Hi, philosophy graduate here. This is going to have 1984 spoilers for people who haven't read it.

>!The question of are people happy in Oceania is difficult. The first thing to be really really clear on is that the Party goes out of its way to ensure that outer party members are always kept in a state of discomfort. They live and work in a perpetual state of privation, with bad gin, terrible cigarettes, nondescript food, and constant monitoring by Big Brother. If they show even a thought against the Party they're dragged off to be tortured and re-indoctrinated. They know this full well, and fear it. Sexual desire and love are deliberately expended in events like the two minute hate, and constant Party activities designed purposefully to exhaust and weaken outer party members to make them unable to rebel against the Party.!<

>!Inner party members seem to be given way better conditions, but as they're the top dogs of the pyramid, and everything O'Brien shows us is likely a fabrication, there's really no way to actually tell. Besides this, we wouldn't consider a society where only the top leaders were happy to be a happy one.!<

>!The proles are where it gets interesting. They are left almost completely alone by the Party, other than basic entertainment and lotteries and such. This is because the proles as a group are considered to be, and in fact (in the story) are unintelligent enough that they don't pose any threat to the party and cannot be awakened to do so because Outer Party members are so rigorously monitored.!<

>!The situation of the proles is directly an imagining of the early communist question of when the working class would develop class consciousness; the intelligence and awareness of their oppression so they would be in a position to organise and fight against it. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were of the opinion that it was necessary for a "vanguard party" of intellectuals to guide the proletariat (from which the word proles is an abbreviation) to class consciousness, and doubted that without them they would not be able to do so.!<

>!The structure of the Party in Oceania defends against this completely by locking down and minutely controlling the intellectuals. Even those that believe (as in the family man who is, at the end, imprisoned and tortured just the same because his own children informed on him) are subject to the brutality of a state whose only aim is to increase and protect its own power.!<

>!Happiness is then only to the found in the lives of the proles, who are intellectually free because they have no intellect. Their inability to organise or formulate the concepts of revolution are what allows them to conduct the most human lives of any in Oceania (exemplified when Winston observes a large older lady singing while hanging out her washing). The only way to be "happy" there is to descend to the level of an animal and cease to be human, because intelligent humans are subject to the Party at every level.!<

>!It might be possible to argue that post-Ministry of Love, Winston is happy. But this is completely belied by the fact his whips are now in the mind, instead of external. His thought processes have become mangled to the point where he is essentially as mindless as a prole; he can barely stand to do anything of any worth, drinking and wasting his time every day. He dreams of being killed by a Party assassin because somewhere in his mind he feels death is preferable to his existence. In a sense, he loves Big Brother in the end because it will finally be the instrument of his release from the suffering they themselves have visited upon him, and is merely a response to the removal of torture, not a positive happiness.!<

I hope this helps!