Part 3, Chapter 3 - excerpts

The proletarians will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million.  They cannot.  I do not have to tell you the reason:  you know it already. ... There is no way in which the Party can be overthrown.  The rule of the Party is for ever.  Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.' He came closer to the bed.  For ever! he repeated. ... You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power.  Now tell me why we cling to power.  What is our motive?  Why should we want power?  Go on, speak, he added as Winston remained silent.

Winston ... knew in advance what O'Brien would say.  That the Party ... sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. ... That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come...

Now I will tell you the answer to my question.  It is this.  The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.  We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. ... We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.  All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.  The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.  They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.  We are not like that.  We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means, it is an end.  One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.  The object of persecution is persecution.  The object of torture is torture.  The object of power is power.  Now do you begin to understand me? ...

You know the Party slogan:  'Freedom is Slavery.'  Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible?  Slavery is freedom. ... The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings.  Over the body but, above all, over the mind. ... How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?  Winston thought.  By making him suffer, he said.

Exactly.  By making him suffer.  Obedience is not enough.  Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?  Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.  Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.  Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? ... A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.  Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.  The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice.  Ours is founded upon hatred.  In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.  Everything else we shall destroy, everything.

Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution.  We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman.  No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer.  But in the future there will be no wives and no friends.  Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. ... There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party.  There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. ...  If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.  The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease.  It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. ... That is the world that we are preparing, Winston.