Summary of The Book

1984 Part 2, chapter 9 contains excerpts from Goldstein’s famed book. 

The main ideas of Goldstein’s book are:

  1. War is important for consuming the products of human labor; if this work were used to increase the standard of living, the control of the party over the people would decrease. War is the economic basis of a hierarchical society.
  2. There is an emotional need to believe in the ultimate victory of Big Brother.
  3. In becoming continuous, war has ceased to exist. The continuity of the war guarantees the permanence of the current order. In other words, “War is Peace”
  4. There have always been three main strata of society; the Upper, the Middle and the Lower, and no change has brought human equality one inch nearer.
  5. Collectivism does not lead to socialism. In the event, the wealth now belongs to the new “upper-class”, the bureaucrats and administrators. Collectivism has ensured the permanence of economic inequality.
  6. Wealth is not inherited from person to person, but it is kept within the ruling group.
  7. The masses (proles) are given freedom of thought, because they don’t think! A Party member is not allowed the slightest deviation of thought, and there is an elaborate mental training to ensure this, a training that can be summarized in the concept of doublethink.

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