Anonymous - Power and Proles

“Throughout recorded time and probably since the end of the neolithic age there have been three kinds of people in the world. The high, middle, and the low. They have been subdivided in many ways and worn countless different names and the relative numbers as well as their attitude toward one another have have varied from age to age, but the essential structure of society has never altered.

Even after enormous upheavals in seemingly irrevocable changes the same pattern has always reasserted itself. The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable, the aim of the high is to remain where they are, the aim of the middle is to change places with a high, the aim of the low when they have an aim for it is an abiding characteristic of the low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in it’s main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the high seem to be securely in power but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently or both, they are then overthrown by the middle who enlist the low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective the middle thrusts the low back into their old position of servitude and themselves become the high.

Presently the middle group splits off from one of the other groups or from both of them and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups only the low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there have been no progress of the material kind. Even today in a period of decline the average human being is physically better off than it was a few centuries ago, but no advancing wealth, no softening of manners, no reform our revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

From the point of view of the low no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of the masters. By the late nineteenth century the recurrences of this pattern have become obvious to many observers.

There then arose schools of thinkers who interpret history as a cyclical process and claim to show that inequality was the unalterable law of human life.

This doctrine of course had always had its adherents but in the manner in which was now put forward was a significant change, in the past the need for a hierarchical form of society have been the doctrine specifically of the high. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and by the priests, lawyers and the like who were all parasitic upon them, and they have generally been softened by promises of compensation in an imaginary world beyond the grave.

The middle so long as it was struggling for power had always made use of such terms is freedom justice and fraternity, but the principle underlying cause was that as early as the beginning of the twentieth century human equality have become technically possible.

It was still true that men were not equal in their native talents and their functions and to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others, but there was no longer any real need for class distinctions of large differences of wealth.

But the earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable. Every new political theory by whatever name it called itself led back to hierarchy and regimentation, and in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about nineteen thirty, imprisonment without trial, use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations not only became common again, but were tolerated in even defended by people who consider themselves enlightened in progressive.

But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this, there are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power, either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented middle group to come into being, or it loses it’s own self confidence and willingness to govern.

These causes do not operate singly and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them will remain in power permanently.

The masses never revolt of their own accord and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison they never even become aware that they are oppressed because there is no way in which discontent become articulate.

As for the problem of overproduction which has been latent in our society since the development of machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare which is also useful in keying up public morale for the necessary pitch.

From the point of view of our present rulers therefore the only genuine dangers are the splitting off of a new group of able underemployed power-hungry people, and the growth of liberalism and skepticism in their own ranks. The problem that is to say, is education, it is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way.

Who wields power is not important provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same, from the proletarians nothing is to be feared, left to themselves they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century working breeding and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel but without the power of grasping of the world other than it is. They can only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate the more highly.

What opinions the masses hold or do not hold are looked on as a matter of indifference, so long as they continued to work and breed, there other activities were without importance. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they married at twenty, they were middle aged at thirty, they died for the most part at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.

To keep them in control was not difficult, a few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumors and marking down and eliminating the few individuals where judged capable of becoming dangerous. It was not desirable that the proletariat should have strong political feelings, all that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which will be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make an exception longer working hours or shorter rations.

And even when they became discontented as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere because being without general ideas they could only focus on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escape their notice.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” ~ George Orwell, Excerpts from 1984

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