From the Bookshelf of Utopian and Dystopian Reading Group…

Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not to tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is [Orwell's:]. May I speak in stead of the thing with which the book deals -- the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution -- the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at the total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology -- are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eight-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.