The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

1. The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism Summary of Goldstein`s Book

2. Origins of the book • Written by Goldstein • The Manifesto of the Brotherhood • Winston receives the book from O’Brien • The book doesn't actually give Winston any new information, however it does shed light on some previously unknown or unclear details for the reader

3. Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength • Keeping people ignorant keeps society strong • “Throughout recorded time…. There have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle and the Low…. The essential structure of society has never altered” (192).

5. Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength (2) • Each class has goals • Upper Class • Middle Class • Lower Class • Upper class supports hierarchy, whereas middle class speaks of “freedom, justice, and fraternity.” (p 211) • Revolution always comes from the middle class

6. Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength (3) • “So long as they [the middle class] are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never become aware that they are oppressed.” (p 216) • People are under constant surveillance • Limited access to media and foreigners • History is changed so the party is always right • Never know anything other than Ingsoc

7. Chapter 3: War is Peace • “Without words said, a wave of understanding ripples through the crows. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there a tremendous commotion. The banners and poster with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them has the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!” (p 188) • “War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that is was in the early decades of the twentieth century. 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.” (p 193)

8. Why stay in constant war? • “…There is no longer, in a material sense, something to fight about” (p 194) • Territory: “there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin and Hong Kong containing with it about a fifth of the population of the Earth.” (p 195) • Labour: “The inhabitants of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the status of slaves, pass continually from conqueror to conqueror…” (page 195)

9. Why stay in constant war (2) • The purpose of war is: • “…to use of the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living” (p 196) • “The Machine”  industrialisation, technology has improved lives of the lower classes, therefore threatening the existing class structures

10. Why stay in constant war? (3) • “The problem was how to keep the wheels of the world turning, without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.” (p 198) • “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but the products of human labour.” (p 198)

11. Why stay in constant war (4) • All Party members should be “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” (200). • War makes more willing to give up freedoms and luxuries

12. Think that’s not true? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o38VBTeeauM • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV1k8np44KI

13. In a sentence… • “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact” (207)

14. Eurasia and Eastasia • Both have similar political systems, only with different names • Eastasia Death Worship / Obliteration of the Self • Eurasia  Neo-Bolshevics • “The average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies.” (p 204)

15. How is war peace? You tell me!