I was just finishing Weber’s “Spirit of Capitalism” and was taken by many observations which could have been made just as well, not of the Capitalist, but of the socialist/communist as well.
For example, the inhuman result of the Protestant Ethic, as explained by Weber is that man is not longer the end but a means, in the sense that it is not that wealth is to serve man, but that man who serves wealth. Men no longer work in order to live but live in order to work.
At the heart of this development he cites many different causes but chief among them a religious ideal.
Now, if we look at 1984, the novel, at the moment when O’Brien and Winston engage in conversation- Winston being tortured. Winston did not even have to say the question for O’Brien already knew: Winston understood the how the Party operated but not the why it operated the way it did. O’Brien maintains that no other age had ever been so honest and free of illusions as to it’s objectives and claims that it is simply for the sake of power itself. Not power in order to do X, but power and the accumulation of more power. In this, O’Brien is like a capitalist, even if the capital being reinvested and amassed is not wealth but “power”. That is what got me thinking.
First off, can we say that O’Brien was being honest? Is it possible to pursue wealth or power for it’s own perfect and inhuman sake?
In the capitalist, as Weber has commented, the search for wealth is, while superficially logical and rational, supported by foundations that are illogical and irrational. That if, that if indeed the capitalist spirit comes from a Protestant ethic which is trying to obtain a religious release, such idea is not based on any further rationality but on a natural need to remove fear from our lives-- but nothing scientific exists in that this endeavor, the collection of wealth for it’s sake and not for comsumption, can gain such an end or that no other means exists to attain the same goal. Wealth, when produced by the protestant ethic, is not wealth for itself. The entrepeneur does not consume his wealth but because he is transacting with God. It is not without purpose. He might be like the biblical character that makes five talents out of the one talent his master has given him and by such deed is given honor and power. But if he even had the desire of making five talents out of one talent to beging with it is with his own interests in mind-- that is, recognition and a greater reward that the five talents represent in themselves.
The capitalist way does not come solely from the power of such an idea but from a natural tendency that is co-opted with the idea. It is a human trait that we can forgo an immediate pleasure if we feel a greater reward will result from such privation. Not everyone does it, but even animals are known to store away food-stuff, so my point stands. That said, again, we see that the accumulation, the pursuit, is not made for it’s own sake, but in relation to the wants and hopes of the mindful ascetic.
Though today the Protestant Ethic is not the underlying force that drives the Spirit of Capitalism (which is questionable whether it ever was it’s chief contributor), it is still true to say that no capitalist, in my opinion, pursues wealth for the sake of wealth alone. If Gates or Trump has not, as of yet, consumed all his assets, it is not because he has lived a deprived life, and refused luxuries. Other, less excentric billionares might enjoy less of their wealth, but still with their eyes of future generations- their children’s grandchildren and their grandchildren. They leave behind a name, a legacy, like Nobel. In their systems of values, such events are priceless.
Thus, when we read O’Brien rap on about how torture is done for it’s own sake and everything else for that matter, as well, for it’s own sake; for the sake of power; and power being power over others etc, etc, I find O’Brien less than honest, or no more than dreamer, who dreams that he has overcome his own self.
If you consider govts highly similar to the Party, like Stalin and Mao, you find the underlying religion of communism. The proletariat conducts it’s revolutions and lives in subjugation with the promise of a future classless society. No more suffering for everyone means also no suffering for he himself. The self adopts a greater community as itself, and the future as an end worthy of the means of today. If you throw in Hitler, he too was far from being a procurer of power for power’ sake. As a believer in the supremacy of the white race, he too subjugated all to a greater good, of race purity-- and let’s not forget nationalism in itself. But nationalism is so predominant that it could account for the toleration of the Party and every other oppressive regime by itself.
Even Machiavelly, who saw the Prince’s measure of success only in his ability to remain in power, still had his own ideas as to how such power would liberate Italy and give back it’s honor, so that it is not for power’s sake but for Italy’s. Could it be though that O’Brien represents an age in which all dreams are now lost, all illusions revealed, so that nations mean nothing, race means nothings, family means nothing…? But then why does the Party still mean so much for some? Fear alone is hardly the question and this is why I liked the novel so much, because Orwell provides you with so much detail as to the different methods of mass control, such as scapegoats.
Yet it only makes me wonder why they could ever need oppression. Or to be more specific, why would they need to oppress the outer party. Perhaps because it seeks to change places with the inner party and yet O’Brien would not be at all against this. So much is left unsaid. How does the inner party exist at all? How does it renew itself at the death of one of it’s members? By creating bloodlines? Unlikely, if we believe O’Brien. Selection? But then Winston would have been a great choice.
I know, I know…it’s just a book. It is fiction…