While it is well understood that The Party had a goal of
achieving complete control over the population,
what was the longer objective after that goal had been achieved?
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Sign up to join this communityWhile it is well understood that The Party had a goal of
achieving complete control over the population,
what was the longer objective after that goal had been achieved?
O'Brien tells us explicitly:
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
— Part III, Chapter III, Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Party's ultimate objective is to retain and exercise power because power only exists when it is being exercised.
The Party breaks people not because it needs to, not because it wants to but because it can. Power for the Party is not material power, or even military power, it’s power over the 6 cubic inches of brain in each and every Party member (proles don’t matter).
“A boot crushing a human skull forever.”
They have achieved their goal of unassailable, eternal power and control. Their stranglehold on power will only become more cemented as the last generation to even remember bits of the world before die out, and the language eventually loses to capacity to even express or conceptualize dissent. Some other answers note the ongoing and eternal wars and alliances with the neighboring powers, but whether the same government as their rivals is beyond the point. Those nations and the constant wars are necessary to burn off excess production capacity, populations, and as an object of the people’s fear and hatred. They have no need for any further technological advancement, the system is perfect or nearing perfection, power and control being the goals unto itself.
(Extra: not part of my answer: maybe some tweaks could be made to the technology and processes of ferreting out thought crime, erasure of history, and the fighting of their wars, but these would be implemented slowly, if at all, to avoid upsetting the balance of a system that works.. ‘if it ain’t broke..’. I like to think people like Winston function as sort of the ‘blow off valve’ for discontent, existing to funnel any thoughts of resistance or revolt down long since dead ended pathways. Its like if the machines in the matrix just made it so the people-pod doors couldn’t be opened, you would wake up, realize the pointlessness of it, and BEG to go back to sleep :)
I was taught in a Political Science class decades ago that the two goals of all politicians are to get elected, and get re-elected -- or alternatively, to gain and then retain power.
Ingsoc has gained some power; they are absolute rulers of their lands (which remain mostly stable despite continual border wars which whichever other power they aren't current allied with) -- but they are not yet absolute rulers of all lands (unless you believe (as Winston Smith had begun to just before he was taken) that the enemies were all part of the Party and the wars existed solely to keep the citizens in line).
Beyond that goal, however, the goal is to retain power. If you believe that all three Parties are in fact one, that is the ongoing process -- maintain enough apparent conflict and change to hold control over the citizens (the proles take care of themselves, for the most part; it's all they care about to have a place to live and resources to support themselves). Keep things the way they are -- to those few in actual power, it's a perfect world.
What's the ultimate objective of any politician? They all, to a man, believe that they present the best solution for how to govern the population. This is not necessarily something they will ever stop doing once in control of the nation, unless forced away, by democratic succession laws or by a revolution.
The final chapter of 1984 offers some insight though: the most prominent members of the ruling party are fanatic patriots and also obsessed with the war effort. Even though they know that the 3 great nations of the world have to maintain a status quo with constant war, and therefore none can ever be allowed to win or lose it, they still hope for victory and cheer as news from the front line arrive.
So their goal could be to win the war, at the same time as they must ensure that they never win the war. It is a paradox, very much in line with doublethink. In pratice: the goal is to maintain status quo.
The Party is founded on lies.
When Winston first reached this conclusion, he was thinking of the lies that the Ministry of Truth peddles in order to keep the proles and Outer Party from overthrowing the Inner Party and Thought Police, and if he got any farther than this, he may also have given thought to the lies that the Inner Party brass undoubtedly tell to lull the suspicions of fellow Party members whom they intend to betray in their chronic internecine struggles.
But there is one lie that all of the Inner Party members believed: That power is worth anything in and of itself.
When you really think about it, power--that is, the ability to reduce your fellow man to chattel--is a zero. As a means to an end it has some use, but O'Brien makes it clear that he, and the rest of the Inner Party, would forsake everything else for power. Why?
This is a question that O'Brien does not answer, and probably has never even considered, because the answer is psychological. The desire for power, for power's sake, comes from an inner craving of the soul; and because we read of no dictator or demagogue telling us what this inner state was, we can conclude nothing, aside from it not being something that anyone wishes to believe about themselves.
In the heart of the person who lusts for power there is something, whether envy at the ability of others to find meaning in life, or an unshakable sense of inadequacy, or some other sentiment entirely, which such a person tries to soothe by robbing others of their agency. The goal of the Party is to feed this inner craving.
So the lie, that power has inherent value, is the true foundation of the Party. If nobody believed it the Party would cease.
The whole thing is explained by the reductive Three Peoples theory and Curtis Yarvin’s three-layer theory. We both agree that there are three kinds of people in society. There’s the Gentry, educated and creative; there are Commoners, responsibly wiving and thriving in the market economy; and then there are Victims, dependent and subordinate, political clients of the Gentry. THe more malevolent and seditious of the Gentry, thrives on taxing the 2nd group and oppressing the 3rd, not oppress them with whips and chains or slavery but with suspension of prosperity and sapping will and independent assertion and thought. In all seriousness, there is an underclass of people in real society and their relative compliance with the law is only bought and maintained with social assistance/welfare. Take that from them, and god help you.