Orwellian Timing

I finished reading 1984 last week while on vacation with my family, and was struck by the timelessness of its lessons. Unfortunately, I was also able to watch those lessons demonstrated through the sad state of Iran, whose rulers' daily efforts to squelch protests were so closely paralleled in the book that it no longer felt like fiction.

The book clearly demonstrates the tendencies of totalitarianism, and is a statement of the authors frustrations with socialist movements within his time (specifically Russia), which he believed betrayed the socialist ideal. Orwell's frustration seems to be the frustration of many socialists of the period, who observed the horrific actions of socialism's practitioners and yet did not want to disown their own socialist ideology. Realizing Orwell was still a defender of socialism (democratic socialism, that is) while reading this book was very strange to me, as it seemed he grasped precisely how socialist movements would be corrupted, and why they have almost universally failed - at least in their purest forms.

For me, this book is best read through the lens of Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom", where he provides a thorough explanation of why socialism will lead to the same political reality as a fascist state.

Great read, though. On to Animal Farm.