Isaac Asimoves reviews 1984

@Eaglebauer Said

Haven't got the time to read this right now but will. Last time I read 1984 was probably about 15 years ago but the whole dystopian thing has always been a fascinating literary element for me, and Asimov was brilliant.

Thanks for posting this!

@MAW Said

https://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm

A very good review too, full of stimulating points. Really makes me look at the book in a different light. Though I haven't read it since around 1984 I wonder if I'd still consider it a classic.

@Erimitus Said

I worked in a processing center where every inch of the property, inside and out, had a camera watching it. Each watcher had a computer screen that monitored a dozen cameras. They could enlarge the image of a particular screen, zoom in and out, and follow a person moving through the building from camera to camera. To move through a door a person needed an access card and when an area was accessed the image on the watchers screen was highlighted. The best part was that there were cameras watching the watchers. And, I suspect, there were watchers watching the watchers watching the watchers.

@MAW Said

Plus, you bet the watchers didn't like being watched either.

@ThePainefulTruth Said

Asimov wrote: "This comes under the heading of what Orwellian Newspeak calls 'double-think', something that Orwell, like any human being, is good at."

I think he suffers from his own double-think when he rails against Stalin's brand of totalitarianism, but doesn't see the near identical results of Hitler's National Socialism brand of totalitarianism. Both result from inevitable corruption following centralized socialist control. Whether the state owns or simply controls industry is irrelevant.

Wells wasn't engaging in "a private feud with Stalinism", but rather an overall indictment of socialism--focusing on it's currently strongest form. Asimov's double think is his irrational conclusion that his brand of socialism is somehow immune to it's inevitable pitfalls by repackaging it in a different politically correct label. PC is double-think.

@MAW Said

Wells? You getting your H.G's and your Orwells mixed up?

@ThePainefulTruth Said

Good catch, but that doesn't change anything.

@MAW Said

Not even the fact that Marx was totally oppossed to the state. There wouldn't be a state under socialism, their can't be if you read what Marx wrote.

Quote:
I understand the state in America owns the Post Office, so is that socialism or Nazism!

@ThePainefulTruth Said

Communism supposedly is designed to proceed to a stateless society, but it never makes it that far. What he suggests is a power vacuum which is unsustainable for anything beyond a few nanoseconds. Fascism doesn't worry about the "stateless charade".



Technically, any government is socialism. But modern usage of the term includes an understood (iow unstated) "big/centralized" preface while giving mandatory lip service to any constitution that might exist. The government's ownership of General Motors is pure unconstitutional communism--except, again, for not proceeding with the stateless part.

BTW, even Obama admits that the Post Office is an example of governmental incompetence--a subject on which he's an acknowledged expert.

@MAW Said

If only there was a Presidential candidiate that could trim back the state to the size it was when FDR was president eh lad?
Cause it was much, much smaller then.