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Orwell was influenced by the ideas of the American [[conservative]] [[James Burnham]]'s book ''The Managerial Revolution'',<ref>[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21337504 1984: George Orwell's road to dystopia]</ref> which contains many of the same themes. This helped to shape the political situation described in 1984. Orwell also found influence in Jack London's novel ''[[The Iron Heel]]'', and Yevgeny Zamyatin's ''[[We]]''.
Though Orwell was deeply critical of communism, it is debatable whether 1984 was intended as a condemnation of all forms of [[socialism]]. Orwell denied attacking socialism but that may have been essential self-preservation for a writer in the pro-socialism climate in [[Britain]] at the time. On the other hand it is possible that Orwell, being acutely aware of the promotion of liberalism by large corporations in crony capitalist environments, believed that a form of socially conservative limited socialism was the best way to prevent the further erosion of freedom and traditional values. Orwell wrote, in response to critics: "My recent novel [Nineteen Eighty-Four] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the [[British Labour Party]] (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions ... which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. ...The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."<ref>''The Collected Essays: Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4,'' p. 546</ref> 1984 has a conservative message, and was influenced by the work of [[James Burnham|Burnham]].
The book is, at its heart, a condemnation of the ultra-liberal menace that arose and threatened Europe during his time. The fictional Oceanic dictatorship is the logical extreme of the liberal attitude towards government Orwell saw creeping in around him, both at home and abroad. The breakdown and perversion of home and family ties, the eradication of religion to make room for secular cult worship, the manipulation of language and history to suit the agenda of the day, and the use of deliberate economic strangulation in order to ensure compliance in the population were all tactics that Orwell predicted would come into play should an ultra-liberal government arise. One need only examine the regimes of [[Stalin]] and [[Kim Jong Il]] to see examples of Orwell-type dictatorships; atheism and state-worship forcibly substituted for religion, the deliberate starvation of all but the most elite members of society, even Orwell's nightmarish vision of sons spying on their parents for the state came true in the Soviet Union, and still persists in North Korea. Thus he uses the book to attack the intrusiveness and arrogance of [[big government]].
