George Orwell’s 1984 contains excerpts from a fictional book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Orwell provides a short passage from Chapter 1, entitled “Ignorance is Strength” and a much longer passage from Chapter 3, entitled “War Is Peace.” Although 1984 is a work of dystopian fiction, TPOC has long struck me as a profound work of social science. The book is a wonderful meditation on not only totalitarianism (especially Stalinism), but politics itself.
The upshot: I’ve...
Published on January 11, 2021 07:34