The new world order of H.G. Wells

By Valentin Katasonov: An open conspiracy or plans for the world revolution.
The new world order is a familiar phrase. It is difficult to say who invented it and when. Some believe that the term was born in the United States. On June 20, 1782, Congress approved the bilateral Great Seal of the United States. The obverse of the seal featured a bald eagle, the national symbol of the United States. In the other is an unfinished pyramid whose top is crowned with an eye with a triangle. The phrase on the parchment below the pyramid says: Novus Ordo Seclorum (New Order of the Centuries). From the 1930s onwards, the reverse of the Great Seal began to be represented on the dollar bill. However, the inscription on the Great Seal and on the dollar bill is somewhat different from the phrase New World Order, the authorship of this term is believed to belong to the English writer H.G. Wells (1866-1946).

In the Soviet Union, H.G. Wells was one of the most popular foreign writers. He was perceived as a representative of the science fiction genre. His novels The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898) are especially famous. During half a century of creative activity Wells wrote about 40 novels and several volumes of stories, more than a dozen controversial works on philosophy and approximately the same number of works on the restructuring of society, two world stories, about 30 volumes with political and social forecasts, more than 30 brochures on Fabian Society issues, armament, nationalism, world peace, three children's books, an autobiography.

H.G. Wells was not just a writer. He was deeply immersed in history, sociology, biology (he was a biologist by education), physics, mechanics, astronomy, chemistry. He followed the development of technology, evaluated the consequences of its application. By introducing some scientific concepts in his works and representing the technology of the future, he sometimes showed a surprising vision ahead of his time. Thus, in 1895, in his novel The Time Machine, he introduced the concept of a four-dimensional world; Einstein later used this concept in developing the theory of relativity. In World Unchained (1914) Wells writes about nuclear weapons based on fission of the atom. Describes a world war, an "atomic bomb" is dropped from an airplane (that's what he calls it). In 1898 in his novel The War of the Worlds Wells described images of the next world war with the use of aviation, poisonous gases, laser devices (later he detailed the description of this type of weapons in the novels When the Sleeper Wakes, War in the Air). And it is no longer necessary to talk about the spaceships that conquer the space of the Universe, for example, in the novel "The first people on the moon" (1901). I think Yevgeny Zamyatin, in his dystopian novel We (1920), described the integral spacecraft by borrowing some details from H.G. Wells.

Wells was optimistic at first about the role of scientific and technological progress as a means of improving human society. However, his optimism waned when World War I began. Advances in science and technology, incorporated into the latest weapons, have resulted in millions of deaths on the battlefield. The writer realized that science and technology are a double-edged tool that can make a person happy and can bring destruction and death. The rapid development of transportation, communications, and international trade led to the fact that the borders dividing space began to disappear so to speak. And the friction and conflict remained, any spark could lead to a military fire, which is especially dangerous when thousands of miles of space cease to be a serious obstacle to weapons and military equipment. Wells' focus began to shift to social, political, and military issues.

Wells understood that the world was heading for some kind of catastrophe, which could not be avoided only with science and technology. It is necessary to change something in the structure of society, the political power, the economic model, in the world order. And in 1928 Wells wrote a paper under the intriguing title The Open Conspiracy. Blueprints for a world revolution (The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution). This is more of a philosophical and political essay. Or a manifest program. Wells uses in this book the same title "new world order" with which we began our conversation. And in 1940 he published a book called The New World Order.


In The Open Conspiracy, Wells calls for the creation of a new world order different from the one that existed at the time he wrote. And then he spoke of a capitalist world with economic crises and chronic social tensions that threatened at any moment to become a socialist revolution. In the 20th century, V. Lenin wrote, the world of capitalism reached its highest stage of monopoly, which inevitably led to imperialist wars for the redivision of the world. The First World War was purely imperialist, and in 1928, when The Open Conspiracy appeared, it was already felt that a second imperialist war could break out (the Treaty of Versailles, signed at the Paris Peace Conference, programmed the preparation of such a war) .

Wells's main idea was that there should be a United World State in the form of a planetary Republic. Nation states must voluntarily surrender their sovereignties by handing them over to the World Government. The "open conspiracy" is not hostile to governments, parliaments, and monarchs that agree to consider themselves provisional institutions that will continue to function during the transition period: "If constitutions, parliaments, and kings are thus, they can be tolerated, as institutions temporary that operate until the Republic reaches the age of majority, and while these constitutions are guided in the spirit that I have indicated, the open Conspiracy will not attack them ». Presumably, in relation to those governments and monarchs who were not ready to voluntarily surrender their powers, force was supposed to be used. So the idea is to seek universal and eternal peace through wars. Wells for some reason was certain that these wars would be the last in human history.

However, how to unite different nations with very different cultures in a single state? A single World Religion should play an important role in eliminating the national and cultural differences of individual peoples: “The more beautiful and attractive false loyalty, false ideas of honor, false relationships established by religions, the more we should strive to free our conscience from them and the conscience of those around us, and the irrevocable rejection of them ». Neither Christianity nor other world religions are adequate for the role of the World Religion, which, in Wells's opinion, only instilled "prejudice" and "false values." By the way, Wells showed no sympathy for Christianity and in every possible way approved of the aggressive atheism policy that was applied in Soviet Russia. In this he was supported by some other British intellectuals, such as Bernard Shaw.

Wells was well acquainted with Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), author of the multi-volume work "Study of History," which described ideas about civilizations that existed and exist in the world. While he agreed that there is diversity of civilizations, Wells believed that it was necessary to get rid of it, to build a single civilization. Undoing and destroying "backward" civilizations, which also included Russia ("the Russian civilization"): "India, China, Russia, Africa are a mixture of applied social systems, some of which are doomed, while others will be taken to their extremes: the finances, the mechanization and the political invasion of the Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean civilizations will destroy them, seize them, exploit them and enslave them a little more or less ».

The only "promising civilization" was for Wells the Anglo-Saxon world. It is his interests that he represents. It is no secret that Wells was a Freemason and a member of secret societies. According to The Committee of 300 author John Coleman, Wells was a member of this committee, which is considered the world's highest authority behind the scenes.

The ruling elites of unpromising civilizations should be on the side of the "Open Conspiracy", they should be given the hope of becoming part of the world elite: to what Europe and America owe their rise, the Open Conspiracy can make infinite promises . With a leap they will be able to leave the dying ship of their old-fashioned system and, on the heads of their current conquerors, they will enter into full brotherhood in the brotherhood of the rulers of this world ».

It is noteworthy that H.G. Wells counted heavily on Soviet Russia in implementing the Open Conspiracy. He positively evaluated the power of the Bolsheviks: “This government is considered by many to be an extremely interesting innovation. When a community of propagandists became a republic, it was inspired by the ideas of the Open Conspiracy, paving the way for its implementation.

By the same title of his book, Wells claims to be a revolutionary. He was impressed by the fact that the Bolsheviks are also "international" revolutionaries. Trotsky, immediately after October 1917, presented the slogan to transform the "Russian" revolution into a "world" one. It is true that at the time Wells wrote The Open Conspiracy Stalin had already faced Trotsky announcing the possibility of building socialism in one country to ideologically corroborate the industrialization that was beginning in the country. However, these innovations in the life of the USSR apparently did not reach Wells, or he perceived them as "tactical maneuvers".

Both in The Open Conspiracy and elsewhere Wells carefully addresses the question of the socioeconomic structure of the society he wants. In any case, this is a model in which monopolies and banks dominate, and the economy is controlled by the State. Wells was familiar with John Maynard Keynes, the ideologue of state intervention in economic life, and, apparently, viewed the world of the future as Keynesian capitalism. You can also feel the influence on Wells of the Austrian-German economist Rudolf Hilferding, known for his fundamental work "Financial Capital" (1910) and who created the theory of "organized capitalism". For Hilferding, this is the ideal form of society based on the dominance of bank capital, which gives order to the economy and social life. This is not spontaneous capitalism or socialism. This model attracted Wells, who was one of the most prominent Fabians. The Fabian Society, founded in London in 1884, united the British intellectual elite of reformist-socialist views, affiliated with the Labor Party. At the same time, the Fabians (and Wells) had very vague ideas about socialism.

However, in some respects, Wells's vision of the new world order was very clear. He believed that the social structure of the future society should be extremely simple. Above, the elite, below, everything else (commoners, proletarians, masses). Without strata and middle classes. The elite should be made up of intellectuals and capitalists. Just as the Bolsheviks proclaimed an alliance of workers and peasants as the basis of the socialist system, for Herbert Wells, the basis of society should be the alliance of intellectuals and big business.

As for Russia at the time, despite its "civilizing backwardness," according to Wells, it had a strong chance of joining the NPM faster than others, as it had an "intelligentsia." The "open conspiracy" counted very, very much in this stratum, "whose members number only a few tens of thousands. Only they have access to the ideas of world perestroika, and in the matter of forcing the Russian system to take a real part in the world conspiracy, only this small minority can be counted on and reflecting its influence on the myriad of individuals controlled by it. The further east you go, starting with European Russia, the greater the relationship between the number of people who have a stable mind and who are prepared enough to understand and help us, and the number of people who do not have that mind changes. in favor of the latter, which leads us to a terrifying conclusion. Destroy this little faction and you will find yourself face to face with the barbarians, prone to chaos and without the capacity of any type of social or political organization that surpasses that of a military adventurer or a thief boss. Russia itself (without the Bolshevik regime - VK) is in no way a guarantee against the possibility of such degradation. ”

Wells very much hoped that Soviet Russia would support the Open Conspiracy. However, the USSR went its own way and even confused the cards for those British conspirators, whose views were put forth by the English writer. This was finally made clear to Wells in 1934, when he visited the Soviet Union and met Stalin. At the same time, the idea of ​​an open conspiracy remained relevant for decades. English writers like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell borrowed something from H.G. Wells and added something to his description of the future of the new world order.