To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "high" from 1984 is absurd.
That doesn't mean revolutions are bad from a system point of view, they serve as reboots for a system plagued with memory leaks.
P.S. it’s always a treat to stumble on a non-moderator comment from dang
Orwell is famous for having been early to break with political allies whose tactics he abhorred, even though they were fighting for his side. He had a genius for intellectual honesty, which made his writing exceptionally clear. If there's a clearer writer in English I wonder who it is.
Or put another way: So long as there is a high that people can day dream about becoming then there will never be equality for the majority of people. Otherwise people will get into the high places, slam the door shut as soon as they can, and the fighting and day dreaming will continue.
I agree with your sentiment and I am probably on the lower end of the middle class now, coming from a working class family, but I can't find a way to avoid that someone will get more than me by simply not caring about obeying the rules.
If you have more resources you can buy your exemptions from the law. Probably from someone who can be "bought" because that money is a significant amount compared to what usually earns.
I hoped in this third Industrial revolution to free us up from labor, but it looks like people don't get it well when you tell them "your job doesn't exist anymore" even if it's generally a good thing.
By Orwell’s definition you can’t depend on The Low to defend themselves
> The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives
However on the individual level, you can reap the benefits of the revolutions and will die before the next cycle, so there's always at least some incentive to challenge the status quo.
It doesn't change the fact that it's hopeless on the large scale.
If you've read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, chronicling his experience in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the socialists, I think that's a reasonable interpretation of his position.