Free Orwell's Revenge by Peter Huber

think of the sinister possibilities of the radio, state-controlled education and so forth.”
    Does Orwell then agree with Russell, that tyranny is self-destructive, or with Burnham, that tyranny is durable and strong? In 1940, when he reviews Russell, Orwell is with Burnham. In 1946, when he reviews Burnham, he is with Russell. In 1948, when he finishes 1984, he is with Burnham once again. What’s going on? The answer is “the radio . . . and so forth.” The answer is the telescreen.
    In 1946, Orwell is (temporarily) sure that Burnham is wrong. As a responsible critic, Orwell takes pains to explain why. Burnham has relied on Machiavelli, but Machiavelli’s theories, valid enough when “methods of production were primitive,” are now obsolete. World politics have been transformed. By what? By “the arrival of the machine.” Industrialism has made human drudgery “technically avoidable.” “In effect,” says Orwell, “Burnham argues that because a society of free and equal human beings has never existed, it never can exist. By the same argument one could have demonstrated the impossibility of aeroplanes in 1900, orof motor cars in 1850.” Burnham’s key mistake has been to misunderstand the political implications of new technology.
    And having written that, Orwell puts Burnham to one side and sets to work on 1984. As he writes, Orwell finds himself thinking again about just where it was that Burnham went wrong. He thinks about machines—Orwell is always thinking about machines. And then it hits him: Burnham’s geopolitical prophecies are right after all! The Orwell of the 1930s, who anticipated all of Burnham’s ideas by years, was right too. Superstate totalitarianism is coming again. Burnham didn’t correctly understand why; he blamed it all on the Machiavellian instincts of the ruling oligarchy. But Orwell now grasps the real reason. Big Brother is coming because of the advent of a new machine. He is coming by telescreen.
    And indeed, Orwell has being saying that for years, too. Perhaps he reaches back into his files to refresh his memory. To his 1940 review of Bertrand Russell, the one pointing to “the sinister possibilities” of radio and so forth. Or to another book review Orwell published in 1936. “You can’t ignore Hitler, Mussolini, unemployment, aeroplanes and the radio,”Orwell had written then. Or to another review he published in 1939: “The Inquisition failed, but then the Inquisition had not the resources of the modem state. The radio, press-censorship, standardised education and the secret police have altered everything. . . .Mass-suggestion is a science of the last twenty years, and we do not yetknow how successful it will be.” Or perhaps Orwell remembers his wartime broadcasts for the BBC, and pulls from the shelf his “Imaginary Interview with Jonathan Swift”:
    GEORGE ORWELL: Since your day something has appeared called totalitarianism.
    JONATHAN SWIFT: A new thing?
    ORWELL: It isn’t strictly new, it’s merely been made practicable owing to modem weapons and modem methods of communication.
    There it is again: modern methods of communication. The new telemedia are what give modern totalitarianism an altogether new power, never before seen or even imagined. 1984 is not just a rewrite of Burnham, or a variation on H. G. Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes, Jack London’s The Iron Heel, Zamyatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, or E. M. Forster’s“The Machine Stops,” all of which Orwell has read and written about many times. Like the others, 1984 is a book about power. But what is politically new about Orwell’s book—radically, brilliantly new—is the combined power of oligarchy and the communicating machine. In 1984, Big Brother speaks to everyone, and Winston Smith speaks to no one.