1984 - Planet eBook

organization. Below Big Brother comes the Inner Party. Itsnumbers limited to six millions, or something less than2 per cent of the population of Oceania. Below the InnerParty comes the Outer Party, which, if the Inner Party is describedas the brain of the State, may be justly likened to thehands. Below that come the dumb masses whom we habituallyrefer to as ‘the proles’, numbering perhaps 85 per cent ofthe population. In the terms of our earlier classification, theproles are the Low: for the slave population of the equatoriallands who pass constantly from conqueror to conqueror,are not a permanent or necessary part of the structure.In principle, membership of these three groups is not hereditary.The child of Inner Party parents is in theory notborn into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of theParty is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor isthere any racial discrimination, or any marked dominationof one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americansof pure Indian blood are to be found in the highestranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area arealways drawn from the inhabitants of that area. In no partof Oceania do the inhabitants have the feeling that they area colonial population ruled from a distant capital. Oceaniahas no capital, and its titular head is a person whosewhereabouts nobody knows. Except that English is its chiefLINGUA FRANCA and Newspeak its official language, it isnot centralized in any way. Its rulers are not held togetherby blood-ties but by adherence to a common doctrine. Itis true that our society is stratified, and very rigidly stratified,on what at first sight appear to be hereditary lines.