Ingsoc (Newspeak for "English Socialism") is the ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania (The Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa) in George Orwell's dystopic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
Society is composed of three levels:
- The Inner Party that makes policy decisions and runs the government. (Referred to as simply The Party.)
- The Outer Party that works in the state jobs and is the working class of the society. The Outer Party is also under the most scrutiny, being constantly monitored by two-way telescreens and other implements of surveillance.
- The Proles that are the lower class, the rabble the Inner Party keeps happy and sedate with Victory Gin and prolefeed ("rubbishy texts"). The proles are named for the proletariat, the lowest class in Marx's three-class socio-economic structure.
Oceania is constantly at war -- or appears to be -- with either Eurasia or Eastasia, but does not admit that it ever changes sides and alters history to make the side it is currently on the side it has always been on. Winston Smith's job is to alter newspaper archives to reflect the current wave of historical revisionism.
Ingsoc is represented by Big Brother, an omnipresent Stalin-like figure constantly depicted on posters and the telescreen. Like Ingsoc itself, Big Brother is constantly watching.
Ingsoc demands complete submission to it, and uses torture to achieve that end (Room 101). In fact, Ingsoc has mastered a complex system of psychological tools and methods to make people not only confess imagined crimes and forget any thoughts of rebellion, but to actually love Ingsoc itself.
