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In George Orwell 's Dystopic Novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four '', Ingsoc is the Ideology of the Totalitarian government of Oceania . Ingsoc is Newspeak for "''' English Socialism '''". ORIGINS English Socialism predominated during a Communist or, more likely, Socialist Revolution , but as The Party is constantly rewriting history it is impossible to tell precisely how it occurred. In addition to rewriting history, The Party also is constantly rewriting the language to make ambiguous the true meanings of words and the ideas behind them, hence, "English Socialism" became the shorter and more Esoteric "Ingsoc." INGSOC AS A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY In the novel, Emmanuel Goldstein 's book '' The Theory And Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism '', describes the actual ideology of the Party as " Oligarchical Collectivism ", stating that Ingsoc "rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism", (a practice Orwell dealt with in '' Animal Farm ''). The Party is Personified by Big Brother , an omnipresent face constantly depicted on Poster s and the Telescreen ; like the Party itself, Big Brother is constantly watching. Ingsoc demands complete submission and tortures to achieve it, (see Room 101 ). Ingsoc has mastered a complex system of psychological tools and methods not only to make people confess imagined crimes and forget thoughts of rebellion, but also to actually love Ingsoc itself. Unlike most real totalitarian regimes, Ingsoc has little if any true end or ultimate political goal other than control for its own sake. O'Brien puts it quite glibly: INGSOC AS A METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY Aside from being a political philosophy, Ingsoc is a metaphysical philosophy, positing that all knowledge rests in the collective mind of the Party, that reality is what the Party says it is. This is the Party's justification for altering historical texts. It uses Doublethink to believe what it would otherwise know as false, and in believing the new past, the new past was, hence ''he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past.'' Thematic references to Solipsism , regarding pure Ingsoc, are made throughout the book's third part, implying that, according to Ingsoc, the universe exists entirely in the mind of the person. It is the job of the Ministry Of Love (via torture and brainwashing) and, to a lesser extent, that of the Ministry Of Truth (via false propaganda) to ensure that each person's mind is shaped to undying loyalty to the Party and its ideology. In these beliefs the person exists only as part of the collective, thus convincing the collective that nothing exists other than the goodness of the Party and the evil of other nations, this is the form of the conscious universe of the person and the collective, thus the Party remains in total power. CLASS STRUCTURE UNDER INGSOC Under Ingsoc, society is composed of three classes: # The '' Inner Party '', who make policy, effect decisions, and run the Government , they are simply referred to as The Party. # The '' Outer Party '', who work the state jobs and are society's Middle Class . "Members are allowed no vices other than Cigarette s and Victory Gin ." The Outer Party also are the most scrutinised, constantly monitored with two-way telescreens and other surveillance technologies. # The '' Proles '', who are the Lower Class , the rabble whom the Inner Party keeps happy and sedate with beer, gambling, sport, casual sex, and Prolefeed ("rubbishy texts"). The proles are the Proletariat , Marx 's term for the working class. The Proles are 85 per cent of Oceania 's populace. The classes mix little, although the narrator describes an evening at the cinema, where proles and Party members both attend. The protagonist also is able to patronize a prole Pub without attracting much attention — or so he thinks — and to visit the flat of O'Brien , a member of the Inner Party, pretext of borrowing a newer edition of the Newspeak dictionary. In keeping with themes of secrecy, deception, and contradiction present in other aspects of this work, Ingsoc, through its propaganda, claims to be egalitarian. The Proles, and some members of the Outer Party, often are hideously exploited while the Party élite live comfortably, and goods are as scarce and costly as Ingsoc propaganda depicts them to have been under capitalism. OTHER POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES IN ''1984'' Eastasia and Eurasia, the other two Superstate s formed and ruled by an ideology in and of similar manner as Oceania, each have their Ingsoc equivalents. Eurasia, formed from Russia 's conquest of Europe , names its ideology Neo-Bolshevism, and the Chinese name for their ideology for ruling Eastasia is commonly translated as '''Death-Worship''', or, more precisely, the '''Obliteration of the Self'''. This fact, that the three ideologies are virtually indistinguishable in their tenets, is known to all three ruling Inner Parties and is constantly denied via Doublethink . This denial of similarity among them, and the three-fold, mutual vilification of each other permits Eternal War among the three superstates. Without said war, the lower classes would lack focus for the hatred and triumph with which the Inner Parties psychologically dominate them. Unexplained, in the novel, is how Ingsoc and its ruling Inner Party established and maintained control of the British Isles , the British Commonwealth , and the entire Americas in a historically-short period, (roughly 30 years, per the novel's chronology). In light of the wide differences among the peoples in these regions, this premise is the significant plot weakness of the novel. Goldstein's book claims Oceania was created "with the absorption of .... the British Empire by the United States". No explanation is given for the name, or why several prominent early Party members (e.g., Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford) were British. While the history is murky, the United States may have invaded and conquered what became Oceania in the chaos of the nuclear war Goldstein says occurred in the 1950s . Alternatively, it may be argued that Ingsoc controls only Britain, as an isolated regime, (like contemporary North Korea). This could have resulted from global nuclear warfare that rendered other countries indifferent, unwilling to intervene, or ignorant about Britain, if they survived. Alternatively, it is equally possible that the entire world is controlled by The Party, for whatever reason, and that, in both cases, the war and Eastasia and Eurasia are fictional. Indeed, ''The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism'', Goldstein's work, is revealed as Yet Another Insidious Example of the Party's mass deception. This constant uncertainty about truth — contrasted with the Party's claims to absolute knowledge — is important to Orwell's concern about power-worship and the loss of scientific objectivity that occur under tyranny. SEE ALSO
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