in its most sadistic terms, was the truen(but unadmitted) inner purpose of thenSoviet and nazi regimes. The rulers ofnOceania, however, no longer hide thisnfrom themselves. Third, Orwell soughtnto explore both the future of surveillancen(through the “telescreen”) andnwhat was later to become known asnbrainwashing. It was commonly thoughtnin the late 1930’s and the 1940’s that thenvictims in Stalin’s show trials had somehownbeen “converted” into a belief inntheir own guilt. Orwell doubted that thisnconversion had occurred. He correcdynthought that the victims had simply beenntortured or blackmailed into confessing.nBut he went on to wonder whether sciencencould make “true” forced conversionnpossible, and he developed thisnthou^t into the crovwiing horror of thenworld portrayed in 1984.nM1984 was not intended as a merenpolemic against Stalinism, neither was itna mere literary reflection or product ofnthe cold-war era, as an examination ofnOrweU’s literary and nonfiction worknshows. 1984 was the culmination of anseries of earlier “negative Utopias,” ornSubtle WisdomnOne Ms. Ehrenreich, the liberal left’snnewest first lady of sexual sagacity, praisingna new feminist tract on sexolog)’ innThe Nation, the flagship of Americanngauchism:nThe short stories by M>Ta Goldberg andnCarole Rosentlial explore women’s attractionneven to men who are manifestlyncreeps.nThe emphasis on even is ours. We allnknow that crass misjudgments are quitencommon to existential wcLssitudes. Moreover,nwithout some ill-fated humannpropensities, their omnipresence, andntheir consequences, neither ManonnLlBERAL Cl’LTlKi:n”dystopias,” which stretched back atnleast to the turn of the century and withnwhich Orwell was familiar. (It was thenculmination in more than one sense: nondystopia produced since 1984 is as horriifying,nnor has any approached 1984 innpenetration or philosophical interest,nwith the possible exception of BernardnWolfe’s Limbo.) Orwell studied thesenearlier dystopias with great care andnfound Jack London’s The Iron Heel, writtennbefore World War I, and EvgenynZamyatin’s We, written in 1923, thenmost impressive. The writings of ArthurnKoestler and Franz Borkenau, both personalnfriends of Orwell, were importantnsources of his ideas; Borkenau’s booknThe Totalitarian Enemy, published inn1940, expresses some of the notions laternfound in 1984. Perhaps the most importantnof all Orwell’s sources was JamesnBumham’s The Managerial Revolution,npublished in 1941. This work predictednthat capitalism and the nation-state systemnwere coming to an end, but thatnthey would not be replaced by socialismnas it had been understood before 1914.nRather, society would pass under thencontrol of a new ruling class, the “man-nLescaut nor Washington Square not AnnAmerican Tragedy nor most of ThomasnHardy’s novels could have been written.nNow, what about men who are attractedneven to sluts and slatterns? Dnnnagers,” a coUectivist hierarchy. Thenworld would be ruled by three “superstates,”nwhich would probably be totalitarian,nbased in North America, Europe,nand the Far East. The influence of allnthese sources, especially Bumham’s,ncan be documented not only in 1984nbut also in Orwell’s essays and reviews.nMichael Walzer’s essay, “On FailednTotalitarianism,” is essentially an attemptnto argue not only that totalitarianism isnpasse—which is suggested in severalnother essays in 1984 Revisited—but alsonthat there is no important distinction betweenntotalitarianism and other nondemocraticnregimes—the latter generallyngrouped together under the rathernvague rubric of “authoritarian”—evennthough Orwell and others perceivednone. Since the 1960’s a determined effortnhas been made by the left to discardnthe entire concept of totalitarianism.nWalzer does not have the nerve to joinnthis group, but indfrectiy his argumentsnhave the same objective. This efiiect resultsnpardy from Walzer’s misconstruingnof the totalitarian-authoritarian distinctionnand pardy from his using only onenpeculiar version of the concept of totalitarianism.nUnfortunately, that is not thenversion that interested Orwell; in feet, itnis a rather dubious notion that was formulatednonly after his death.nThe word totalitarianism was coinednby Mussolini in 1932. Totalitarian regimesnexist where one party monopolizesnall power in society. It does not merelynenforce a political dictatorship, but replacesnor controls all institutions andndictates—or at least seeks to —every activitynof its citizens. Moreover, it usuallynattempts to destroy some social group,ne.g., Jews in the case of nazism, thenbourgeoisie in the case of communistnregimes. Except perhaps for the last,nmost of these aspects of totalitarian regimesnwere fiilly apparent in the 1930’s,nwhen the term came into widespread use.nBy 1940, when Orwell began using it,nmany writers found it so femiliar thatnthey no longer felt it necessary even tondefine it for their readers. In this sense,ntotalitarianism obviously existed andnJanuary 1984n