Notes on The Open Conspiracy by H.G. Wells

General Notes

• This book, once again, reveals the problems of the binary between Utopian Ideology and Utopian Science. The moment one begins to work towards Utopia, it is no longer Utopian (as Jameson says) and yet every thinker of a transhuman Utopia can’t help follow theory with practice (Jameson, Marx, Wells, Teilhard) and the practice is always flawed.

I. The Present Crisis In Human Affairs

• “Quite a small number of people heedless of the ultimate consequences of what they did, one man here and a group there, have made discoveries and produced and adopted inventions that have changed all the conditions of social life” (49)
• “We do not give our children a chance of discovering that they live in a world of universal change” (49).
• ”... but no one hailed these things as being more than ‘improvements’ in existing conditions. They are not observed to be the beginnings of a profound revolution in the life of mankind. The attention of young people was not drawn to them; no attempt was made, or considered necessary, to adapt political and social institutions to this creeping enlargement of scale” (50).
• “They changed a world where there had never been enough into a world of potential plenty, into a world of excessive plenty” (51; my emphasis).
• “We are coming to see more plainly that certain established traditions which have made up the frame of human relationships for ages are not merely no longer as convenient as they were, but are positively injurious and dangerous” (52).
• “And meanwhile war, which was once a comparative slow bickering upon a front, has become war in three dimensions, it gets at the ‘non-combatants?’ almost as searchingly as at the combatants, and has acquired weapons of stupendous cruelty and destructiveness” (52).
• “Our political and economic ideas of living are out of date, and we find great difficulty in adjusting them and reconstructing theme to mee the huge and strenuous demands of the new times” (52).
• “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” (53).

II. The Idea of the Open Conspiracy

• “Though none of us are yet clear as to the precise way in which this great change-over is to be effected, there is a world-wide feeling now that change-over of a vast catastrophe is before us” (53).
• “It seemed to me that all over the world intelligent people were waking up to the indignity and absurdity of being endangered, restrained, and impoverished, by a mere uncritical adhesion to traditional forms of behaviour, and that these awaking intelligent people must constitute first a protest and then a creative resistance to the inertia that was stifiling and threatening us” (54).

III. We have to Clear and Clean Up Our Minds

• ”Fundamentally, the Open Conspiracy must be an intellectual rebirth” (56).
• Think about the differences between an Open Conspiracy and an Open Source Conspiracy (route through Jameson’s concept of meta-utopia).
• Wells takes up the question of world revolution by discussing the distance of the signifier from the signified and the arbitrary nature of language as a means of describing and constructing reality. He takes a very post-structural view of language (although his commitment to experiment is suspect).
• From a discussion of language, Wells moves to rhetoric. From rhetoric he talks of the importance of having an understanding of history, life, and economics: essentially, participation in the Open Conspiracy involves an attempt to think through systems and understand their operation (which is interesting but, maybe, problematic). Although, his discussion of these systems is about trying to get people out the superstitious frame of mind in which they work.

VIII. Broad Characteristics of a Scientific World Commonweal

• One of the major problems with this section, which outlines the economic and social dimensions of the society that should be created by the Open Conspiracy is that Wells ignores the forces of reification in the manufacturing of the social: as though one could just create a new socius (I suppose he means for it to be the end product of a long social struggle, but this moves the realm of the Utopian from the virtual to the possible; against the whole idea of an Open Conspiracy). This raises the question: can an Open Conspiracy be programmatic in the way Wells describes? Is the social able to be reprogrammed, as he suggests it must be, to meet the needs of the contemporary world system? And, if so, how to avoid the question of “permanent revolution” or the rigidity of this new World Government in the face of future change. The problem of progress for this model of the world picture.
• “A map imposes no will on anyone, breaks no one in to its ‘policy.’ And yet we obey maps” (78). I believe maps do have a will and do in fact break us to their “policy.”
• “And through that will it will produce as the central organ the brain of the modern community, a great encyclopaedic organization, kept constantly up to date and giving approximate estimates and directions for all the material activities of mankind” (78). I wonder if this insistence on the formation of a world brain is not the key here: a brain is, essentially, a conceptual apparatus for massaging the trauma of the continuous revolution represented by the sensory experience of the Real.

XI No Stable Utopia is Now Conceivable

• Wells attempts (seems) to address my objections above by stating that the Open Conspiracy does not seek a stable, happy society. Rather, “one may doubt if such a thing as happiness is possible without steadily changing conditions involving continually enlarging and exhilarating opportunities” (83). The problem still seems to me that this ever-broadening of opportunities will never emerge, unless what Wells is saying is that the Open Conspiracy needs to be a phase-change in consciousness in order to facilitate an approach to the future more in line with technological change (what would that look like?).

X The Open Conspiracy Is Not To Be Thought of as a Single Organization; It is a Conception of Life Out of Which Efforts, Organizations, and New Orientations Will Arise

• Chapter title probably addresses the above. How can this be the product of a revolution?

XII The Resistances of the Less Industrialized Peoples to the Drive of the Open Conspiracy

• “India, China, Russia, Africa present melanges of social systems, thrown together, outpaced, overstrained, shattered, invaded, exploited, and more or less subjugated by the finance, machinery, and political aggressions of the Atlantic, Baltic, and Mediterranean civilization. In many ways they have an air of assimilating themselves to that civilization, evolving modern types and classes, and abandoning much of their distinctive traditions. But what they take from the West is mainly the new developments, the material achievements, rather than the social and political achievements, that, empowered by modern inventions, have won their way to world predominance. They may imitate European nationalism to a certain extent; for them it becomes a convenient form of self-assertion against the pressure of a realized practical social and political inferiority; but the degree to which they will or can take over the social assumptions and habits of the long established European-American hierarchy is probably very restricted. Their nationalism will remain largely indigenous; the social traditions to which they will try to make the new material force subservient will be traditions of an Oriental life widely different from the original life o Europe” (99).
• This chapter, dealing with the problems presented by incorporating other, non-European cultures into the Open Conspiracy is interesting in that it recognizes that Westernization is not the same thing as globalization and that non-Western cultures may need to find their own path to modernity. The problem, though, is that Wells sees the Open Conspiracy as the end point of all Western thought and doesn’t seem to open a space for any discord that may result when non-Western nations finally “catch up” (whatever that might entail).

XIII. Resistances and Antagonistic Forces In Our Conscious and Unconscious Selves

• “There is no ‘we,’ and there can be no ‘we,’ in possession of the Open Conspiracy./The Open Conspiracy is in partial possession of us, and we attempt to serve it. But the Open Conspiracy is a natural and necessary development of contemporary thought arising here, there, and everywhere.” (105).
• Refers to his vision of society as “a world in order” (108).

XIV. The Open Conspiracy Begins as a Movement of Discussion, Explanation, and Propaganda

• In his description of recruiting people to the Conspiracy, it doesn’t seem very much different from a Secret Society.
• “Fundamentally important issues upon which unanimity must be achieved from the outset are: / Firstly,_the entirely provisional nature of all existing governments, and the entire provisional nature, therefore, of all loyalties associated therewith; / _Secondly, the supreme importance of population control in human biology and the possibility it affords us of a release from the pressure of the struggle for existence on ourselves; and / Thirdly, the urgent necessity of protective resistance against the present traditional drift towards war” (111).
• Early definition of affinity politics: “Groups coming into agreement upon these matters, and upon their general interpretation of history, will be in a position to seek adherents, enlarge themselves, and attempt to establish communication and co-operation with kindred groups for common ends … We have seen already that the Open Conspiracy must be heterogeneous in origin. Its initial groupings and associations will be of no uniform pattern. They will be of a very different size, average age, social experience, and influence” (111). “Collective action had better for a time—perhaps for a longtime—be undertaken not through the merging of groups but through the formation of ad hoc associations for definitely specialized ends, all making for the new world civilization. Open Conspirators would come into these associations to make a contribution very much as people come into limited liability companies, that is to say with a subscription and not with their whole capital. A comprehensive organization attempting from the first to cover all activities would necessarily rest upon and promote one prevalent pattern of activity and hamper or estrange the more original and interesting forms. It would develop a premature orthodoxy, it would cease almost at once to be creative, and it would begin to form a crust of tradition” (113).
• His description of the Open Conspiracy is a direct inverse of what the Religious Right is doing (seeking the teaching of creationism, removing books from the library, etc.).
• His seven goals of the Open Conspiracy concludes with “the admission therewith that our immortality is conditional and lies in the race and not in our individual selves” (114).

XVIII. Progressive Development of the Activities of the Open Conspiracy Into a World Control and Commonweal: The Hazards of the Attempt

• “Whenever possible, the Open Conspiracy will advance by illumination and persuasion. But i has to advance, and even from the outset, where it is not allowed to illuminate and persuade, it must fight. Its first fight will probably be for the right to spread its system of ideas plainly and clearly throughout the world” (130).
• This chapter (and the last few) is littered with militaristic language (much like Teilhard).

Final Thoughts

• Overall, Wells’s book provides a frightening and provocative picture of a transhuman politics of the virtual. Partly, I think the problematic aspects of his work lie in his shifting the realm of Utopia from the virtual to the possible in the course of writing a plan. As a set of Utopian machines, the Open Conspiracy is a powerful meme, but I’m not sold on Well’s Utopian vision (which is different).