What does O'Brien's answer about the real reason the Party seeks total power ?

O'Brien begins to answer this by claiming that the Party
could really care less about the petty crimes people commit, in
fact,

The
Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not
merely destroy our enemies, we change
them.

This ability to change
people is much different than control movements of the past. O'Brien notes the flaws of
great movements of religion and politics in The Spanish Inquisition, the Russian
Communists, and the German Nazis. According to O'Brien, all of these groups contained
some of the same flaws: they could destroy peoples and they could degrade them, but they
could not change them. This is not power. Power occurs when
change happens. The Party seeks total power because in each
of these historical cases

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after only a few years the same thing had
happened over again. The dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was
forgotten. Once again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they
had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All
the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them
true.

In all of history, new
generations remembered the past. They acted on the ills they saw forefathers experience.
O'Brien's Party creates new truth so that new generations cannot remember the
past.

O'Brien gives even more
reason:

That
the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of
the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass
were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must
be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than
themselves... That the party was the eternal guardian of
the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing
its own happiness to that of
others.

Ironically, O'Brien
seems to believe it all. However, after some time apart, and further questioning from
Winston, O'Brien finally admits:

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The Party seeks power entirely for
its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are
interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power,
pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from
all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are
doing.

POWER MEANS CONTROL.
The Party is interested in complete control and dominion of
mankind.