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From: "::Y-Not::" <%+14$-Y-Not@here-and.there>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rolex
Subject: Re: An Explanation of "Proles"
Date: 22 Jun 2006 00:47:04 -0500
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In article <lc8i92hkrpetiij7v1938rlc9vm382ipot@4ax.com>, Mephistopheles
<no-fixed@address.net> wrote:
> The word proles as I used it refers to the lowest working classes as
> depicted in Orwell's "1984" They were the only group that Big Brother
> & the Repressive State never bothered to supervise.
>
> Orwell's "hero", Winston Smith (the last "man" in the World) used to
> slip quietly into anonymity of the Proles Quarters to enjoy Free Love,
> which was forbidden by the State, with his girl friend (the last
> "woman"?)
>
> The word "proles" is short for the word "proletariat" which was a word
> used by the Romans for their slaves. But in "1984" Orwell meant it to
> imply the general masses, ie the working class and unemployed.
>
> It's true that Karl Marx adopted the word and made it a slogan for the
> Communists, ie "the dictatorship of the proletariat", so it had that
> connotation as well.
>
> By the time he wrote "1984" Orwell was a total enemy of Communism
> having figured out that they had bastardized the name "Socialism" by
> adopting it as their own. There was nothing "socialist" in the Union
> of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Just like there was nothing
> "democratic" in East Germany after the Communist takeover, which they
> named the German Democratic Republic (GDR). And there's nothing
> "republic" in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Nor is their
> anything "liberating" about Red China's People's Liberation Army
> (PLA).
>
> These communist, totalitarian regimes giving themselves free-sounding
> names are examples of Orwellian DOUBLESPEAK as in "peace is war,
> slavery is freedom, torture is love, lies are truth and starvation is
> plenty" etc etc.
>
> Around 1991 or so, the powers-that-be announced that "Communism is
> dead" and moved their tyrants into position of trust and friendship
> with the Capitalist tyrants of the world, thus fulfilling Orwell's
> prophesy of "oligarchical collectivism".
>
> These days we're becoming "the proles" in all senses of the word and
> don't seem to be fulfilling Orwell's hope, ie "If there was hope, it
> lay in the proles, because only there could the force to destroy the
> Party ever be generated...If only they could somehow become conscious
> of their own strength".
>
> Mephi.....well, you did ask.
>
> .
>
Who asked? :-)
Thanks for the info. Since the original post in which it was
referenced, didn't quite specify the particular meaning that was
intended for it, in my post I chose what I thought was the most likely
candidate. And since "these days we're becoming "the proles" in all
senses of the word", I wasn't actually wrong, was I?
Unfortunately. :-(
Scholarly dissertation. What's next?
Y Not :-)
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