Open Society, Open Conspiracy

Peter Myers, 3 Sept 1997; update June 20, 2019; bold emphasis added.

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Is the takeover of national economies, by the forces of Globalism, purely an ad hoc process, or does it operate to a plan? Could there be anything "conspiratorial" about it?

These days, conspiracy theories are considered a mark of the Far Right. However, the Marxist analysis of ideology is also conspiratorial: the leading purveyors of ideology, such as economists professing laissez-faire principles, are seen as willing and deliberate deceivers of their victims.

In 1946, just after the last world war, there were two huge armies in the world, those of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. If ever there was a time when a world government might have been formed, this was it: if they had joined up, no other force could have resisted them.

Such a proposal was put in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists over several months in 1946. In his book Has Man a Future?, Bertrand Russell - an advocate of world government - describes how it developed, first as a proposal assembled by David Lilienthal, then in a form developed by Bernard Baruch (p. 25 & p. 97): russell2.html.

This Baruch Plan for World Government was canvassed in the issues of 1946 and put to Stalin: baruch-plan.html. By the end of that year, Stalin had rejected it, on the grounds that it required submission to Washington, and the Cold War had begun.

But what is most interesting is Bertrand Russell's article in the issue of October 1, 1946, titled The Atomic Bomb and the Prevention of War, where he writes,

"The American and British governments ... should make it clear that genuine international cooperation is what they most desire. But although peace should be their goal, they should not let it appear that they are for peace at any price. At a certain stage, when their plan (sic) for an international government are ripe, they should offer them to the world ... If Russia acquiesced willingly, all would be well. If not, it would be necessary to bring pressure to bear, even to the extent of risking war".

For a man with a reputation as a pacifist, it reads like a declaration of war. Given that the U.S. government had only recently demonstrated its firepower at Hisoshima, Russell's strongarm tactics would hardly have seemed enticing to Stalin.

Although Baruch and Lilienthal were Jews, they were on the Capitalist side. After Stalin "stole" Communism from its Jewish creators (stalin.html), they had gradually moved to Trotsky, the H. G. Wells variant and the "New Left" (new-left.html); now a "convergence" proposal was being put, as had been advocated by H. G. Wells in his book The Open Conspiracy (first published in 1928, then updated in the 1933 edition).

Fifty years later, at the end of the Cold War, a similar proposal was presented. Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced, "No nation in the world need be left out of the system we are constructing. ... We must take advantage of this historic opportunity that now exists to bring the world together in an international system based on democracy, open markets, law and a committment to peace" (Sydney Morning Herald, June 6, 1997). She conceded that "not every nation is yet ready to play its full part in this system", but said the world had no despot like the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who at the time of the Marshall Plan prevented eastern Europe from joining in.

H. G. Wells, like Russell an advocate of world government, wrote in the 1933 edition of The Open Conspiracy:

The "Open Conspiracy", Wells says, is "a movement aiming at the establishment of a world directorate" (p. 33), "the world movement for the supercession or fusion of existing political, economic, and social institutions" (p. 32), "the working religion of most sane and energetic people" (p. 73).

In some respects, Wells' vision is Marxist: he supported the decolonisation movement, and has even been touted as one of the authors of Woodrow Wilson's 14-Point Plan (David C. Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal, pp. 238 & 431).

In The Open Conspiracy he praises the U.S.S.R. for clearing away the old order (p. 60), and for the mental stimulation of their Five Year Plans, in the sense that through them "the idea of reorganizing the affairs of the world on quite a big scale", previously seen as utopian, came to be widely seen as realistic (p. 15); the world government he advocates would be anti-racist (p. 63), anti-nationalist (p. 73) and cosmopolitan. It would aim at eliminating sickness, famine and tyranny, and prevent over-population (p. 28).

Yet in other respects, Wells is quite anti-Marxist: "In practice Marxism is found to work out in a ready resort to malignantly destructive activities, and to be so uncreative as to be practically impotent in the face of material difficulties" (p. 45). "If now we reject the error and accept the truth, we lose the delusive comfort of belief in that magic giant, the Proletariat, who will dictate, arrange, restore, and create, but we clear the way for the recognition of an elite of intelligent, creative-minded people scattered through the whole community" (p.45).

I read Wells' criticism of "Marxism" in this book of 1933 as an attack on Stalinism. This is because he was a leading supporter of the early Soviet regime. Wells and the Webbs supported Trotsky (against Stalin) at the time of his Expulsion from the USSR: wells-lenin-league.html.

Pitirim Sorokin on Wells' visit to Russia in 1920: kronstadt.html.

"The Open Conspiracy ... starts with a proposal not to exalt the labour class but to abolish it, its sustaining purpose is to throw drudges out of employment and eliminate the inept - and it is far more likely to incur suspicion and distrust in the lower ranks of the developing industrial order of to-day than to win support there" (pp. 56-7). "Our hope for the human future does not lie in crowd psychology and the indiscriminating rule of universal democracy" (p. 56).

The new overclass, functioning as an elite like the old aristocracy of the British Empire, yet anti-monarchical and anti-Christian, combining right-wing economic policies with left-wing social policies - this is the very elite seen by Wells as running the world government:

"And when we come to the general functioning classes, landowners, industrial organizers, bankers, and so forth, who control the present system, such as it is, it should be still plainer that it is very largely from the ranks of these classes, and from their stores of experience and traditions of method, that the directive forces of the new order must emerge. The Open Conspiracy can have nothing to do with the heresy that the path of human progress lies through an extensive class war" (p. 46).

Wells does not envisage world government through a world parliament:

"in a polyglot world a parliament of mankind or any sort of council that meets and talks is an inconceivable instrument of government" (p. 31). Rather, "the new directive organizations of men's affairs will not be of the same nature as old-fashioned governments. They will be in their nature biological, financial, and generally economic." (p. 32).

"Some method of decision there must certainly be and a definite administrative machinery. But it may turn out to be a much slighter, less elaborate organization than a consideration of existing methods might lead us to imagine. It may never become one single interlocking administrative system. We may have systems of world control rather than a single world state" (pp. 31-2).

World Government is a benign imperialism, a new kind of white man's burden:

"By its own organizations or through the police and military strength of governments amenable to its ideas, the movement is bound to find itself fighting for open roads, open frontiers, freedom of speech, and the realities of peace in regions of oppression. 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" (p. 89).

The revolt of colonised regions of the world, India, China, Africa etc., against the European Empires, is assisted by the Open Conspiracy, and it invites their amenable leaders - the "finer, more emergetic minds" (p. 58) to move "from the sinking vessel of their antiquated order, across their present conquerors, into a brotherhood of world rulers" (p. 59). They are encouraged to turn to "the problem of saving and adapting all that is rich and distinctive of their inheritance to the common ends of the race" (p. 59).

"But to the less virorous intelligences of this outer world" - those not willing to submit - "the new project of the Open Conspiracy will seem no better than a new form of Western envelopment, and they will fight a mighty liberation as though it were a further enslavement to the European tradition. They will watch the Open Conspiracy for any signs of conscious superiority and racial disregard. Necessarily they will recognize it as a product of Western mentality ..." (p. 59).

Wells clearly presents a three-stage policy:

1. colonisation on the basis of the white race and the Christian religion

2. decolonisation: the attack on stage 1, an attack supported by the Open Conspiracy

3. recolonisation on a non-racial basis, by a new elite selected from all countries.

This has a direct bearing on the present situation in South Africa and China. The British Commonwealth and the United States helped the anti-apartheid movement, but are now imposing a new servitude, that of the free-market economy. This combination of Left social policy with Right economic policy is the characteristic feature of the Open Conspiracy. China has been assisted to modernise, but it too is being asked to submit to a new Western-imposed order, and is presently deciding whether to fight "a mighty liberation" to retain its independence. But, Wells says, the Open Conspiracy is not averse to bloodshed: "The establishment of the world community will surely exact a price - and who can tell what that price may be? - in toil, suffering, and blood" (p.91).

The method used by the Open Conspiracy within a country, is not military but "an incessant critical educational and propagandist activity" (p. 32).

"A lucid, dispassionate, and immanent criticism is the primary necessity, the living spirit of a world civilization" (p. 32).

"For each [social] class it has a conception of modification and development, and each class it approaches therefore at a distinctive angle. ... It must fight upon several fronts and with many sorts of equipment. It will have a common spirit, but it is quite conceivable that between many of its contributory factors there may be very wide gaps in understanding and sympathy. It is no sort of simple organization" (p. 47).

"There should be many types of groups. Collective action had better for a time - perhaps for a long time - be undertaken not through the merging of groups but through the formation of ad hoc associations for definitely specific ends, all making for the new world civilization. Open Conspirators will come into these associations to make a contribution." (p. 72).

"In this book we are not starting something; we are describing and participating in something which has started. ... To-day it may seem no more than a visionary idea; to-morrow it may be recognized as a world-wide force of opinion and will" (p. 73). "While the Open Conspiracy is no more than a discussion it may spread unopposed because it is disregarded. As a mainly passive resistance to militarism it may still be tolerable. But as its knowledge and experience accumulate and its organization become more effective and aggressive, as it begins to lay hands upon education, upon social habits, upon business developments, as it proceeds to take over the organization of the community, it will marshal not only its own forces but its enemies." (p. 90). "Our conception of an almost bloodless domination of the Atlantic communities may be merely the confident dream of a thinker whose thoughts have yet to be squarely challenged" (p. 90).

Wells appeals to Marxists to abandon Communism:

"It has pleased the vanity of the Communist party to imagine itself conducting a propaganda of world revolution. Its fate may be to develop upon lines that will make its more intelligent elements easily assimilable to the Open Conspiracy for a world revolution" (p. 60).

This seems to have happened to Mikhail Gorbachev. He abandoned Communism in order to join a single "world civilization".

Sections of the British Labour Party, having ousted Marx, are now turning openly to Wells.

H. G. Wells saw the end of World War I as an opportunity to create a new world. He supported both Lenin, and the attempt to create a World Government at the Treaty of Versailles. He also advocated the creation of a Jewish state: wells-lenin-league.html.

His ideas for a united world drew on Jewish thought, in discussions with David Lubin and Israel Zangwill.

Michael Higger, in his book The Jewish Utopia, explains that whereas Plato's Republic "is chiefy concerned with what will hold the ideal city together", "The rabbis, on the other hand, are mainly interested in that ideology which would hold the whole world, or the Universal State, together." (p. 5).

Higger writes that "A Jewish Utopia begins where Wells leaves off" (p. 6). That means, that the Zionists would assist the implementation of Wells' plan, then turn it into their own: : jewish-utopia.html.

H. G. Wells, Lionel Curtis, Henry Wickham Steed & Lord Grey advocate the League of Nations as a World Government - The Atlantic Monthly, 1919, January & February: house-schiff.html.

H.G. Wells' plans for World Government:

(1) The Open Conspiracy: opencon.html

(2) 4 other books by H.G. Wells on World Government: hgwells.html.

The One World Or None report of 1946: one-world-or-none.html.

Back to the One World index: oneworld.html.

Note on Stalin

After Stalin "stole" Communism from its Jewish creators (stalin.html), they gradually moved to Trotsky, the H. G. Wells variant and the "New Left": new-left.html.

Stalin used covert means as Jews did. It was only clear in retrospect what he'd been about.

While Stalin was executing the Jewish leaders of "the Opposition" in the 30s and 40s, the presence of Hitler seemed the greater evil, and this helped Stalin to get away with it.

Later, he paid for it - he was murdered within two months of the Doctors Plot being announced: death-of-stalin.html.

Hitler's war also changed the nature of Communism. To secure the loyalty of the Russian people, Communism had to rehabilitate the pre-Revolution culture of Russia. Make it "national Communism". This alienated Jews, who considered themselves "internationalists".

The creation of Israel also changed Communism. Jews dicovered that they were nationalists after all. Russians discovered that their country was partly being run by people with other allegiances: slezkine.html.

There was a parting of the ways. But this was only made concrete with the Mid-East wars of 1967 and 1973.

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