Goldstein's book
Encyclopedia
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, is the fictional book
that is a thematic and plot element integral to the dystopia
n novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949), by George Orwell
. In the totalitarian society of Oceania
, ruled by the seemingly omnipotent, omniscient Party
, in its propaganda
, Emmanuel Goldstein
is the principal enemy of the state
— a former member of the Inner Party – continually conspiring against the leadership of Big Brother
. Early in the story, the protagonist thinks to himself: "There were . . . whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as The Book".
, Winston Smith
, secretly hates the Party and Big Brother
; in the event, he approaches O’Brien, a high-level member of the Inner Party
, believing him part of the Brotherhood, Goldstein's conspiracy
against Oceania
, Big Brother, and the Party. Initially, he appears as such, especially in giving Winston a copy of Goldstein’s illegal book, which O’Brien says reveals the true, totalitarian nature of the society the Party established in Oceania; full membership to the Brotherhood requires reading and knowing The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the true title of "the book". When alone in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop, Winston examines the book
, before reading it, noting that it was:
Despite the term "oligarchical collectivism" featuring nowhere else in the novel, it alludes to the Party’s ideology English Socialism, Ingsoc
, in Newspeak
. Winston reads two long excerpts establishing how the three totalitarian super-states — Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia — emerged from a global war, thus connecting the past and the present, and explains the basic political philosophy
of the totalitarianism
that derived from the authoritarian political tendencies manifested in the first part of the twentieth century.
the Party. (Chapter II, presumably titled Freedom is Slavery after the remaining Party slogan, is not detailed in the novel.)
characteristic of human societies; beginning with the historical observation that societies always have hierarchically
divided themselves into social class
es and caste
s: the High (who rule); the Middle (who work for, and yearn to supplant the High), and the Low (whose goal is quotidian survival). Cyclically, the Middle deposed
the High, by enlisting the Low. Upon assuming power, however, the Middle (the new High class) recast the Low into their usual servitude. In the event, the classes perpetually repeat the cycle, when the Middle class speaks to the Low class of "justice" and of "human brotherhood" in aid of becoming the High class rulers.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the power-seeking Middle class dispensed with the pretence of pursuing justice for everyone: "In each variant of Socialism
that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned. The new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century . . . had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality"; because the true goal was to end history
upon becoming the perpetual High ruling class — composed not of aristocrats
or plutocrats
, but of "bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians" originally from "the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class".
Moreover, by the mid-twentieth century, technology
had rendered feasible a totalitarian
society; electronic apparatuses, such as the telescreen
(transceiving
television) allowed continuous governmental espionage of the populace: "The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time". After the revolutionary period of the 1950s and the 1960s, society divided itself into the High (Inner Party), the Middle (Outer Party), and the Low (Proles); the first used technology to establish themselves as the perpetual ruling class. The Inner Party
, collectively
fixed their privileged command-status when the old-style Socialists failed to perceive that the Party’s assumption of societal command had only concentrated political power to fewer people than under the deposed capitalism
. They believed that the abolishment of private property had established Socialism
, when it, in fact, established economic inequality.
Militarily, the Party do not fear the external conquest of Oceania — by either Eastasia or Eurasia — because the three super-states are military equals. The Oceanian social-class pyramid is a trinity: the ruling Inner Party
— presided by Big Brother, an icon
ic, demigod
leader (possibly fictional) meant to be worshiped and obeyed; the administrative Outer Party
, who execute the rule of Oceania; and the Proles
, who do the work. The mass of the populace will not revolt against the Party’s rule, because the Minitrue’s propaganda
denies them the facts that would allow them to compare countries and political systems — and so discover their enslavement. Therefore, the only possible, internal enemies would be "the splitting-off of a new group of able, under-employed, power-hungry people, and the growth of liberalism
and scepticism
in their own ranks".
The Proles usually are not subjected to propaganda: "They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect", thus no desire to rebel. Yet the inner and outer members of the Party are so controlled, lest they develop unorthodox
intellectual deviations, be it scepticism or liberalism, thus, a Party member "is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party".
To safeguard the essential beliefs in the omniscience and infallibility of Big Brother and the Party, the Minitrue continually practices historical revisionism
, because the past has no objective existence, given it resides in documents and in memory. To the end of suppressing any unorthodoxy
, the Party inculcate self-deceptive habits of mind to the inner and outer members, thus crimestop ("preventive stupidity"), halts thinking at the threshold of politically-dangerous thought, and doublethink
allows simultaneously holding and believing contradictory thoughts without noticing the contradiction, to wit:
Hence the Party’s perpetuity: "for the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes . . . The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity".
, Australia
, Canada
, and all of South America
to form Oceania; the USSR annexed continental Europe
to form Eurasia; and Eastasia emerged "after a decade of confused fighting", with China’s annexation of the Indian sub-continent, Japan
, Korea
, et al. In various alliances, they have warred for twenty-five years. Yet the perpetual war is militarily nonsensical, because "it is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference", since each is a totalitarian state.
The historical review describes how, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mechanised industrial production raised "the living standards of the average human being very greatly", and that it became "clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared . . . hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations" — a threat to the Party’s perpetuity, because, ". . . if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would learn to think for themselves", become politically conscious and so depose the ruling oligarchy; therefore, ". . . in the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance". Given that large-scale, mechanised production could not be eliminated once invented, the Party arranges the destruction of surplus goods — before that makes "the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent". Hence the perpetual war
Such a way of life creates, in the Party’s members, an externally-controlled mentality, wherein he or she is "a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war", although "the entire war is spurious . . . and waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones"; hence the populace believe it is real and will "end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world". Despite unnecessary weapons development, the Inner Party knows that the war must continue, that "the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs", lest an invasion of enemy territory allow the warring peoples to meet and discover that their lives are like those in the enemy super-state. Even the ideologies — "Ingsoc", "Neo-Bolshevism", and "Obliteration of the Self" — are actually similar, though they all alike portray the other
as a barbarian
:
Hence "the war" is actually "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", therefore, war is peace.
arrested him; yet he believes that the hope of change lies with the Proles
.
, not a revolutionary
of the Brotherhood. At the Miniluv, he tortures Winston in order to cure him of his political insanity: that there exists an objective
reality external to that of the Party. In their torture chamber conversations, he tells Winston that The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, "the book" by Emmanuel Goldstein
, was written by a committee that included him. When Winston asks O’Brien if "the book" is true, he replies: "As description, yes. The programme it sets forth . . . is nonsense".
Fictional book
A fictional book is a book that sometimes provides the basis of the plot of a story, a common thread in a series of books, or the works of a particular writer or canon of work. A fictional book may also be used as a mode of conceit to illustrate a story within a story.-Prominent fictional...
that is a thematic and plot element integral to the dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
(1949), by George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
. In the totalitarian society of Oceania
Nations of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are the three fictional superstates in George Orwell's futuristic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.-Oceania:...
, ruled by the seemingly omnipotent, omniscient Party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
, in its propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, Emmanuel Goldstein
Emmanuel Goldstein
Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the number one enemy of the people according to Big Brother and the Party, who heads a mysterious and possibly fictitious anti-party organization called The Brotherhood...
is the principal enemy of the state
Enemy of the state
An enemy of the state is a person accused of certain crimes against the state, such as treason. Describing individuals in this way is sometimes a manifestation of political repression. For example, an authoritarian regime may purport to maintain national security by describing social or political...
— a former member of the Inner Party – continually conspiring against the leadership of Big Brother
Big Brother (1984)
Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
. Early in the story, the protagonist thinks to himself: "There were . . . whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as The Book".
Background
The protagonistProtagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
, Winston Smith
Winston Smith
Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a "central eye ... [the reader] can readily identify with"...
, secretly hates the Party and Big Brother
Big Brother (1984)
Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
; in the event, he approaches O’Brien, a high-level member of the Inner Party
Inner Party
The Inner Party represents the oligarchical political class in Oceania, and has its membership restricted to 6 million individuals . Inner Party members enjoy a quality of life that is much better than that of the Outer Party members and the proles...
, believing him part of the Brotherhood, Goldstein's conspiracy
Conspiracy (political)
In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. Typically, the final goal is to gain power through a revolutionary coup d'état or through assassination....
against Oceania
Nations of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are the three fictional superstates in George Orwell's futuristic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.-Oceania:...
, Big Brother, and the Party. Initially, he appears as such, especially in giving Winston a copy of Goldstein’s illegal book, which O’Brien says reveals the true, totalitarian nature of the society the Party established in Oceania; full membership to the Brotherhood requires reading and knowing The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the true title of "the book". When alone in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop, Winston examines the book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
, before reading it, noting that it was:
Despite the term "oligarchical collectivism" featuring nowhere else in the novel, it alludes to the Party’s ideology English Socialism, Ingsoc
Ingsoc
Ingsoc is the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.-Fictionalised origin of Ingsoc:...
, in Newspeak
Newspeak
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state. Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained...
. Winston reads two long excerpts establishing how the three totalitarian super-states — Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia — emerged from a global war, thus connecting the past and the present, and explains the basic political philosophy
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
of the totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
that derived from the authoritarian political tendencies manifested in the first part of the twentieth century.
Contents
Chapter I: Ignorance is Strength, and Chapter III: War is Peace of "the book" are titled with Party slogans; O’Brien later refers to chapters featuring a programme for deposingDeposition (politics)
Deposition by political means concerns the removal of a politician or monarch. It may be done by coup, impeachment, invasion or forced abdication...
the Party. (Chapter II, presumably titled Freedom is Slavery after the remaining Party slogan, is not detailed in the novel.)
Chapter I
Ignorance is Strength details the perpetual class struggleClass struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
characteristic of human societies; beginning with the historical observation that societies always have hierarchically
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
divided themselves into social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
es and caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
s: the High (who rule); the Middle (who work for, and yearn to supplant the High), and the Low (whose goal is quotidian survival). Cyclically, the Middle deposed
Deposition (politics)
Deposition by political means concerns the removal of a politician or monarch. It may be done by coup, impeachment, invasion or forced abdication...
the High, by enlisting the Low. Upon assuming power, however, the Middle (the new High class) recast the Low into their usual servitude. In the event, the classes perpetually repeat the cycle, when the Middle class speaks to the Low class of "justice" and of "human brotherhood" in aid of becoming the High class rulers.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the power-seeking Middle class dispensed with the pretence of pursuing justice for everyone: "In each variant of Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned. The new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century . . . had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality"; because the true goal was to end history
End of history
End of history may refer to:* The advent of a particular political and economic system as a signal of the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government, as posited by Thomas More in Utopia, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx and Francis Fukuyama*The...
upon becoming the perpetual High ruling class — composed not of aristocrats
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
or plutocrats
Plutocracy
Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. The word plutocracy is derived from the Ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.-Usage:The term plutocracy is generally...
, but of "bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians" originally from "the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class".
Moreover, by the mid-twentieth century, technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
had rendered feasible a totalitarian
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
society; electronic apparatuses, such as the telescreen
Telescreen
Telescreens are most prominently featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, although notably they have an earlier appearance in the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times...
(transceiving
Transceiver
A transceiver is a device comprising both a transmitter and a receiver which are combined and share common circuitry or a single housing. When no circuitry is common between transmit and receive functions, the device is a transmitter-receiver. The term originated in the early 1920s...
television) allowed continuous governmental espionage of the populace: "The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time". After the revolutionary period of the 1950s and the 1960s, society divided itself into the High (Inner Party), the Middle (Outer Party), and the Low (Proles); the first used technology to establish themselves as the perpetual ruling class. The Inner Party
Inner Party
The Inner Party represents the oligarchical political class in Oceania, and has its membership restricted to 6 million individuals . Inner Party members enjoy a quality of life that is much better than that of the Outer Party members and the proles...
, collectively
Collectivism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...
fixed their privileged command-status when the old-style Socialists failed to perceive that the Party’s assumption of societal command had only concentrated political power to fewer people than under the deposed capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. They believed that the abolishment of private property had established Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, when it, in fact, established economic inequality.
Militarily, the Party do not fear the external conquest of Oceania — by either Eastasia or Eurasia — because the three super-states are military equals. The Oceanian social-class pyramid is a trinity: the ruling Inner Party
Inner Party
The Inner Party represents the oligarchical political class in Oceania, and has its membership restricted to 6 million individuals . Inner Party members enjoy a quality of life that is much better than that of the Outer Party members and the proles...
— presided by Big Brother, an icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
ic, demigod
Demigod
The term "demigod" , meaning "half-god", is commonly used to describe mythological figures whose one parent was a god and whose other parent was human; as such, demigods are human-god hybrids...
leader (possibly fictional) meant to be worshiped and obeyed; the administrative Outer Party
Outer Party
The Outer Party is a fictional social stratum from the George Orwell novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.The Party which controls Oceania is split into two parts: the Inner Party and the Outer Party...
, who execute the rule of Oceania; and the Proles
Proles
Proles is a term used in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to refer to the working class of Oceania ....
, who do the work. The mass of the populace will not revolt against the Party’s rule, because the Minitrue’s propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
denies them the facts that would allow them to compare countries and political systems — and so discover their enslavement. Therefore, the only possible, internal enemies would be "the splitting-off of a new group of able, under-employed, power-hungry people, and the growth of liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and scepticism
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
in their own ranks".
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
intellectual deviations, be it scepticism or liberalism, thus, a Party member "is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party".
To safeguard the essential beliefs in the omniscience and infallibility of Big Brother and the Party, the Minitrue continually practices historical revisionism
Historical revisionism (negationism)
Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favourable light. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see...
, because the past has no objective existence, given it resides in documents and in memory. To the end of suppressing any unorthodoxy
Orthodoxy
The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...
, the Party inculcate self-deceptive habits of mind to the inner and outer members, thus crimestop ("preventive stupidity"), halts thinking at the threshold of politically-dangerous thought, and doublethink
Doublethink
Doublethink, a word coined by George Orwell in the novel 1984, describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. It is related to, but distinct from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Its opposite is cognitive dissonance, where...
allows simultaneously holding and believing contradictory thoughts without noticing the contradiction, to wit:
Hence the Party’s perpetuity: "for the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes . . . The prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity".
Chapter III
Before reading the first chapter, Winston reads the third chapter War is Peace, which explains that slogan-title’s meaning, by reviewing how the global super-states were established: The US annexed the British EmpireBritish Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and all of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
to form Oceania; the USSR annexed continental Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
to form Eurasia; and Eastasia emerged "after a decade of confused fighting", with China’s annexation of the Indian sub-continent, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
, et al. In various alliances, they have warred for twenty-five years. Yet the perpetual war is militarily nonsensical, because "it is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference", since each is a totalitarian state.
The historical review describes how, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mechanised industrial production raised "the living standards of the average human being very greatly", and that it became "clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared . . . hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations" — a threat to the Party’s perpetuity, because, ". . . if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would learn to think for themselves", become politically conscious and so depose the ruling oligarchy; therefore, ". . . in the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance". Given that large-scale, mechanised production could not be eliminated once invented, the Party arranges the destruction of surplus goods — before that makes "the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent". Hence the perpetual war
Such a way of life creates, in the Party’s members, an externally-controlled mentality, wherein he or she is "a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war", although "the entire war is spurious . . . and waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones"; hence the populace believe it is real and will "end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world". Despite unnecessary weapons development, the Inner Party knows that the war must continue, that "the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs", lest an invasion of enemy territory allow the warring peoples to meet and discover that their lives are like those in the enemy super-state. Even the ideologies — "Ingsoc", "Neo-Bolshevism", and "Obliteration of the Self" — are actually similar, though they all alike portray the other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
as a barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
:
Hence "the war" is actually "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", therefore, war is peace.
Later chapters
Winston never has opportunity to finish reading The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, and learn the "Why?" of Oceania and the world order in 1984 before the Thought PoliceThought Police
The Thought Police is the secret police of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals, using psychology and omnipresent surveillance from telescreens to monitor, search, find and kill...
arrested him; yet he believes that the hope of change lies with the Proles
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
.
The true author of "the book"
O’Brien rejects Winston Smith’s perspective as nonsense, because he is a faithful member of the Inner PartyInner Party
The Inner Party represents the oligarchical political class in Oceania, and has its membership restricted to 6 million individuals . Inner Party members enjoy a quality of life that is much better than that of the Outer Party members and the proles...
, not a revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
of the Brotherhood. At the Miniluv, he tortures Winston in order to cure him of his political insanity: that there exists an objective
Objective
Objective may refer to:* Objective , to achieve a final set of actions within a given military operation* Objective pronoun, a pronoun as the target of a verb* Objective , an element in a camera or microscope...
reality external to that of the Party. In their torture chamber conversations, he tells Winston that The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, "the book" by Emmanuel Goldstein
Emmanuel Goldstein
Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the number one enemy of the people according to Big Brother and the Party, who heads a mysterious and possibly fictitious anti-party organization called The Brotherhood...
, was written by a committee that included him. When Winston asks O’Brien if "the book" is true, he replies: "As description, yes. The programme it sets forth . . . is nonsense".