Comments on The Open Conspiracy by H. G. Wells, Part 1
Series Contents
(Related Series: more information on Wells)

By Alan Mercer

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Revised PDF version of whole series

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From The Open Conspiracy and Other Writings, 1933, Waterlow & Sons Ltd., London.

The Open Conspiracy is a non-fiction book by author H. G. Wells, who is more famous for his science fiction stories, such as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds.

Ch. I ‘The Present Crisis in Human Affairs’

Certain themes are repeated.   Wells writes about the “abolition of distance” as technology brought the world closer together. (p. 10)

He complains about an “alarming increase in population” because of the prolongation of life. (p. 11)

He emphasizes the ever present danger of another world war, implying all the time that people need to shape up and follow the internationalist prescription for how the world should be rearranged – in order to prevent war.  The same type of fear message was still prevalent later during the Cold War:

“Over everything human hangs the threat of such war as man has never known before, war armed and reinforced by all the powers and discoveries of modern science.” (p.11)

He talks about how the state structure worked for a while but states now “jostle each other exasperatingly”.

“Commerce under the new conditions is perpetually breaking nationalist bounds and making militant raids upon the economic life of other countries.” (p. 12)

By this, he is flipping over the Socialist side of his cap to reveal the Capitalist side – meaning they’re not opposite to him –  and he is emphasizing how the nation state is just something that gets in the way of international commerce or trade, which we’re supposed to always assume is legitimate trade as opposed to looting of resources carried out for hundreds of years by European aristocracies and their corporations.

Think about it. If the government of a nation actually did represent its people, then the nation would be something real and solid where others would have to respect the laws or face consequences.    It would be just as if you tried to invade a family’s home in which the men of the home stood ready to protect their family, their natural rights and freedoms, their property rights, and their tribal rights from the invaders.

But somehow nations are just slipping away into a worldwide mush, not having done a very good job of defending rights anyway.  How convenient that is!  It’s as though people were really NOT represented by the national government at all!  Because whatever boundaries they have ultimately count for nothing.   So of course, by now, internationalists have already taken over, and we see our national leaders signing international treaties every other week as they bring us closer to world government.

He carries on about war and how bad it’s going to be for people:

“gets at the ‘non-combatant’ almost as searchingly as at the combatant, and has acquired weapons of a stupendous cruelty and destructiveness.”

“…We are being continually being urged by our training and traditions to antagonisms and conflicts that will impoverish, starve, and destroy both our antagonists and ourselves.” (p. 12)

Here he talks nonsense about “our training and traditions” as if it didn’t require incredible propaganda and effort by the ruling class to get ordinary people to participate in the horrible mass death and destruction of World War I.

Wells, playing the role of critic of the system he’s a part of, like Bertrand Russell, admits the people:

“are being misled by those who trade upon the old traditions.   … It is preposterous that we should still be followed about and pestered by war, taxed for war preparations, and threatened bodily and in our liberties by this unnecessary and exaggerated and distorted survival of the disunited world of the pre-scientific era.” (p. 12)

So Wells is really blaming the separateness, the lack of political unity in the world as the cause of war.  And I have heard this kind of message all my life.   Is separateness really the cause of war and conflict?  Could we not argue that separateness, independence, minding our own business and respecting others’ space and rights would more likely lead to peace?   Isn’t this in line with our own experiences? Are we also to blame conflict on the fact that individuals are separate?  It’s insanity to eliminate separateness.

Weren’t Napoleon and Alexander the Great and others attempting to eliminate separateness through war?  And what we have going on nowadays is just the continuation of their goal – with a mixture of more clever strategies however – militarization, threats, death, propaganda, lies and looting – all attempting to achieve the elimination of separateness.

In my opinion, it is more plausible that there are people with destructive personality traits – in control of nations – causing these incredible unnatural wars that Wells writes about – who are in constant fear because they do not control all nations, all resources and all individuals.  And that is what motivates them and their totalitarian propaganda.   Because, no, they will not be happy until everyone is predictable and under their thumb.  They don’t like competition.  They don’t like people defending their rights or standing up to them.   In other words, a certain kind of person causes war deliberately because he is twisted up.    People like that will always be with us, unfortunately, and they try to take advantage of everyone else, and they try to control everyone else.  If we could stop being fooled by them, and if regular people stood up for each other, then there would be some hope.

Of course Wells doesn’t talk about it in these terms.  A unified world would just be another kind of world with these kinds of control freak psychopaths running amok over everyone else, with no alternatives.   The utopia of world “unity” means only one way of doing things.  It means you are controlled, no escape from taxation and regulation, because all regions of the earth will be bound together.  You will be even less free than you are now.  You will have no alternative way of organizing your life and society.  So you will not be a threat to them.   No system will be allowed to threaten their control.  That’s the motivation of world government and that is what they mean by “peace” and the absence of war.   No competition.

Peace to an ordinary person means treating others and their rights with respect and administering justice to prevent criminals from taking over, but you see, those ideas never really got off the ground unfortunately.   Because of our various indoctrinations, most people project their own sensibilities onto the world and everyone else and fail to see that the system that pretends to be just and pretends to protect us is just a sham.

“Peace” to those at the top pushing world government means no opposition, and no resistance allowed.   And they don’t have the moral values that prevent ordinary people from stealing and killing in order to achieve their ends.  But ordinary people are easily fooled and seduced.  Most of us never learn and are easy prey.

The word “pre-scientific” implies that there is some natural historical march towards a “scientific” society.  It means a planned managed society by a technical expert class, a type of feudalism, as opposed to a society based on freedom and individual rights.    The progress towards this “scientific” society has been managed by the members of the “Open Conspiracy” that Wells writes about.

Continued  Part 2

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