Posted by Mata MacUileam on April 02, 2002 at 08:46:06:
In Reply to: Re: hey comrads off to woomera today! posted by Claus B. Storgaard on April 02, 2002 at 03:39:43:
The "urge to conform" is correct as Orwell puts it, but still yet there are people who, for sake of debate, will not at all conform or submit to any circumstances. It is this that prevents the revolution, it is this as well that creates it. "No society can live if it attempts to be exclusive," so quotes Ghandi, and all societies that are far right or left are exclusive. An anarchist government is as well a totalitarian government as it is also the closest thing to what Marx had incorrectly called a communist society. If one were to live here, he would stillbe subjected to the will of the people, directly or otherwise.
This is where Orwell makes his random mistake, small and insignificant as they usually are, but still yet it takes away from the overall picture. "Public opinion" is always unsteady and is always attributed to two things: what it is that the higher class thinks and that the magazines print. This was true then and is still to an extant true today. There are many people who do not have the will to think on their own volition, and if there are people who are not courageous to actually do so. If public opinion were to rule without law to regulate it, it would likely have less of an effect. With no limits to public opinion, the people, more correctly in this case, the masses, will act more on their own individual volition and it is that conflict of opinion which negates the revolution.
Lenin tried to make a Utopia. So did Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Julius Ceasar. All of their attempts resulted in no utopia, but a controlled society and civil strife. The idea of a society where something will conform and not question is also one that doesn't live or, if it does, not strongly or fairly. It is important to debate a practice (not entirely questioning its validity, but trying to reform it and base it on facts) and in that way society can live.