> ultimate driving force behind both authoritarianism and consumerism that continues to rule the world, money and capitalism

I would say the problem is any social structure that allows money to buy power, i.e. that allows the translation of economic power into political power (and vice versa). Either we should prevent that, or consider placing a cap on maximum per-capita economic power (preferably as a factor of the average, not unlike the Swiss proposal for CEO salaries).

A person should be able to buy as many yachts, castles or private jets as he wants, but using his money to lobby, campaign or otherwise influence political process -- perhaps that should be severely limited?

Civilization and technology today allows individual human beings to wield far higher concentrations of power than our psychology evolved to deal with. A good social system should cap it below the threshold where people go crazy (i.e. where our brains malfunction).

As a Swiss and living within the Swiss political system I firmly believe that laws alone can never be enough to keep people from getting too much power. Instead, implementing and defending a democracy that actually deserves its name, as in a system where the majority of people keep the last say in the law making process, instead of just letting them delegate that right every few year, is what keeps the system stable and everyone in check. Besides the direct effect on the law, this has two positive effects that most people don't quite seem to grasp when arguing about direct vs. indirect democracy:

- People tend to be more content with the laws they need to follow. Even if they lost on a vote its easier to accept in a system where its an actual majority behind it instead of just some removed cabal that you can only elect based on some pamphlet information every few years.

- Politicians in such a system tend to think ahead in terms of what can and cannot be popular with the people. They do so not only for the election years (which don't have that great of an importance here, not only because of direct democracy but also because of the way our federal government is formed by all major parties) but whenever delicate issues are coming up. One example I'd attribute to this effect is our liberal online piracy laws and our seemingly better protected privacy. When we had our own small scale Snowden affair in the 80ies it blew up into a huge scandal leading to the resignation of a federal council member ('Fichenaffäre', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal).

You should finish both books rather than go by the superficial text in those comics. Huxley lays out a society founded upon consumerism and, implicitly, a rampantly free market. Orwell's notion of the future seems to assume that the state has such total control that those in power may have anything they desire while the rest of the proles are left to scavenge what they can from the gutter. Simply because currency is not a major topic in either of the books does not mean they do not discuss the mechanics of power and social influence.

Orwell's book was entirely about state power; it was a parody of Stalinism. He was in the awkward position of being a socialist who'd been shot at by hardline communists during the Spanish civil war, and wanted to warn the left that Stalinism was really dangerous and should not be associated with.

Orwell was fighting for the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) not against them, this faction had the support of Stalin. He was shot by members of Francos army, they were a Fascist / Nationalist party that had the support of the NAZIs and Fascist Italy.

I'd conflated two events; you're correct that Orwell was shot by an Fascist sniper, but there were also Stalinist purges going on against POUM ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia ) as it was a non-Stalinist Marxist faction.

One correction: POUM was anti-Stalinist. By the end of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell describes how POUM was driven underground by pro-Stalinist parties PSUC and PCE (I think these were the two).

POUM was definitely left-anarchist/communist though.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.