We continue our discussion of Orwell’s “War Is Peace.”
I don’t think that Orwell did believe the Soviet system could last for a long time. In fact, I’ve always suspected that the last third of 1984 was more tongue-in-cheek than people believe; Orwell was in fact poking fun at people in his time who believed that such a society could be perpetuate itself. My reason for believing this is this essay where he reviews James Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution”:
Here is a quote from that essay:
“It is too early to say in just what way the Russian régime will destroy itself. If I had to make a prophecy, I should say that a continuation of the Russian policies of the last fifteen years – and internal and external policy, of course, are merely two facets of the same thing – can only lead to a war conducted with atomic bombs, which will make Hitler’s invasion look like a tea-party. But at any rate, the Russian régime will either democratize itself, or it will perish. The huge, invincible, everlasting slave empire of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established, or, if established, will not endure, because slavery is no longer a stable basis for human society.”
A fascinating essay; I’d never read it until now. I still have trouble believing that any part of 1984 is “tongue-in-cheek,” but this is the strongest evidence I’ve seen in favor of this reading.
Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society.
Your comment is excellent. I also wonder, though, whether he had the idea of satiation: once we have so many consumer goods, we won’t want more.
Maybe, but I doubt it. Orwell gets the idea that the common man aspires to the standard of living of the middle classes, who in turn aspire to the standard of living of the upper classes. Both sets of aspirations leave ample room for expanding consumption. Orwell’s in the older socialist tradition of thinking that capitalism creates artificial scarcity, not the later view that capitalism creates artificial wants.
From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared.
You commented correctly that we need inequality in order to have incentives. But there’s more to say. We are getting rid of human drudgery in the first world. Jobs at pretty much every level are much easier now. That’s distinct from inequality.
If I were young, I think I’d prefer physical labor with a team of friends to teleworking in isolation. But point well-taken.
Also, while you emphasize the role of incentives, it’s important to note that no one “decides” that there’s inequality. It’s the natural result of a market process in which people become various degrees of good at what they do. No one decided that Jeff Bezos should be the wealthiest man in the world. Instead, billions of voluntary transactions led to that result.
Yes, but we can still talk about how much inequality the government decides to allow.
Imagine if we could revive Orwell and bring him into modern times. Let him see how those officially classified as “poor” in America or Britain have blown far past the threshold he describes, and in fact possess luxuries far beyond anything the wealthiest people in his day had available to them. Show him how even the poorest Americans have supercomputers in their pockets that can instantly connect to a wealth of easily accessible and freely available information in platforms like Wikipedia and Khan Academy. And after he’s taken all that in, let him browse Twitter and and listen to talk radio and attend some political rallies, and ask him if he still thinks it’s material poverty that keeps people stupefied.
Brilliant. If only we could actually revive Orwell for this fine experiment! My guess is that he would switch to blaming the media for stupefying people, though the role of prolefeed in Oceania makes that an awkward move. Prolefeed is the segment of Oceania’s media that actually gives customers the thrills they’re looking for!
And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
Orwell is right by highlighting that this doesn’t depend on actually being in a state of war. It only requires a “consciousness of being at war” – you need only make people feel like the social issue de jour is akin to a state of war. Think of the War on Drugs, or the War on Poverty – the rhetoric of both was designed to try to create a “consciousness of being at war” as justification for the “handing-over of all power to a small caste.” And interestingly, Orwell held no illusions that the socialism he advocated wouldn’t entail the same thing.
Again, an excellent point.
“But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.”
Perhaps Orwell was on to a grain of truth. One hundred years ago, a town might only have a few college graduates. If old novels are to be believed, their status conferred a certain amount of respect. Today, how much deference does the average skilled laborer have for someone with a college degree and no other significant achievements? In my observation, very little.
I’d say that the average skilled laborer respects the material dominance of college graduates, but not their rhetorical dominance. He wants his kids to go to college. He wants them to marry other college grads. He wants his grandkids to go to college. But he doesn’t want to defer to the political and social opinions of college graduates.
Was this greatly different in the past? I really doubt it. Perhaps the masses had more deference for religious elites in the 19th-century than they have for intellectual elites today. Even there, however, the surviving evidence seems thin. Prior to the rise of public opinion research, who really knows what the masses thought and felt?
I doubt it would be possible to establish a hierarchy in America that those on the bottom rungs of the hierarchy would take very seriously. If the Constitutional Convention happened today, for example, would most people be inclined to support a document written by a small group of the most educated Americans? It seems very unlikely. In short, Orwell might have been on to something.
There was great deference for elites for a few years after 9/11 – a classic “rally round the flag” effect. The Constitutional Convention fits the same mold.
One issue with Orwell’s take on war as a means of perpetually maintaining social cohesion is that people tend to get war fatigue after a while, and I think the example of the Iraq War is an example of this. The original enthusiasm had mostly dissipated after a few years and opposition was a big factor in the 2008 election. Both Russia and Germany faced increasing domestic dissidence as WW1 dragged on and this partly motivated their governments to seek peace. War seems an effective way to encourage social cohesion for a few years, but not indefinitely. I think eventually the war would become a domestic burden to the party rather than an asset.
An excellent point, very consistent with the work of Scott Althaus. On reflection, the power-maximizing strategy is probably to go through cycles of suspicion and hysteria: “You never know when the enemy will pounce” seasoned with an occasional “The enemy is pouncing!” Classic Stalinism.
Except for the first few years after 9/11, I don’t think that one can make a very strong case that war, or even threats to “national security”, is used as an effective way to amass much power nowadays. Although we have deployed troops in the Middle East for 20 years, the War on Terror just doesn’t garner much mindshare anymore, and hasn’t for quite some time.
I agree that the War on Terror no longer generates much social cohesion. But during the 90s, military spending as a share of GDP did plummet (see graph below), and the War on Terror managed to reverse that trend for about a decade. Now we’re still a little higher than 20 years ago, but imagine how low military spending would have been without 9/11. So I’d still say that war remains helpful for amassing and retaining power.
In 2020, the obvious pretense for “handing-over of all power to a small caste” is the War on Covid. Prior, and after, some desperately wanted, and will want, the War on Climate Change to fill that role, although thus far their efforts have been largely ineffective. Instead, the War on Systemic Racism and Sexism has been, and post-Covid is on track to continue to be, the all-consuming War that justifies everything…
Agreed. As KevinDC says above, our metaphorical wars often serve the same function as the literal wars of Oceania, though the intensity is plainly far less.
READER COMMENTS
John Alcorn
Feb 17 2021 at 9:52am
Late comments on your previous post in the book club — It’s hard to keep up with you!:
1) In previous posts, you argue that totalitarian regimes can maintain power indefinitely — or at least much longer than they do — if successors would practice ruthless repression like the founders. For example, loss of nerve among rulers after Stalin, culminating in Gorbacev, explains the collapse of communism.
In your post about war, you argue that war is an efficacious means to the end of justifying ruthless domestic repression, and that war also spontaneously occurs among power-hungry dictators.
Why, then, did successors often lose their nerve in 20th-century totalitarian regimes? (We’re back to sideward glances at western prosperity, and tensions between totalitarian empire and national sentiments in smaller, satellite States.)
2) You criticize Orwell on economic equality: “The case for economic inequality in the machine age remains as strong as ever. We need incentives for work, skill acquisition, and innovation.”
At some income threshold, which has already been surpassed among the middle classes, a blind spot kicks in: hedonic adaptation. Perhaps people in modern economies believe that ‘more’ will bring happiness, but then find themselves on an hedonic treadmill?
Shouldn’t issues raised by hedonic adaptation figure into imaginary debates with Orwell, and debates today about inequality and incentives?
3) You mention that Orwell seems oblivious to ‘the rat race.’ Socialists will reply that a just society doesn’t ignore distinction (status competition), but channels ambition into many dimensions of excellence other than income or wealth. Perhaps the rub here is that uneven natural endowments often shape also distinctions that aren’t economic; for example, beauty, affability, athletic prowess, intelligence, social entrepreneurship, and so on.
KevinDC
Feb 17 2021 at 10:33am
I suspect this has a lot to do with the nature of power struggles in dictatorships. Initially, they are won by the most ruthless and cold blooded people – the ones who will do absolutely anything to get power. But almost by definition, in the process of gaining power they also push aside or eliminate everyone who was almost but not quite as ruthless as they were. And during their reign, they keep a firm eye out for and move swiftly against anyone who might be ruthless enough to challenge them. As a result, when the first dictator passes, there’s nobody left who has that same level of brutality and brutal competence, so their successor is inevitably less brutal and more moderate. This may also explain what’s different in the case of North Korea – being an explicitly familial dynasty, you could select for equally brutal successors in a way that wasn’t true in the Soviet Union.
John Alcorn
Feb 17 2021 at 12:56pm
@KevinDC,
Thank you for your insightful reply. There is surely something to the mechanism you sketch. But may I follow up?
1) If war naturally occurs among power-hungry dictators, and if citizens believe that war justifies ruthless domestic repression, then won’t successors, too, make war and continue repression, instead of losing nerve? Do founders really eliminate from succession all contenders and aspirants who have the right stuff (psychology, ability) for war and domestic repression? Doesn’t war itself foster psychology of brutality in Inner Party members, along with legitimacy among subjects?
Given that your mechanism surely has some bite, I would sketch a concatenation of mechanisms (disequilibrium elements), each of which substantially increased the probabilities of loss of nerve, loss of legitimacy, and collapse of communism:
(a) self-serving elimination of brutal rivals and aspirants by the founder; (b) increase in awareness of a growing prosperity gap with the West; and (c) growth in national and religious sentiments in satellite countries.
2) Re: North Korea.
Are you sure that dynastic succession (kin lineage) facilitates selection for efficacious brutality? As you point out, trust might allow the founder to inculcate brutality in the son. However, natural endowments, too, matter. Brutality genes might skip a generation! Regression to the mean is probable. Kin lineage greatly reduces the scope of eligible pool of talent in efficacious brutality.
Blaise Pascal argued that kin lineage reduces both competence and strife:
I lack any expertise about North Korea. A layperson’s question: Absent external support by China, would the dynastic regime in North Korea maintain totalitarian power?
KevinDC
Feb 18 2021 at 2:25pm
Hey John!
Good comments all around, and I should make it clear that my initial response was meant more in the spirit of “this factor seems like a plausible mechanism” rather than “this is definitely what explains it.” Undoubtedly there are additional factors at play that I haven’t mentioned or thought of!
A few follow ups on what your comments:
It’s not actually clear to me that war is always the natural response for power-hungry dictators. I think for such people, their number one priority is to hold on to their power, and as a secondary concern, if possible, expand their power. In Orwell’s fictional world, war was not a threat to the power of the ruling party. In the real world, it often is. A power hungry dictator in a country that has little chance of successful military engagement will be motivated to keep their iron grip on their country, rather than risk losing it in a military engagement they may not win.
This isn’t a necessary truth, but I think it’s a practical reality. While it’s logically possible that Stalin could have risen to power without eliminating and weeding away all other possible rivals who were sufficiently Stalin-like, I don’t think it’s likely to work out that way very often. Dictators are notorious for purging even members of their inner circle at the slightest pretense, so it seems unlikely that after Stalin died, there would have been anyone left who was comparable to Stalin to take his place.
I definitely don’t claim certainty here, but I do think it increases the odds. Particularly since you only need one family member with “the right stuff” to take over. After all the current North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, was not the eldest son of the previous dictator, Kim Jong Il, but he was the still one selected to take over. And, by all accounts, he had his older brother, Kim Jong Nam, murdered after he came to power.
I doubt that North Korea would have lasted as long as it did without Chinese support, though.
As a side note, I think some of the most interesting expositions on the nature of political power were a couple of videos made by the Youtuber CGP Grey, who played Machiavelli in this video called The Rules for Rulers, where he describes what is necessary to keep and maintain power, and in a follow up video where he talks about the influence of family dynasties in power structures.
John Alcorn
Feb 19 2021 at 9:42am
KevinDC,
Wise comments!
My overall takeaway from the book club and conversation with you: Orwell, Bryan Caplan, and commenters identify many plausible mechanisms, but don’t establish firm empirical generalizations. The sample sizes — totalitarian regimes in 1984 and in the past 100 years — are small. There are confounding variables in comparative history (the application of J.S. Mill’s method of differences to establish causation in history). Counterfactual speculation is suggestive, and often necessary, but rarely dispositive. Nonetheless, identification of plausible mechanisms is impressive and fascinating. I learned a lot.
Thanks also for links to two videos by CGP Grey. They are full of insights. A quibble: The 1st video underestimates irrationality in grass-roots political psychology. (Grey lost me with the claim that democracies provide massive subsidies to universities and to health care because these industries greatly increase general productivity.) Bryan Caplan’s book, The Myth of the Rational Voter, is a corrective. The 2nd video strikes me as elaboration of Blaise Pascal’s insight about dynastic lineage as a focal point for succession without strife.
Philo
Feb 17 2021 at 8:00pm
From your reply to David Henderson: “Orwell gets the idea that the common man aspires to the standard of living of the middle classes, who in turn aspire to the standard of living of the upper classes. Both sets of aspirations leave ample room for expanding consumption.” But, for Orwell, the upper classes have no aspirations, no room for expanding consumption. As Henderson suggests, for Orwell the upper classes are sated (as least so far as consumption goods are concerned).
Weir
Feb 18 2021 at 9:16pm
“Hitler and his acolytes were firmly convinced that the development of the German standard of living had been held back since 1918 by an unholy alliance formed between selfish bourgeois liberals and primitivist socialists. This conspiracy of low expectations had benefited only the German bourgeoisie, whilst robbing the majority of the German population of the full benefits of the new technologies of mass-production. Ford had had the entrepreneurial vision to break with the past and to turn what had once been a luxury product into a popular commodity. In Germany, what was required to break the deadlock was an act of decisive political will. The Third Reich made it its mission to use the authority of the state to coordinate efforts within industry to devise standardized and simplified versions of key consumer commodities. These would then be produced at the lowest possible price, enabling the German population to achieve an immediate breakthrough to a higher standard of living. The epithet which was generally attached to these products was Volk: the Volksempfaenger (radio), Volkswohnung (apartments), Volkswagen, Volkskuehlschrank (refrigerator), Volkstraktor (tractor). This list contains only those products that enjoyed the official backing of one or more agencies in the Third Reich. Private producers, however, had long appreciated that the term ‘Volk’ had good marketing potential, and they, too, joined the bandwagon. Amongst the various products they touted were Volksgramophone (people’s gramophone), Volksmotorraeder (people’s motorbikes) and Volksnaehmaschinen (people’s sewing machines).” That’s from a book by Adam Tooze.
Hitler said Germans must be allowed “to lead a life analogous to that of the American people.” (And Europeans in general, said Hitler, “take the circumstances of American life as the benchmark for their own lives.”)
“The Volga would be ‘our Mississippi,’ he said. ‘Europe–and not America–will be the land of unlimited possibilities.’ Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine would be populated by pioneer farmer-soldier families. Autobahns would cut through fields of grain. The present occupants of those lands–tens of millions of them–would be starved to death.” That’s Alex Ross.
Meaning that “Hitler’s Beneficiaries” would be entirely spared the burden of this new war, unlike in the First World War, and unlike Orwell’s book.
Weir
Feb 18 2021 at 8:31pm
“Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning ‘to quack like a duck.'”
That’s from the end of the book.
Is it as funny as Wodehouse? People overlook the comedy in Orwell. People overlook the word “was.”
If the book is prophecy, then it matters that the last chapter is written in the past tense, and in Oldspeak (“or Standard English, as we should call it.”)
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