1984 - Planet eBook

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealththreatened the destruction—indeed, in some sense was thedestruction—of a hierarchical society. In a world in whicheveryone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in ahouse with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed amotor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhapsthe most important form of inequality would alreadyhave disappeared. If it once became general, wealth wouldconfer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imaginea society in which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessionsand luxuries, should be evenly distributed, whilePOWER remained in the hands of a small privileged caste.But in practice such a society could not long remain stable.For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, thegreat mass of human beings who are normally stupefied bypoverty would become literate and would learn to think forthemselves; and when once they had done this, they wouldsooner or later realize that the privileged minority had nofunction, and they would sweep it away. In the long run,a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of povertyand ignorance. To return to the agricultural past, assome thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth centurydreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution. Itconflicted with the tendency towards mechanization whichhad become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the wholeworld, and moreover, any country which remained industriallybackward was helpless in a military sense and wasbound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its moreadvanced rivals.