Anyone using 1984 to form their political argument doesn't make sense, it's based around a caricature of governments Orwell had personal bad experiences with (British government bureaucracy, and Stalinists during the spanish civil war). It's not a terrible book, but forming a serious political opinion for or against it is not a useful thing to do.
Though, imo, Orwell states the hopes are the proles because he does fundamentally believe in socialism from below, however he's so mixed up in his upbringing it never gets coherent.
I also personally don't really like Asimov's review. Beyond his own work having a lot issues (like the Foundation series can be read as a gross distortion of historical materialism), the review also comes off as kind of jealous. Also some of the parts of the review are just wrong about the book that makes me question how Asimov read it, like the comment on Orwell thinking there had to be constant war. The point is that the war does not exist, dunno how he missed that. Or that he accuses Orwell of not forseeing computers, but Asimov admitted to doing that himself after the review was published. To me the book is still a very effective novel about the psychological methods of power, and as political satire (if clouded and dated by personal politics and lack of knowledge of the purges. It'd be really interesting to see a rewrite that focused more on the mass paranoia the party was in).
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Anyone using 1984 to form their political argument doesn't make sense, it's based around a caricature of governments Orwell had personal bad experiences with (British government bureaucracy, and Stalinists during the spanish civil war). It's not a terrible book, but forming a serious political opinion for or against it is not a useful thing to do.
Though, imo, Orwell states the hopes are the proles because he does fundamentally believe in socialism from below, however he's so mixed up in his upbringing it never gets coherent.
I also personally don't really like Asimov's review. Beyond his own work having a lot issues (like the Foundation series can be read as a gross distortion of historical materialism), the review also comes off as kind of jealous. Also some of the parts of the review are just wrong about the book that makes me question how Asimov read it, like the comment on Orwell thinking there had to be constant war. The point is that the war does not exist, dunno how he missed that. Or that he accuses Orwell of not forseeing computers, but Asimov admitted to doing that himself after the review was published. To me the book is still a very effective novel about the psychological methods of power, and as political satire (if clouded and dated by personal politics and lack of knowledge of the purges. It'd be really interesting to see a rewrite that focused more on the mass paranoia the party was in).
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