Problems of dystopian fiction abound. All of the dystopian fiction dealing with totalitarian states and societies strike me as fictitious forms of yellow journalism. They create overwhelming structures which we are supposed to take for granted came about naturally and rationally, and instead of denouncing this as intellectual lazineß, it has become a normal response to claim that, being merely fiction, this genre of book need not delve that far, as we are responsible for ourselves suspending disbelief.
I firmly consider it poßible to construct a logical totalitarian world, yet with a caveat implicitly built into my forstanding of that word, of the basic limits to the choice of forces even capable of encompaßing a 'totality'. As I have said previously here, the very notion of government poses a complicated problem for totalitarianism. An entity made out of humans, no matter how few, cannot be totalitarian because of individual wills, the slowneß and inefficient bureaucratism inherent in building any system out of humans, and then the innate rationality and emotional sensibilities of mankind. These three elements can only reach a high level of authoritarianism with to-day's technology, but simultaneously causes totalitarianism to be unpracticable due to the primary machine being mankind. Artificial Intelligences, hive-mind space monsters, and the forces of economy are the only things capable of totalitarianism. Still then, the lattermost is not an entity, and therefore cannot be totalitarian in the traditional sense either, yet may plausibly be totalitarian in the spiritual, societal as opposed to the political, governal manner.
What would be a more novel idea to base a dystopia on would be the concept of social tyranny. The banality of evil is a falsehood (as demonstrated here), most evils are far from banal, yet there is something to be said for the evil of banality. These republics love to tout the liberty of individualism, which cannot be denied is truer under them than any previous government type (ironically including actual democracy, where everyone has a direct say on executing Socrates), however, as seen most clearly in the Wokian post-modern age, this very same liberty is safeguarded by institutionalising, in a sense, the public opinion, naturally leading to a covert preßure to conform. There is also the potential financial risk involved, for to critique the tyranny of social judgement is to in eßence discredit the very consensus that republics and all of the powers connected to them (exempli gratia the 'free media' and consumerism) base their superior right to rule, their revolutions' and states' legitimacy on, which would array said powers against the publishment of such a book.
Totalitarian dystopian fiction usually is pervaded by many political axes to be ground, and this, I think, is a double-headed axe. On the one hand, it does add a certain level of unwritten back-story as to how the story society/state functions and the mode in which it became tyrannical, but on the other hand, it can date the book or points within, and handled poorly can dilute the quality of the book into that of a grind-stone.
I must be fully honest here, providing this post-face, that I have not read anywhere near enough material of this topic to be considered learned upon it. The post-face to my previous article left the door open for a return when I had obtained more knowledge on the material under review, and I again reiterate this. But something which I recognised whilst writing this was the coincidence that all capitalist fiction tends to be dystopian, the few of its utopian works centring around feudalism (princely fairy tales), and all Marxist (but not neceßarily Leftist) fiction opts for the inevitable Red Dawn of proletarian progreß. It seems that two major traditions have influenced the present course; the dystopian capitalist tradition of Zamyatin's We, and the utopian Communist tradition of Bogdanov's Red Star. And all of this causes the most obvious question to occur, what of the original Utopia? This article has served to spring open an entire discußion. Before the post-face explodes, I shall end with a note. Though the topic at hand has come to a close, do expect articles on the other topics in this subject.
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