Comments on The Open Conspiracy by H. G. Wells
Series Contents
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)

Continued from Part 11

Ch. XII    The resistances of the less industrialized peoples to the drive of the open conspiracy

Wells explains part of the transition from the old order to the new world order, referring to “the finer, more energetic minds” of the less industrialized countries who will feel an “immense invitation” from the Open Conspiracy:

“At one step they may go from the sinking vessel of their antiquated order, across their present conquerors, into a brotherhood of world rulers.” (p. 59)

So Wells gives a surprising description to the Open Conspiracy – a “brotherhood of world rulers”  – which builds up an international ruling class from each nation, as long as they can find a few who can fit in to the new system.

So a few natives from those countries would jump ship from their native culture and national feeling, and would be recruited to join the elite class, the Open Conspiracy – a world government in the making.  And they would side-step the domination and difficult race relations with the European middle class settlers, and concentrate with the internationalist elite on planning for the coming world order.

However, says Wells, most will see the Open Conspiracy as no better than Western imperialism, and

“they will fight a mighty liberation as though it were a further enslavement to the European tradition.”  (p. 59)

Wells expected acceptance of the Open Conspiracy to emerge from the cultural conflict:

“In the conflict of old traditions and in the consequent deadlocks lies much hope for the direct acceptance of the groups of ideas centering upon the Open Conspiracy.” (p. 59)

Wells claims the Russian Soviet government was  a “novelty of extraordinary interest”.

Wells expresses empathy for the Soviet government, and seems to be expressing clear disdain for the Russian “peasants and herdsmen” over which the Soviet dictatorship ruled.   And he actually implies the looting Soviet government was somehow morally superior to those it ruled, which is completely absurd and elitist:

“It finds itself separated, intellectually and morally, by an enormous gap from the illiterate millions over which it rules.” (p. 59)

Wells describes the tyranny as an

“urgent militant necessity for mental unanimity and a consequent repression of criticism…”

“…More open perhaps to scientific and creative conceptions than any other government, and certainly more willing to experiment and innovate…” (p. 59)

Wells feels the Soviet regime does not hit the mark.  He really doesn’t like the fact that the proletariat are free to breed:

“it struggles within itself between concepts of a modern scientific social organization and a vague anarchistic dream in which the “State” is to disappear, and an emancipated proletariat, breeding and expectorating freely, fills the vistas of time forevermore.” (p. 60)

Wells feels that the vast majority in Russia, even though it was ruled by Communism, and China would not be receptive to the Open Conspiracy because of their “inchoate barbarism”:

“…the hope of China struggling out of it without some forcible directive interventions is a hope to which constructive liberalism clings with very little assurance.” (p. 61)

So it’s historically interesting that he discusses the idea of direct “Open Conspiracy” intervention in China.    So it is worth looking into how much input the later Communist Chinese might have received over the years from the agents of “constructive liberalism” in the form of Western bureaucrats, industrialists, ex-politicians, etc.

Wells sees the Marxist ideology “entrenched in Moscow” becoming

“more and more dogmatic and unprogressive, repeating its sacred credo and issuing its disregarded orders to the proletariat of the world, and so stay ineffectively crystallized until the rising tide of the Open Conspiracy submerges, dissolves it afresh, and incorporates whatever it finds assimilable.” (p. 61)

And so much later we had the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet system, the announcements by President Bush Sr. of the “New World Order“, and the merger of the Soviet and American systems.

Wells discusses in his eugenics racist social Darwinist mode about how much difficulty there is in getting Asia and Africa to adopt modern society and “knowledge and ideas that have checked the rate of increase of all the Atlantic populations”. (p. 62)

“It seems inevitable that the development of modern means of communication and the conquest of tropical diseases should end in giving access everywhere to modern administration and to economic methods, and everywhere the incorporation of the former wilderness in the modern economic process means the destruction of the material basis, the free hunting, the free access to the soil, of such barbaric and savage communities as still precariously survive…” (p. 62)

He says the Open Conspiracy would need to start with the “Atlantic civilizations” (Europe and North America):

“For the rest of the world, its (the Open Conspiracy’s) propaganda, finding but poor nourishment in the local conditions, may retain a missionary quality for many years.”

So he is talking about those tribal societies who who have their own way of living, and their independent means of survival (who end up being servants to European immigrants he says).  They are outside of the “modern” “economic” system, so they are “barbaric” and “savage” according to him.  But European elite-run nations who build machine guns and chemical weapons and let millions die in world wars, because their systems are so complicated, so controlling, and so authoritarian, they get to be called “civilized”!?    Taxation, conscription, corporate welfare, armaments.  That’s “civilization”.

So much for the idea that “economics” is run by people who believe in the free market.  If you push your way in to another nation, and start pushing them around, and imposing your system on them, you are INVADING them, invading their property rights and natural rights, and that is what the elite-run corporations and governments still do under various excuses and guises.  It’s wrong.  It’s immoral.   It always was and they always knew that.

So it’s not laissez-faire, although there were more who believed in that back then, but they never were in charge.  It’s “constructive liberalism” as Wells calls the totalitarian survival-of-the-fittest economics ideology which he admired so much.   Theft and intervention is not freedom.  Imposing economic systems on other peoples contradicts freedom.  The economic systems we live under are not for freedom and they should not be equated with freedom or “free market”.  They were created for the convenience of an elite class for the purpose of looting and monopolizing. And variations on these systems have existed for thousands of years.  And they are just methods for conveniently taxing and enslaving people.   We are just trained by our education and the media to slap the words “freedom” onto them, but we are taxed on income, taxed on purchases, taxed on property, and we have to ask permission to do so many things, and yet people insist that Western countries like Canada are “free”, because the charlatans leading us keep using the word “freedom” over and over in their speeches.     Government and force is part of the economic system we live under.   It’s older than socialism. Government is there for the convenience of the elite class.  It manages the resources for them.

If the government served the people and had our best interests at heart, there wouldn’t be such a serious problem.  But it doesn’t.   The system of “democracy” doesn’t deal with our best interests.  It bails out banks and other corporations, it puts us in debt to banks, it directs resources towards war, towards technologies it sees as a priority, towards population control, it funds body scanners which violate our privacy, and puts them in airports, it pardons pedophiles and lets other serious criminals out on the street, it puts innocent people in prison for decades.   It controls culture (openly in Canada), it controls education, it controls health care, it wars against the peoples’ civil rights and property rights under the guise of the “drug war”.   Why?  This is “democracy”.  It is fake democracy as a gloss on the actual government, to make us think we have a say in things. But when was the last time you had a say in anything or even had something to say, or knew what was going on?   Would you tell your federal or provincial “representative”? Maybe we should try, but I bet most Members of Parliament will just tell us that their Party had already decided on the issue.

Ch. XIII   Resistances and antagonistic forces in our conscious and unconscious selves

Wells speaks about internal conflicts that true believers have.  And he often personifies the Open Conspiracy:

“The Open Conspiracy is in partial possession of us, and we attempt to serve it.” (p. 64)

Wells says that the conspirators need to conquer the tumult of their lives and focus on the big issues:

“Aim must prevail over the aimless.”

And he must be trying to appeal to idealists, to get them on board with the power conspiracy.   And this is the same problem that we deal with on the other side, those who believe in freedom, individual rights and the value of human life, those of us who are troubled by what the dominant purposeful ones are doing in this world.

The masses have no direction until they are hungry and out on the streets. They are aimless.  Those of us who are trying to wake up, we find that we are pulled towards a whirlpool of diversions and endless fun, even endless political diversion, not to mention endless work.  And by the time we realize how serious life is, and how we shouldn’t be just going along with everything, it will all be too late.   And the banks will have taken everything, and we will be living under IMF “austerity measures” with our families scattered to the winds, no common ground with our neighbours, no wealth left, no rights, and no freedoms left.

And we will look back at all the time we wasted, and we will wail out loud for being naiive, for being suckers, for mouthing empty slogans and wishful thinking about some wonderful future that we’re somehow evolving towards, which never comes. And we’ll regret so much that we said nothing and did nothing, and we let ourselves be lied to and we let ourselves be stolen from, and we let other people be tortured, and bombed and arrested without trial.

Continued…

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