While searching for the exact name of the Ministry of Information in George Orwell’s 1984, I found a very cool lecture on the web talking about utapias and dystopias. ¹
The author believes that the books is not a prophesy but an observation of the current trends at the time, and that seems plausible enough (since 1984 was written during and after World War II). He also mentions Orwell’s reaction to socialism – he was a socialist where it meant human decency, but he was strongly opposed to the actual proponents of socialism he met.
Living in the days of neoliberalism and evil globalisation, it is hard for me to share the sentiments expressed in the closing paragraph. How could a welfare state be such a bad idea?
It is clear that Orwell’s mind and his dystopia were products not necessarily of his imagination but more importantly of his own experience. For how else should it be? As England emerged from World War Two and as the Labour Party came to power, the State began to intervene more forcibly into the lives of the citizen. And so, following World War Two, England began to build that vast government-subsidized entity known as the Welfare State. No one was immune from paying the costs of that Welfare State. Individualism and collectivism were joined together as the “middle road.” Orwell had seen what this union had accomplished in Italy, Germany, Spain and the Soviet Union. Could England be far behind? – Steven Kreis ²
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