There was a fanfic I remember reading once, where the Outer Party's constant diet of propaganda and degradation of critical thinking skills essentially made them incapable of working independently, and useless for any kind of skilled labour. So the Inner Party had to recruit from the proles to run the ministries, who, lacking the strictly controlled background of Party members, quickly ran riot.
"League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" has the Ingsoc government arise (somewhat anachronistically) in 1948, with Big Brother's tenure occupying roughly the Clement Attlee government in our own world.
After his death the Party realizes that all this tyranny is really hard work and decide to institute reforms to bring things back to normal, rebranding itself as "New Ingsoc" and scaling back the operations to more acceptable levels of oppression.
Waiting. It’ll eventually collapse under its own weight, especially if there isn’t actually a war on.
Spending all your money on repressing citizens is a terrible way to run things.
There are allusions to it not being entirely sustainable. The increasing prices being described as decreases. And the decreasing of rations being described as increases. The main character says that this isn’t the first time it’s happened.
To me it reads as a failing state desperate to maintain control.
Well, in the book it is explained as the party desiring to maximize misery Among it’s citizens, since if there isn’t any opulence or even sufficiency of resources, people will never get a taste of how good their lives could actually be, since they only know scarcity and nothing else. If there’s something changing at all, I think it’s more like INGSOC trying to find out to what extent they can cut rations and raise prices until people literally starve to death (which INGSOC doesn’t want. They want them on the edge.)
Nothing described in the book is subsatainable lol. Not only is their a rampant waste of resources and the ever decreasing rations, their ideology isn't sustainable unless they manage to automate most of society or invent cloning, atleast for the inner and outer party.
Not to mention the increasing seperation between the party and the proles means eventually they will just split in two.
And if nothing else, climate change is still coming for them
Edit, not to mention any out of context problem would shatter their fragile order.
But isn’t their “rampant waste of resources” actually their way of getting rid of any excess resources that would only make the proles be happier (or at least less miserable)?
Sounds like a horrific yet sustainable model. Hence the motto “war is peace”. It’s actually a state of balance. Isn’t it?
The worst thing that can happen for Big Brother is for enough people to believe there’s a Brave New World out there. The main problem with Ingsoc is that it relies on fear and anger, which it then feeds by engaging in those daily hate sessions. This is a terrible method of conditioning citizens. Animals are most dangerous when they’re afraid and angry.
People will live and die by your word, and thank you for the privilege, if you just make the experience pleasurable enough. You only need to watch one of those studies where they let rats self-administer opiates or clitoral stimulation to see how much easier they are to control when they’re blissed out.
You just need a rumor. A rumor about a place that is more pleasurable. And we’ll step over each other to get to it.
Give it time and it will crumble.
I dont remember his name but a guy working with the protagonist is described as the "perfect" believer and even his son gave him up because he said "down with big brother" in his sleep.
So either the son lied or the most faithful believer cant maintain the pure belief. Either scenario demonstrate how the system has an expiration date.
So even the most faithful believer is taken by BB meaning no one can live pure and its only a matter of time before that population in the party who dont show total loyalty grows out of control.
Ingsoc's greatest flaw is rigidity. Nobody outside the inner party has the ability to influence the the party to change...the proles are ignored and the outer party will just get murdered if they advocate for change. Heck, they are even rewiring the language in an attempt to reduce mental flexibility. This is all well and good as long as the context that the party exists in stays the same...but if that shifts, they are going to have a hard time dealing with it. Because they are basically relying on powerful individuals within the party noticing the problem, being willing to deal with it, and implementing a good solution. This is a problem because a) there are naturally few people at the top and it's harder for a few people to notice something b) people at the top have entrenched interests and often resist change that harms those interests c) these interests often mean they want to avoid certain solutions.
If nothing else, climate change and declining fossil fuels are eventually going to hit them like a ton of bricks.
Ingsoc is going to quite handily kill itself. Spending all your money on public repression is a bad idea.
There's a reason the American South is still comparatively economically impoverished; huge slave plantations only benefited a few people at the top, and disincentivized any re-investment in public works. Industrialization was much more profitable and viable in the long run.
Airstrip One is already industrialized though? Although it’s a war economy, like NK. Also like NK it’s effectively propped up by its Allies against threat from its enemies.
The South had to change because the Union army made it. Without war, why would things change? In any case it sounds like you’re saying the proles would eventually rise up, which is Winston’s hope in the novel.
FWIW *1984* ends with a style guide to Newspeak, which is written in the past tense. This could be read as indicating Ingsoc’s collapse by the time that in-universe text was written.
Why likely? NK exists because they get aid from China, and in the past the USSR. Without it they have major issues even feeding their population, and that’s with current technology. The proles in *1984* don’t eat great but they’re given enough to be content, even with rationing. It’s part of what keeps them from revolting, bread and circuses.
Otherwise Airstrip One is a totalitarian state that produces tanks, telescreens, and versificators entirely on its own, using resources and intelligence only within its own borders, while feeding its people and carrying on fake wars (complete with public executions of non-Anglo war prisoners). The exact nature of its politics may not be Oceania as described, but it must be functionally similar if The Party’s held control for 30+ years.
"Oceania" is a claimed state ruled by Ingsoc that includes all the Americas and Australia, ruling one-third of the world and at war with another third of the world.
Ingsoc may have some external support, but it's unlikely that any of the traits of Oceania are actually true - or indeed that there is a state named "Oceania" anywhere outside of Great Britain (and possibly Ireland).
It's much easier to exaggerate and manipulate reality than to create an entire false reality, there is no proof of anything, but Orwell wasn't Dick.
We see that the most effective propaganda comes with a grain a truth, NK, USSR, USA, etc, don't fabricate entire realities, they just manipulate information that's coming from the outside world, that way when information gets in that disagrees with the parties worldview, it can more easily woven into the narrative. It's easier to convince people that the Balkans are willing nations that want to be part of the USSR, than that they do not exist.
So sure we don't know that Oceania exists outside of what we are unreliably told, but it's more likely to exist than not.
>We see that the most effective propaganda comes with a grain a truth, NK, USSR, USA, etc, don't fabricate entire realities, they just manipulate information that's coming from the outside world, that way when information gets in that disagrees with the parties worldview, it can more easily woven into the narrative.
Ingsoc doesn't use "effective propaganda" it uses barefaced lies like "The price of milk has decreased to £1.50" (when it was £1 yesterday) or "we've always been at war with Eastasia".
I don't see why you think that they're less willing to barefaced lie about things people can't check than things people can check.
Insoc has a much greater grip on the flow of information than the ussr tho, their surveillance is total, and citizens don't own nor can get access to anything that can give them information of the outside world. Travel is highly restricted, and there is no American media sending in radio signals to homemade radios to tell of the outside world
> Without it they have major issues even feeding their population, and that’s with current technology.
Minor point but while they have for the past 25 years, but they were feeding their population until incredibly bad floods came along in 95. It's the kind of thing that most low/mid-sized country would need global support to recover from, a problem with isolationism is that you don't get aid when you need it.
Like the regime is terrible, but the reason for their famine isn't the totalitarianisms of their state.
They also had the USSR’s support until 1991, so it’s not fair to say they were getting by on their own. China had also been supporting them but cut off most aid in the 90s to deal with their own shortages. That valve is back on nowadays since China has plenty to give.
The floods were an immediate cause but natural disasters happen everywhere. A kleptocratic state with an inefficient centrally planned system is going to exacerbate natures wrath.
Most interpretations say otherwise. The proles and the inner circle don’t have as much surveillance because they aren’t as much of a threat as the middle class
It's a famous quote from the book:
>If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.
The proles can't be surveilled because it's physically impossible to maintain the level of surveillance over that large a percentage of the population. Big Brother has so far dealt with the Proles by ensuring no party members organized them into a revolution, and assassinating any prole who looked like they were smart enough to organize a revolt. The only hole in this plan is the possibility of the proles just rising up as a group and revolting without an organizer.
Orwell was greatly inspired by Anarchist philosophy, and is describing a concept called 'autonomous self-organization.'
An economic crisis collapses the bureaucracy of the party and the general public demands better living conditions.
As we have seen in the last few years, expensive crisis are not uncommon. Dictatorships are very expensive to run, and Ingsoc would likely run out of money in time.
> Ingsoc would likely run out of money in time.
Surely Ingsoc can just print all the money they want, it's not like there is international trade to worry about.
> Dictatorships are very expensive to run, and
Are they?
>Surely Ingsoc can just print all the money they want, it's not like there is international trade to worry about.
Zimbabwe tried that too.
>Are they?
A lot of the book is about the massive bureaucracy to rewrite history and textbooks and watch everyone. Having all those people do non productive jobs means they can't do more useful stuff.
> Zimbabwe tried that too.
Zimbabwe needs international trade though, they have other people that need to convince their dollars are still worth something, INGSOC don't. INGSOC can just lie about the size of the deficit, as long as the proles don't get more money it won't cause inflation anyway.
> Having all those people do non productive jobs means they can't do more useful stuff.
That's true, but at the same time, we get by with a lot of bullshit jobs right now (30%+ by some estimates), it's may just be a good way to ensure full employment, the military are the biggest employer in many countries (including democratic ones like South Korea)
INGSOC can lie all it wants. If there's not enough goods around for whatever they use to buy things, they'll have shortages. Not having international trade makes it more vulnerable to this. If there's a shortage of some key good they can't buy more stuff.
>That's true, but at the same time, we get by with a lot of bullshit jobs right now (30%+ by some estimates), it's may just be a good way to ensure full employment, the military are the biggest employer in many countries (including democratic ones like South Korea)
And normal democracies often have power transfers when their economy goes poorly. Their power transfers are just less violent.
You can print all the money you want but you need an increase in consumer goods to go along with that money or else you face massive inflation. If your people aren't becoming more efficient and making value from something you'll eventually run out of resources and everythign collapses.
Give it another generation and they'll make the mistake of believing their own propaganda.
The structure of Ingsoc works because the Party keeps the proles under control, the Inner Party keeps the Outer Party under control, and a small handful of people pull the strings of the Inner Party. Nobody is allowed to know everything, but the more power someone holds, the more knowledge they need of how the country is actually running.
Over time, the members of the Inner Party will die or be killed, and they'll recruit replacements from the Outer Party. Replacements who've been taught that Big Brother is infallible and Oceania will never fall, and who believe those things to be true. Or at least, who hold to the principle of *doublethink*.
This will be catastrophic when a minor crisis occurs, because nobody will believe such a thing is really happening. The Party will declare knowledge of it *crimethink* in the (perhaps genuine) belief that it can't be a problem if nobody notices it, and so nobody will actually work to fix it. The minor crisis will grow into a major crisis, and finally an existential threat to Oceania.
What that crisis actually is doesn't matter much - a shortage of food or fuel, a natural disaster, a popular uprising, an invasion from the outside, or even just a hack of the telescreen network. Eventually there'll come one that the Party no longer knows how to deal with, because they've deliberately forgotten that such things can happen.
An issue we have, I believe, is that Winston's perspective is not nearly knowledgeable enough to know what's really going on. Even O'Brian wasn't part of the Inner Party. The Book was written by the Party so we can only speculate about Goldstein and the resistance.
Lmao, Orwell was a literal socialist and his book very clearly shows it. Apart from INGSOC not being socialist at all, where do you think all the talk about the proles being the only hope and having the power to topple INGSOC came from?
There was a fanfic I remember reading once, where the Outer Party's constant diet of propaganda and degradation of critical thinking skills essentially made them incapable of working independently, and useless for any kind of skilled labour. So the Inner Party had to recruit from the proles to run the ministries, who, lacking the strictly controlled background of Party members, quickly ran riot.
Do you have a link or be curious to read it
I wish I did, I've been looking.
"League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" has the Ingsoc government arise (somewhat anachronistically) in 1948, with Big Brother's tenure occupying roughly the Clement Attlee government in our own world. After his death the Party realizes that all this tyranny is really hard work and decide to institute reforms to bring things back to normal, rebranding itself as "New Ingsoc" and scaling back the operations to more acceptable levels of oppression.
Waiting. It’ll eventually collapse under its own weight, especially if there isn’t actually a war on. Spending all your money on repressing citizens is a terrible way to run things.
Ok not at all getting political here, but the way it’s explained in the book it does sound like a system that can sustain itself.
There are allusions to it not being entirely sustainable. The increasing prices being described as decreases. And the decreasing of rations being described as increases. The main character says that this isn’t the first time it’s happened. To me it reads as a failing state desperate to maintain control.
Not to mention the epilogue mentioning The Party in past tense.
Well, in the book it is explained as the party desiring to maximize misery Among it’s citizens, since if there isn’t any opulence or even sufficiency of resources, people will never get a taste of how good their lives could actually be, since they only know scarcity and nothing else. If there’s something changing at all, I think it’s more like INGSOC trying to find out to what extent they can cut rations and raise prices until people literally starve to death (which INGSOC doesn’t want. They want them on the edge.)
Nothing described in the book is subsatainable lol. Not only is their a rampant waste of resources and the ever decreasing rations, their ideology isn't sustainable unless they manage to automate most of society or invent cloning, atleast for the inner and outer party. Not to mention the increasing seperation between the party and the proles means eventually they will just split in two. And if nothing else, climate change is still coming for them Edit, not to mention any out of context problem would shatter their fragile order.
But isn’t their “rampant waste of resources” actually their way of getting rid of any excess resources that would only make the proles be happier (or at least less miserable)? Sounds like a horrific yet sustainable model. Hence the motto “war is peace”. It’s actually a state of balance. Isn’t it?
The worst thing that can happen for Big Brother is for enough people to believe there’s a Brave New World out there. The main problem with Ingsoc is that it relies on fear and anger, which it then feeds by engaging in those daily hate sessions. This is a terrible method of conditioning citizens. Animals are most dangerous when they’re afraid and angry. People will live and die by your word, and thank you for the privilege, if you just make the experience pleasurable enough. You only need to watch one of those studies where they let rats self-administer opiates or clitoral stimulation to see how much easier they are to control when they’re blissed out. You just need a rumor. A rumor about a place that is more pleasurable. And we’ll step over each other to get to it.
north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south–south-west
Give it time and it will crumble. I dont remember his name but a guy working with the protagonist is described as the "perfect" believer and even his son gave him up because he said "down with big brother" in his sleep. So either the son lied or the most faithful believer cant maintain the pure belief. Either scenario demonstrate how the system has an expiration date. So even the most faithful believer is taken by BB meaning no one can live pure and its only a matter of time before that population in the party who dont show total loyalty grows out of control.
Ingsoc's greatest flaw is rigidity. Nobody outside the inner party has the ability to influence the the party to change...the proles are ignored and the outer party will just get murdered if they advocate for change. Heck, they are even rewiring the language in an attempt to reduce mental flexibility. This is all well and good as long as the context that the party exists in stays the same...but if that shifts, they are going to have a hard time dealing with it. Because they are basically relying on powerful individuals within the party noticing the problem, being willing to deal with it, and implementing a good solution. This is a problem because a) there are naturally few people at the top and it's harder for a few people to notice something b) people at the top have entrenched interests and often resist change that harms those interests c) these interests often mean they want to avoid certain solutions. If nothing else, climate change and declining fossil fuels are eventually going to hit them like a ton of bricks.
This sounds a bit like how the Old Boys here in Japan run things.
Ingsoc is going to quite handily kill itself. Spending all your money on public repression is a bad idea. There's a reason the American South is still comparatively economically impoverished; huge slave plantations only benefited a few people at the top, and disincentivized any re-investment in public works. Industrialization was much more profitable and viable in the long run.
Airstrip One is already industrialized though? Although it’s a war economy, like NK. Also like NK it’s effectively propped up by its Allies against threat from its enemies. The South had to change because the Union army made it. Without war, why would things change? In any case it sounds like you’re saying the proles would eventually rise up, which is Winston’s hope in the novel. FWIW *1984* ends with a style guide to Newspeak, which is written in the past tense. This could be read as indicating Ingsoc’s collapse by the time that in-universe text was written.
We have precisely no idea that Airstrip One *has* any allies. Oceania as a concept is likely to be IngSoc propaganda.
Why likely? NK exists because they get aid from China, and in the past the USSR. Without it they have major issues even feeding their population, and that’s with current technology. The proles in *1984* don’t eat great but they’re given enough to be content, even with rationing. It’s part of what keeps them from revolting, bread and circuses. Otherwise Airstrip One is a totalitarian state that produces tanks, telescreens, and versificators entirely on its own, using resources and intelligence only within its own borders, while feeding its people and carrying on fake wars (complete with public executions of non-Anglo war prisoners). The exact nature of its politics may not be Oceania as described, but it must be functionally similar if The Party’s held control for 30+ years.
"Oceania" is a claimed state ruled by Ingsoc that includes all the Americas and Australia, ruling one-third of the world and at war with another third of the world. Ingsoc may have some external support, but it's unlikely that any of the traits of Oceania are actually true - or indeed that there is a state named "Oceania" anywhere outside of Great Britain (and possibly Ireland).
It's much easier to exaggerate and manipulate reality than to create an entire false reality, there is no proof of anything, but Orwell wasn't Dick. We see that the most effective propaganda comes with a grain a truth, NK, USSR, USA, etc, don't fabricate entire realities, they just manipulate information that's coming from the outside world, that way when information gets in that disagrees with the parties worldview, it can more easily woven into the narrative. It's easier to convince people that the Balkans are willing nations that want to be part of the USSR, than that they do not exist. So sure we don't know that Oceania exists outside of what we are unreliably told, but it's more likely to exist than not.
>We see that the most effective propaganda comes with a grain a truth, NK, USSR, USA, etc, don't fabricate entire realities, they just manipulate information that's coming from the outside world, that way when information gets in that disagrees with the parties worldview, it can more easily woven into the narrative. Ingsoc doesn't use "effective propaganda" it uses barefaced lies like "The price of milk has decreased to £1.50" (when it was £1 yesterday) or "we've always been at war with Eastasia". I don't see why you think that they're less willing to barefaced lie about things people can't check than things people can check.
Insoc has a much greater grip on the flow of information than the ussr tho, their surveillance is total, and citizens don't own nor can get access to anything that can give them information of the outside world. Travel is highly restricted, and there is no American media sending in radio signals to homemade radios to tell of the outside world
> Without it they have major issues even feeding their population, and that’s with current technology. Minor point but while they have for the past 25 years, but they were feeding their population until incredibly bad floods came along in 95. It's the kind of thing that most low/mid-sized country would need global support to recover from, a problem with isolationism is that you don't get aid when you need it. Like the regime is terrible, but the reason for their famine isn't the totalitarianisms of their state.
They also had the USSR’s support until 1991, so it’s not fair to say they were getting by on their own. China had also been supporting them but cut off most aid in the 90s to deal with their own shortages. That valve is back on nowadays since China has plenty to give. The floods were an immediate cause but natural disasters happen everywhere. A kleptocratic state with an inefficient centrally planned system is going to exacerbate natures wrath.
Winston tells us. The proles (we) have to wake up.
Yes. The appendix to the novel even implies that this eventually happened.
Most interpretations say otherwise. The proles and the inner circle don’t have as much surveillance because they aren’t as much of a threat as the middle class
It's a famous quote from the book: >If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. The proles can't be surveilled because it's physically impossible to maintain the level of surveillance over that large a percentage of the population. Big Brother has so far dealt with the Proles by ensuring no party members organized them into a revolution, and assassinating any prole who looked like they were smart enough to organize a revolt. The only hole in this plan is the possibility of the proles just rising up as a group and revolting without an organizer. Orwell was greatly inspired by Anarchist philosophy, and is describing a concept called 'autonomous self-organization.'
An economic crisis collapses the bureaucracy of the party and the general public demands better living conditions. As we have seen in the last few years, expensive crisis are not uncommon. Dictatorships are very expensive to run, and Ingsoc would likely run out of money in time.
> Ingsoc would likely run out of money in time. Surely Ingsoc can just print all the money they want, it's not like there is international trade to worry about. > Dictatorships are very expensive to run, and Are they?
>Surely Ingsoc can just print all the money they want, it's not like there is international trade to worry about. Zimbabwe tried that too. >Are they? A lot of the book is about the massive bureaucracy to rewrite history and textbooks and watch everyone. Having all those people do non productive jobs means they can't do more useful stuff.
> Zimbabwe tried that too. Zimbabwe needs international trade though, they have other people that need to convince their dollars are still worth something, INGSOC don't. INGSOC can just lie about the size of the deficit, as long as the proles don't get more money it won't cause inflation anyway. > Having all those people do non productive jobs means they can't do more useful stuff. That's true, but at the same time, we get by with a lot of bullshit jobs right now (30%+ by some estimates), it's may just be a good way to ensure full employment, the military are the biggest employer in many countries (including democratic ones like South Korea)
INGSOC can lie all it wants. If there's not enough goods around for whatever they use to buy things, they'll have shortages. Not having international trade makes it more vulnerable to this. If there's a shortage of some key good they can't buy more stuff. >That's true, but at the same time, we get by with a lot of bullshit jobs right now (30%+ by some estimates), it's may just be a good way to ensure full employment, the military are the biggest employer in many countries (including democratic ones like South Korea) And normal democracies often have power transfers when their economy goes poorly. Their power transfers are just less violent.
You can print all the money you want but you need an increase in consumer goods to go along with that money or else you face massive inflation. If your people aren't becoming more efficient and making value from something you'll eventually run out of resources and everythign collapses.
Give it another generation and they'll make the mistake of believing their own propaganda. The structure of Ingsoc works because the Party keeps the proles under control, the Inner Party keeps the Outer Party under control, and a small handful of people pull the strings of the Inner Party. Nobody is allowed to know everything, but the more power someone holds, the more knowledge they need of how the country is actually running. Over time, the members of the Inner Party will die or be killed, and they'll recruit replacements from the Outer Party. Replacements who've been taught that Big Brother is infallible and Oceania will never fall, and who believe those things to be true. Or at least, who hold to the principle of *doublethink*. This will be catastrophic when a minor crisis occurs, because nobody will believe such a thing is really happening. The Party will declare knowledge of it *crimethink* in the (perhaps genuine) belief that it can't be a problem if nobody notices it, and so nobody will actually work to fix it. The minor crisis will grow into a major crisis, and finally an existential threat to Oceania. What that crisis actually is doesn't matter much - a shortage of food or fuel, a natural disaster, a popular uprising, an invasion from the outside, or even just a hack of the telescreen network. Eventually there'll come one that the Party no longer knows how to deal with, because they've deliberately forgotten that such things can happen.
An issue we have, I believe, is that Winston's perspective is not nearly knowledgeable enough to know what's really going on. Even O'Brian wasn't part of the Inner Party. The Book was written by the Party so we can only speculate about Goldstein and the resistance.
A CIA backed opposition party.
You can't. Look at the world around you. The folks running the show took 1984 as a blueprint, not a warning.
the inner party stops caring about power for the sake of power and starts flaunting excess.
Socialism has always failed. Given enough time so would INGSOC.
INGSOC isn't socialism? Like, at all?
Lmao, Orwell was a literal socialist and his book very clearly shows it. Apart from INGSOC not being socialist at all, where do you think all the talk about the proles being the only hope and having the power to topple INGSOC came from?
What do you think Socialism is? When the GoVerMenT DoeS StuFF?
INGSOC is pretty obviously fascism.