big brother keeps the population poor and hungry - /lit/

Anonymous09/14/26, 13:19No.25531010

>Big Brother keeps the population poor and hungry in order to control them This has always been my least favourite aspect of 1984. In the story, INGSOC deliberately keeps the people of Oceania in poverty and on the edge of starvation so that they are too exhausted to resist the regime. If you look at actual totalitarian regimes in history though, the reality is the opposite. No totalitarian regime in history has ever wanted its people to be poor. It's the opposite. When people are hungry, they get angry. When people are poor, they start to question the system. Every successful revolution in history has occurred when the living conditions of the average person have become so dire that they are willing to risk death in order to overthrow the state. The easiest way for a dictatorship to legitimize itself is to increase the standard of living for its people. The CCP in China holds an absolute monopoly on power, but over the last 50 years it has genuinely delivered for the people of China and raised the most greatest amount of people from poverty in the shortest amount of time than any other government in human history. Proponents of the regime can then say that while the government suppresses political freedom and opposition, it's necessary to do so in order to protect the greater wellbeing of the people. Having Oceania be a place where the people are well fed and taken care of but the government still retains absolute totalitarian control would actually make the story of 1984 much more interesting, because it would raise the question of whether or not it would be worth it to live under an absolute dictatorship as long as you were well fed and taken care of. Is it worth it to give up all of your freedom and autonomy to an all powerful state as long as your stomach is full and you have a roof over your head? Orwell seems afraid to ask this question so he refuses to give Oceania any redeeming aspects whatsoever, making it not only a totalitarian state that controls every aspect of its citizens lives, but also a place where the people are poor and starving. I think the story would be more interesting if Oceania was still an absolute dictatorship that controlled the very thoughts of its citizens, that it actually provided a reasonable standard of living for its people.

Replies

Anon09/14/26, 13:25No.25531017

If people are too malnourished they genuinely can’t revolt. The danger zones for totalitarian regimes is actually the stage where things are starting to get slightly better but not good enough or from the other direction where living standards have dipped below that of the ancien regime but are not at Venezuela levels yet.Tsarist Russia for example, things were genuinely getting better after the mid 19th century which led to the growth of a class of urban intellectuals which eventually overthrew the state in 1917.

Anon09/14/26, 13:28No.25531022

This is why LoGH is so good

Anon09/14/26, 14:28No.25531108

You're asking for moral ambiguity from an allegorical story.

Anon09/14/26, 14:33No.25531117

>The easiest way for a dictatorship to legitimize itself is to increase the standard of living for its people. But Ingsoc DID improve the lives of its citizens compared to what came before them, which was World War III.

Anon09/14/26, 14:35No.25531121

INGSOC Is not a sane, reasonable and efficient government interested in making good decisions. It is a batshit-insane cult completely disconnected from reality.

Anon09/14/26, 15:21No.25531194

Brave New World is the flipside of the coin you're looking for both 1984 and BNW describe different forms of IRL social engineering

Anon09/14/26, 15:28No.25531202

Well part of it is that it was a book written by a man who was dying from an awful disease, living alone in a miserable cottage on a scottish island, and he even had to edit and type up the handwritten manuscript himself when he was very weak, which probably put him in the ground sooner. That's why London is so grimy and disgusting, and why everything is decaying and described in such scatological terms. He definitely had decay and phlegm on the forefront of his mind, as well as a single minded drive to finish the book quickly.But I don't necessarily agree with your point that reality shows that no totalitarian regime wants to keep its people poor. In North Korea generals and senior bureaucrats have a lower standard of living than average salarymen in south korea. In Eritrea 99% of the population is essentially enslaved to a few ruling families. In Pakistan after India tested its first atomic weapon the government famously declared "we will eat grass if necessary to afford our own atomic weapons."

Anon09/14/26, 16:02No.25531249

The biggest flaw of the book (as well as Brave New World) is that systems only last for as long as the upper class remains sexually appealing, as a consequence of a healthy lifestyle and a large, constantly flowing gene pool. This fact bears the double advantage, for humanity, that for as long a system remains vigorous, the upper class remains positive about the outcomes of their actions and shares with the plebian crowd, integrates them into their plans, raises the most talented of them into the upper classes. But when the increase of wealth causes the upper classes to begin segregating more and more from the less fortunate, when this segregation further leads to increasing rates of inbreeding in an attempt to preserve the wealth in the hands of a few families, in one word, when money and conventional becomes the sole measure of all social matters, and this leading class, degenerated into an aristocracy that in itself has accepted to democratically accept all the pestilent diseases that begin to grow inside it's bosom, that's when the society as a whole begins to slowly decay. Fortunately, the day comes when the perishing aristocracy becomes so weak, that a mere revolution suffices to remove them from power and establish a new order of things. I am very positive about the coming decades, though the same cannot be said about the increasingly inbred members shaped out of the debris of the current mode of culture.

Anon09/14/26, 16:14No.25531272

The book is about what Great Britain would look like under a fascist regime. Since Orwell hates the British he portrays them as a bunch of stupid cattle willing to accept any level of oppression against them

Anon09/14/26, 18:44No.25531593

>No totalitarian regime in history has ever wanted its people to be poor. ahahaaahahahaaahahaaaaahaha ahaahahahahaaaahahaha

Anon09/14/26, 22:35No.25532021

>The CCP in China holds an absolute monopoly on power, but over the last 50 years it has genuinely delivered for the people of China ... by being less totalitarian. China is nominally communist, yet has reconciled itself to the private ownership of capital. It was the final nail in the coffin of communism.

Anon09/14/26, 22:41No.25532032

You didn't read the novel carefully enough. The Party absorbs the intelligentsia of society and monitors them closely, knowing that only they are capable of leading a revolution. It doesn't give a shit about the proles, because they're little more than cattle and can easily be propagandised into submission. Orwell portrays this explicitly.

Anon09/14/26, 22:52No.25532060

Did you not read the appendix? The status quo was unsustainable precisely because of what you said.

Anon09/14/26, 23:04No.25532077

China is state capitalist. It's a slightly less shitty version of capitalism but capitalism nonetheless. If it has markets and private property then I don't care whatever it calls itself, it's a capitalist country.

Anon09/15/26, 05:28No.25532734

Holy shit you’re retarded did you actually try to understand what was being said in the novel or did you just mindlessly read the words on the page?

Anon09/15/26, 05:38No.25532748

>The CCP in China holds an absolute monopoly on power, but over the last 50 years it has genuinely delivered for the people of China and raised the most greatest amount of people from poverty in the shortest amount of time than any other government in human history. Sigh, it's another commie/totalitarian hates 1984 for obvious reasons thread. No need to yap just tell us you love big brother, it would save a lot of time.

Anon09/15/26, 14:45No.25533284

Everyone knows Zamjatin's WE is the superior dystopian novel, even though it's pure sci-fi.

Anon09/15/26, 18:55No.25533685

>No totalitarian regime in history has ever wanted its people to be poor. It's the opposite. When people are hungry, they get angry. When people are poor, they start to question the system. the zoomers face "the grind" of grinding poverty, have to claim to be women to get jobs, and dont have any ability to do anything

Anon09/15/26, 19:00No.25533699

Its just like real life and Trumpflation

Anon09/16/26, 22:34No.25536110

My least favorite aspect is when the main character has sex in that book, I stopped reading after that

Anon09/16/26, 23:38No.25536192

the point is to control their minds, then it doesn't matter how much money they have. they've done an excellent job, btw. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j0_TDPaUznw&ra=m

Anon09/16/26, 23:44No.25536196

Also "recognition" is another thing. Or thymos if you want to use the Greek word. I'm not a Platonist but Plato talked about it. You see this in politics a lot on the left and right. People feel humiliated and powerless or feel like they've been treated more as ~things~ and not as people who are acknowledged by other people and respected. It's not just "give me money." Even Elon Musk feels this because he thinks he's a genius who built space rockets and electric cars and then people made fun of him on Twitter. It's Trump supporters, gays & lesbians, blacks, Muslims, white people, "patriots" who are like I don't care if GDP goes down if we deport these immigrants because we want England to be like England again and they feel insulted by people saying they're nothing but racists and imperialists and colonizers and it's all deserving punishment for that. The socialists will say that's all a distraction from le struggle against le bourgeoisie but that's not actually a good argument because people feel like they've been disrespected.

Anon09/18/26, 20:45No.25539408

Everywhere no matter the political regime has experienced rise in standard of living. In second half of 20th century the communist block and USA aligned countries have both experienced rise in standard of living. However in communist states it rose slower. The communist parties tried their best to hide how good life is in the west. In 1980s there were shortages of toilet paper. Throughout the whole post-WW2 life of communist block there were shortages of medicine, technology and basic needs such as meat. The communist states didn't want the standard of living to be high, they wanted it to be as low as possible as long as the population thinks it's higher than outside of it. They didn't want the population to have good life, they didn't believe in the ideology, they wanted power, they wanted the population to be dependent on the state and loyal to it. The rise of standard of living in China happened after they became capitalist. And throughout 1980s the communist states also reoriented themselves to indeed try to have high standards of living - because everyone in them knew how good life is outside of them. They did it to bribe the populace to be loyal, they were unable to. For example they started to boost salaries a lot, however there were still shortages of both basic goods and luxuries, so the people had nothing to spend the money on. As such the rise in salaries lead to frustration. However your example of china and this example I listed all came after Orwell, he died in like 1948 and he didn't experience the post WW2 totalitarian regimes.