Reply #9: 1984 vs Brave New World

[mrfrapp]

1984 was a take on totalitarian regimes in general not just those of a Communist flavour. This of course includes fascism, which is, according to Mussolini, "the merging of corporation and state". (The quote in full reads, "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power"). I've always read 1984 therefore as a critique of how capitalism might be subverted and bastardised in the same way communism was in the Soviet Union.

Brave New World is more obviously a critique of capitalism of course,
but I don't think those themes are in our future. They're here right now and have been for some time.