Social Theory: September 2009 Archives

In 1984, George Orwell introduced Newspeak, a new language being gradually adopted by citizens of a fictional country called Oceanaia. As Orwell notes, the intention was that once Newspeak had been fully adopted, 'a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words'. This was done through the invention of new words and, more importantly, by 'eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings.'

Words, of course, don't change their meaning by coincidence. As Orwell points out in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, the 'decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes'. Of course, if we think foolish thoughts, our language would become full of foolish words, but the effect becomes a cause and the new language encourages more foolish thoughts. But what exactly does it mean that the decline of language has political and economic causes? Well, since the civilized world happens to be in the middle a severe ideological crisis, we can use a contemporary example to show how this process works. 

We live in a time of immense confusion. Words that used to mean one thing suddenly mean another. The values which made us prosperous and free are being questioned and trampled on. We are in a mess, and our instinctive reactions seem to make things worse. 

In 1989, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama declared "The End of History" and noted that 'The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism'. Twenty years later, the ideological appeal of classic liberal values  - free markets, property rights, civil liberty, and individual responsibility - is in decline, following an economic meltdown in developed countries and the perceived success of the authoritarian-socialist model, most notably in the People's Republic of China. Capitalism as we know it is dying. Some say it already died a long time ago.