Did Orwell or Rand get it right?

This is a quote from the poster Independent that I through interesting.

Orwell was a lifelong left winger while Rand seemed to hate left wing ideas with every fibre of her body and soul, so their world views and hopes for the future could not have been different.

In 1984 and Atlas Shrugged they set out warnings.

But could either of their visions be said to have come true?

*

 

Funny thing about "visionaries," They're all labeled by "hind sight." If you have a hundred people pen their predictions, by chance a few will be "right." Are these few "visionaries," just good at guessing, or psychic?

.

 

I think Rand's dystopian vision is closer to reality than Orwell's. Huxley's, I think, is closer than either.

 

Yeah huxley got it, but Orwell was the better writer.

 

Orwell was definitely a better writer than either Rand or Huxley, though Rand did have an amazing talent for complex plotlines.

 

The Parallels between Orwell's Animal Farm and the Cuban Revolution are shockingly close, unahppily so.

 

I think it was intended to parallel the Russian revolution.

 

Putting aside literary merit and concentrating on the politics, I’m unsure any of them ‘predicted’ anything.

I think Orwell was a definite warning (coloured by his knowledge of Franco, Hitler and Stalin) he was talking to 1948 and by 1984 the UK did have an ill conceived and destructive ‘ism’ in control but it was Thatcherism not Stalinism.

Rand’s vision on the other hand is too biased and too black and white to be taken seriously. The bad are bad the good are good.

Anyway the idea somehow that the disappearance of the great and good would collapse society is a bit laughable when we know that left to themselves they nearly brought about their its collapse and the ones that saved it were just us ordinary tax payers, who are the ones most likely to suffer for it. My view is that a lot of those great and good should be removed forcibly from our society and put behind bars and society would be better off for it.

 

I fine line must be drawn. Putting the most talented people in jail would be pretty stupid; but so would allowing them to take advantage of the rest of us.

EDIT: Sorry, that should have been allowing us to take advantage of the rest of you.

 

Remember much of the books is exaggeration and symbolism.

 

huxley got it right! he was new school.
orwell and rand are old school... nothing new in "their ideals."
in the western world plato was the first one with these ideals.

neither orwell or rand offered any blueprint of how to advoid the nightmare.
after huxely laid out the new school nightmare, in 'brave new world' and, 'brave new world revisted; huxley DID lay out a blueprint of how we could advoid the nightmare. it is in his third book dealing with political models... that book is entitled "island."