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1. The NewTotalitariansThe vindication of prophets of doom is perversely fascinating,for men love scourging themselves with proof that they reallyare as ridiculous as they have always been telling each other.It is therefore scarcely surprising that, in all the literature ofprediction that has flourished in the wake of science, thelamentations have achieved the greater fame. Two pessimistic visions of the future have already passed into folklore;two classic nightmares of what very likely awaits us; twosketches of the prison that we appear bent on erecting aroundourselves with the most disastrous ingenuity. They are, ofcourse, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and AldousHuxley's Brave New World.Brave New World was first published in 1932; NineteenEighty-Four in 1949. Time has already shown how far bothwere written with the gift of prophecy. Both divined something that is now becoming uncomfortably apparent: thatthe advance of science is producing a new kind of ruling classwith powers unknown before. Both foretold the final subservience of human beings to a revolutionary hybrid oftechnological manipulator and political manager.But, although the end in both cases is roughly the same,Brave New World seems more applicable to the West at thistime. Where Nineteen Eighty-Four describes the logical conclusion of a Communist dictatorship, the climax of theBolshevik Revolution, as it were, Brave New World presentsthe final corruption of a Western style of life. The crux ofthe difference is this. Orwell postulates a reign of terror to

8 The New Totalitarianssecure the position of the new ruling class, but Huxley supposes that the scientific advances which bring them to poweralso induce the requisite change of mentality, so that physicalcompulsion is superfluous.Huxley, although he describes certain developments nowbecoming familiar, assumes the necessary political changes, andconcentrates on the human results. It has become a cliche tosay that this or that phenomenon is a piece of Brave NewWorld, and it has become evident to the point of banalitythat certain aspects of the story have started their fulfilmentin the West. We have the first steps towards test tube babiesand genetic engineering; the hallucinatory drug cults andtheir 'trips', as the inhabitants of Brave New World took a'holiday' with 'soma'; mechanical attitudes to sex; themutability of the past, and the worship of technology. But tofind the vision closing in, with its various facets drawn together in a system, is a rather harder thing.And yet, many of the scientific necessities are already withus. We have foolproof contraceptives, illimitable communication, electric energy and gadgetry in abundance. Their properapplication waits only upon the correct social machinery:science, as always, is several lengths ahead of politics.The victory of technology over man, says Huxley in aforeword to one of the later editions of his novel, requiresonly a highly centralized totalitarian government. But, he says,There is of course no reason why the new totalitarianism shouldresemble the old. Government by firing squads . is not merelyinhumane. it is demonstrably inefficient, and in an age of advancedtechnology, inefficiency is a sin against the Holy Ghost. A reallyefficient totalitarian state would be the one in which the all-powerfulexecutive of political bosses and their army of managers control apopulation of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because theylove their servitude.Of all people, it is the Swedes who have come closest tothis state of affairs. They have the necessary background and

The New Totalitarians 9predilections. Outside Russia, they alone have grasped thenecessity of adapting politics to technology, untroubled bydoubts or reservations. They offer the first example of asystem that fulfils Huxley's prophecy. Historical accident andnational idiosyncrasies have pushed Sweden ahead on theroad to Brave New World. But even if she is isolated, inbredand incompletely western, her present state cannot bedismissed as something alien and eccentric, curious to examine,yet with no portents for the rest of us. All that stands betweenourselves and Sweden is a certain protective shell granted bythe Western European heritage. But it is fragile, and it isbeing eroded from within and without. To watch presentSwedes may be to watch our future selves.To begin with, says Huxley, Brave New World depends oneconomic security; without it, the love of servitude is impossible. And in this, the foundation of the 'new totalitarianism', Sweden is well advanced. She has solved the problem ofpermanent security and abolished enclaves of distress withincollective prosperity. She has been helped in this by a centuryand a half of peace, isolation and neutrality, by being smalland easily governed, and by being populated in proportionto her natural resources.Economic security by itself does not necessarily imply a loveof servitude. Other conditions are required: on the side of therulers, a thorough understanding of the interaction betweeneconomics and power; and on the side of the ruled, submission to authority and a reverence for the expert. Also, inboth cases, an aversion to individuality, an instinct for thecollective, a suspicion of parliamentary institutions, a worshipof the State, and a preference for government by bureaucratrather than by politician.All through their history, the Swedes have consistentlyfulfilled these specifications. Thus it is that the technopolitical establishment which has been brought to power inSweden by a scientific and industrial revolution, found a

10 The New Totalitarianssingularly malleable population to work with, and has beenable to achieve rapid and almost painless results. Sweden of1973 bears as little resemblance to herself of 1930, as theSoviet Union of today to Tsarist Russia. It is in the past fortyyears, and particularly since 1950, that the Swedish metamorphosis has taken place.It is the product of the Social Democratic Party which cameto office in 1932 and has subsequently broken most recordsfor continuity of government by holding power for overfour decades. Their system has proved to be an incomparabletool for applying technology to society. They have alteredthe nature of government by making it a matter of economicsand technology alone. Politicians have lost their significancein Sweden, supplanted by a form of technocratic oligarchy,which is apparently unassailable, because its tenets are universally accepted. Henceforth, changes of political complexionare unlikely to mean changes in circumstance, and the samedevelopment is to be expected, whatever the party in office.To view this is a sobering affair. It is not as if the Swedeswere endowed with originality in politics. They are imitatorsand assimilators. They possess no magic keys. They haveshown that the means already exist to build the politicalfoundations of Brave New World. In this sense, they havedemonstrated that Huxley did not see far enough.Security [he says in the aforementioned comment to Brave NewWorld] tends very quickly to be taken for granted. Its achievement ismerely a superficial, external revolution. The love of servitude cannotbe established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution inhuman minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution, we require,among others, the following discoveries and inventions. Firstly, agreatly improved technique of suggestion through infant conditioningand, later, with the aid of drugs, such as scopolamine. Second, afully developed science of human differences, enabling governmentmanagers to assign any given individual to his or her proper place inthe social and economic hierarchy. (Round pegs in square holes tend

The New Totalitarians 11to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to infectothers with their discontents.) Third (since reality, however Utopian,is something from which people feel the need of taking prettyfrequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and other narcotics,something at once less harmful and more pleasure-giving than ginor heroin. And fourth (but this would be a long-term project, whichwould take generations of totalitarian control to bring to a successfulconclusion) a foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardizethe human product and so to facilitate the task of the managers.It is the achievement of the Swedes to have shown what canbe done without these expressions of perfection. They haveshown that the 'revolution in human minds and bodies' canbe carried through, to a remarkable degree, by availablemethods. They have demonstrated, for example, that therelatively crude indoctrination offered by television andconventional education holds tremendous possibilities, provided only that there is effective centralized control of both.They have proved how powerful are the existing agents ofinducing love of servitude. They are the first of the newtotalitarians.In the search for prophecies fulfilled, it is useful to makeone excursion into Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Swedes havedemonstrated the power of that form of semantic manipulation Orwell called Newspeak: the changing of words tomean something else. In this way, thought can be directed,and undesirable concepts eliminated, because the means ofexpressing them have been removed. 'Freedom' does notyet in Swedish, as in the brainchild of Orwell's Ministry ofTruth, mean exactly 'slavery', but it already implies 'submission', and a powerful word in the vocabulary of opposition has therefore been effectively neutralized. Similarly, it isexceedingly difficult to speak in any but favourable terms ofthe State, because the words in that field have been positivelyloaded.But otherwise, Brave New World is enough. 'Industrial

12 The New Totalitarianscivilization is only possible,' says Mustapha Mond, 'whenthere's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limitsimposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheelsstop turning.' This is precisely what the rulers of Sweden arealways saying, although of course not so directly, and withrather greater verbosity.The Swedes have found other devices, extremely useful forinducing the 'love of servitude', in the manipulation ofsexuality and the official sponsorship of changes in morals. Itis a mistake to believe that the Swedes are particularlyadvanced or emancipated. The English are no less sexuallyliberated. But what distinguishes Sweden is that morality hasbecome the concern of the government, where elsewhere itis something independent, growing out of changes withinsociety.The ultimate crime in Brave New World is to deviate from anorm. That norm is innocent of ethics and morality, anddecided on grounds of expediency alone. The situation isalready a doctrine of Swedish law. Gone is the idea of right orwrong, or the moral content of an action. Crime is nowdefined as social deviation. The test of whether an offence ispunishable, however, is solely whether it has awkward effectson the collective. Analogously, in non-criminal spheres theworst solecism is to be different. Sweden, like Soviet Russia,belongs to that group of countries in which 'individuality'has a derogatory ring.All this is not because Sweden is so far advanced butbecause, in all senses except the purely technological, she is soextraordinarily backward. Sweden is a relic of the MiddleAges, a State of corporations and communes, and the Swedesare medieval people living only as members of a group. It isan ideal situation for the incarnation of Brave New World.Like the rulers of Brave New World, the managers ofSweden have abolished history, in order to cut off the pastand, by disorienting their time sense, to make people easier

The New Totalitarians13to manipulate. But the Swedish leaders, at any rate, acthistorically and, like Huxley's privileged Controller, they atleast are aware of their historical roots. To understand thenew totalitarians of Sweden, then, it is best to start withSwedish history.

2. The HistoricalBackroundThe true distinction of the Swedes is not that they havesuccessfully married technology and man, but that they havedone so with so little apparent difficulty. The process which,in other countries, generated both modern technology andresistance to its political demands, had only the first of theseeffects in Sweden. As a result, the conflicts normally associatedwith the technological revolution have been all but absent.This is very different from the discomforts of the Westernworld; but Sweden is not quite of the West.To begin with, the Scandinavian peninsula is not so mucha part of Europe as an extension of Siberia and, encased in thatnorthern fastness, Sweden was a late starter. The Ice Agelingered, so that man arrived rather later than he had doneelsewhere on the European mainland. The Swedes werebarbarians while Rome fell and the Dark Ages gathered.Until almost the threshold of medieval times Sweden, withall Scandinavia, remained primitive, unchronicled, inaccessible and unknown. One of the last European countries to bechristianized, Sweden was finally admitted to the Pale of theChurch in A.D. 1103, five centuries after Britain. The countrystill bears the marks of its early retardation.The Swedes enter history with the opening of the VikingAge in the eighth century A.D. That fascinating periodestablished the future division of Scandinavia. Where theVikings of Denmark and Norway turned westwards overseas, those from Sweden pushed overland to the east. TheSwedes advanced into Russia, and since then the Danes and

The Historical Background 15Norwegians have belonged to the West, where Sweden hashad one foot in eastern Europe.The early Swedish colonists established the medieval stateof Kiev out of which modern Russia grew: the very wordRussia perpetuates their memory in the form of Rus, theirancient name. Inland Vikings, the Rus, like their ocean-goingcolleagues in the "West, were essentially merchants, and itwas the trade routes along the great rivers to Constantinoplethat drew them to the Russian hinterland. For about ahundred years, until the middle of the tenth century, theSwedes dominated trade between northern Europe and theeast. But as the Rus declined, the Slavonic Russian empirerose; and as the Arabs lost their grip on the Asian approaches,shorter southern routes were opened, the roundabout way viathe far shore of the Baltic fell into disuse and the Swedes wereby-passed. By the beginning of the eleventh century, Swedenhad turned into a cul-de-sac, facing east.The Viking age was the greatest of the sallies made by theSwedes into the outside world: their natural state has beenone of isolation. Except for one or two inconsequentialDanish incursions in modern times, they have been free offoreign invasion descending with singularly little alien infiltration from prehistoric Teutonic arrivals. They remain outstandingly homogeneous. The roots of their language areimmaculately Germanic. Where English is haunted by Celtic,and Italian by Etruscan, all research has failed to shake theoriginal purity of the Swedish tongue. And Swedish historylacks the tension provided elsewhere by the feud of Saxon andCelt, Slav and Teuton, Latin and Goth.The Swedes have been excluded from most of the formativeexperiences of Western Europe. They were never occupiedby the Romans. They escaped the convulsions succeeding thefall of Rome. They stood aside from medieval powerstruggles. Continental military adventures in modern timeshardly relieved their fundamental isolation; they were scarcely

16 The New Totalitarianstouched by the intellectual currents of Europe. For centuriesSweden led a sequestered life on the outskirts of the West.Nowhere else did the Pope exercise so little influence and,alone in medieval Christendom, the Swedes possessed whatamounted to a national Church. As a result, their horizonshave been narrowed. By escaping the papacy, the one universal power of the age, Sweden was deprived of the internationalism which became the great medieval civilizing force.She was precociously nationalistic, and her untimely isolationsent her into the twentieth century with little more than apeasant culture she could truthfully call her own. She hasbeen left intellectually defenceless and, when cultural invasionsfinally penetrated her borders after the late eighteenth century,she swallowed the successive waves hook, line and sinker.Even today Sweden resembles some retarded society hurriedlyassimilating a stronger civilization.Originally divided among petty warring kings Sweden wasunified by A.D. 1000. But provincial rivalry died hard, andthe country had to wait until the fourteenth century for afixed capital and an ordered succession to the throne.A series of dynastic marriages united Sweden, Norway andDenmark under the Danish Queen Margrethe in 1397. Rivalsfor the mastery of Scandinavia, Sweden and Denmark were,however, unhappy bedfellows, and the union was ill starredfrom its birth. It was finally destroyed in 1523 by Gustav Vasa,the founder of modern Sweden. In that year he drove out aninvading Danish army and secured Swedish independence.But it is as an administrator, not a soldier, that he is honouredamong his countrymen.The best Swedish kings have been royal bureaucrats, andGustav was the first of that breed. He was a born organizer,devoted to administration, who brooked no delegation; nodetail was beneath his notice. He turned Sweden into acentralized State of a kind that was only equalled almost threecenturies later in Napoleonic France. And he met little of the

The Historical Background 17opposition that faced Western European rulers. They had toovercome an adverse mode of thought and feeling in establishing central rule: he had the help of a favourable mentality. Thereason is partly to be sought in a peculiarity of Swedishhistory. Sweden was never feudalized, where WesternEurope very largely was.In its true sense, feudalism was something deeper thanmerely serfdom and military service. It was an attitude ofmind from which have emerged the Western civic virtues.The heart of it was a contractual relationship between manand master. It limited the prerogatives of a superior, andinsisted on the rights of vassals. Its heritage has been a suspicion of the central power and acceptance of that aristocraticstate of mind we misname democratic.Feudalism dominated England, France, the Low Countriesand western Germany. It was imperfectly established inSaxony and Spain. It was absent from Prussia, the Scandinaviancountries and Russia. At one extreme of constitutionaldevelopment, there was England, where civil liberties andparliamentary supremacy directly grew out of feudal limitations on the sovereign: at the other, Russia, where Duma andpeople were impotent before monarchs devoid of suchrestraints. There were many gradations in between, butSweden leant towards the Russian end of the scale. Wherethe lower orders of society had no defined rights, autocracy

The New Totalitarians This book is a warning. It is a terrifying portrait of an "ideal" society that has destroyed democracy in the name of "pro- gress." Roland Huntford demonstrates by fact after shocking . Huxley's Brave New World. Brave New World was first published in 1932; Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949. Time has already shown how far both