How long could the society in 1984 last?

[strangeland]

Anyone who's read 1984 will remember O'Brian's description of the future in Oceania: "But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

But could it really go on forever? Everything in the world of 1984 is horribly inefficient by design. Technological progress seems to be stuck in the 1940s and if anything, to be moving backwards. Resource extraction in the 1940s was horribly inefficient and polluting by modern standards, and part of the reason that we've been able to keep up with increasing consumption is improved resource extraction technology. The resources are clearly already strained: Winston, a comparatively well-off Outer Party Member in the capital city, lives a meager, impoverished existence compared with a lower middle class person before the revolution.

The society in 1984 is careening towards a Malthusian catastrophe: Prole families are described as having 7 or 8 children, and with poor education and little prospect for a higher standard of living (again, the party keeps the standard of living low by design), there's little reason to think the birth rate will fall anytime soon. A population expanding faster than food production, especially one that is weak and hungry, is at extremely high risk for epidemics.

At the same time, each of the regimes is spending a huge amount of resources fighting a deliberately pointless war. I doubt the Party cares very much about resource management. They're going to run out of something critical eventually. What then?

 

[Sachyriel]

If they run out of something they make it an un-thing, like they do with people.

 

[Johnrankins]

Anyone who's read 1984 will remember O'Brian's description of the future in Oceania: "But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

But could it really go on forever? Everything in the world of 1984 is horribly inefficient by design. Technological progress seems to be stuck in the 1940s and if anything, to be moving backwards. Resource extraction in the 1940s was horribly inefficient and polluting by modern standards, and part of the reason that we've been able to keep up with increasing consumption is improved resource extraction technology. The resources are clearly already strained: Winston, a comparatively well-off Outer Party Member in the capital city, lives a meager, impoverished existence compared with a lower middle class person before the revolution.

The society in 1984 is careening towards a Malthusian catastrophe: Prole families are described as having 7 or 8 children, and with poor education and little prospect for a higher standard of living (again, the party keeps the standard of living low by design), there's little reason to think the birth rate will fall anytime soon. A population expanding faster than food production, especially one that is weak and hungry, is at extremely high risk for epidemics.

At the same time, each of the regimes is spending a huge amount of resources fighting a deliberately pointless war. I doubt the Party cares very much about resource management. They're going to run out of something critical eventually. What then?

For the reasons you suggest I doubt it lasts a century. The economy collapses due to lack of resources and society falls into complete anarchy. You might find the world falling into a dark age in very short order.

 

[B_Munro]

Consider the sort of death tolls that North Korea suffered from famine while still not collapsing, and North Korea exists in a world where there is an "outside" to compare to. I expect that famine and horrible weather gets explained as enemy superweapons, and the Inner Party simply relocates to the more healthy parts of the globe and writes off the equatorial and drought-striken regions: most of the proles may be simply "triaged" at some point. And an advantage of a technology stuck at 1940s levels is that it doesn't need a lot of the rare metals and materials that modern technology does, and the extremely low living standard means individual consumption remains very low: some sort of early 20th century coal-and-iron industrial machine to provide the rare privileges of the elite and the weapons to keep the masses down seems sustainable for a few centuries. The question is whether the inner party is willing to accept increasingly straitened circumstances in exchange for continued power, whether "power for power's sake" truly surpasses all other goals - a higher living standard for yourself, (even the elite can't really have that many luxuries if tech is stuck in the 1940s and productivity is minimal), a desire for knowledge, a desire to be seen as a savior or distibuter of largesse, some sort of patriotic sentiment, etc.

Bruce

 

[strangeland]

North Korea stays afloat due to food aid from the outside world and (particularly) free coal, oil, and building materials from China, which effectively amounts to a massive subsidy, without which North Korea probably would have collapsed during the Famine of the 1990s. The states in 1984 don't have an outside power propping them up. North Korea can also earn hard currency from arms sales, which the states in 1984 can't.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

I've always had the theory that Newspeak, being really a ignorant language which lacks the richness of Old English, will lead to the members of the Inner and Outer party after 1984 (those that control things, mind you) being unable to understand each other, or at least causing things to break down when it's hard to communicate orders and ideas. Communism tends to try to apply scientific method to human things, which has obviously met with horrific results (see anything Mao did), and I don't see language as any different. The proles, however, would remain Old English speakers and the party would -in time- be unable to understand them, and therefore unable to monitor them and control them and defer subversion because they can't understand subversion as the ideas of "freedom" would have been eradicated. The Proles, already left to their own, will be freed to develop as an independent culture further. As things start to collapse for the party, the proles, freed from the oppression of old due to the party's new found ignorance, will grumble, and become dissatisfied and unhappy in the end leading to rebellion. Language being the very fabric of how things are done (it's difficult to have an order carried through when the order is confusing duck speak, and concepts have been eradicated creating an ideological fabric eaten by moths), as it crumbles (and assuredly, as resources run out), the party and government crumbles.

Out of this, the proles, having been able to organize and much more efficiently carry things out due to a more dynamic language, will rise to take things over.
As concepts like the democracy of old have been eradicated even from the Proles, what order comes from this is difficult to say.

 

[Sachyriel]

I ever-think Newspeak, being a double-plus stupid language which isn't as vocab as Oldspeak, will make the I/O Party after 1984 stupid and unspeak and unthink. Ingsoc tries to be ingsoc about proles, which has met with double-plus bad, and I don't see speaking as any different. But Proles would remain oldspeakers and the Party would be unthink about oldspeak, and unable to use the telescreen to make ingsoc workers because they unthink Oldspeak. Proles will be unparty and become badthink and badspeak more and more. As Ingsoc becomes unparty proles will stop doublethink and think the party is double-plus bad and do thought-crime and party-crime. Speaking is the way things are done and if Newspeak has double-plus holes in it then the party will become unparty because people can't order one another around for Ingsoc. Proles will partythink on their own and use Oldspeak to make a double-plus-speak that can unparty Ingsoc. But since proles have no party-think then the party that comes after will be double-plus unknown!

Come with me to Room 101

 

[CobaltKnight]

To answer your predicament about the population rising to cause famine and over-all social unrest, this is easily remedied by launching missiles into the Prole quarters for some population reduction; they'd just blame the enemy at the time.

I do, however, believe that the society collapsed within a century, due only to the fact that the end of the book describing Newspeak appears to me to be written within the narrative universe, but speaking about the language as a dead and forgotten thing. Convinced me SOMETHING caused the collapse of the party within time; don't remember why I thought it was 100 years time, though.

 

[Awilla the Hun]

The Party could just deploy Doublethink, with some specialist "UniBigBrotherSocComms" (United Big Brother Society Committees), who are still able to use Oldspeak-strictly unofficially, of course-to link up with the Proles, whilst simultaneously being "unable" to speak it. To keep Party Members out, have some sort of dreadful plague starting up in Prole districts (possibly spread with a few actual toxins), with only the UniBigBrotherSocComms being allowed in as part of our Beloved Big Brother's noble efforts to care for his people.

 

[strangeland]

The Newspeak experiment is doomed to failure because you can't have a language devoid of ideas. You can manipulate language for political purposes: the Nazis and the Soviets both did this very successfully, but neither attempted anything on the scale of creating Newspeak. I think the party would, rather than admit failure, just keep pushing the target date for full adoption of Newspeak ever further into the future, while continuing to tamper with the language as much as possible.

 

[Ozymandias]

Consider the sort of death tolls that North Korea suffered from famine while still not collapsing, and North Korea exists in a world where there is an "outside" to compare to. I expect that famine and horrible weather gets explained as enemy superweapons, and the Inner Party simply relocates to the more healthy parts of the globe and writes off the equatorial and drought-striken regions: most of the proles may be simply "triaged" at some point. And an advantage of a technology stuck at 1940s levels is that it doesn't need a lot of the rare metals and materials that modern technology does, and the extremely low living standard means individual consumption remains very low: some sort of early 20th century coal-and-iron industrial machine to provide the rare privileges of the elite and the weapons to keep the masses down seems sustainable for a few centuries. The question is whether the inner party is willing to accept increasingly straitened circumstances in exchange for continued power, whether "power for power's sake" truly surpasses all other goals - a higher living standard for yourself, (even the elite can't really have that many luxuries if tech is stuck in the 1940s and productivity is minimal), a desire for knowledge, a desire to be seen as a savior or distibuter of largesse, some sort of patriotic sentiment, etc.

Bruce

The novel states explicitly that living standards are falling every year and that this is deliberate policy. It also states that all Inner Party members live austere lives. They have few privileges, e.g. O'Brien has a servant and has better food rations, and can even turn off the telescreen for a brief while. The Book that Winston reads equates the elite with someone having a lump of horseflesh in a besieged city. They are perfectly happy to let technological progress come to a halt. I don't think we have very many real-life examples of this process of de-industrialization. But a parallel might be the collapse of Rome, where most of the knowledge and intellectual advances of the ancient world were deliberately destroyed by the Christians (think of monks burning down the Library of Alexandria). Given the spreading dark age, I think such a society could last at least a millennium (like Christian civilization). Whether it survives longer than that, it is unknowable.

 

[Emperor Qianlong]

Actually, depending on how you interpete the epilogue, it can be interpreted as having already collapsed by the time the epilogue is written.

Either way, I don't think that the system could have lasted much longer than a few more decades.

 

[Thande]

Actually, depending on how you interpete the epilogue, it can be interpreted as having already collapsed by the time the epilogue is written.

Apparently when someone pointed that out to him Orwell specifically denied it. I've noticed that dystopia writers always get all pouty when people try to put a light at the end of their tunnel.

 

[Emperor Qianlong]

Apparently when someone pointed that out to him Orwell specifically denied it. I've noticed that dystopia writers always get all pouty when people try to put a light at the end of their tunnel.

Perhaps, yes. On a kind of similar note, what got me halfway through the novel (at least, I got that impression, though I admit it's been ages... ) is that O'Brian very nearly buckles in towards Winston in regard for the entire system of Oceania being in vain and switches the sides to start a revolution, but Orwell realized at that point that he wanted a genuine dystopia and has Winston make his completely unexpected and illogical turn towards the IngSoc ideology. That point of the book is a serious break that makes no sense to me.

To me it was always that the entire system seemed totally unsustainable and would inevitably collapse. However, maybe I'm only saying that beause we have the hindsight of what happened with the Communist block...

 

[Ozymandias]

To me it was always that the entire system seemed totally unsustainable and would inevitably collapse. However, maybe I'm only saying that beause we have the hindsight of what happened with the Communist block...

I always thought, since I first finished reading 1984, that Orwell was satirizing a theocracy, pointing out the parallels with modern totalitarianism. I saw Christopher Hitchens give a talk about Orwell a while back and he mentioned that Orwell thought that totalitarianism was essentially theocratic. That makes a lot of sense to me.

So, is the system in 1984 unsustainable? Well, how long does a social system have to survive to be considered sustainable? If we consider Oceania to be equivalent to Christian Europe at the start of the Dark Ages, and given that all the other societies on Earth are similar to Oceania and thus not a direct threat, such a society could theoretically last a very long time. Remember that Christian Europe was forced to make technological progress and social reforms because of threats from first the other competing states of Europe and second from the competing societies of Muslims, Norse, Mongols who were constantly invading Europe. Absent such internal and external threats, who can doubt that today Europe would be pretty much still in the Dark Ages? After all, Medieval Europe was in many respects, in a socioeconomic and technological steady-state, neither making very many technological advances nor possessing very much social dynamism. And the aristocrats and clergy were perfectly content to leave it that way!

 

[Wolfpaw]

I've noticed that dystopia writers always get all pouty when people try to put a light at the end of their tunnel.

That's because we're trying to show you how awful everything is, blast you!

Stop lessening the misery!

 

[Lightman]

I always thought, since I first finished reading 1984, that Orwell was satirizing a theocracy, pointing out the parallels with modern totalitarianism. I saw Christopher Hitchens give a talk about Orwell a while back and he mentioned that Orwell thought that totalitarianism was essentially theocratic. That makes a lot of sense to me.

You have this backwards. Orwell was criticizing Stalin's totalitarian USSR; he may indeed have seen Stalinism as fundamentally theocratic (though not communism itself - remember that Orwell was a socialist, albeit the kind who named names to the government), but he wasn't criticizing theocracy - there was no major theocracy to satirize.

Several elements of Oceanian society are lifted directly from that of the USSR; the idea of the unperson, for example. The so called "illogical turn towards the INGSOC ideology" basically happened - political prisoners awaiting execution would often have their confessions broadcast to the world, begging forgiveness from Stalin.

 

[Ozymandias]

You have this backwards. Orwell was criticizing Stalin's totalitarian USSR; he may indeed have seen Stalinism as fundamentally theocratic (though not communism itself - remember that Orwell was a socialist, albeit the kind who named names to the government), but he wasn't criticizing theocracy - there was no major theocracy to satirize.

Several elements of Oceanian society are lifted directly from that of the USSR; the idea of the unperson, for example. The so called "illogical turn towards the INGSOC ideology" basically happened - political prisoners awaiting execution would often have their confessions broadcast to the world, begging forgiveness from Stalin.

Oh, absolutely, I agree that Orwell was criticizing Stalinism and totalitarianism in general. But I think that he saw these phenomena as essentially theocratic and it's in that sense that he was satirizing a theocracy. I apologize if I didn't express myself clearly enough, that's my fault.

 

[Goldstein]

Personally, I think it's impossible for the system to last more than a century, and some of the reasons have been already pointed out. Even the North Korea analogies are irrelevent here, because even North Korea is more sustainable.

-First, no matter how much effort the Inner Party puts into orthodoxy, they cannot change the fact of accumulative changes being unavoidable and taking their toll, more so in such a regimented society. They will become weak, and they will not even see it coming, as they start from a lecture on historical dynamics that is positively ridiculous.

-The Newspeak. No, Jim, that's not how language works. You cannot just purge a meaning from a word and simply expect an idea not to be expressed. As long as an idea has an external reference and needs to be expressed, its correspondent meaning will emerge naturally from the language. And when a system dedicates so much effort to make life utterly suck and to politize every aspect of life, political discontent is going to be unavoidable, and it will be expressed. The only thing Newspeak would achieve, in case it moderately suceeded, is to make dissent impossible for a goodthinkful person to spot.

-The party underestimates the massive underclass too much, wich would eventually backfire. Eventually, intelligent Proles with opinions of their own will emerge and will not be spotted by the thinkpol. We're talking about millions of people living under Somalian Anarchy and judged unable to rebel... do they really expect to spot each dangerous prole? That makes the system extremely weak on that matter.

-Planned economies use to stagnate without even trying, as the actual demand cannot be calculated properly anymore. Well, this system is stagnating the economy on purpose. If the Miniplenty's duty is to avoid people die from starvation in excess, it will eventually fall too short. Not to tell nobody really knows about the real production, so the gap between the actual economical situation and what the party -cynically or not- estimates will become too big. By the time they realize, the proles will have fallen to cannibalism.

-The telescreens. Picture for a moment the absurd level of time, resources, paperwork, dedicated to record and psychologically analyze the hidden meaning of the average joe scratching his balls on sunday afternoon. Now go and tell me that's materially sustainable.

-They live in a heavy-industry, no-research, stuck-in-the-40s world. Nice. There's only a small con: The natural resources are not forever, and the fuckers don't even know. It's almost a countdown to the Stone Age. Nice shot at an eternal system, assholes.

 

[Claudius]

I've always had the theory that Newspeak, being really a ignorant language which lacks the richness of Old English, will lead to the members of the Inner and Outer party after 1984 (those that control things, mind you) being unable to understand each other, or at least causing things to break down when it's hard to communicate orders and ideas. Communism tends to try to apply scientific method to human things, which has obviously met with horrific results (see anything Mao did), and I don't see language as any different. The proles, however, would remain Old English speakers and the party would -in time- be unable to understand them, and therefore unable to monitor them and control them and defer subversion because they can't understand subversion as the ideas of "freedom" would have been eradicated. The Proles, already left to their own, will be freed to develop as an independent culture further. As things start to collapse for the party, the proles, freed from the oppression of old due to the party's new found ignorance, will grumble, and become dissatisfied and unhappy in the end leading to rebellion. Language being the very fabric of how things are done (it's difficult to have an order carried through when the order is confusing duck speak, and concepts have been eradicated creating an ideological fabric eaten by moths), as it crumbles (and assuredly, as resources run out), the party and government crumbles.

Out of this, the proles, having been able to organize and much more efficiently carry things out due to a more dynamic language, will rise to take things over.
As concepts like the democracy of old have been eradicated even from the Proles, what order comes from this is difficult to say.

EXXXXCELLENT!