Sub semnul dezbaterii- călătoriei auguste inapoi/inainte/spre Orwell… o prima secventa de (am)plasare a lui Orwell în plină expansiune postmodernă, operand cu “regula lui daca”: daca Orwell poate fi ataşat postmodernismului, atunci singura conexiune posibil-justificabilă a acestui efect o constituie racordarea, în avans, la o atmosferă/ambianţă specifică, care forţează atragerea-prin- repoziţionare în contextele deschise ale postmodernităţii.
In 1984 Orwell explains the motivation of the Party. Their only aim is power – not the power to achieve any particular goal, simply power for its own sake. I examined the rationality of this idea of power, not as a means to achieving a further goal, but simply as an end in itself. There are two schools of thought in this area. The first, which stems from Aristotle’s conception of what it is rational to want for yourself, makes a distinction between things which are a means to an end, and things which are an end in themselves. For Aristotle, power cannot be an end in itself. It can only be an instrumental good – something which enables us to get things which are ends in themselves. The second school of thought is that power, in the form of financial power, is the ultimate aim of capitalist accumulation. John Locke proposed the drive for unlimited accumulation as the force which underpinned early capitalism. In this schema, it becomes rational to pursue power, in the form of wealth, as an end in itself. Returning to Orwell, I suggested seeking power purely for its own sake is irrational from an Aristotelian perspective. But the motivation Orwell ascribes to the Party, that it seeks power purely for its own sake, appears rational from the perspective of Locke and the drive towards unlimited accumulation. Orwell, despite his obvious interest in totalitarianism, by indicating that the pursuit of power as an end in itself can be rational, points us towards an important truth about the nature of power in capitalism.