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Ask HN: Why aren't there any cars in Nineteen Eighty-Four?

In the entirety of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, I haven't noticed a single car or truck in the streets of Oceania. Sure, Winston takes the train once or twice, but no cars? I would have thought the generally envisioned future of the 40's included car-ridden roads. Was this novel even more ahead of its time than I thought?

floxy 4y ago
How many privately owned cars were there in the Soviet Union? Seems like automobiles are tools of the bourgeoisie, so it seems perfectly inline that a socialist paradise would tightly control them.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  The societal structure under The Party was oligarchical; not socialist. The whole point was that it vilified the goals of socialism under the name of socialism.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    Did you mean totalitarianism? Orwell was a democratic socialist.
    - xvedejas 4y ago
      As someone who is neither, I think it's clear that plenty of democratic socialists are anti-nondemocratic socialism. Surely the biggest critics of a government falsely claiming to pursue an ideology, are those true believers of the ideology, seeing their ideas used as cover for something else?
      - int_19h 4y ago
        It goes beyond indignation; there's long-standing bad blood between two camps. Soviets specifically actively persecuted democratic socialists (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries) during the 1917 revolution. In late USSR, some political dissidents also self-identified as some kind of demsoc or demcom, such as e.g. Aleksandr Skobov.
    - schoen 4y ago
      In-world, it gets referred to as "oligarchical collectivism" by a purported critic.
      - cratermoon 4y ago
        "Oligarchical Collectivism" refers to Stalinism, not socialism.
        schoen 4y ago
        I mean "the societal structure under The Party" as referred to by wildrhythms above.
  - idlewords 4y ago
    This is the ANSII standard critique of socialism, that it will invariably assume an oligarchal form no matter how lofty the ideals of the founders. The "no true Scotsman" arguments about what does and doesn't constitute real socialism always seem miss this point.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Interesting fact about the Soviet union: the grapes of wrath was banned, because the government was worried that if Soviet citizens knew that even the poorest Americans could afford a car, they would revolt.
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    Source. https://sites.psu.edu/comm150honors/2016/02/04/the-grapes-of-wraths-foreshadowing-of-the-cold-war/ https://sites.psu.edu/comm150honors/2016/02/04/the-grapes-of...
  - mvhvv 4y ago
    I see this mentioned a lot, but I don't think it's entirely true. The book was apparently well liked in the USSR due to the obvious anti-capitalist reading. The film was imported by the government intending to screen it as a propaganda piece, but quickly cancelled. The part about the farmer having his own truck seeming like a luxury to soviet citizens is true, but it's a bit unfair to say it was banned when the book was so well regarded.
- twelve40 4y ago
  17 million privately owned cars in 1991, about 1/5 per capita than Europe at the time. Unless you are talking about 1948, when the country was a burnt-out desert recovering from 30 million war dead.
  - idlewords 4y ago
    Maybe a better comparison is to 1975, the height of advanced socialism, when 0.8% of Soviet households owned a car. Cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_the_Soviet_Union#cite_note-50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_the_Soviet_Union#...
    - twelve40 4y ago
      sure, the next line after your quote says they realized it's not enough and massively ramped up production in the 70s. there was never a ban or stigma on private cars, it's simply a very expensive and wasteful way to move people, especially in 1948 when it was one big smoldering ruin. And when everything is walkable, and there is plentiful public transport. But if you really really wanted a car, you could eventually get it and people had millions of them.
      - jlawson 4y ago
        "if you really really wanted a car, you could eventually get it" Never in my life have I ever seen the word 'eventually' doing so much work.
        twelve40 4y ago
        shrug why is this so surprising? it was never a well-off society, most people in Kenya today for example probably have to bust their ass their whole life and still may not be able to get a car. but hey, if you want to keep believing that there was a crazy dictatorship ban on cars, help yourself.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        They realized it wasn't enough and massively ramped up production after 1975.
- defrost 4y ago
  Orwell was an ardent critic of the Soviet system and neither Animal Farm nor 1984 are examples of a "socialist paradise". It's a trait of the midriff of Mexico and Canada to blindly conflate Soviet Authoritarianism, Communism, Socialism, the Nazi NDP, etc with near zero understanding of the differences .. which leads to a region wide confusion between their system and free market capitalism. Political education and civics in the US could use a shake up.
  - booleandilemma 4y ago
    Who do you suppose could teach us? China? Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea? Maybe you should move to one of those countries. the midriff of Mexico and Canada Keep hating.
    - defrost 4y ago
      Hating? Bemused .. and you've essentially confirmed why. Enjoy your personal myopic bicameral Stockholm.
  - simple-thoughts 4y ago
    There’s a single maximally virulent system of “managerialism” that all of those options you list (and others including modern absolute monarchism and even modern theocratic states) follow. Other alternatives that were common historically were eliminated by these. Competitions between these variants of managerialism are mostly about finding an ideal balance rather than fundamental difference.
  - idlewords 4y ago
    Since people tend to overthink these definitions, I'll share the pragmatic Polish one: capitalism is the economic system where you can buy sausage, while socialism is the one where you can't.
bwestergard 4y ago
When 1984 came out in 1949, the overwhelming majority of British households did not own cars. Likewise for many other western European countries. The U.S. was and is an anomaly. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42182497 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42182497
- kelnos 4y ago
  You touch on something it's important to remember here: Orwell was an English author, not American, and lived in Europe for most of (if not all) his life. Even if the US's car ownership rates were in 1949 already what they are today (they weren't), the author's view of the world was certainly different, living in a place where car ownership was uncommon.
  - HarryHirsch 4y ago
    Yes, Arthur Seaton from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning who worked at his bicycle factory in Nottingham as a machinist in the mid-1950's could afford a motorcycle "or perhaps an old car". He lived nearby with his family, in a terraced house, and would have had no need for a vehicle. Winston Smith would be in a similar social class.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    He was born in British India, though his family moved to England when he was one year old, which is where he grew up. His mother grew up in Burma. In his 20s he lived and worked in Burma for 5 1/2 years as an Imperial police officer. He was fluent in Burmese. That doesn't change your conclusion, as 1920s British India wasn't a car-oriented culture either. Rather, I wish to point out that his life in Burma were a big influence on his views, in a way I think would have been harder for someone living only in England, or staying in the British ex-pat bubble as most his countrymen did.
- treis 4y ago
  It's been a long time since I read 1984 but I thought everyone was generally impoverished. Like not starving but no real luxuries.
jtode 4y ago
1948. War just over. The 57 Chevy and the culture it represents, one which I consumed in Hot Wheels form as a 70s kid, did not exist yet. No society, not even America, had put in a thoroughly modern highway system (aside from the Autobahn, maybe, but...), let alone rearranged their entire society's topology around individual use of high-fuel-consumption pleasure vehicles. Even here in North America, that was being planned, but not here yet. And Orwell was an Englishman writing in bombed-out, austerity-ridden, digging-itself-out-from-an-apocalypse England. Even today, they don't have the car culture that we have here, and I've seen a lot of pictures of horse and carts wending their way around the ruins of post-war London. I'm sure there were plenty of cars around, driven by dignitaries and princes and whatsorts, but I don't think they were used daily to get to work by your typical file clerk, or your typical village farmer, etc. It wouldn't even have occurred to him to write about a character's relationship with their car, or their even owning a personal car that wasn't tied to their profession (milk truck, taxicab, chauffeur), anymore than he would write about their tractor if the characters were agrarians; as much as the industrial revolution was in the distant past, the age of ubiquitous personal technology and obscene consumption had yet to be born. I am reminded of something from way deep in my brain's cellar, some sort of quasi-fascist screed by a Futurist artist or writer from the 30s about a marvelous "race-automobile" or something, but it was something completely different from the 50s-diner drive-in-movie car culture that is the background mythology we live with. More of a "let it all burn and bring the future forth!" kind of nihilist thing. I tried to google it but this was literally a class I took in high school in the 80s, sorry. Anyways, 1984 is an incredibly pessimistic novel about the future he saw coming, so any of his characters enjoying the sort of expansive freedom that I have, where I could literally walk out my door right now and be thousands of miles from here in a couple of days with nobody saying boo about it... even if it was a story of a personal struggle against a totalitarian state, it would be a different story than one where he runs the risk of being denounced by name in front of his entire society if he doesn't work hard enough at his morning exercise under the state's watchful eye. One that it would have been fairly magically prescient on his part to be able to extrapolate from his lived experience.
- Pulcinella 4y ago
  some sort of quasi-fascist screed by a Futurist artist or writer from the 30s about a marvelous "race-automobile" or something Yep that sounds exactly like the Futurist movement[0]. It basically was Fascist (or at least, intentionally intended to be highly compatible with Fascism). Fillipo Marinetti wrote both the Manifesto of Futurism and the Fadcist Manifesto and wanted Futurism to be the official art style of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy (though Mussolini really didn’t care much for art in general and Fascist Germany was far more interested in “traditional” German and “classical” art than Futurism). The Futurist Manifesto states: “We affirm that the beauty of the world has been enriched by a new form of beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism
pornel 4y ago
The network of streetcars and buses in the US hasn't been dismantled yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
- idlewords 4y ago
  Orwell was English.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    That said, the dismantling of streetcars that pornel mentions occurred worldwide, with very few exceptions. (pornel is mistaken in what he implies, however, by citing Wikipedia. Had he actually read the cited the article as opposed to just relying on the title and half-remembered bits of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the article explains in detail why there was no actual conspiracy. Even if the conspiracy were real, it would only have applied to the US when, as I said, the dismantling occurred outside the US as well.)
booleandilemma 4y ago
It's been a few years since I read the book but weren't there shortages of things as commonplace as boots? How are they going to have cars? (And they'll need rubber for the wheels, at least)
idlewords 4y ago
There's a scene with trucks: "A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine guns standing upright in each corner, was passing slowly down the street. In the trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed close together. Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted there was a clank-clank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing leg-irons. Truck-load after truck-load of the sad faces passed." The reason there are no private cars in Orwell's dystopia is the same reason there are none in North Korea, for the same mix of ideological and economic factors.
- bookstore-romeo 4y ago
  I guess I didn't notice that passage so much. It is still interesting, as trucks seem to be used only for the Party's needs
  - hluska 4y ago
    Everything (deep fears, children, the truth etc.) was used only for the party’s needs!
- JoeDaDude 4y ago
  The scene with the trucks and PoWs made it into the 1956 version of the film, see relevant clip (or the whole movie if interested) at the following link: https://youtu.be/fpGThhWTW2E?t=1896 https://youtu.be/fpGThhWTW2E?t=1896
throwanem 4y ago
It's the world's most useless and overrated cautionary tale about the future of Stalinist absurdism Orwell saw in the UK's future if Labour stayed in power. The man could write, that I grant you, but beyond a skillful prose style he's little of use to offer in general and especially here; Nineteen Eighty-four is not at all ahead of its time, but rather quite a bit behind it. That said, it makes sense a Stalinist regime would permit its ordinary subjects neither the private ownership of property nor the liberty of physical movement embodied in having a car. As in the USSR, the nomenklatura would have limousines and drivers, and everyone else would take the train or walk.
- vba616 4y ago
  >the future of Stalinist absurdism Orwell saw in the UK's future if Labour stayed in power Are you sure? I thought Labour came to power right after the war, Churchill was famously kicked to the curb, and Orwell anticipated and wrote about why it was necessary and political upheaval was only temporarily delayed during the external threat. I know everything changed quickly after the war, but Orwell died before long anyway.
  - ggm 4y ago
    "George Orwell a life" by Bernard Crick isn't bad (that said, he was a rude prick to my mother about some of the CP (UK) history, so I have reasons to dislike him at a personal level)
    - vba616 4y ago
      I have a series of volumes with Orwell's collected writings, including before, through, and after WWII, so while I'm a bit vague, I am going on my memory of primary sources.
- dudul 4y ago
  Dystopian stories rarely attempt to accurately predict the future. They usually grossly exaggerate it to make a point about the present. It's funny because contrary to you I don't find Orwell's style very compelling but the content of his writing is brilliant.
version_five 4y ago
There is a passage in 1984, I think in one of the chapters from Goldstein's book, that mentions cars, and takes about how a person looking forward to 1984 from early in the century was optimistic and imagined owning a car and maybe an airplane, and how the life even of an inner party member is austere by comparison. He also mentions trucks when Winston was young and had to scrounge for food and would get some grain that fell off a truck driving on bumpy roads. They do talk about tubes and Winston takes the train to the country. So I'd say the world Orwell imagined didn't have many cars (Edit, I see when I was typing, idlewords also remembered another passage about trucks)
SilverBirch 4y ago
From a writing perspective… tackle one thing at a time? From an in universe perspective cars are a very individualistic concept, the type of totalitarian control in 1984 isn’t really compatible with everyone going where they want when they want. From a historical perspective, Britain was incredibly poor in the post war period, rationing went on well into the 50s, from this perspective it’s difficult to picture the average person owning a car- and we were very far off that in the 40s.
karaterobot 4y ago
Option 0 (the default hypothesis for any question like this): It didn't come up in the plot, and wasn't deemed an important background detail, or Orwell just didn't think about it. Option 1: In a world of severe rationing, cars are such a luxury item that they're rare or nonexistent. Option 2: Personal transportation represents a level of freedom and autonomy that is not supportive of the goals of The Party, where employment and living space are centrally planned anyway. Thus they aren't part of the world. Trucks, rail, and so on serve the Party's interest, so they do exist.
Waterluvian 4y ago
Ask any teenager: cars are freedom. At least that’s my interpretation.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Ask any teenager today and they'll probably say they don't really care, because it's too expensive to own and operate a car, there's no place worth going (or it's too expensive unless it's fast food), and they can just stay at home with their phones instead. Teenagers today have very different values than in prior decades.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Good point. I’ll have to ask my mentees but I think you might be right. But I guess to answer the question we’d have to explore it from the frame of when it was written. So… in the late 40s did teens get access to cars? I feel like that was an American 60s-00s thing. Was it big in the UK? Now I have to research this because I’m very curious.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      > So… in the late 40s did teens get access to cars? In the US there were millions of cars from the 20s and 30s to be had for next to nothing. Buy an old jalopy, fix it up a bit and you have yourself a hotrod to cause the old people to clutch their pearls. By the 50s this was fully established in American culture. —edit— Should say that the returning servicemen were the pioneers here, hard to go from being a fighter pilot to just being a serious citizen so they took to motorcycles and fast cars like ducks to water.
  - api 4y ago
    I think no place worth going is the fundamental thing. Socialization can happen online to a great extent. Clubs are 21 and up. Restaurants are too expensive. Underground clubs and parties are rare to nonexistent, killed by a mix of helicopter parenting and disengagement driven by being online. Concerts are a bit of a thing but also expensive. It’s just such a different world. I was really into BBSes as a teen so I guess I was among the early adopters. I didn’t go out much until senior year of HS and college. I was weird. So wild that I would be normal today.
graymatters 4y ago
Cars are means and symbols of individual independence and freedom. As such, they wouldn’t be allowed in a 1984 world. Beware those trying to eliminate cars.
- zhte415 4y ago
  > Cars are means and symbols of individual independence and freedom. A car as a choice is. A car as a requirement for affording a place, or perceived desirable place, to live, isn't, it's part of the tax of dwelling. Further, cars can be seen, and often act, as means to separate one's self from, again perceived, mixing in or exposure to undesirable society. I think car ownership could have been used to good effect in 1984.
jonathankoren 4y ago
George Will would tell you because trains are "collectivism", and cars represent Freedom(tm). https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597 https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597
jollyllama 4y ago
Big Brother saw fit to build you a walkable city, and this is the thanks you give him?
- Psyladine 4y ago
  Seriously. Where are you thinking of going, comrade?
yottalove 4y ago
Orwell was an optimist. We carry view screens in our pocket and can be tracked and monitored backwards in time.
hluska 4y ago
I don’t believe anyone alive would definitely know the answer to this question, but I can share some options: 1.) George Orwell didn’t think private cars would catch on in any significant way. He did write this in the 1940s so that’s a possibility. 2.) He wanted to convey that the government controlled everything, even transportation. 3.) The government wants to control attention so they can broadcast propaganda (and expect rapt attention) at will. 4.) George Orwell wrote scenes with cars, they were poorly written and didn’t make an edited manuscript.
- version_five 4y ago
  There is a specific passage in the book where he says a person looking forward from the early 20th century would have expected to own a car (and instead they get the Airstrip One of 1984). So I don't think 1 is correct
  - idontwantthis 4y ago
    It sounds pretty clear to me that characters don’t have cars because in the state controlled world of the book everyone is poor just like in a Communist country today or during the Cold War.
raydiatian 4y ago
I actually think this is an excellent question. Because of how utterly worthless a question it is. “Why aren’t there any pringles references in Star Wars?” It’s fiction, the author does what they want, and it doesn’t matter beyond supporting the story. It’s not like Orwell was after a “hard world-build”. You get that, right? He was trying to express opinions on the danger of allowing too much power to be centralized with one entity.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  Sure, but there were many examples of personal transportation vehicles in Star Wars. Luke’s family had one and they seemed pretty poor.
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    panic()
peepeepoopoo3 4y ago
> "With a car, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.
paulpauper 4y ago
Cars in some way signify individual freedom, autonomy. You choose the destination.
- roydivision 4y ago
  Yes, I was going to make the same point. I'm not sure this was a conscious decision on Orwell's part, the idea of freedom and autonomy would probably not have been linked to car ownership for him back then, as it is now. And there are other, stronger reasons mentioned elsewhere in these comments, impracticality, cost, privilege etc. But viewed in retrospect I think this is valid.
bananabiscuit 4y ago
If Orwell correctly predicted that communists would want to eradicate the personal freedom that comes from car ownership, you think he wouldn’t have beat us over the head with it?
nostromo 4y ago
The car is much too individualistic for 1984. The train is much more on-theme as it's very controllable by a central authority.
joshe 4y ago
GDP per person in history always blows my mind. In 1949, UK gdp/person was $11,000. Lower than Brazil now at $14K. $11K is right where Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bosnia are today. Communist countries like the Soviet Union or Poland were at $3K. The level of Kenya, Syria, and Nepal today. $1K poorer than Bangladesh now which comes in at $4k per person. Just soviet union: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1073160/ussr-gdp-per-capita-1900-1950/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1073160/ussr-gdp-per-cap... The rest: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020?time=1923..2018&country=USA~POL~GBR~ETH~BRA~CUB~AUS~NZL~MYS~Western+Europe https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2...
joshe 4y ago
Here's a video of cars on the street in the Soviet Union in 1965. Lots of walkers and few drivers at mid day in a dense area of Moscow. https://youtu.be/8uK5y8YjJTM?t=309 https://youtu.be/8uK5y8YjJTM?t=309 One from 1952, less of a big overview though. https://youtu.be/J7UGpzhHIYQ?t=303 https://youtu.be/J7UGpzhHIYQ?t=303
smithclay 4y ago
When 1984 was written in the 40s the economics of car ownership were very different. Great post on this: “Why Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car” https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/why-agatha-christie-could-afford-a-maid-and-a-nanny-but-not-a-car https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/why-agatha-christie-cou...
- kube-system 4y ago
  That’s still the case in some parts of the world. We take for granted in the western world that labor is expensive.
- SilasX 4y ago
  The time when cars were more expensive than servants was 1890s-1910s, not the 1940s though.
  - Retric 4y ago
    1940’s was when 1984 was written, not the year being compared for Agatha Christie. “In 1919, Ford’s Model T cost £170—around $12,000 in 2022 dollars. So a car was worth about three months of income for the Christie family—but almost five years of income for their maid!” 3 months salary was clearly an affordable if major expenses, so this was more a question of prioritization. A maid making the equivalent of 200$/month sounds incredibly low a mere 100 years ago, but would actually be a competitive salary in many cities today.
    - SilasX 4y ago
      > 1940’s was when 1984 was written, not the year being compared for Agatha Christie. But it was being brought up right after mention of the 1940s, implying some explanatory power for that decade.
      - Retric 4y ago
        The explanatory power is in reference to 1984. The lack of cars in 1984 is yet another indication that economic prosperity declined relative to the year when the boom was written. Just as the chocolate ration was reduced multiple times. However, if 1984 was written in say 1900 the lack of cars wouldn’t have signified anything.
tracerbulletx 4y ago
There are 4 references to "motor-cars" in the book. In one it says "His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides." In another it says that the inner party members have a private motor car and sets them in contrast to outer-party members. Both of these references lead me to believe cars are rare and reserved for the elite.
olivermarks 4y ago
English book, not many cars in UK in 1949, plus Orwell wrote to warn about freedom of movement, speech and just about everything else being in jeopardy. In some ways the last 60 years of freedom of motorized personal travel in the western world have been a brief anomaly. The aggressive elites actions to control everyone and everything by electrification only plus digital centralized controls is greatly helped by people experiencing climate change anxiety urging every faster restriction, ironically highly Orwellian. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2091351/under-hood-big-brother-forget-orwells-198420-years-later-its-our-cars-are-giving-us/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2091351/under-hood-big-brothe...
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Well, this comment escalated quickly. To that point: - Who are the elites you’re discussing? Characterize them however you prefer, but please do characterize them so we understand what you mean. - In what ways does fueling personal automobiles with electricity and batteries impact freedom of movement versus other fuels? - How is this aggressive given efforts to mainstream electric vehicles have gone on for a majority of the decades you call an anomaly? - Sincerely, when you say “digital centralized controls”, I don’t understand whether you mean the trend of replacing physical buttons with touchscreens, or some implied more nefarious plot. Can you clarify that? - You acknowledge people are experiencing climate change right? I’m sure I’m not misinterpreting this, but giving you an opportunity to clarify that as well in case I’ve misunderstood. - Given climate change, assuming I got you right, how would you prefer they react versus the problems you’ve identified?
perryizgr8 4y ago
A car grants immense liberty to the individual. It would be antithetical to have cars in the world of 1984, where the state must control every aspect of your life.
layer8 4y ago
1984 mentions cars: As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there. […] In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. […] For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. […] By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’. […] The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of DOUBLETHINK, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. ——— This implies that only member of the Inner Party have cars, and that inequality is seen as beneficial, and general access to technology as detrimental. This would explain why there are only few cars. There are two more mentions of cars with reference to the past: ——— His [Big Brother's] exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides. […] And at the same time [before the Revolution] there were a very few people, only a few thousands—the capitalists, they were called—who were rich and powerful. They owned everything that there was to own. They lived in great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they wore top hats——’
elecush 4y ago
George left cars out because the metropolis is so developed that cars are unnecessary. Plus, in a mass surveillance state, no cars makes more sense. There are planes that go on raids, right? How do you get things onto planes? He did not mention any wheel barrows explicitly in the book, neither. So chew on that. But cars are specifically a good question because cars use precious fuel that would go to the wars. Plus, cars are a source of independent journeying and thinking, which is not what mini is about. In theory, the top officials of the party should all have cars.
tjmc 4y ago
Given the novel correctly predicted computer generated fiction and music, I don't think you could put it down to a lack of foresight.
deafpolygon 4y ago
Well, I can't speak for Orwell but in a society like the one depicted in 1984 - having the ability to move physically with a car wouldn't have been deemed necessary. If you look at N.Korea or countries like it, for example, no one really owns cars unless it's required (in N. Korea's case, it is likely prohibited). And who says what is required? The state. In fact, that type of mobility would have been considered a threat to "national security". Everyone would live near where they work, and the food would be rationed and delivered to where it was needed. Everyone would provide only the necessary things in service to the state. Fun fact, for the majority of the year I don't travel further than 5km from where I live. And I don't own a car. Yet, I live in a democratic society. I have all the basic necessities within 2km, and everything else can be "delivered". We're only halfway there! For the majority of the world, a car is a luxury and not always necessary. In the US, they built their infrastructure around having a car and thus, a car is necessary.
solumunus 4y ago
Because why would the proletariat own cars? I don't know why this should be surprising given the context laid out in the book. It has nothing to do with Orwell failing to forecast the popularity of cars. Do folks think 1984 was Orwell's literal prediction of the future? Of course not, it's a fiction of a possible, imagined future.
tablespoon 4y ago
> In the entirety of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, I haven't noticed a single car or truck in the streets of Oceania. Sure, Winston takes the train once or twice, but no cars? I would have thought the generally envisioned future of the 40's included car-ridden roads. Was this novel even more ahead of its time than I thought? I think O'Brien says every member of the inner party has either a car or a helicopter. It's also stated that Oceania has a deliberate policy of discouraging technological advancement, except in the fields of military arms and mind control. The "generally envisioned future[s] of the 40's," were optimistic, 1984 is an extremely pessimistic dystopia. Once down to deliberately engineer grinding poverty for its population.
kazinator 4y ago
Wouldn't it have been funny/spooky if there had been a coded reference to "Pontiac Fiero" in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
iammjm 4y ago
I find cars a kind of an extension of human personal freedom, as I have the agency to drive anywhere where I want. I guess trains are more "totalitarian", as they only drive on set routes and need a lot of people to service. Still, I love trains and use them all the time.
NoboruWataya 4y ago
Because an individual with a car can drive wherever he or she wants. They are, conceptually at least, a liberating force. They are not consistent with the totalitarianism of Big Brother's society. In 1949, a society where everyone has their own car would have been seen as a utopian vision of the future. We see it differently today, of course.
- FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
  > They are, conceptually at least, a liberating force. At one level I agree. At an individual level, you can go places you previously couldn't, at previously-unheard-of speeds, without asking anyone. At another level though -- the automobile depends on the collective to maintain roads, particularly highways, and it constrains motion to one dimension. A world in which the State didn't build roads and in which automobiles were consequently much less useful would in some ways be more free. Less legible, less accessible, more dangerous probably (since harder to transmit state power and police law), but more free, like the interior of the Amazon or the Congo or Papua. A more wild place. But you have, I suspect, thought of all this: > We see it differently today, of course.
easytiger 4y ago
Only if you realise the removal of cars == removal of personal agency which is part of the distopia
IYasha 4y ago
Same as the UN plan to remove private transport from people. Makes them vulnerable and dependent.
- vermontdevil 4y ago
  Come again? UN Plan?
  - IYasha 4y ago
    The 15 Minute City is a UN ( https://unfccc.int/blog/the-15-minute-city https://unfccc.int/blog/the-15-minute-city ) and WEF plan ( https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/15-minute-city-stickiness/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/15-minute-city-sticki... ). You will be tracked and trapped in your suburb and happy about it.—IClimate ( https://iowaclimate.org/2022/12/03/oxford-2024-climate-lockdowns-start-you-will-be-tracked-and-trapped-in-your-suburb-and-happy-about-it/ https://iowaclimate.org/2022/12/03/oxford-2024-climate-lockd... ) But I'm not sure the cars are in this exact article, but you get the idea. Where I live we already starting to feel the pressure on car owners (I'm not one) for over 5 years.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      That's about as coherent a problem as "Bill Gates injecting microchips in your arm via vaccines to control you via 5G". If Oxford really wanted to restrict your movement they wouldn't be making it easier to cycle.

floxy 4y ago

How many privately owned cars were there in the Soviet Union? Seems like automobiles are tools of the bourgeoisie, so it seems perfectly inline that a socialist paradise would tightly control them.

wildrhythms 4y ago
The societal structure under The Party was oligarchical; not socialist. The whole point was that it vilified the goals of socialism under the name of socialism.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Did you mean totalitarianism? Orwell was a democratic socialist.
  - xvedejas 4y ago
    As someone who is neither, I think it's clear that plenty of democratic socialists are anti-nondemocratic socialism. Surely the biggest critics of a government falsely claiming to pursue an ideology, are those true believers of the ideology, seeing their ideas used as cover for something else?
    - int_19h 4y ago
      It goes beyond indignation; there's long-standing bad blood between two camps. Soviets specifically actively persecuted democratic socialists (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries) during the 1917 revolution. In late USSR, some political dissidents also self-identified as some kind of demsoc or demcom, such as e.g. Aleksandr Skobov.
  - schoen 4y ago
    In-world, it gets referred to as "oligarchical collectivism" by a purported critic.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      "Oligarchical Collectivism" refers to Stalinism, not socialism.
      - schoen 4y ago
        I mean "the societal structure under The Party" as referred to by wildrhythms above.
- idlewords 4y ago
  This is the ANSII standard critique of socialism, that it will invariably assume an oligarchal form no matter how lofty the ideals of the founders. The "no true Scotsman" arguments about what does and doesn't constitute real socialism always seem miss this point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Interesting fact about the Soviet union: the grapes of wrath was banned, because the government was worried that if Soviet citizens knew that even the poorest Americans could afford a car, they would revolt.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Source. https://sites.psu.edu/comm150honors/2016/02/04/the-grapes-of-wraths-foreshadowing-of-the-cold-war/ https://sites.psu.edu/comm150honors/2016/02/04/the-grapes-of...
- mvhvv 4y ago
  I see this mentioned a lot, but I don't think it's entirely true. The book was apparently well liked in the USSR due to the obvious anti-capitalist reading. The film was imported by the government intending to screen it as a propaganda piece, but quickly cancelled. The part about the farmer having his own truck seeming like a luxury to soviet citizens is true, but it's a bit unfair to say it was banned when the book was so well regarded.
twelve40 4y ago
17 million privately owned cars in 1991, about 1/5 per capita than Europe at the time. Unless you are talking about 1948, when the country was a burnt-out desert recovering from 30 million war dead.
- idlewords 4y ago
  Maybe a better comparison is to 1975, the height of advanced socialism, when 0.8% of Soviet households owned a car. Cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_the_Soviet_Union#cite_note-50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_the_Soviet_Union#...
  - twelve40 4y ago
    sure, the next line after your quote says they realized it's not enough and massively ramped up production in the 70s. there was never a ban or stigma on private cars, it's simply a very expensive and wasteful way to move people, especially in 1948 when it was one big smoldering ruin. And when everything is walkable, and there is plentiful public transport. But if you really really wanted a car, you could eventually get it and people had millions of them.
    - jlawson 4y ago
      "if you really really wanted a car, you could eventually get it" Never in my life have I ever seen the word 'eventually' doing so much work.
      - twelve40 4y ago
        shrug why is this so surprising? it was never a well-off society, most people in Kenya today for example probably have to bust their ass their whole life and still may not be able to get a car. but hey, if you want to keep believing that there was a crazy dictatorship ban on cars, help yourself.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      They realized it wasn't enough and massively ramped up production after 1975.
defrost 4y ago
Orwell was an ardent critic of the Soviet system and neither Animal Farm nor 1984 are examples of a "socialist paradise". It's a trait of the midriff of Mexico and Canada to blindly conflate Soviet Authoritarianism, Communism, Socialism, the Nazi NDP, etc with near zero understanding of the differences .. which leads to a region wide confusion between their system and free market capitalism. Political education and civics in the US could use a shake up.
- booleandilemma 4y ago
  Who do you suppose could teach us? China? Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea? Maybe you should move to one of those countries. the midriff of Mexico and Canada Keep hating.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Hating? Bemused .. and you've essentially confirmed why. Enjoy your personal myopic bicameral Stockholm.
- simple-thoughts 4y ago
  There’s a single maximally virulent system of “managerialism” that all of those options you list (and others including modern absolute monarchism and even modern theocratic states) follow. Other alternatives that were common historically were eliminated by these. Competitions between these variants of managerialism are mostly about finding an ideal balance rather than fundamental difference.
- idlewords 4y ago
  Since people tend to overthink these definitions, I'll share the pragmatic Polish one: capitalism is the economic system where you can buy sausage, while socialism is the one where you can't.

bwestergard 4y ago

When 1984 came out in 1949, the overwhelming majority of British households did not own cars. Likewise for many other western European countries. The U.S. was and is an anomaly. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42182497 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42182497

kelnos 4y ago
You touch on something it's important to remember here: Orwell was an English author, not American, and lived in Europe for most of (if not all) his life. Even if the US's car ownership rates were in 1949 already what they are today (they weren't), the author's view of the world was certainly different, living in a place where car ownership was uncommon.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Yes, Arthur Seaton from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning who worked at his bicycle factory in Nottingham as a machinist in the mid-1950's could afford a motorcycle "or perhaps an old car". He lived nearby with his family, in a terraced house, and would have had no need for a vehicle. Winston Smith would be in a similar social class.
- eesmith 4y ago
  He was born in British India, though his family moved to England when he was one year old, which is where he grew up. His mother grew up in Burma. In his 20s he lived and worked in Burma for 5 1/2 years as an Imperial police officer. He was fluent in Burmese. That doesn't change your conclusion, as 1920s British India wasn't a car-oriented culture either. Rather, I wish to point out that his life in Burma were a big influence on his views, in a way I think would have been harder for someone living only in England, or staying in the British ex-pat bubble as most his countrymen did.
treis 4y ago
It's been a long time since I read 1984 but I thought everyone was generally impoverished. Like not starving but no real luxuries.

jtode 4y ago

1948. War just over. The 57 Chevy and the culture it represents, one which I consumed in Hot Wheels form as a 70s kid, did not exist yet. No society, not even America, had put in a thoroughly modern highway system (aside from the Autobahn, maybe, but...), let alone rearranged their entire society's topology around individual use of high-fuel-consumption pleasure vehicles. Even here in North America, that was being planned, but not here yet. And Orwell was an Englishman writing in bombed-out, austerity-ridden, digging-itself-out-from-an-apocalypse England. Even today, they don't have the car culture that we have here, and I've seen a lot of pictures of horse and carts wending their way around the ruins of post-war London. I'm sure there were plenty of cars around, driven by dignitaries and princes and whatsorts, but I don't think they were used daily to get to work by your typical file clerk, or your typical village farmer, etc. It wouldn't even have occurred to him to write about a character's relationship with their car, or their even owning a personal car that wasn't tied to their profession (milk truck, taxicab, chauffeur), anymore than he would write about their tractor if the characters were agrarians; as much as the industrial revolution was in the distant past, the age of ubiquitous personal technology and obscene consumption had yet to be born. I am reminded of something from way deep in my brain's cellar, some sort of quasi-fascist screed by a Futurist artist or writer from the 30s about a marvelous "race-automobile" or something, but it was something completely different from the 50s-diner drive-in-movie car culture that is the background mythology we live with. More of a "let it all burn and bring the future forth!" kind of nihilist thing. I tried to google it but this was literally a class I took in high school in the 80s, sorry. Anyways, 1984 is an incredibly pessimistic novel about the future he saw coming, so any of his characters enjoying the sort of expansive freedom that I have, where I could literally walk out my door right now and be thousands of miles from here in a couple of days with nobody saying boo about it... even if it was a story of a personal struggle against a totalitarian state, it would be a different story than one where he runs the risk of being denounced by name in front of his entire society if he doesn't work hard enough at his morning exercise under the state's watchful eye. One that it would have been fairly magically prescient on his part to be able to extrapolate from his lived experience.

Pulcinella 4y ago
some sort of quasi-fascist screed by a Futurist artist or writer from the 30s about a marvelous "race-automobile" or something Yep that sounds exactly like the Futurist movement[0]. It basically was Fascist (or at least, intentionally intended to be highly compatible with Fascism). Fillipo Marinetti wrote both the Manifesto of Futurism and the Fadcist Manifesto and wanted Futurism to be the official art style of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy (though Mussolini really didn’t care much for art in general and Fascist Germany was far more interested in “traditional” German and “classical” art than Futurism). The Futurist Manifesto states: “We affirm that the beauty of the world has been enriched by a new form of beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car . . . is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

pornel 4y ago

The network of streetcars and buses in the US hasn't been dismantled yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

idlewords 4y ago
Orwell was English.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  That said, the dismantling of streetcars that pornel mentions occurred worldwide, with very few exceptions. (pornel is mistaken in what he implies, however, by citing Wikipedia. Had he actually read the cited the article as opposed to just relying on the title and half-remembered bits of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the article explains in detail why there was no actual conspiracy. Even if the conspiracy were real, it would only have applied to the US when, as I said, the dismantling occurred outside the US as well.)

booleandilemma 4y ago

It's been a few years since I read the book but weren't there shortages of things as commonplace as boots? How are they going to have cars? (And they'll need rubber for the wheels, at least)

idlewords 4y ago

There's a scene with trucks: "A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine guns standing upright in each corner, was passing slowly down the street. In the trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed close together. Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted there was a clank-clank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing leg-irons. Truck-load after truck-load of the sad faces passed." The reason there are no private cars in Orwell's dystopia is the same reason there are none in North Korea, for the same mix of ideological and economic factors.

bookstore-romeo 4y ago
I guess I didn't notice that passage so much. It is still interesting, as trucks seem to be used only for the Party's needs
- hluska 4y ago
  Everything (deep fears, children, the truth etc.) was used only for the party’s needs!
JoeDaDude 4y ago
The scene with the trucks and PoWs made it into the 1956 version of the film, see relevant clip (or the whole movie if interested) at the following link: https://youtu.be/fpGThhWTW2E?t=1896 https://youtu.be/fpGThhWTW2E?t=1896

throwanem 4y ago

It's the world's most useless and overrated cautionary tale about the future of Stalinist absurdism Orwell saw in the UK's future if Labour stayed in power. The man could write, that I grant you, but beyond a skillful prose style he's little of use to offer in general and especially here; Nineteen Eighty-four is not at all ahead of its time, but rather quite a bit behind it. That said, it makes sense a Stalinist regime would permit its ordinary subjects neither the private ownership of property nor the liberty of physical movement embodied in having a car. As in the USSR, the nomenklatura would have limousines and drivers, and everyone else would take the train or walk.

vba616 4y ago
>the future of Stalinist absurdism Orwell saw in the UK's future if Labour stayed in power Are you sure? I thought Labour came to power right after the war, Churchill was famously kicked to the curb, and Orwell anticipated and wrote about why it was necessary and political upheaval was only temporarily delayed during the external threat. I know everything changed quickly after the war, but Orwell died before long anyway.
- ggm 4y ago
  "George Orwell a life" by Bernard Crick isn't bad (that said, he was a rude prick to my mother about some of the CP (UK) history, so I have reasons to dislike him at a personal level)
  - vba616 4y ago
    I have a series of volumes with Orwell's collected writings, including before, through, and after WWII, so while I'm a bit vague, I am going on my memory of primary sources.
dudul 4y ago
Dystopian stories rarely attempt to accurately predict the future. They usually grossly exaggerate it to make a point about the present. It's funny because contrary to you I don't find Orwell's style very compelling but the content of his writing is brilliant.

version_five 4y ago

There is a passage in 1984, I think in one of the chapters from Goldstein's book, that mentions cars, and takes about how a person looking forward to 1984 from early in the century was optimistic and imagined owning a car and maybe an airplane, and how the life even of an inner party member is austere by comparison. He also mentions trucks when Winston was young and had to scrounge for food and would get some grain that fell off a truck driving on bumpy roads. They do talk about tubes and Winston takes the train to the country. So I'd say the world Orwell imagined didn't have many cars (Edit, I see when I was typing, idlewords also remembered another passage about trucks)

SilverBirch 4y ago

From a writing perspective… tackle one thing at a time? From an in universe perspective cars are a very individualistic concept, the type of totalitarian control in 1984 isn’t really compatible with everyone going where they want when they want. From a historical perspective, Britain was incredibly poor in the post war period, rationing went on well into the 50s, from this perspective it’s difficult to picture the average person owning a car- and we were very far off that in the 40s.

karaterobot 4y ago

Option 0 (the default hypothesis for any question like this): It didn't come up in the plot, and wasn't deemed an important background detail, or Orwell just didn't think about it. Option 1: In a world of severe rationing, cars are such a luxury item that they're rare or nonexistent. Option 2: Personal transportation represents a level of freedom and autonomy that is not supportive of the goals of The Party, where employment and living space are centrally planned anyway. Thus they aren't part of the world. Trucks, rail, and so on serve the Party's interest, so they do exist.

Waterluvian 4y ago

Ask any teenager: cars are freedom. At least that’s my interpretation.

midoridensha 4y ago
Ask any teenager today and they'll probably say they don't really care, because it's too expensive to own and operate a car, there's no place worth going (or it's too expensive unless it's fast food), and they can just stay at home with their phones instead. Teenagers today have very different values than in prior decades.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Good point. I’ll have to ask my mentees but I think you might be right. But I guess to answer the question we’d have to explore it from the frame of when it was written. So… in the late 40s did teens get access to cars? I feel like that was an American 60s-00s thing. Was it big in the UK? Now I have to research this because I’m very curious.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > So… in the late 40s did teens get access to cars? In the US there were millions of cars from the 20s and 30s to be had for next to nothing. Buy an old jalopy, fix it up a bit and you have yourself a hotrod to cause the old people to clutch their pearls. By the 50s this was fully established in American culture. —edit— Should say that the returning servicemen were the pioneers here, hard to go from being a fighter pilot to just being a serious citizen so they took to motorcycles and fast cars like ducks to water.
- api 4y ago
  I think no place worth going is the fundamental thing. Socialization can happen online to a great extent. Clubs are 21 and up. Restaurants are too expensive. Underground clubs and parties are rare to nonexistent, killed by a mix of helicopter parenting and disengagement driven by being online. Concerts are a bit of a thing but also expensive. It’s just such a different world. I was really into BBSes as a teen so I guess I was among the early adopters. I didn’t go out much until senior year of HS and college. I was weird. So wild that I would be normal today.

graymatters 4y ago

Cars are means and symbols of individual independence and freedom. As such, they wouldn’t be allowed in a 1984 world. Beware those trying to eliminate cars.

zhte415 4y ago
> Cars are means and symbols of individual independence and freedom. A car as a choice is. A car as a requirement for affording a place, or perceived desirable place, to live, isn't, it's part of the tax of dwelling. Further, cars can be seen, and often act, as means to separate one's self from, again perceived, mixing in or exposure to undesirable society. I think car ownership could have been used to good effect in 1984.

jonathankoren 4y ago

George Will would tell you because trains are "collectivism", and cars represent Freedom(tm). https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597 https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597

jollyllama 4y ago

Big Brother saw fit to build you a walkable city, and this is the thanks you give him?

Psyladine 4y ago
Seriously. Where are you thinking of going, comrade?

yottalove 4y ago

Orwell was an optimist. We carry view screens in our pocket and can be tracked and monitored backwards in time.

hluska 4y ago

I don’t believe anyone alive would definitely know the answer to this question, but I can share some options: 1.) George Orwell didn’t think private cars would catch on in any significant way. He did write this in the 1940s so that’s a possibility. 2.) He wanted to convey that the government controlled everything, even transportation. 3.) The government wants to control attention so they can broadcast propaganda (and expect rapt attention) at will. 4.) George Orwell wrote scenes with cars, they were poorly written and didn’t make an edited manuscript.

version_five 4y ago
There is a specific passage in the book where he says a person looking forward from the early 20th century would have expected to own a car (and instead they get the Airstrip One of 1984). So I don't think 1 is correct
- idontwantthis 4y ago
  It sounds pretty clear to me that characters don’t have cars because in the state controlled world of the book everyone is poor just like in a Communist country today or during the Cold War.

raydiatian 4y ago

I actually think this is an excellent question. Because of how utterly worthless a question it is. “Why aren’t there any pringles references in Star Wars?” It’s fiction, the author does what they want, and it doesn’t matter beyond supporting the story. It’s not like Orwell was after a “hard world-build”. You get that, right? He was trying to express opinions on the danger of allowing too much power to be centralized with one entity.

UncleEntity 4y ago
Sure, but there were many examples of personal transportation vehicles in Star Wars. Luke’s family had one and they seemed pretty poor.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  panic()

peepeepoopoo3 4y ago

> "With a car, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

paulpauper 4y ago

Cars in some way signify individual freedom, autonomy. You choose the destination.

roydivision 4y ago
Yes, I was going to make the same point. I'm not sure this was a conscious decision on Orwell's part, the idea of freedom and autonomy would probably not have been linked to car ownership for him back then, as it is now. And there are other, stronger reasons mentioned elsewhere in these comments, impracticality, cost, privilege etc. But viewed in retrospect I think this is valid.

bananabiscuit 4y ago

If Orwell correctly predicted that communists would want to eradicate the personal freedom that comes from car ownership, you think he wouldn’t have beat us over the head with it?

nostromo 4y ago

The car is much too individualistic for 1984. The train is much more on-theme as it's very controllable by a central authority.

joshe 4y ago

GDP per person in history always blows my mind. In 1949, UK gdp/person was $11,000. Lower than Brazil now at $14K. $11K is right where Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bosnia are today. Communist countries like the Soviet Union or Poland were at $3K. The level of Kenya, Syria, and Nepal today. $1K poorer than Bangladesh now which comes in at $4k per person. Just soviet union: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1073160/ussr-gdp-per-capita-1900-1950/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1073160/ussr-gdp-per-cap... The rest: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020?time=1923..2018&country=USA~POL~GBR~ETH~BRA~CUB~AUS~NZL~MYS~Western+Europe https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-2...

joshe 4y ago

Here's a video of cars on the street in the Soviet Union in 1965. Lots of walkers and few drivers at mid day in a dense area of Moscow. https://youtu.be/8uK5y8YjJTM?t=309 https://youtu.be/8uK5y8YjJTM?t=309 One from 1952, less of a big overview though. https://youtu.be/J7UGpzhHIYQ?t=303 https://youtu.be/J7UGpzhHIYQ?t=303

smithclay 4y ago

When 1984 was written in the 40s the economics of car ownership were very different. Great post on this: “Why Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car” https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/why-agatha-christie-could-afford-a-maid-and-a-nanny-but-not-a-car https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/why-agatha-christie-cou...

kube-system 4y ago
That’s still the case in some parts of the world. We take for granted in the western world that labor is expensive.
SilasX 4y ago
The time when cars were more expensive than servants was 1890s-1910s, not the 1940s though.
- Retric 4y ago
  1940’s was when 1984 was written, not the year being compared for Agatha Christie. “In 1919, Ford’s Model T cost £170—around $12,000 in 2022 dollars. So a car was worth about three months of income for the Christie family—but almost five years of income for their maid!” 3 months salary was clearly an affordable if major expenses, so this was more a question of prioritization. A maid making the equivalent of 200$/month sounds incredibly low a mere 100 years ago, but would actually be a competitive salary in many cities today.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    > 1940’s was when 1984 was written, not the year being compared for Agatha Christie. But it was being brought up right after mention of the 1940s, implying some explanatory power for that decade.
    - Retric 4y ago
      The explanatory power is in reference to 1984. The lack of cars in 1984 is yet another indication that economic prosperity declined relative to the year when the boom was written. Just as the chocolate ration was reduced multiple times. However, if 1984 was written in say 1900 the lack of cars wouldn’t have signified anything.

tracerbulletx 4y ago

There are 4 references to "motor-cars" in the book. In one it says "His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides." In another it says that the inner party members have a private motor car and sets them in contrast to outer-party members. Both of these references lead me to believe cars are rare and reserved for the elite.

olivermarks 4y ago

English book, not many cars in UK in 1949, plus Orwell wrote to warn about freedom of movement, speech and just about everything else being in jeopardy. In some ways the last 60 years of freedom of motorized personal travel in the western world have been a brief anomaly. The aggressive elites actions to control everyone and everything by electrification only plus digital centralized controls is greatly helped by people experiencing climate change anxiety urging every faster restriction, ironically highly Orwellian. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2091351/under-hood-big-brother-forget-orwells-198420-years-later-its-our-cars-are-giving-us/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2091351/under-hood-big-brothe...

eyelidlessness 4y ago
Well, this comment escalated quickly. To that point: - Who are the elites you’re discussing? Characterize them however you prefer, but please do characterize them so we understand what you mean. - In what ways does fueling personal automobiles with electricity and batteries impact freedom of movement versus other fuels? - How is this aggressive given efforts to mainstream electric vehicles have gone on for a majority of the decades you call an anomaly? - Sincerely, when you say “digital centralized controls”, I don’t understand whether you mean the trend of replacing physical buttons with touchscreens, or some implied more nefarious plot. Can you clarify that? - You acknowledge people are experiencing climate change right? I’m sure I’m not misinterpreting this, but giving you an opportunity to clarify that as well in case I’ve misunderstood. - Given climate change, assuming I got you right, how would you prefer they react versus the problems you’ve identified?

perryizgr8 4y ago

A car grants immense liberty to the individual. It would be antithetical to have cars in the world of 1984, where the state must control every aspect of your life.

layer8 4y ago

1984 mentions cars: As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there. […] In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. […] For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. […] By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’. […] The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of DOUBLETHINK, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. ——— This implies that only member of the Inner Party have cars, and that inequality is seen as beneficial, and general access to technology as detrimental. This would explain why there are only few cars. There are two more mentions of cars with reference to the past: ——— His [Big Brother's] exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides. […] And at the same time [before the Revolution] there were a very few people, only a few thousands—the capitalists, they were called—who were rich and powerful. They owned everything that there was to own. They lived in great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they wore top hats——’

elecush 4y ago

George left cars out because the metropolis is so developed that cars are unnecessary. Plus, in a mass surveillance state, no cars makes more sense. There are planes that go on raids, right? How do you get things onto planes? He did not mention any wheel barrows explicitly in the book, neither. So chew on that. But cars are specifically a good question because cars use precious fuel that would go to the wars. Plus, cars are a source of independent journeying and thinking, which is not what mini is about. In theory, the top officials of the party should all have cars.

tjmc 4y ago

Given the novel correctly predicted computer generated fiction and music, I don't think you could put it down to a lack of foresight.

deafpolygon 4y ago

Well, I can't speak for Orwell but in a society like the one depicted in 1984 - having the ability to move physically with a car wouldn't have been deemed necessary. If you look at N.Korea or countries like it, for example, no one really owns cars unless it's required (in N. Korea's case, it is likely prohibited). And who says what is required? The state. In fact, that type of mobility would have been considered a threat to "national security". Everyone would live near where they work, and the food would be rationed and delivered to where it was needed. Everyone would provide only the necessary things in service to the state. Fun fact, for the majority of the year I don't travel further than 5km from where I live. And I don't own a car. Yet, I live in a democratic society. I have all the basic necessities within 2km, and everything else can be "delivered". We're only halfway there! For the majority of the world, a car is a luxury and not always necessary. In the US, they built their infrastructure around having a car and thus, a car is necessary.

solumunus 4y ago

Because why would the proletariat own cars? I don't know why this should be surprising given the context laid out in the book. It has nothing to do with Orwell failing to forecast the popularity of cars. Do folks think 1984 was Orwell's literal prediction of the future? Of course not, it's a fiction of a possible, imagined future.

tablespoon 4y ago

> In the entirety of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, I haven't noticed a single car or truck in the streets of Oceania. Sure, Winston takes the train once or twice, but no cars? I would have thought the generally envisioned future of the 40's included car-ridden roads. Was this novel even more ahead of its time than I thought? I think O'Brien says every member of the inner party has either a car or a helicopter. It's also stated that Oceania has a deliberate policy of discouraging technological advancement, except in the fields of military arms and mind control. The "generally envisioned future[s] of the 40's," were optimistic, 1984 is an extremely pessimistic dystopia. Once down to deliberately engineer grinding poverty for its population.

kazinator 4y ago

Wouldn't it have been funny/spooky if there had been a coded reference to "Pontiac Fiero" in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

iammjm 4y ago

I find cars a kind of an extension of human personal freedom, as I have the agency to drive anywhere where I want. I guess trains are more "totalitarian", as they only drive on set routes and need a lot of people to service. Still, I love trains and use them all the time.

NoboruWataya 4y ago

Because an individual with a car can drive wherever he or she wants. They are, conceptually at least, a liberating force. They are not consistent with the totalitarianism of Big Brother's society. In 1949, a society where everyone has their own car would have been seen as a utopian vision of the future. We see it differently today, of course.

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
> They are, conceptually at least, a liberating force. At one level I agree. At an individual level, you can go places you previously couldn't, at previously-unheard-of speeds, without asking anyone. At another level though -- the automobile depends on the collective to maintain roads, particularly highways, and it constrains motion to one dimension. A world in which the State didn't build roads and in which automobiles were consequently much less useful would in some ways be more free. Less legible, less accessible, more dangerous probably (since harder to transmit state power and police law), but more free, like the interior of the Amazon or the Congo or Papua. A more wild place. But you have, I suspect, thought of all this: > We see it differently today, of course.

easytiger 4y ago

Only if you realise the removal of cars == removal of personal agency which is part of the distopia

IYasha 4y ago

Same as the UN plan to remove private transport from people. Makes them vulnerable and dependent.

vermontdevil 4y ago
Come again? UN Plan?
- IYasha 4y ago
  The 15 Minute City is a UN ( https://unfccc.int/blog/the-15-minute-city https://unfccc.int/blog/the-15-minute-city ) and WEF plan ( https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/15-minute-city-stickiness/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/15-minute-city-sticki... ). You will be tracked and trapped in your suburb and happy about it.—IClimate ( https://iowaclimate.org/2022/12/03/oxford-2024-climate-lockdowns-start-you-will-be-tracked-and-trapped-in-your-suburb-and-happy-about-it/ https://iowaclimate.org/2022/12/03/oxford-2024-climate-lockd... ) But I'm not sure the cars are in this exact article, but you get the idea. Where I live we already starting to feel the pressure on car owners (I'm not one) for over 5 years.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    That's about as coherent a problem as "Bill Gates injecting microchips in your arm via vaccines to control you via 5G". If Oxford really wanted to restrict your movement they wouldn't be making it easier to cycle.