1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[jbor]

>> It's not modelled
>> on the post-war British society under the Labour government

on 8/5/03 6:52 AM, Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com wrote:

> I'm inclined to an opinion that Orwell was thinking of both Stalin & Atlee
> when he wrote 1984.  He is criticizing a tendency toward the dictatorship of
> the bureaucracy instead of the proletariat in both systems.
> I know he was harshly criticized by the far left, i.e.. the Stalinist-Maoist
> camp (accurately, given their assumptions) for his "Social-Democratic"
> tendencies.  

I don't disagree. The society in the novel is a futuristic projection
modelled on Stalinist Russia, however, many of the descriptive details
(bombs, no razor blades or shoelaces etc) are drawn from actual British
experience, particularly during the war, and it is also framed as a warning
about where British Labour, which was still pro-Stalin at the time of
writing, "could" end up. Pynchon deals with this in the paragraph at the
bottom of p. x of the Foreword, particularly in the last two sentences
there.

best