolute and unconditional love not for the Party or the Oceanic state, but for Big Brother, a personal loyalty not a result but a condition of political loyalty.

I doubt this contains seed of any breakdown in itself, but it certainly represents a tension, a crack in the bulwark, which seems to speak of a greater ideological instability that may be brought out in a moment of crisis. I think there are probably others- the racism and anti-Semitism of the party suggests a continuing reliance on ethnic identities even in a state which we are elsewhere told strive for utilitarian cosmopolitanism, while the mob-mentality provoked by the Two Minute Hates seems to represent a sort of collective concious distinct from the state, however in thrall to it- but that's certainly the most prominent. There are elements of the Party's cosmology which are not identical to the party itself, and those non-identities represent lines of fracture.
 
It is interesting.

Let's presume that there is indeed a world as described in the Book (or we will be confronted with unnumbered possibilities). Here are few thoughts:

1) Not much time has passed since creation of the superstates. The novel was written in 1949 and action takes place in 1984 which means 35 years. While Inner Party may think that it is possible or desirable to maintain this "eternal war" it hardly the case.

2) We are shown Big Brother who is a façade but we are not shown "frater" #2. Inner party is highly sociopathic community so there is no doubt there is power struggle and internale formal or informal leaders.

3) The superstates are post-global-nuclear-war entities. This may explain why only totalitarian ideologies have survived: to maintain civilization in post-nuclear war while a war still continues it may be necessary or the state will just explode. What was described as "perpetual war" may be just a necessary inertia to keep war economy running and a way to consume surplus of population.

4) Indeed it does not seem that Proles themselves are any big threat to the Inner Party. The Outer Party is heavily monitored. But there is a "hope". The black market was mentioned in the novel and it means there is organized crime in Oceania. And where is organized crime there are crime lords who are the only ones to play the game of power with Inner party more or less even.
 
Not much time has passed since creation of the superstates. The novel was written in 1949 and action takes place in 1984 which means 35 years. While Inner Party may think that it is possible or desirable to maintain this "eternal war" it hardly the case.

That may very well be a façade. For all we know, it may actually be actually be the year 3000, 8,231,239, 1969, 1992 or even 2014. We know nothing certain, since history in 1984 is being redacted over and over and over again. In some ways, George Orwell may have foreseen the philosophies of Derrida and Beaudrillard and the inherent dangers of buying to their thought: While I do not suggest a moral equivalency, both they and Oceania believe that the truth is not physical but literary and thus can be redacted over and over again.
 
That may very well be a façade. For all we know, it may actually be actually be the year 3000, 8,231,239, 1969, 1992 or even 2014.
I said I presume that the Book is generally valid. In other case there is nothing to discuss - the protagonist may just had a bad LSD trip after all and all of this is hallucination.

We also know that from his childhood Winston remembers the Atomic Wars fought in Europe, western Russia, and North America. He also remembers tube time (when it was possible to use it for shelter).

So the basic premise is still valid - Oceania is post-nuclear state emerged relatively recent.

Now, the importance of the history for survival of the Party is overstated. It is a tool to manipulate and sedate masses, but real challenges are coming from entities who are not really interested in it.
 
I said I presume that the Book is generally valid.

The problem is that it may very well compromise the meaning of the book if we take that for granted.
 
I've always been a fan of the isolated Airstrip One theory, but if we take the book inside the novel as valid then I think eventually when food drys up due to eternal war a revolution would occur.
 
That may very well be a façade. For all we know, it may actually be actually be the year 3000, 8,231,239, 1969, 1992 or even 2014. We know nothing certain, since history in 1984 is being redacted over and over and over again. In some ways, George Orwell may have foreseen the philosophies of Derrida and Beaudrillard and the inherent dangers of buying to their thought: While I do not suggest a moral equivalency, both they and Oceania believe that the truth is not physical but literary and thus can be redacted over and over again.

That is unlikely. There are hints that Winston remembers the world before Ingsoc (his flashbacks of childhood). This further corroborates that the events of "1984" indeed take place within roughly half-a-lifetime from WW2 and the subsequent nuclear conflict which precipitated the rise of the superstates. I'd guess that started sometime in the early 1950s, as it is mentioned that Eastasia is the newest superpower, which only fully formed later, sometime in the 1960s.

Therefore, as Snorrius said, the Inner Party is perhaps too arrogant in its belief that the system it has set up is eternal. It's just too early to say - Hitler pronounced his 1000-year reich way too soon as well. In our world, totalitarian countries seem to go through a certain progression, beginning with revolution (or coup), then its youthful, triumphalist era, and then the decay and internal rot begins to eat them away until they reform, collapse, or are destroyed by others.
 
The "perpetual war" model is really only workable if the army's know down to a really low level that they're not actually fighting a war, which requires them to be isolated from the general propaganda of society. It requires its armed forces to be willing to fight and die for IngSoc but not to win, and to knowingly fight and die under these terms.
 
The "perpetual war" model is really only workable if the army's know down to a really low level that they're not actually fighting a war, which requires them to be isolated from the general propaganda of society. It requires its armed forces to be willing to fight and die for IngSoc but not to win, and to knowingly fight and die under these terms.

Concerning this, what do we really know about the army in the 1984 setting? I remember there was some mass execution of Eurasian prisoners as part of the Hate Week, but Oceanian soldiers were never really shown in person.

That would support the idea that the soldiers are totally separated from the rest of the Oceanian society, like a separate caste. They probably never return home. I'd imagine they are something akin to mercenaries; their job is to fight somewhere in Africa or Asia, enjoy the few perks (you get to kill men, rape women and enslave their children) and then die one way or another. I'd assume they don't really care much what they're fighting for after a few years of it. If they can't handle the pressure, they're shot by political officers. I'd assume the whole army operates kind of like a Stalinist penal battalion, with Miniluv troops behind their backs ready to shoot anybody who doesn't carry out orders (or just think too much).
 
I dunno, the "Comrade Ogilvy" stuff suggests that at least part of the military is recruited from Airstrip One. Even if it isn't wholly representative, it's implied that it's least commonplace enough to be plausible.
 
For all we know, those prisoner executions can be an arranged thing like the Floral Wars in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
 
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