The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell's 1984

by Dorian Lynskey

The “primal traitor” Goldstein may have been modelled on Trotsky (born Lev Bronstein), but his “Chapter III: War Is Peace” owes more to Burnham than it does to Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed. Orwell thought that, among revolutionaries, “the longing for a just society has always been fatally mixed up with the intention to secure power for themselves.” But in the “what-if?” world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the longing for a just society has been eliminated: “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” Orwell did not agree with Burnham, but he ensured that O’Brien did. In places, the writer (“No theory, no promises, no morality, no amount of good will, no religion will restrain power”) and the character (“We are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power”) are almost interchangeable.