emmanuel goldstein wrote the theory and practice of oligarchical collectivism.
who wrote the theory and practice of oligarchical collectivism?
emmanuel goldstein
the term "oligarchical collectivism" is similar to the theory of bureaucratic collectivism put forth by some trotskyists in the late 1930s. leon trotsky is the likely model for orwell's emmanuel goldstein: a former member of the party inner circle who had been purged and declared an enemy of the people by the soviet state he had helped to found, and subsequently a critic of its social system in exile—just as goldstein critiques the system of oceania. however, the bureaucratic collectivist theory was formulated not by trotsky, but by some of his followers mainly in the united states who dissented from his view of the soviet union as a degenerated workers' state. these theorists, such as max shachtman, saw the soviet union, along with nazi germany and fascist italy, as representing a new type of society, neither capitalist nor socialist, characterized by direct, integrated political and economic rule by a new ruling class of totalitarian state bureaucrats. in the era of the molotov–ribbentrop pact and the lead-up to world war ii, this theory claimed that the apparently opposed fascist and stalinist social systems were in effect identical in essence, reminiscent of goldstein's claims that oceania, eurasia and eastasia are actually identical and only differ in the justifying ideology. for these reasons, some scholars such as james m. decker have identified goldstein's book as a parody of trotsky's real-life book "the revolution betrayed", while others such as carl freedman have instead compared to works such as ex-trotskyist james burnham's "the managerial revolution".
the theory and practice of oligarchical collectivism
george orwell's famous novel "nineteen eighty-four" describes a fictional society of "oligarchical collectivism". orwell was familiar with the works of james burnham, having reviewed burnham's "the managerial revolution" prior to writing "nineteen eighty-four". oligarchical collectivism was a fictionalized conceptualization of bureaucratic collectivism, where big brother and the inner party form the nucleus of a hierarchical organization of society professing itself as "english socialism" because of its revolutionary origins, but afterwards only concerned with total domination by the party.
bureaucratic collectivism