{"id":149814,"date":"2019-12-16T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=149814"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:41:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T13:41:16","slug":"george-orwells-1984-revisited-what-oceania-and-israel-have-in-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/george-orwells-1984-revisited-what-oceania-and-israel-have-in-common\/","title":{"rendered":"George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Revisited: What Oceania and Israel Have in Common"},"content":{"rendered":"

For George Orwell, the appalling picture of the future starkly depicted in ‘1984’ was not some imaginative exercise. ‘Don\u2019t let it happen. It depends on you,’ he warned.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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A scene from the 1984 film version of Orwell\u2019s final, prophetic book. 20th Century Fox<\/p><\/div>\n

13 Dec 2019 – <\/strong><\/em>George Orwell is one of the most widely read English-language authors, and has certainly been one of the most quoted ones for more than a half-century. There is no need to mention the many concepts associated with him: \u201cNewspeak,\u201d \u201cthought police,\u201d \u201cOrwellian\u201d and so on. At the same time, the man who strove, as he himself said, to turn political writing into an art and who declared that everything he wrote after 1936 (subsequent to his participation in the Spanish Civil War, against fascist forces) was written against totalitarianism and in favor of democratic socialism, continues to be perceived, ultimately, as a storyteller.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the approach of the vast body of writing that exists about Orwell, and about his novel \u201c1984\u201d in particular, I will argue here, in brief, that his output needs to be seen as belonging to the realm of of political theory. In other words, Orwell is (also) a political theoretician (in the conventional sense of the term: a person who espouses a theory about the social reality). Moreover, and especially in his 1949 dystopic novel, he contributed significantly to the understanding of the dynamics of modern politics and in particular of the phenomenon the Roman historian Tacitus called the \u201csecrets of governing\u201d (arcana imperii). \u201cEvery new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation,\u201d Orwell wrote.<\/p>\n

Any consideration of Orwell\u2019s writing cannot ignore the fact that he chose the literary genre as the most congenial for giving expression to his views. Writing was for him a tool for changing social reality, and the literature he wrote was political. In fact, it often seems as though the narrative interferes with his attempt to set forth his views about modern capitalism (and about democracy, on the one hand, and fascism, on the other). Indeed, when he encountered difficulties in plot construction, he was known to deal with them by devious literary means, so as to retain his political point.<\/p>\n

A vivid example of this is his insertion of a completely theoretical text running to dozens of pages in \u201c1984,\u201d by means of a literary stratagem of introducing a fictitious book-within-a-book. The text, \u201cThe Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism,\u201d is manifestly a sociopolitical analysis of trends in modern industrial society and a historic description of the phenomenon called \u201cgovernment.\u201d Some people advised him to remove the \u201cbook\u201d from the book. Happily for us, he ignored them.<\/p>\n

\u2018It depends on you\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Orwell did not in any systematic way read the classic works of political thought and theory (as opposed to contemporaneous political writing, about which he was extremely knowledgeable), and that may help us understand why he chose the literary genre rather than focusing on philosophy or political science. In his works he gave expression to, and provided an explanation (theoretical) for, developments in modern society. Shortly before his death, in 1950, he made it unequivocally clear that the appalling picture of the future starkly depicted in \u201c1984\u201d was not some imaginative exercise for him. \u201cDon\u2019t let it happen. It depends on you,\u201d he asserted toward the end of his life. In his view, the dystopia had already begun to materialize.<\/p>\n

What is the \u201cit\u201d he warned against? He is referring to the fact that in the struggle to impose limits on political power, society is at a disadvantage. Orwell went a few steps further, developing the analysis of Jos\u00e9 Ortega y Gasset, who in his book \u201cThe Revolt of the Masses\u201d (1932), wrote, \u201cThis is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the state\u2026 The result of this tendency will be fatal. Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by State intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify. Society will have to live for the State, man for the governmental machine.\u201d In \u201c1984,\u201d Orwell showed how that scenario could be realized in everyday life.<\/p>\n

His writing from the 1930s onward displays a persistent effort to identify the socioeconomic forces that were pushing toward the emergence of a society whose features resemble those he would portray in \u201c1984\u201d and to warn against them. For this reason, Orwell\u2019s final book was a very frightening one. He was out to scare his readers, because he wanted to make them think about the direction in which modern society was being led. \u201cPower is not a means, it is an end,\u201d he wrote at the end of \u201c1984.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, as now, the public had trouble conceiving of the fact that there are sociopolitical elements whose goal is to preserve a class society. In other words, precisely in an era in which technology is creating great abundance, unparalleled in human history, it is scarcity that rules. (\u201cIn principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life,\u201d Orwell wrote.)<\/p>\n

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George Orwell. Bettmann Archive \/ Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

In his view, this state of affairs was not the result of a mistake, a \u201chidden hand\u201d or a government of fools; it was a deliberate policy advanced by an exploitative elite. And it isn\u2019t by accident that the masses don\u2019t grasp what is happening: \u201cIn the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.\u201d In other words, there are forces whose vested interest is to preserve \u201chigh\u201d and \u201clow.\u201d The rationale for this was explained as early as the 17th century by the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu in his \u201cPolitical Testament\u201d: \u201cAll students of politics agree that when the common people are too well off, it is impossible to keep them peaceable\u2026 It would not be sound to relieve them of all taxation and similar charges, since in such a case they would lose the mark of their subjection and consequently the awareness of their station.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orwell died young, aged 46 \u2013 younger than the age at which many thinkers in the realms of humanities and social sciences have written their magnum opus. From this point of view, it\u2019s hard to imagine how our world would look if Niccolo Machiavelli (who died at 58), Karl Marx (at 64), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (66), Immanuel Kant (79) or Thomas Hobbes (91) had died when they were still in their forties. By the same token, it\u2019s tempting to imagine how our world of ideas would look if Orwell had lived another 40 years.<\/p>\n

A survey of his development as a thinker, beginning from his period of service in the Imperial Police in Burma (when he was in his 20s), shows one thing clearly: The issues that troubled Orwell beginning in the 1930s won a richer and more complete theoretical expression in \u201c1984.\u201d Indeed, when we consider the stage his intellectual progress had reached in the autumn of his years, we find new directions, not yet fully matured, in his analysis of modern politics.<\/p>\n

Mechanism of power<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve written so far is meant to justify my reading of \u201c1984\u201d as political theory, and not just as a novel. The general plotline is well known and needs no elaboration. I will only mention that the book covers a short period in the life of Winston Smith, a citizen of Oceania (a region congruent with much of today\u2019s Western world), which is under tight totalitarian rule as part of a one-party system and where life plays out under the watchful eye of \u201cBig Brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, what has drawn the most attention in the book \u2013 and is also considered Orwell\u2019s legacy \u2013 is the description of the totalistic means of supervision and control that exist in Oceania, and in particular the \u201ctelescreen\u201d that monitors people nonstop and identifies \u201cdeviations\u201d from the government\u2019s sadistic path. And, of course, the notion of the media as serving political interests. (\u201cMost of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie,\u201d Orwell wrote). In the wake of the technological and political developments of recent decades, references to him are only increasing, but often those references miss the crux of the book: not the mechanism of power, but the motif that generates it.<\/p>\n

Two great questions arise from the book: How did it happen and why did it happen? That is, how did humanity reach a situation in which a small elite possesses spiritual and physical power over the entire population? Or, in Orwell\u2019s famous formulation in \u201c1984\u201d: \u201cI understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u201d refers to the technique: the tools that the development of modern industrial society has placed at the disposal of the rulers. Orwell offers a horrific account of the means by which the rules control the masses and bring about a totally regimented society: atomic bombs, perpetual war, Thought Police, social inequality, creation of a \u201cbesieged city\u201d atmosphere, \u201ctwo minutes of hate\u201d fomented by the authorities against specific groups, and more. These and other means, Orwell makes clear, generate a disciplined community of fear. \u201cAnd even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty,\u201d he wrote, explaining the logic of technological and industrial development in Oceania.<\/p>\n

He was adept at describing the \u201chow\u201d in the daily life of the country\u2019s citizens: Technological developments have placed in the hands of an exploitative minority more efficient means to control the masses. And if in the past, the mechanisms of rule required the presence of physical violence, abuse, torture, executions and the like, the new techniques had to a certain degree made superfluous the Nazi Gestapo and the Stalinist NKVD, which unleashed terror in the streets. Authority in \u201c1984\u201d is reflectled in a total inner capitulation to the Moloch of government.<\/p>\n

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Residents of Sderot seek cover during amid rocket fire from Gaza.
Eliyahu Hershkovitz<\/p><\/div>\n

Orwell\u2019s comments in this context are almost prophetic: \u201cPart of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Orwell maintained in \u201c1984,\u201d the new technologies made it possible to control the individual\u2019s thought. \u201cIn the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.\u201d Tweeters would do well to make this their motto (it also helps one stay below character limits). Absurdly, a theoretical possibility that frightened many when the book was published is today legitimized by a public which considers itself enlightened, liberal and democratic.<\/p>\n

Orwell maintained that the new technologies made it possible to control the individual\u2019s thought. \u201cIn the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this sense, Oceania is so frightening because the totalitarianism of rule has resulted in the emergence of a totally static society, where no social change is possible. History indeed ended with the emergence of Oceania, which is also why the novel\u2019s original title was \u201cThe Last Man in Europe\u201d \u2013 Winston is the last person who still thinks. \u201c\u2018If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors,\u2019\u201d says O\u2019Brien, who is out to mend Winston\u2019s sick (and skeptical) mind.<\/p>\n

Relentless war<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most illuminating aspects of \u201c1984\u201d is Orwell\u2019s perceptive description of the relationship between domestic policy and foreign policy. The world of \u201c1984\u201d is divided into three powers \u2013 Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia \u2013 which wage unceasing wars on each other. The parallel to the blocs of the Cold War is perfectly clear. The wars, however, have limited goals and the adversaries are not capable of or interested in truly destroying one another. \u201cTo understand the nature of the present war \u2013 for in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war \u2013 one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive.\u201d This principle is surely fraught with great meaning for people living in Israel, and we would be doing justice to Orwell\u2019s memory to consider it more closely.<\/p>\n

In the world depicted in \u201c1984\u201d (and by this Orwell meant everywhere) foreign policy is an instrument of domestic policy. As such, in his view, foreign policy is a continuation or projection of internal policy. Why? Because the former is implemented by the same elite that rules the country, and it has the same goals in foreign policy as it does in domestic policy. This is one of the splendid theoretical contributions of \u201c1984.\u201d In contrast to the realistic description that is common in political science faculties (dealing with confirmation and preservation of the existing order), according to which foreign policy is activity by state A (as subject) directed at state B (as object) for the benefit of citizens of the former \u2013 Orwell shows that the division between domestic and foreign policy is formal (illusory) and is only presented to the public as the form in which decisions are made by the political echelon. In fact, he maintains, the whole purpose of foreign policy is internal. Meaning, the implementation of power by the rulers is in fact aimed toward the population within a given country, and not toward populations in other countries, which are not the object of that specific government.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, in Oceania \u2013 as in Israel \u2013 a missile falls and creates panic. This is the meaning of continuous war today, and it achieves its goal: constant deprivation, perpetuation of distress and the heightening of the fear level.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

War is the direct expression of foreign policy, Orwell explains, but it is entirely aimed at influencing the domestic situation at home: \u201cWar, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair\u2026 The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.\u201d The citizen doesn\u2019t know much about the wars the state is fighting, even though his whole being is mobilized for that end, Orwell avers. The antennas broadcast to the masses what the elite wishes them to hear: \u201cThe enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil.\u201d The ruling groups know that, \u201cit is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory.\u201d This state of affairs creates the ultimate man of the masses for the rulers \u2013 imbecilic masses whose psychological makeup is appropriate for the perpetuation of a hierarchical society. Fear, which is largely invented, is the means of control by which the society is organized.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous,\u201d Orwell writes. In practice, because war is ceaseless, \u201cthere is no such thing as military necessity.\u201d War is life (itself). It\u2019s worth noting that Orwell coined the term \u201cCold War\u201d (in a brilliant October 1945 article, \u201cYou and the Atom Bomb\u201d). A reading of \u201c1984\u201d shows exactly what he meant: The aim of war is not a conquest of one kind or another, but the preservation of a hierarchical society of \u201chigh\u201d and \u201clow.\u201d In fact, Orwell contended, we should talk about \u201ccontinuous warfare\u201d (and not about \u201cwar\u201d that takes place in a given time) that serves the balance of forces in every country and allows the continuation of social inequality. This means, he notes, \u201cis also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

War needs to be managed \u2013 not resolved, Orwell explains (and one is compelled to mention here the grotesque concept that is dominant in these parts, that of \u201cconflict management\u201d). In practice, \u201cIt does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU<\/p>\n

In this connection, a prime principle in Orwell\u2019s politological analysis is the difference between formal posturing\/speech (aimed at the masses in order to mobilize public opinion) and realistic posturing\/speech. War is \u201cwaged for purposes quite other than the declared ones.\u201d This, in Orwell\u2019s view, is one of the \u201csecret(s) of rulership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, in Oceania \u2013 as in Israel \u2013 there is no threat of destruction, even though it\u2019s hammered into the public\u2019s head relentlessly that the Sword of Damocles is hovering over everyone. Occasionally, in Oceania \u2013 as in Israel \u2013 a missile falls and creates panic. This is the meaning of continuous war today, and it achieves its goal: constant deprivation, perpetuation of distress and the heightening of the fear level. Orwell explains the politics underlying the missile: \u201cbecause a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.\u201d This is what rulers want, he argues.<\/p>\n

However, the big question Orwell tries to answer is the \u201cwhy\u201d: Why did a society come into being in which \u201cGod is power\u201d and in which political power is concentrated in the hands of a \u201csmall privileged caste\u201d? This question perturbed Orwell for the last 15 years of his life, and in \u201c1984\u201d he addresses that complex issue: \u201cBut there is one question which until this moment we have almost ignored. It is; WHY should human equality be averted?… what is the motive for this huge, accurately planned effort to freeze history at a particular moment of time?\u201d<\/p>\n

A reading of \u201c1984\u201d shows that Orwell did not think, as is usually thought today, that the difference between the rulers and the ruled lies only in only a division of labor (as if the ruler punches a card in the elected institutions). In his view, society\u2019s division into a working class (tasked with the industrial production that is the foundation of modern society) and a ruling class (whose role is to rule and to swallow up the profits the workers create) is a historical phenomenon that demands explanation. He is critical of the establishment scholars \u201cwho interpreted history as a cyclical process and claimed to show that inequality was the unalterable law of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Answering the \u2018why\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Already in the opening of the book-within-a-book, \u201cOligarchical Collectivism,\u201d Orwell explains that rule, enslavement and exploitation are a phenomenon that has characterized human society \u201cprobably since the end of the Neolithic Age.\u201d In other words, in the period of the agricultural revolution some 10,000 years ago, the social structures were created that institutionalized exploitation of the community by a ruling elite. In terms of Homo Sapiens, this is a new phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Herein lies the heart of the matter of \u201c1984\u201d and of the \u201cwhy\u201d \u2013 the reason for the continued existence of a hierarchical society, of an exploitative minority and an exploited majority. Orwell noted that the growth in social wealth (which already was a fact at the time the book was written, and remains so today) and the way that wealth is distributed is destined to wreak destruction on the class society. Why? \u201cIt was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is why continuous war is needed, why rule by fear is essential. And this is where Orwell\u2019s greatness resides: in his horrifying account of the everyday existence of a person living in a society where fear rules and war never ends. \u201c\u2018If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face \u2013 for ever,\u2019\u201d O\u2019Brien tells Winston near the end of the book.<\/p>\n

I am obliged here to recall Jack London\u2019s hair-raising passage in his masterful novel \u201cThe Iron Heel\u201d (1907), which Orwell read and very much esteemed: \u201cWe will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine and those that come after us have the power. There is the word. It is the king of words \u2013 Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author of Ecclesiastes seems to have had thoughts along the same line when he wrote (8:4), \u201cInasmuch as a king\u2019s command is authoritative, and none can say to him, \u2018What are you doing?\u2019\u201d Indeed, who can say?<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adam Raz – <\/em>Haaretz Contributor <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 haaretz.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 Dec 2019 – For George Orwell, the appalling picture of the future starkly depicted in ‘1984’ was not some imaginative exercise. ‘Don\u2019t let it happen. It depends on you,’ he warned. \u201cThere is the word. It is the king of words \u2013 Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":149815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1235,915,267,855,260,88,642,767,85,109,287,126],"class_list":["post-149814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-1235","tag-art","tag-geopolitics","tag-george-orwell","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-literature","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine-israel","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275082,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149814\/revisions\/275082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}