1984

[Redman]

I have just finished reading Orwells 1984 and it was a scary book!! it is a little slow at first but it really picks up. I was very suprised at how much I liked reading it. It freaked me out because it reflected on our country in the present day a lot. if you haven't read it I suggest you should.

[FinnMacCool]

1984 is one my favorite books. It makes some excellent points about the motives of those seeking absolute power.

Many conservatives come to the conclusion that this book was anti communist but it was actually against centralized governments. Orwell himself was a socialst of sorts and he fought alongside marxists in the spanish civil war.

We haven't quite reached the parells which 1984 had predicted but thats only to be expected.

There could be a point though when it might be so. Specificallly once the Party controls reality, then it can control everything. I think thats what the warning was.

[Comrade Marcel]

I'm sure this has been said on here many times, but here goes:

1984 is a satire. Just about everything in it could be experienced in London in 1948 though.

There is political ideologies based on what Orwell wrote, they are called "Third Positionists" and they seek to mix aspects of communism with fascism. One example is the National Bolshevik Party (Nazbols).

1984 is not the first of it's kind. Check out Plato's "Republic", More's "Utopia", Zamaytin's "We", Huxley's "Brave New World". There is some more recent stuff as well, such as Burrough's "Naked Lunch" (very weird though) and Buregess's "1985". A good anti-Soviet one that is quite humourous is Aksyonov's "Say Cheese"!

[dislatino]

Does this book describe an authoritarian government looking to totalitarianism or what?
I haven't read the book but from the talks its sounds like an intersting read.

[Cult of Reason]

As far as I am concerned 1984 is a must-read.

[FinnMacCool]

I think its a must read also. It's pretty much what got me into radical politics.

[bolshevik butcher]

It probably influenced me a lot as well. It's a fantastically well written book. Even if it is, as a satire inevitably will be slightly crude in places.

[Cult of Reason]

It influenced me, but not as much as Homage to Catalonia.

[Janus]

Here are some past discussions on Orwell and 1984.

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...c=41232&hl=1984 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=41232&hl=1984)

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...c=40866&hl=1984 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=40866&hl=1984)

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...c=34369&hl=1984 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=34369&hl=1984)

[dislatino]

Thanks for posting the links Janus, very interetsing stuff being talked about.

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by Clenched [email protected] 25 2006, 10:44 PM
It probably influenced me a lot as well. It's a fantastically well written book. Even if it is, as a satire inevitably will be slightly crude in places.
Out of all Orwell's works, I have to say I found 1984 and Animal Farm to be the shittiest. Of course, the Trots and their bourgie friends like it because they want people to think it parodies Stalin, their worst enemy.

Keep in mind who's side Orwell was on:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#The_road_to_Nineteen_Eighty-Four

"In 1949, Orwell was approached by a friend, Celia Kirwan, who had just started working for a Foreign Office unit, the Information Research Department, which had been set up by the Labour government to publish pro-democratic and anti-communist propaganda. He gave her a list of 37 writers and artists he considered to be unsuitable as IRD authors because of their pro-communist leanings. The list, not published until 2003, consists mainly of journalists (among them the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin) but also includes the actors Michael Redgrave and Charlie Chaplin. "


Check out some of his other works though, particularly his older stuff:

Burmese Days (http://www.george-orwell.org/Burmese_Days/index.html)

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (http://www.george-orwell.org/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying/index.html) (my persynal fav.)

Also check out homoage to Catalonia, Road to Wigan Pier, and Down and out in Paris and London.

Be sure to read 1985 (http://www.george-orwell.org/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying/index.html) by Anthony Burgess (the author of Clockwork Orange) if you can get your hands on it. The story is much more believable and less fantastic then 1984.

[FinnMacCool]

Right, Orwell was anti communist.

I haven't read Burmese Days or Keep the Aspidistra Flying yet. I have read the Road to Wigan Pear and Homage to Catalonia. The latter was an exceptional piece of work, by the way.

[Hegemonicretribution]

Zamaytin's "We"
I second this. Actually by reading it you can see where many of the ideas for this text came from.

I would also reccommend Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury as another must read in the genre.

[Honggweilo]

I wonder if orwell's book influenced limonov of the NBP... Then you could say that indirectly Orwell is the founder of National Bolshevism :P

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2006, 12:22 PM
I wonder if orwell's book influenced limonov of the NBP... Then you could say that indirectly Orwell is the founder of National Bolshevism :P
I would assume that it did, since part of nazbol theory is the carving up of the world into three powers.

[7189]

Anthony Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange' is another interesting perspective on a dystopian future if you're interested.

I must say I really enjoyed '1984' but I thought the ideas in Huxley's 'Brave New World' were more interesting and certainly more radical.

However what interests me is the context one can deduce from reading this book. It is especially interesting that Orwell believed Stalinism would conquer Western Europe. It provides a fascinating insight into the sentiments of the time, and the post war communist scare in Western Europe, when many were extremely unsure of their country's capablity to resist the looming threat behind the Iron Curtain.

[Donnie]

1984 is a good read, I have the film of it on dvd with John Hurt and Richard Burton in it. It's a good picture of a future dystopia.

If you ever get time try and pop down to your local video store and rent out some of these films, all of these have a potrayal of a future dystopia.

A Clockwork Orange - As somebody mentioned above

Metropolis
http://home.planet.nl/~voogt053/Pics/Metropolis.JPG
- It's based on a future dystopia where by the workers are exploited and run the machinery under the city and a ruling elite run the city. Eventually the workers revolt. The film has no speech in it, it's all directed by opratic music...but never the less you get the picture of what is happening. The film is basically a criticism of 'Futurism' and the Futurist movement which we all know has it's grounds in Italian Fascism.

Soylent Green
http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/7560000/7566554.jpg
- This film is really amazing, it also describes another future dystopia and is an excellent peace of anti-capitalist propaganda because it shows what the rapid class inequalities will be in the near future if we keep capitalism. It's also quiet anti-state as well. I saw this film in my Science Fiction an Introduction to Philosophy class.

[Ultra-Violence]

Omg i love you commrade Donnie Metropolis is like one of my favorite movies. I was wacthing Late at night one day and all i got to say Yo! Loved im so happy im not the only one who've seen that movie! i thought i was alone..............
j/k :)

[bcbm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2006, 07:15 PM
the Futurist movement which we all know has it's grounds in Italian Fascism.
Um, no, it is the other way around, actually. Fascism (and Dadaism, oddly enough) both drew elements from Futurism, although I don't think Futurism in and of itself is too terrible.

As for the topic at hand, I liked 1984, but I think Brave New World is much closer to modern society.

[Andypunkarelli]

I first read 1984 as part of my edumacation (is that how George would say it) in high school, and the concept of a totalitarian dictatorship that spies on, controls, and manipulates its people to a common way of thinking was pretty freaky.

I re-read it last week and it scared the bejeezus out of me. The thought police, big brother...weird!!!

To think that now in the USA you can be interrogated by the FBI for speaking out of turn, or being anti-governmental, under the PATRIOT act. An act that allows the government to rape the privacy of the general public. A government that uses fear tactics to align the general public to the "anti-terrorist" stance adopted by their leaders.

I was in New York a few months after 9/11 and i saw on the news that a UK plane had been stopped from taking off in Washington DC and it was given a CODE ORANGE??? I called home and my folks new nothing of it...it was such a dangerous situation that it didn't make the news.

scary...just plain scary!!!

[CCCPneubauten]

Hitler loved Metropolis, infact he tried to get Fritz Lang, the director, to do propaganda for him. Didn't work out, but Hitler loved the move nonetheles. The movie is fascist. As you will note there is ONE person who unites everyone. The workers did rise up, but you will remeber the flood killed a lot of them, this can be said that workers need strong leadersip, or else they ruin the revolution.

It is a good movie, but the central idea is fascism. For better German expressionism try Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, ect.

[Thorez]

I am not fond of George Orwell's works. Inspired by the fascist West in which he was bred, he clearly had an anti-Communist agenda. This book is revered by the West because it came out during an era of demagogic anti-communism. He regurgitates several myths of the Cold Warrior era about Stalin being an omnipotent figure with a massive cult of personality when in actuality he was dependent on several colleagues e.g Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrei Zhdanov, Lavrenti Beria, Andrei Vyshinski, Georgi Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovitch, Anastas Mikoyan, and several others. In concern to the supposed cult of personality, it is undeniable that Stalin was genuinely adored by the masses. It would be naive to assert that Stalin himself promoted and implemented this. Stalin was not responsible for the cult of personality. Rather, those around the Stalin, the elite sectors of the Party, were responsible. Documents show that Stalin frequently spoke out against the cult constructed around him.

"1984" tries to present the myth of USSR being a "police state" even though 99% of people of the Stalinist era lived comfortable lives that were free from these sorts of fantastic police intrusion. 50% of Russians today are fond of Stalin despite the copious post-Stalin propaganda espoused by Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Unsurprisingly, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev, and Yeltsin are the ones who are loathed by the Russian people while Lenin and Stalin are adored. Slanderously, Orwell tries to present the USSR as being composed of war pigs when history has shown USSR to have been the greatest force for peace this planet has ever seen. Except for Finland over a minor territorial dispute, USSR did not build up any conflict. There are Trotskyist sympathies manifested with the Jewish Emmanuel Goldstein character who clearly represents the Jew Lev Bronstein aka Leon Trotsky. The connotation is that such staunch opposition to the Trotskyists is gratuitious and borders towards insanity even though there has been a disruptive, destructive Trotskyist movement in various countries ranging from Spain to Sri Lanka to Peru. The fact is that the Trotskyist threat was genuine and various documents from USSR reveal that the likes of Mikhail Riutin explicitly called for the removal of our beloved Comrade Stalin.

I did not find anything extraordinary about the content of "1984". I don't find it distinguishable from many other dystopian novels about individual despair, psychological alienation, and "totalitarian" government. The content of this novel is quite mundane. Character development is rather shallow. The scene with Winston and his female companion engaging in raw sex is degenerate and foul. With the Cold War having ended, this novel seems has lost revelence.

For excellent literature, I would recommend the works of Maxim Gorky, Anna Seghers, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Bertolt Brecht, Jaroslav Hasek, Rainis, Martin Anderson Nexo, and Julius Fucik.

[CCCPneubauten]

""1984" tries to present the myth of USSR being a "police state" even though 99% of people of the Stalinist era lived comfortable lives that were free from these sorts of fantastic police intrusion. "


Are you sure about that? Or are you one of those 'Stalin wasn't too bad' kinda people?

[Comrade Marcel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2006, 09:13 PM
I did not find anything extraordinary about the content of "1984". I don't find it distinguishable from many other dystopian novels about individual despair, psychological alienation, and "totalitarian" government. The content of this novel is quite mundane. Character development is rather shallow. The scene with Winston and his female companion engaging in raw sex is degenerate and foul. With the Cold War having ended, this novel seems has lost revelence.

I agree with you on your analysis of 1984, I think some of the character development in animal Farm was even better!

As for the raw sex scene, I think Orwell wanted it to be "degenerate and foul". I'm not sure what bases you are attacking that fact on, other than some kind of "morality".

I actually broke out laughing when they did this scene in the movie, Julia had a 70's bush, Winston is like a broomstick (from the book I imagined him to be a bit stalky) and it takes him like 10 seconds to orgasm. You'd think after all that time he would try a little harder! ;)


For excellent literature, I would recommend the works of Maxim Gorky, Anna Seghers, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Bertolt Brecht, Jaroslav Hasek, Rainis, Martin Anderson Nexo, and Julius Fucik.

Agreed. I'll add Chinghis Aitmatov, Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Sholokhov, Pavel Luknitsky and Alexander Kuprin to that list! :D

[Comrada J]

I never bothered to read this book. Mainly because of the trots/liberals that love to make analogies to it all the time.