the
concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not
yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the
past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then
had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown. The
new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand. Socialism,
a theory which appeared in the early nineteenth century and was the last
link in a chain of thought stretching back to the slave rebellions of
antiquity, was still deeply infected by the Utopianism of past ages. But in
each variant of Socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of
establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned. The
new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in
Oceania, Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia, Death-Worship, as it is commonly
called, in Eastasia, had the conscious aim of perpetuating UNfreedom and
INequality. These new movements, of course, grew out of the old ones and
tended to keep their names and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the
purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a
chosen moment. The familiar pendulum swing was to happen once more, and
then stop.