1984

[workers of the]

i have read "1984" lately and there is a lot of similarity to corporate USA.
is there any article that wrote about it, even if some user can support or come against that Comparison.
any information about the influence of Marx on George Orwell.

[Dave B]

Orwells 1984 was partly inspired, and contained material in it from Burnhams, ex Trot, Managerial Revolution written circa 1942.

Over generalising.

Burnham basically theorised about the emergence of a ‘new class’ of technocrats who would go on to take over the world etc.

Which for him was just as applicable to Stalinist Russia as to developments in the west.

Burnham himself was picking up and developing the ideas of the likes of Bruno Rizzi.





http://www.marxists.org/archive/rizzi/bureaucratisation/index.htm

[Црвена]

1984 reminded me more of current China: state capitalism masquerading as communist and wrecking the way communism is perceived.

[exeexe]

The book was written in 1948, just about when the cold war was about to begin. Orwell imagines a possible future on how the USSR would develop. There are some hints to prove this. For example there are no markets for the rich. There are no laws. (USA is very strict about having laws). goods are rationed. The government is hidden (no transparency). Its a one party system. If you critizice the government they will come after you etc.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

There were clearly laws in 1984, while in jail waiting to be interrogated the main character encounters a number of proles who are there for mundane offenses. The issue with law was that it was more or less arbitrary when it came to outer party members as it changed from day to day. For the proles, life went on more or less as it had under the previous regimes. I'm also not sure about markets, as inner party members had access to all sort of luxury goods, I'm not sure if they ever address how they get access to them. Again though the proles had shops, so its not completely unreasonable to suspect that the inner party members did as well. They may have just taken the items directly though.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Orwell talks about "oligarchic collectivism", which is a clear nod to the "bureaucratic collectivism" that Burnham, Shachtman and Eastman talked about, a nonsensical theory cribbed from a fascist (Rizzi) that claimed that party officials owned the means of production in the Soviet Union in a new kind of class society. Burnham and Eastman also thought the fascist regimes and FDR's America were evolving in the same direction. The only ones who were able to hold this ridiculous theory and remain in the vicinity of revolutionary politics were the ex-Trotskyists around Hal Draper; the rest of the adherents of the theory ended up as Cold War social-democrats or worse.

And pray tell, what is "corporate USA"? Socialists don't simply oppose large corporations, we oppose capitalism, full stop. Including "good" small capitalism.

[Devrim]

Orwell's 1984 is a parody on UK society after the Second World War. He originally wanted to call the book 1948 but his publisher refused to allow it.

Devrim