The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution by H.G. Wells was first published in 1928. It was rewritten and expanded in about 1930.
As already mentioned in another review, Wells studied under Thomas Henry Huxley, grandfather of Aldous Huxley who authored Brave New World. T.H. Huxley was a strong supporter of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and is known for his materialist and irreligious views. Wells later introduced Aldous Huxley to satanist and occultist Aleister Crowley. Wells was a socialist who joined the Fabian Society in 1903.
The book is basically a pseudo-intellectual essay on how important it is to run the world differently for the sake of avoiding war and being able to live peaceful and happy lives. Apart from that, everything else is vague and repetitive. Despite the subtitle “Blue Prints”, the method of how to fix the world and the reasoning for those methods are unclear. (How this review reads is a reflection of the text.)
Wells begins with the observation of the “abolition of distance” due to technological advances in transportation and communication. By bringing people closer together, conflict is more likely due to traditional values such as patriotism which in past may not spurred conflict.
According to the author, some try to explain this by the lack of “moral progress” which he criticizes as vague. Although he is not entirely wrong, he is not clearer.
What does moral mean? Mores means manners and customs. Morality is the conduct of life. It is what we do with our social lives. It is how we deal with ourselves in relation to our fellow creatures. And there does seem to be a much greater discord now than there was (say) a couple of hundred years ago between the prevailing ideas of how to carry on life and the opportunities and dangers of the time. We are coming to see more and more plainly that certain established traditions which have made up the frame of human relationships for ages are not merely no longer as convenient as they were, but are positively injurious and dangerous. And yet at present we do not know how to shake off these traditions, these habits of social behaviour which rule us.
It seems Wells has confused (general) fundamentals with (particular) applications. The former, if it is truly a principle, should not change, it is the latter that needs to change according to circumstances.
Either way, he promotes a “reconstructed world” by an “open conspiracy” as people wake up to the problems and protest against the “established things”. This so-called conspiracy is open because it “would be willing to accept participation and help from every quarter”. He is explicit that this is not done in secrecy.
Fundamentally the Open Conspiracy must be an intellectual rebirth.
As such, the author emphasizes the importance of history and biology and then promotes a “revolution” in education although it is unclear about what.
The education these new dangerous times in which we are now living demands, must start right, from the beginning and there must be nothing to replace and nothing to relearn in it. Before we can talk politics, finance, business, or morals, we must see that we have got the right mental habits and the right foundation of realized facts.
Apparently, morals are not the most important… even though morality is related to conduct, which would include “right mental habits”.
As for the “right foundation of realized facts”, he seems to be referring to history but it is unclear. There are always more facts to know and it takes work to verify them which he has in effect admitted—understanding those facts so that one could put them to good use requires, as stated, a “right foundation”, one that anyone with commonsense knows would include the moral. On these points alone, the author has contradicted himself and simply comes across as an idiot.
Wells considers religion to be outdated and inadequate to our modern problems. His reasons are unclear. Again, he seems to confuse fundamentals with applications. However, he does point out the differences between
…the new mental dispositions of the present time and those of preceding ages have to be realized if current developments of the religious impulse are to be seen in their correct relationship to the religious life of the past.
In his view, our modern understanding of biology and its impact on psychology as well as our scientific understanding of the history of the world is contrary to religion. Setting aside the discussion of whether science actually contradicts religion—and it seems like the gist of his argument is that it does—it is no surprise all that presupposes a materialistic view.
Wells seems to not know what religion is, at least not the Christian religion. He rightly states that religion looks at the “why” but then thinks that is useless. I am not sure what his logic is, considering that this movement is one of “intellectual rebirth” which should include examining the “why”. He also dismisses the sacraments and rituals as appealing only to emotions, which is false.
In short, the author assumes religion is purely subjective and should be more objective. Christianity and Judaism before it have always assumed both. Granted, there may be times when one was/is emphasized over the other but the two do not exclude each other.
In any case, the author points out the need for control under what he called “World-State” in his other book The Shape of Things to Come.
It is impossible for any clear-headed person to suppose that the ever more destructive stupidities of war can be eliminated from human affairs until some common political control dominates the earth, and unless certain pressures due to the growth of population, due to the enlarging scope of economic operations or due to conflicting standards and traditions of life, are disposed of. To avoid the positive evils of war and to attain the new levels of prosperity and power that now come into view, an effective world control, not merely of armed force, but of the production and main movements of staple commodities and the drift and expansion of population is required. It is absurd to dream of peace and world-wide progress without that much control.
Although he does not explicitly promote population reduction at this point, population growth is a concern along with economics. Either way, total control is the spirit of what he is advocating. (By the way, in The Shape of Things to Come, the population is deliberately kept below 2 billion due to food-supply and climate issues.)
The nature of this new government is “biological, financial, and generally economic”. For a materialist, the control of nature is necessary to achieve a particular end since, according to that school of thought, this material realm is all there is. In practice, this new government “may never become one single interlocking administrative system. We may have systems of world control rather than a single world state.”
Regarding the practical aspects, he goes further in Chapter XIII: “Broad Characteristics of a Scientific World Commonweal”. Like most writers who promote a one-world government, he is explicitly against the loss of liberties except the proposed solutions may do just that.
The security of creative progress and creative activity implies a competent regulation of the economic life in the collective interest. There must be food, shelter and leisure for all. The fundamental needs of the animal life must be assured before human life can have free play. Man does not live by bread alone; he eats that he may learn and adventure creatively, but unless he eats he cannot adventure. … … He can restrain the increase in his numbers, and he seems capable of still quite undefined expansions of his productivity per head of population. … Intelligent control of population is a possibility which puts man outside competitive processes that have hitherto ruled the modification of species, and he can be released from these processes in no other way. There is a clear hope that, later, directed breeding will come within his scope, but that goes beyond his present range of practical achievement, and we need not discuss it further here. Suffice it for us here that the world community of our desires, the organized world community conducting and ensuring its own progress, requires a deliberate collective control of population as a primary condition.
So, due to the food supply, which is admittedly very important, the animals and the environment need to be taken care of. That is vague but sensible enough but then the author shifts into population control and the control of resources. Although the ideas regarding the latter are not entirely wrong—they are more sensible and well-directed compared to the ideas of Marx, and there has to be some authority structure—it is difficult to trust the author.
Wells notes that bringing about this new government is not starting over with a blank slate. It is a transition. Some fields or “classes”, such as bookmakers, rightly need to disappear whereas retailers, agriculturalists and builders are obviously necessary.
However, not everyone will want to go along with this new movement even if they are not against it. Only a minority will be actively for it but the author does not propose a practical solution of how to bring that about.
The Open Conspiracy is not necessarily antagonistic to any existing government. The Open Conspiracy is a creative, organizing movement and not an anarchistic one. It does not want to destroy existing controls and forms of human association, but either to supersede or amalgamate them into a common world directorate.
Right. It may not be outright anarchistic but “revolution” by nature are antagonistic even if they are non-violent.
A change of mental direction would be possible for the majority of people now without any violent disorganization of their intimate lives or any serious social or economic readjustments for them. Mental infection in such cases could be countered by mental sanitation.
Jesus Christ in effect talked about humanity’s need for a change in mental direction (although not using such words), and He wasn’t the first. That change can be brought about by man’s cooperation with the grace of God, both of which are necessary.
Wells merely promotes “mental sanitation” without elaborating what that is. Setting aside that seems suspicious at best, if the materialistic view is correct, if this world is all there is and no supernatural intervention is necessary, then humanity should have achieved world peace by now.
He then continues, vaguely commenting on Russia (USSR). Although he criticizes some things, he does so mildly. Below is one example.
However severely the guiding themes and practical methods of the present Soviet government in Russia may be criticized, the fact remains that it has cleared out of its way many of the main obstructive elements that we find still vigorous in the more highly-organized communities in the West.
If “cleared out of its way many of the main obstructive elements” means wholesale slaughter and oppression of the population, then yeah.
But back to the movement which the author has already warned that not everyone would understand or initially be part of. Even those who are may revert to their old ways of thinking unless they put in the effort. In other words, it goes back to the minority making an effort locally and through education to expand the movement. It is in Chapter XIV that he gives some sort of definition.
At the utmost seven broad principles may be stated as defining the Open Conspiracy and holding it together. And it is possible even of these, one, the seventh, may be, if not too restrictive, at least unnecessary. To the writer it seems unavoidable because it is so intimately associated with that continual dying out of tradition upon which our hopes for an unencumbered and expanding human future rest. (1) The complete assertion, practical as well as theoretical, of the provisional nature of existing governments and of our acquiescence in them; (2) The resolve to minimize by all available means the conflicts of these governments, their militant use of individuals and property, and their interferences with the establishment of a world economic system; (3) The determination to replace private, local or national ownership of at least credit, transport, and staple production by a responsible world directorate serving the common ends of the race; (4) The practical recognition of the necessity for world biological controls, for example, of population and disease; (5) The support of a minimum standard of individual freedom and welfare in the world; and (6) The supreme duty of subordinating the personal career to the creation of a world directorate capable of these tasks and to the general advancement of human knowledge, capacity, and power; (7) The admission therewith that our immortality is conditional and lies in the race and not in our individual selves.
Ultimately, it aims for a “world directorate” and control.
The remaining text has the same vague emphasis on the importance of scientific research, including indexing said research and knowledge (which seems familiar to the “World Encyclopedia Establishment” as mentioned in The Shape of Things to Come), reorganizing the management of resources and industry, and revamping children’s education methods which will require experimentation.
I will end this review with a passage about governments.
The Open Conspiracy rests upon a disrespect for nationality, and there is no reason why it should tolerate noxious or obstructive governments because they hold their own in this or that patch of human territory. It lies within the power of the Atlantic communities to impose peace upon the world and secure unimpeded movement and free speech from end to end of the earth. This is a fact on which the Open Conspiracy must insist. The English-speaking states, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, and Russia, given only a not very extravagant frankness of understanding between them, and a common disposition towards the ideas of the Open Conspiracy, could cease to arm against each other and still exert enough strength to impose disarmament and a respect for human freedom in every corner of the planet. It is fantastic pedantry to wait for all the world to accede before all the world is pacified and policed.
Given the context, I don’t think Wells is promoting the “Atlantic communities” to lead the movement, I think he is recognizing that is how things were happening at the time and/or may play out later.
In any case, on balance, there is a “disrespect” for the government as a principle (even if specific governments are corrupt or evil) and whatever he is promoting has to be imposed. In other words, it’s still a revolution and there is no reason to think his ideas are good.
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