Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Four

It is self-evident that the year 1984 will not in the least resemble the nightmare anticipated by Orwell. Humanity has nowhere been transformed into an amorphous mass of automatons ruled by invisible forces, a Stanlinist Gulag pushed to its logical conclusion and extended to the world at large. This has not occurred even in Communist countries. Quite the contrary: although their regimes remain frozen in totalitarian molds, their reality has been persistently evolving toward more liberal forms. The world is certainly a freer place today that it was in 1948 when Orwell wrote his anti-utopian novel.

Orwell's fear has not materialized because like nearly all predictions it has rested on flawed methodology. Prediction is usually no more than the projection of trends observable in the present onto the future in a straight and uninterrupted line. Therefore, the worse it is, the worse it will get. It has been noted that investment advisory services grow in bullishness as the stock market rises, and turn bearish as it goes down. In other words, they do not really anticipate events, they retrace them. Although predictions of this sort appear to look ahead, they are, in fact, always gazing backwards.

It is, of course, contrary to common sense to assume that any trend will keep on advancing until it triumphs all along the line. A trend postulates a countertrend, a force to be overcome, and if that latter has any raison d'etre to begin with, it will eventually reassert itself, and turn things around. The Hegelian triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis has much to recommend it as a scheme of change.

To the extent that one wishes to predict human affairs, it seems to me, one must proceed from what are known to man. It may, perhaps, be possible to automate individuals but it is difficult to see how this can be done to mankind. Mankind ceaselessly regenerates itself as children come into the world, fresh, ignorant of what has preceded them and what is expected of them, keen to observe, and averse to acting as they are told. To create a uniform world, one would have to devise a way of making acquired characteristics inheritable: something that the charlatan biologist. Trofin Lysenko, promised Stalin, who desperately desired such power.

When I first went to the Soviet Union in 1957, four years after Stalin's death. I was astounded how much independence of thought there existed under the crust of conformity, what eccentric ideas young Kussians had managed on their own to develop. Since then, many of these ideas have spilled into Soviet public life, the vitality and exuberance of which is concealed from sight by the regime's grip on the media. In addition, the Soviet government is discovering that the only way to increase productivity is to resort to contractual arrangements with individual workers and peasants. Thus, in most encouraging ways, freedom of thought and freedom of contract, the two pillars of the democratic order, are injecting themselves into what was to have been a permanent prison for body and mind. Big Brother is learning that some freedom is indispensable even to his own survival.

I believe that there are good grounds for optimism about the future. Regimentation works up to a point but then becomes counter-productive. Modern economics, in particular, have become so immensely complex and so interdependent that they can no longer be effectively run from a single center. They wither unless they allow some scope to free initiative.

As concerns the one dark cloud that hangs over us and causes the most concern--the fear of unclear war--I believe that there are grounds for optimism here, too. It is true that Soviet leadership gives every indication of making active preparations for war. The pace of its weapons' procurement programs is nothing short of frenetic, while the domestic hate campaign against the United States is assuming very ugly dimensions. Soviet defensive preparations, especially the construction of shelters to protect cadres and industries against unclear attack, also give cause for worry, since they are not matched by anything on this side.

But, on the whole, there appears little likelihood of war in the immediate future, because these preparations are balanced by other factors. The failure of Soviet weapons in the Middle East must give Soviet leaders pause. The same applies to the miserable campaign waged by the Red Army in Afghanistan, where, notwithstanding its immense advantage in firepower, victory seems as clusive as ever, and resort has to be had to mindlessly brutal, almost genocidal, terror tactics The fact that Moscow sees President Reagan as a strong and decisive leader further inhibits its spirit of adventure. The Soviet Union needs militarism and the threat of war primarily to keep at bay mounting pressures for reform inside its empire and to intimidate foreign countries, especially Europe. Although its forces are general for waging offensive nuclear war, the imponderables of such a war are too great to tempt precipitous moves.

The things that seem troublesome to me are of a different order. The dissolution of family and community which proceeds apace the world over causes traditional forms of social discipline as well as support to break down setting ever more individuals adrift in a sea of anxiety; terrorism and drug addiction are among its most disturbing manifestations. The scope of international indebtedness is also worrisome because it parts at risk the whole financial and economic structure of the world. But for the reasons stated I remain confident that before these undesirable trends have had a chance to run their full course, countervailing forces will emerge and restore the balance. The main thing is to stay cool and keep one's sense of humor. Richard Pipes is Baird Professor of History.