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“The Party”
Appears in	Nineteen Eighty-Four
Leader	Big Brother
Notable members	O'Brien Emmanuel Goldstein (Later betrayed Ingsoc)
Political ideology	Oligarchical Collectivism, Idealism, Big Brotherism
Political position	Syncretic
Colours	Unknown
Slogan(s)	"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength." "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past".
See also Fictional political parties Politics in fiction

In the dystopian science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), by George Orwell, the Newspeak acronym Ingsoc (“English Socialism”) denotes the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania.

Fictionalized Origin of Ingsoc

Ingsoc (“English Socialism”) originated after the socialist revolution, but, because The Party continually rewrites history, it is impossible to establish the precise origin of English Socialism. Oceania originated from the union of the Americas with the British Empire. Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein led the Party’s socialist revolution, yet Goldstein turned against Big Brother, becoming his enemy. However, it is debatable whether Big Brother and Goldstein actually exist, and are not just fabrications by the party to inspire love and hatred, respectively. Besides its continual historical revisionism, The Party also is continually rewriting the English language into Newspeak, a language whose concision limits the true denotation(s) of words and the ideas they represent; hence the esoteric Newspeak acronym “Ingsoc” replaced the Oldspeak “English Socialism”.

The Ingsoc political ideology is widely regarded as similar to Stalinism.

As political philosophy

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, describes the Party’s ideology as an Oligarchical Collectivism, that “rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism”.

Big Brother personifies the Party, as the ubiquitous face constantly depicted in posters and the telescreen, thus, Big Brother is constantly watching. Ingsoc demands the complete submission – mental, moral and physical – of the people, and will torture to achieve it, (see Room 101). Ingsoc is a masterfully complex system of psychological control that compels confession to imagined crimes and the forgetting of rebellious thought in order to love Big Brother and The Party over oneself. The purpose of Ingsoc is political control, power per se; glibly, O'Brien explains to Smith:

As metaphysical Pseudophilosophy

Metaphysically, Ingsoc posits that all knowledge rests in the collective mind of the Party; reality is what the Party says, the justification for its historical revisionism. With doublethink, the people believe what they otherwise know is false; in believing the revised (new) past, the new past is what was, hence “he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past”.

In the third part of Nineteen Eighty-Four, pure Ingsoc’s thematic references to solipsism imply that the universe exists only in the mind. (Compare Externism). The Ministry of Love (MiniLuv), via brainwashing and torture, and the Ministry of Truth (MiniTrue), with propaganda, ensure that perpetual loyalty to the Party is instilled to the mind of each Oceanian. The person exists only as part of the collective, hence, for the collective, nothing exists beyond the goodness of the Party and the evil of other nations and the Party’s power.

Ingsoc’s social class system

In the year 1984, Ingsoc divides Oceanian society into three social classes, the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles:

1. The Inner Party make policy, effect decisions, and govern; they are known as “The Party”. One of their upper-class privileges is (temporarily) shutting off their telescreens, for time alone. They live in spacious, comfortable homes, have good food and drink, personal servants, and speedy transportation. No Outer Party member or Prole may enter an Inner party neighbourhood without a good pretext.
2. The Outer Party work the state’s administrative jobs; they are the middle class, whose “members are allowed no vices other than cigarettes and Victory Gin”, and who are the citizens most spied upon, via telescreens and surveillance. This is because, according to history, the middle class is the most dangerous; they are the ones to incite revolution, the one thing The Party does not want. They live in rundown neighborhoods, use crowded subways as transportation, have poorer food and drink, and are denied sex for any other purpose than having children within marriage, and are expected to look at it as a duty, rather than pleasure.
3. The Proles are the lower class of workers . They live in the poorest conditions. The Party keeps them happy and sedates them with alcohol, gambling, sport, sexual promiscuity, and prolefeed (Fabricated books, pornography). They are not constantly watched by The Party. A few agents of the Thought Police mark down and eliminate any individuals deemed capable of becoming dangerous and spread false rumors. Proletariat are 85 per cent of Oceania’s populace.

Although the social classes of Oceania interact little, the narrator, Winston Smith, attends an evening at the cinema, where proles and members of the Party view the same film programme; he patronises a proletarian pub without attracting notice (he thinks); and visits the flat of Inner Party man O'Brien, on pretext of borrowing the newest edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Ingsoc’s propaganda proclaims its egalitarianism, yet the Proles and (some) members of the Outer Party are hideously exploited and live in poverty, whilst the ruling élite, The Party, work little and live well and comfortably; yet consumer goods remain as scarce and expensive as under capitalism. It is suggested that this is not a result of a deficit of actual produce, but rather, a surplus: This surplus is more than taken up by ever-present warfare between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. If the Party chose, all its people could live in luxury, but they instead choose to lower the quality of living.

Other political ideologies in Nineteen Eighty-four

Eurasia and Eastasia are the other two ideologically-formed and -ruled superstates that resemble Oceania. Neo-Bolshevism is the ideology of Eurasia, Soviet-conquered Europe. Death Worship (Obliteration of the Self) is the Chinese name for the ideology of Eastasia. The ruling oligarchies of the three superstates are aware that their ideologies are philosophically indistinguishable, a fact kept from, and denied by, their populaces via doublethink. Said denial, practised in each state, and the mutual vilification of the enemy state, permits perpetual war among them. Without said war, the lower classes would have no focus for the hatred of, and triumph over, the enemy, with which their Inner parties dominate them.

How Ingsoc gained control of the United Kingdom, the Irish Free State, the British Commonwealth, and the Americas, in an historically-short period (some 30 years) is not established. In his book, Goldstein (Although most of the book was written by O'Brien) says that Oceania was created “with the absorption of . . . the British Empire by the United States”. The possibility exists that Oceania is no larger than Airstrip One (the British Isles), and that Eastasia and Eurasia are Party fabrications, excuses for wasting natural resources and labour in making weapons.

See also

• George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 1
• Thoughtcrime
• Newspeak
• Doublethink
• Norsefire

External links

• NORSOC, the Norwegian phalang of ingsoc
• Flag-Burning: a Detriment to the Oceanian Way, a satire by Alexander S. Peak
• Students for an Orwellian Society
• Flags of Ingsoc and Neo-Bolshevism at Flags of the World