Comments on The Open Conspiracy by H. G. Wells
Series Contents
By Alan Mercer

Revised PDF version of whole series

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

Continued from Part 14

About education and the Open Conspiracy:

“The forces of the entire movement may be mobilized in a variety of ways to bring pressure upon reactionary schools and institutions.” (p. 78)

About government:

“Its main political idea, its political strategy, is to weaken, efface, incorporate, or supersede existing governments.” (p. 78)

The Open Conspiracy

“will be frankly a world religion.   This large, loose assimilatory mass of movements, groups, and societies will be definitely and obviously attempting to swallow up the entire population of the world and become the new human community.” (p. 79)

Ch. XVI   Existing and developing movements which are contributory to the Open Conspiracy and which must develop a common consciousness.  The Parable of Provinder Island.

Wells discusses the “Birth Control movement”, the “movement for the scientific study and control of population pressure”, and how their movement is going to end up self-defeating unless their project is “universal” and brought into line with the Open Conspiracy.  (p. 80)    Once again, he is disparaging towards certain kinds of human beings that have as much right to be on this earth as the kind he elevates.

Then he says that pacifist organizations are “insincere” unless they go along with population control and the agenda of eliminating nation states. (p. 81)

And he criticizes socialist and communist groups also – all these groups he wants to alter and absorb into the Open Conspiracy, which he claims is the natural “inheritor of socialist and communist enthusiasm”. (p. 81)

In contrast to the socialist critics, he praises the monopolistic type of Capitalism:

“…. a thousand times as many clever people have been busy upon industrial, mercantile and financial processes.  … Everywhere competitive businesses have been giving way to amalgamated enterprises, marching towards monopoly, and personally owned businesses to organizations so large as to acquire more and more the character of publicly responsible bodies.” (p. 81)

So he praises the corporate and monopolistic model as if it’s some kind of ideal.  There are debates online among modern libertarians about the morality of corporations.  But the bottom line in my opinion is to think of it from your own individual point of view.   When a group or board (instead of a single business owner) is making decisions, the line of least resistance to oppressive government dictates and funding is followed, the line of most profitability is automatically followed and individual choice and conscience is suppressed.   So society becomes a collection of machines by analogy, eventually amalgamating into one ultimate “perfect” machine, without conscience, without quirk.   So that is the temptation to everyone who adopts the corporate model, to not have to make decisions or take risks, to let others lead us instead of participating ourselves, to always get someone else to manage things for us, and to fall in line.     The soul is trapped in the mass.  And this is why this aspect of “capitalism” is attractive to advocates of tyranny like Wells.

You can’t just say economics and making money is morally neutral.    Nothing we do is morally neutral when our own governments are violating rights and bombing villages, and creating more and more oppressive laws at home, and massive debt to international banks.  And we just keep going on as usual and saying nothing out of fear, or because we’re wrapped up in so many other things.  If things are not right, we need to stop somehow and fix what we can.   But this is a dilemma for me also, and we all tend to be isolated in our ideas from each other and divided in so many ways.

Continued...

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