Accuracy of George Orwell\'s Predictions

¶ … Orwellian World

The Accuracy of George Orwell's Predictions and What They Hold for Our Future

When, in 1949, George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four, the world had just witnessed one of the most trying and tumultuous periods in all of human history. In the space of only thirty-five years, there had been two world wars, a communist revolution, a host of fascist dictators, and a frenzy of slaughter such as had never been seen before in all the bloodstained annals of mankind. The old order was dead - the changes irrevocable.

Gone was the world empire into a corner of which George Orwell had been born. Gone were all the old empires, and all the ancient dynasties, and with them the social patterns and accretions of centuries. Contending philosophies replaced the sure doctrines of former days, strange new technologies transformed the physical patterns of human existence, and the entire globe was split into two mutually antagonistic armed camps. Communism battled democracy. The State fought the individual. And all humanity waged a war upon nature. In reviewing all these changes and looking forward to the future, Orwell imagined a world yet darker than that which already existed, a world in which the voice of authority had triumphed absolutely, and in which individual human needs and desires were no more. It was humankind's destiny. It was Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It is no surprise that George Orwell should imagine a world in which the State has taken complete control of every aspect of the individual and of society, for such a thing had already happened, albeit not so completely. Clearly, the Soviet Union was the chief model for Orwell's Oceania. In the years since the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Communist Party, and in particular, Joseph Stalin, had created a world that could be considered a prototype of that described in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the Soviet Union, the entire old order had been overturned, weeded out and replaced by a form of government and society that had never really existed before in any time or place. Through a combination of terror, intimidation, and "re-education," Stalin and his thugs substituted the Communist Party for the old Tsarist autocracy. The once powerful Russian Orthodox Church was replaced by Marxist and Stalinist dogma. Private property passed into control of the State. A permanent state of war was created, first in the form of the never-ending war against the counterrevolutionaries at home, and secondly against the enemies of Communism and Stalinism abroad.

The central feature of Oceanian society is the cult of Big Brother. Big Brother is a curiously Stalin-like figure whose face is seen everywhere - in posters, on buildings, and of course on the telescreen. Stalin too, had himself depicted in every possible place. This served two purposes: the first being to create the impression that Stalin, or Big Brother, or whomever the leader might be, was continually watching all that was going on. Secondly, it also created a false association of the leader with all activities. Stalin, or Big Brother, became in effect the author of all activities, inventions, ideas, and so forth; a kind of superman or "god." Indeed, in time, this god would understood to be even more real than the heavenly God in which the people had once believed. Few people claim ever to have actually seen God, but in Orwell's world, as in Stalin's, everyone could claim to have seen his likeness. Orwell believed that this cult of the personality was absolutely essential to the success of the authoritarian state. Each of the totalitarian nightmares that had existed in his time had been dominated by a single man, a single man who, like Stalin, had made himself an object of worship. The Fuhrer, the Duce, Franco, and Stalin, all elevated themselves to quasi-divine status. In fact, the use of an impersonal title by both Hitler and Mussolini accorded very nicely with the whole concept of absolute, unquestioned authority. In both Germany and Italy, man and position were fused, the ultimate plan being the perpetuation of one-man rule through a single office, regardless of the human identity of the officeholder. Of course, this had been attempted many times in the past. Medieval thinkers divided the king's person into two distinct bodies: the king's own human body, and his "body politic." This is the origin of the "royal we." However, the king always had the misfortune of being subject to an actual god or gods. Even the Egyptian pharaoh, though a god himself, was but one of many gods.

As well, Stalin's government represented the closest approximation to a modern state in which all power was vested in a single individual or office. Historically, many leaders had claimed such powers, but without the benefit of modern communication and transportation it had been virtually impossible for one man to invade the private lives of each and every one of his subjects. Telephone, radio, and electronic listening devices, or bugs, did it for Stalin, and telescreens and microphones for Big Brother. Even in old China where the Emperor was head of state, sole legislator, chief executive, and high priest (as well as being the subject of a cult himself), his more remote subjects were largely free to control their own affairs. In all of the two thousand years of history of Imperial China, there was not a single year without a rebellion somewhere in the vast empire. In one of his own essays, Orwell demonstrated how it was possible for a monarch to function as a break upon authoritarianism:

The function of the King in promoting stability and acting as a sort of keystone in a non-democratic society is, of course, obvious. But he also has, or can have, the function of acting as an escape-valve for dangerous emotions. A French journalist said to me once that the monarchy was one of the things that have saved Britain from Fascism. What he meant was that modern people can't, apparently, get along without drums, flags and loyalty parades, and that it is better that they should tie their leader-worship onto some figure who has no real power. In a dictatorship the power and the glory belong to the same person. In England the real power belongs to unprepossessing men in bowler hats: the creature who rides in a gilded coach behind soldiers in steel breast-plates is really a waxwork. It is at any rate possible that while this division of function exists a Hitler or a Stalin cannot come to power. On the whole the European countries which have most successfully avoided Fascism have been constitutional monarchies. The conditions seemingly are that the Royal Family shall be long-established and taken for granted, shall understand its own position and shall not produce strong characters with political ambitions. These have been fulfilled in Britain, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, but not in, say, Spain or Rumania. If you point these facts out to the average left-winger he gets very angry, but only because he has not examined the nature of his own feelings towards Stalin. I do not defend the institution of monarchy in an absolute sense, but I think that in an age like our own it may have an inoculating effect, and certainly it does far less harm than the existence of our so-called aristocracy. I have often advocated that a Labour government, i.e. one that meant business, would abolish titles while retaining the Royal Family."

Yet in the above passage, Orwell also raises another interesting point, and one it is pertinent to his concept of Oceania. His allusion to the idea that a constitutional monarchy helps to stave off fascism is a tacit admission of the fact that "it could happen here," in other words, that even democratic Britain, is not immune to the forces that produce totalitarianism. In the contemporary relationship between Stalin and the West, Orwell also recognized another of the signs of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Stalin not only fostered a sense of continual war within his own country - the ongoing revolution - but his occupation of Eastern Europe provoked an antagonistic response from the West. The United States and its allies, Britain included, were staging their own "war" against communism. By 1949, the Cold War was already in full swing and Great Britain with her American air bases and monetary aid from the Marshall Plan was a full partner in the war to contain Stalin. For his part, Stalin had effectively cordoned off half of Europe and was proceeding to do the same with the Allied portion of Berlin. An anti-communist stance became the litmus test of true loyalty throughout the United States, Britain, and many of its allies. The formation of NATO was only one more step in the grand game of military cat-and-mouse and the burgeoning arms raise. A state of perpetual warfare was essential to the authoritarian state. In creating and perpetuating such a condition, it whipped its citizens to action, and bound them together in single cause. In time of war, the slightest defiance, the slightest criticism of the government can be branded treason, and dealt with accordingly. It is highly significant therefore that,

Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the raid itself, but he did remember his father's hand clutching his own as they hurried down, down, down into some place deep in the earth, round and round a spiral staircase which rang under his feet and which finally so wearied his legs that he began whimpering and they had to stop and rest. His mother, in her slow, dreamy way, was following a long way behind them. She was carrying his baby sister -- or perhaps it was only a bundle of blankets that she was carrying: he was not certain whether his sister had been born then."

So completely natural has war become in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, that Winston cannot even definitely remember if there ever was a time of peace. He only theorizes that such a time must have existed based upon a vague childhood memory of a surprise nuclear attack. Presumably, in time of war, the State's early warning systems would have been fully functioning. More frightening still, is the haziness of his memory regarding his sister. The State and its concerns - war and obedience - take precedence over even the natural affections of family life. Unable to remember whether his sister had yet been born, he merely surmises that she might have because his mother was carrying something that looked like it could have been a baby.

Obedience was the next pillar of the authoritarian state. In the situation of 1949, George Orwell could already see it casting its suffocating pall over both the "free" and unfree worlds. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had both been built upon this principle, and at Nuremberg in 1946, the Allied judges had declared that "I was just following orders" was no excuse for the commission of the most heinous of crimes. The court put forth the idea of a universal morality to which all human beings were subject, and which no government might overrule. Of course, Stalin's Russia paid no heed to such ideas. There the State was and always had been supreme ever since the Revolution. But in the West, righteousness had triumphed...at least as long as one did not look too closely. No doubt, Orwell remarked upon the blind obedience demanded of citizens of the defunct Third Reich, and applauded the court's decision. Surely, he wished that Stalin and his henchmen might also be tried and punished for the terrible purges, and the gulags, and all the other horrors of Soviet repression. But it is certain too, that Orwell noted in the court's decision a dangerous precedent. For one court comprised wholly of a group of nations allied culturally and politically to declare that there was a universal code of morality, one that applied throughout the world, was to assume god-like powers of control. Orwell recognized the decay of traditional ethical structures in both the communist East and democratic West. While certainly, one could hardly argue that Hitler's killers had been acting ethically, communist witch hunts and blacklists were no more moral when they occurred in New York or Hollywood. Though Orwell died just before the days of McCarthyism, he had lived through the first American Red Scare in the 1920s, and Hollywood had already been quite active in blacklisting supposed communist writers and authors. Such persons too, had been driven to the fringes of the literary world in New York, and it could not be forgotten, or forgiven that a blind hatred of communism had been one of the key sources of Nazi success. Oddly enough, it is often in the rigidly controlled communist world that public morality comes closest to traditional religiously inspired standards. No kissing in the park. Conservative clothes. The paternal nuclear family. But, the very collapse of traditional morality that is observable in the West, is also a sign of things to come. The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four functions by making its citizens blandly happy. They remember nothing and they desire nothing.

Since World War I, Western society has been gravely weakened by the attrition of traditional authority. Beginning with attrition of the individual conscience, the process has spread to the attrition of the authority of the family, the law, religion, public morality, and government. Increasingly, authority is denied in principle and vilified in practice at home, while being -- paradoxically enough -- admired and respected abroad, in the communist world. Along with this abrogation of the individual and collective superego, there has developed, as if by way of compensation, a narcissistic cult of the ego aided and abetted by the Third Force psychology of Maslow and Rogers, a cult which appears to have acquired the status once held by religion. This narcissism finds social expression in an epicurean consumerism, which has elevated self-indulgent materialism to a virtue, a moral relativism which can justify or excuse any action, however base or vicious, and a resuscitated Pelagianism."

This sort of moral relativism was the ethical foundation of any totalitarian state, and it was present in varying quantities in the free, as well as the unfree world. Orwell could well foresee its application in the future, as the war on communism intensified. Looking at the freakish pace of events of the past generation, he would have predicted another world war in the not to distant future, a nuclear war such as occurred prior to Oceania's foundation. The exigencies of the state, the preservation of the English or American "way of life," would be called upon as justifications for using technology to root out society's undesirable, be they at home or abroad. We see this same idea operating today in "post 9/11 world." Our leaders tell us that since that day every thing is changed. We can no longer take our freedoms for granted. This does not mean, as of old, that we must take up arms to preserve them, but rather that we must give up some to insure others. But, once one begins to give up freedoms what is left? George Orwell had never heard of the Internet, and the technology of his Nineteen Eighty-Four is crude by the standards of today (and of the real 1984), but it is already being proposed as an appropriate area for government intervention.

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."