Sunday March 7, 2021
  • Venezuela
  • Mexico
  • Colombia
  • Chile
  • Brazil
  • Argentina
  • Podcast
Versión Español
PanAm Post
  • Home
  • Regions
    • South America
    • North America
    • Central America
    • Caribbean
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Opinion
  • Podcast
  • Authors
  • Contact
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Regions
    • South America
    • North America
    • Central America
    • Caribbean
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Opinion
  • Podcast
  • Authors
  • Contact
No Result
View All Result
PanAm Post
No Result
View All Result

Home » ‘1984’ Lives On in Latin America

‘1984’ Lives On in Latin America

Oswaldo Toscano by Oswaldo Toscano
May 14, 2015

Tags: George Orwell
0
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
FacebookTwitterTelegramWhatsapp
El "Gran Hermano" es una referencia perenne de los totalitarismos (Wallpoper)
George Orwell’s works are a constant reminder of the threats of totalitarianism. (Wallpoper)

EspañolEric Arthur Blair bowed out of the Spanish Civil War with a bullet in his neck. That extraordinary conflict was crucial in defining his literary path. His work under the pseudonym George Orwell was a mixture of political and artistic goals. He devoted his career to unveiling the true nature of totalitarianism and defending a freer society that he conceived as “democratic socialism.”

Orwell’s most famous books, Animal Farm and 1984, targeted the Stalin regime. But the lingering question remains: was Orwell aware that democratic socialism was part of Stalin’s own agenda?

RelatedArticles

Three Signs That Elon Musk Has the World at His Fingertips

Trump Against Suppression of Human Rights

February 1, 2021
Three Signs That Elon Musk Has the World at His Fingertips

15 Republicans Who Voted Against Trump Are Already Facing the Consequences

February 1, 2021

In an article for the Brazilian daily O Globo, Olavo de Carvalho writes about the “scissors strategy” conceived by Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. It consisted of presenting the Fabian Society’s democratic socialism as the antagonist of communist Marxism, so that the political right was left completely out of the discussion.

It’s likely that Orwell had no idea about this. However, there are elements in his works that show he did understand how a free society could be turned into a society of slaves. In 1984, he describes a dystopia in which a single party led by an invisible, omnipotent leader only seen through propaganda screens, Big Brother, controls every aspect of people’s lives.

An intricate bureaucratic network of ministries — Education, Peace, Happiness, Truth, Thought Police — and Newspeak, the controlled language that obliterates words posing a threat to the regime and collectivist thought, keep individuals under control. The year chosen as the title of the novel was nothing less than the centennial of the foundation of Fabianism in London.

Indeed, the group of intellectuals that founded the Fabian Society in 1884 aimed to bring about socialism: but incrementally, through “democratic gradual changes, constitutional and peaceful.” For one of its forefathers, the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, “socialism is an opinion about how national rent should be distributed, since its distribution is not a natural phenomenon: it’s a matter of management.”

The group was named after Quintus Fabius Maximus, a Roman politician and skilled general, famous for his strategies aimed at wearing down the enemy. Instead of brute force, he resorted to attrition warfare: tactical manoeuvrings to debilitate the opponent to the point of collapse. A forerunner of the British Labour Party and the welfare state, the Fabian Society achieved little by little its objective against the “disorder and abused spurred by capitalism.”

For instance, in 1895 it founded the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an institution that rose to prestige in academia, harboring famous members such as Shaw himself, and Alfred Marshall. The latter had great influence over John Neville Keynes and his world-renowned son John Maynard Keynes, the economist who disseminated the idea of a state-administered economy, instrumental to strengthening a socialist state.

Socialism is institutionalized aggression against free human interaction, that is, the arbitrary use of force to organize society.

The Fabian socialist path amounted to imposing societal control through a one-party system, operated by an elite of technocrats and socialist politicians.

Returning to Orwell, his novel describes a society of slaves who have no way out of the system: the main character, Winston Smith, after being caught planning an uprising, is tortured in the Ministry of Love’s Room 101, for his own reeducation.

Against the backdrop of a completely planned top-down society, the tale shows how the individual has been subjected to purportedly collective goals through fear, ignorance, and lies. This is the essence of socialism: the institutionalized aggression against free human interaction, the arbitrary use of force to organize society.

Friedrich Hayek’s Fatal Conceit illuminates how the fact that information is dispersed throughout society and order is spontaneous rule out the socialist-planning utopia. The scheme ends up creating a parasitical ruling class living off the rest of a society that has been fooled and enslaved. While democratic means can be a less violent way of taking power, once there the socialists erect a 1984-like wall of fear, ignorance, and lies. According to Carvalho, the Fabians’ groundbreaking book was not written by group’s founders Sidney and Beatrice Webb, but rather by the Soviet government itself.

In his non-fiction essays, Orwell envisions a bottom-up socialism for the workers, the common man, unlike the socialism created by the socialist party elite. He said the former lives up to the ideals of justice and freedom, while the latter is based on social engineering and control at the hands of so-called experts and intellectuals.

With a small dose of imagination we could venture that Orwell foresaw the Stalinist scissors and so decided to leave us a warning for the future about the risks of gradualist democratic socialism, and how it mutates into tyranny all the same. In countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina, we are already living our own versions of 1984, thanks to the ideas of the Fabians and Keynesians.

Translated by Daniel Duarte.

Tags: George Orwell
Previous Post

Hydroelectric Mega-Project Threatens Machu Picchu

Next Post

Latin America’s Youth Must Have a Voice at OAS Summit

Oswaldo Toscano

Oswaldo Toscano

Oswaldo Toscano is an Ecuadorian professor, businessman, and columnist for outlets in Ecuador, Colombia, and Spain. A History PhD candidate at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala, he also studies at SMC University for a master's degree in political economy. Follow him: @otoscano_ec.

Related Posts

Three Signs That Elon Musk Has the World at His Fingertips
Columnists

Trump Against Suppression of Human Rights

February 1, 2021
Three Signs That Elon Musk Has the World at His Fingertips
News

15 Republicans Who Voted Against Trump Are Already Facing the Consequences

February 1, 2021
Three Key Moments to Remind Us That the UN Is a Nest of Oppressive Regimes
Asia

Chinese Regime Silences Relatives of COVID-19 Fatalities During WHO Visit

January 29, 2021
Three Key Moments to Remind Us That the UN Is a Nest of Oppressive Regimes
Analysis

Three Key Moments to Remind Us That the UN Is a Nest of Oppressive Regimes

January 29, 2021
Dollarization Advances in Venezuela with Debit Cards for Foreign Currency Accounts
Argentina

Argentina Drags Chile in its Bipolar Madness Over Venezuela

January 28, 2021
Dollarization Advances in Venezuela with Debit Cards for Foreign Currency Accounts
Politics

Biden forbids linking COVID-19 with China

January 28, 2021
Next Post

Latin America's Youth Must Have a Voice at OAS Summit

Discussion about this post

Subscribe free and never miss another breaking story

  • Venezuela
  • Mexico
  • Colombia
  • Chile
  • Brazil
  • Argentina
  • Podcast

© 2020 PanAm Post - Design & Develop by NEW DREAM GLOBAL CORP. - Privacy policy

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Regions
    • South America
    • North America
    • Central America
    • Caribbean
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Opinion
  • Podcast
  • Authors
  • Contact

© 2020 PanAm Post - Design & Develop by NEW DREAM GLOBAL CORP. - Privacy policy

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Privacy and Cookie Policy.