This is it, this is why 1984 was written. This is George Orwell's statement; Oligarchical Collectivism. The story leads us here in a clumsy way and almost reads like the point of the book is to put across this philosophy, the story being tacked on as an afterthought.

In the story Winston receives the book The Theory And Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein. This is social comment, it is an essay on life, on our lives. It is aimed at the reader and not those characters in 1984; they already know the detail, they are living it.

Two things strike me, the principles of his philosophy are real, for example "doublethink" is a real concept in this world. Secondly, his philosophy is not dissimilar to the world view held by the Bhagavad gita, the philosophy of yoga, and the world of Carlos Castaneda.

The book 1984 is itself actually a prime example of doublethink. Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously. 1984 exists to describe a fictional future world that could never exist, it is like a warning to us. However it also describes the world as it exists today (2004) and as it existed for George in 1949. Doublethink of course exists in our world but I would tend to call it hypocrasy, in old English.

His world view is an acurate vison of the motives of man. People are power hungry and will do anything for it. People are insecure, and the higher up the power heirarchy you travel the more insecure the people are and the more protective they are of their power.

Orwells philosophy shows that the only way to escape the world of Big Brother is to not play its games, like the Bhagavad, Yoga, and Castaneda. Curiously this is not explored in any depth, I would like to have seen Winston make a break for it, to disappear to some remote place to live away from the system maybe to the disputed teratories. There he and Julia could truely be free and live by their own rules.

Without this escape, one whom does not like the system plays either one of two roles in the game; the Rebel, or the Sneak. These being Winston and Julia respectively.