"The New World Order" by H.G. Wells highlights one of the most important concepts impacting our modern times. But the book is extremely flawed.
It outlines the philosophy and framework for a global solution to endless humanitarian crises and conflict, namely a scientific one-world government and economy. These ideas have informed corporate and public policy to this day as we grow closer each passing decade to Wells's dream.
He bases this global utopia off of the idea of collectivism, which he is careful to differentiate from socialism or communism. Modern progressives and conservatives may be surprised at how vitriolic Wells is towards Marxism, and how prescient his remarks are regarding current class warfare in the Western world. He calls Marx "that sedentary man with the great beard," who he considers lazy and full of unfounded hatred against the bourgeoisie simply because he was too unwilling, untalented and unskilled to reach the upper classes that he himself believed he deserved. Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a doctrine of pure hatred, no different than Nazi propaganda, says Wells. He says that such movements all follow the same simple formula: 1) identify a vulnerable class of "have-nots" (proletariat) 2) manipulate them to believe they are being oppressed by a system (capitalism) created by a bogus "bad guy" (bourgeoisie) 3) convince them that overthrowing the identified system will solve all their problems.
I was struck by how similar this formula is to the one employed by American Democrats and Republicans today. You are being suppressed by systemic racism engineered by the whites who are inherently flawed, colonial, and racist! You are being suppressed by a corrupt system that wants to flood the country with brown people who will change the voting demographics forever and take your jobs! And in both cases, as Wells puts it, the "suppressed" need learn nothing, plan nothing, build nothing--just destroy. In Russia, this kind of thinking merely replaced the czar with people like Lenin and Stalin. But this was not the first time this happened. In France, the Revolution merely replaced the monarchy with The Reign of Terror. And it won't be the last time.
It is this tendency of lack of conscience on the part of people jealous for power and the suseptibility of the masses to be manipulated that led Wells to conceive of the New World Order, a global utopia with no sovereign borders under central benevolent and scientific control based on "collectivism."
Ironically, as much as Wells believed that Russian Marxism was a bastardization of collectivism, he still constructed his globalist ideas around Soviet communism--Trotsky’s idea of a worldwide government and Lenin’s idea of an intellectual nucleus that will control all the aspects of society.
Even more ironically, as much as Wells criticized Marx for basing his Socialist Manifesto on emotion rather than intelligence, Wells seems to fall into the same trap. Wells wrote "The New World Order" in response to World War II, but he never really made the connection between Nazism and a global alliance of fascist regimes that worship the state. Wells saw the nation-state as the cause of wars, while in fact, it seems to me that history has shown quite the opposite. Has conflict been the result of people respecting the sovereign borders and way of life of others, or when they interfere? Did Hitler really invade Poland and Czechoslovakia because he was defending the German people? Why did he begin a European-wide extermination of an entire culture? Was it nationalism? No, on the contrary, he was pursuing global aspirations. Instead of conservative white American males or Mexicans crossing the border, the identified system that needed replacing was ostensibly Jewish, and Hitler had plans to take over and solve this problem on a global scale. It seems that whenever one government or culture has expectations that their way is the right way, that the world should conform to one mode of thinking, to one religious faith, to one language, we get holocaust and genecide. We get crusades and jihad. We get colonialism and imperialism. We get invasion and conversion. We get the reservation and the ghetto.
Wells thinks that in order to achieve world peace, the system of sovereign states must be abolished to establish World Government. He talks at length about the benefits of such a society, but doesn't give details about how this could be brought about, or the pitfalls that such an endeavor would be sure to encounter. To whom will the power and responsibility fall to get all the world's cultures and societies in line? And in line with what? What would a global culture and economy look like? He holds the League of Nations as a poster child for how this could be done, but it didn't succeed, nor did it's replacement, the United Nations, in getting people to play nice with each other to achieve common interests. This is partially because these organizations could never get everyone in the club, nor did they want to, nor could all voices be heard equally. This is why the American founders developed an electoral college, because they recognized that smaller states might never have a voice.
Of course, Wells believes that the electoral college and the two party system must be abolished for a nonpartisan system of government. I certainly agree that the two parties are ultimately failing to represent the real needs of everyday constituents. But Wells gives us no insights into what a replacement would really look like. Just get rid of them, he says. OK, but then what? People are as different from one family member to the next, from one neighbor to the next, let alone from one country to another halfway across the globe. How do we manage such a diverse population? The fact is that globalist ideals have failed to recognize these differences just as they have failed to bring us together based on our common humanity. What works for one subset in one region of the globe is like putting a square peg in a round whole somewhere else.
In fact, as we move towards a globalist society in real life, we seem to be more divided than ever. Advancements in shipping, air travel, the internet, and social media have eliminated distance between the world's cultures, which Wells says is a prerequisite for establishing the new world order. However, as we share cultures, we share COVID-19, deforestation, fentanyl, child pornography, prostitution, and McDonald's. Europe is "united" under a common currency and under common masters who know and care nothing for the needs of the various societies and cultures embedded within. This is like having Google maps redirect you through a highway that is freqently used by farm vehicles and truckers--your app says it's the fastest route, but only the locals know you'll never get anywhere on that road. This inevitably led to Brexit with more division to come. In the meantime, more and more territories, former autonomous kingdoms and principalities, historical provences, and ethnic regions are clamoring for independent statehood. We don't have Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia anymore, do we? And in the latter, Serbia keeps hemorrhaging even more countries--first Montenegro, then Kosovo, with Vojvodina also wanting to satisfy their long-standing itch. The Soviet Union is no longer a union, giving us Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan. And in Africa, we now have Eritrea, Namibia, and South Sudan. Meanwhile, we've had NAFTA, SICA, APTA, AfCFTA, the Southern Common Market, CPTPP, NATO, WHO, WTO, the Paris Climate Accord, the World Knowledge Forum, the World Economic Forum, the Montreal Protocol, the Bilderberg Group, and a legion of other free trade agreements, global justice efforts, lobbying groups, think tanks, and neoliberal movements promoting influence over the lives of citizens by non-elected officials and billionaires. We have Germany and Sweden and Great Britain opening up their borders, only to have their new guests isolate in newly formed ethnic neighborhoods with little interest in assimilation. So we have increased efforts at globalization, yet we get more and more nationalism. And have globalist efforts done anything to assuage a hungry and angry population of proletariat ready for any kind of revolution?
But let's assume we are able to establish a new world order. Who will hold a global government accountable to the people? Wells rightfully points out that free speech and global debate is necessary to achieve world peace. Yet he offers no details on how free speech can be safeguarded against censorship by an all powerful oligarchy of global elites. He was acutely aware of how concentrated power corrupts. In observing the kind of disparate information coming from Herr Goebells in Germany and from Britain's Ministry of Information, Wells was also concerned about news and punditry being disseminated "under the advice" of "nonrepresentative persons." He would certainly be likely to listen to MSNBC and Fox News and say, "Well, clearly somebody here must be beholden to their masters!" Communication controlled by the rich and influential is entirely unreliable--it is propaganda. If he was aware of this danger by 1940 before the age of the numerous global mega-corporations that we have today, how did he think things could get any better under a new world order? We are already seeing how global forces are operating to censor speech in everything from labeling vocal parents at school board meetings as terrorists to banning a U.S. president from social media. And this kind of action is applauded by people who tend to hold the Wellsian view that governance and influence should be retained only by those who know what's best. They think corporate tech giants and their fact checkers, as well as political dynasties, know what is fake news, not a narcissistic, bombastic orange outsider, and certainly not the citizens who are incapable of deciding for themselves. How would Wells propose to promote "vigorous publication" and spirited debate in the face of the incredible power of a global government? He doesn't give us a clue.
Similarly, he has a whole chapter dedicated to how to preserve liberty in the face of collectivization, but he doesn't really explain this either. He proposes a "new" declaration of human rights that should be followed by a global system, but it sounds no different than what capitalist countries had been following already. So much for seeing any new ideas there.
What you do see is Wells' personality front-and-center. To believe that a system based on a chosen oligarchy who "know better" is inherently elitist, and you see this elitism rampant in Wells. He often refers to people as stupid and ignorant. The Hindu and Muslim populations he refers to as "dusky peoples." He talks about Catholics as inherently destructive--he even states the entire French Revolution was the fault of "Catholic living and teaching" with no supporting evidence, and that the shifty cutthroats celebrating the guillotine were the product of Catholic church reaping what they sow. This is the kind of stuff that drove people like Hillaire Belloc nuts, and of course, Wells counts him among his many "antagonists." Wells must have had a fragile sense of narcissism, because he always complains about his "enemies" in almost every non-fiction book he has written. He sure talked a good humanitarian game, but I think the man had some personality problems.
My final criticism about the book is that Wells doesn't speculate much on what such a global society, if successful, will look like a century or more from now. He says that people will live in more mobile homes and spend more time traveling. That's it? All this work of globalization to live in trailer parks? So we've managed to eliminate distance, removed incentives for corporate exploitation, completely eliminated borders, and smoothed the divides brought about by religious and linguistic differences! Hurray! We've undone Babylon! But what does this leave us with? A mono-culture? Every street in every city of every continent with a McDonald's and a Starbucks and a Walmart? People getting their goods and services delivered by Amazon and Uber, only interacting with each other across the globe virtually through avatars? Where's the diversity that our celebrities at the Golden Globes and the Oscars and the BBC keep talking about? If we eliminate diversity as we eradicate distance to the point where there are no cancerous or destructive deviations in thought, according to our enlightened scientific and all wise global deities, then we are left with a situation akin to North Korea or Nazi Germany--a uniform population that only worships the State.
Wells tries to say this is a book of guiding print, not the endless specific problems of adjustment to a new world order. Of course. That the easy way out. But the subtitle of "The New World Order" is "Whether it is Attainable, How it can be Attained..." He really made no argument for that. Seems like false advertising to me.
So do I think a new world order is attainable? No. I do think we must expect more globalization, but that's not really a new world order. It's exploitative colonization by a bunch of corporate powers from multiple countries instead of one imperial force. The ideas in "The New World Order" sure sound good to many of us who dream of a more sane world, but unfortunately, these same ideas sound even better to the world's rich and powerful who wish to permanently consolidate their power.
But globalism will always have an upward battle. Even in the face of a mono-culture, human beings tend to congregate into factions--take nationalism completely away, and you still have people rooting for their favorite football team. This is engrained in our DNA. To deny this is to deny nature. You can keep a domesticated dog in the house all it's life, but if it get's loose, it will find other stray dogs and form a pack. Therefore, to deny nature, one must ensure the dogs are never let out. Or neuter them. And unfortunately, that kind of consequence is inherit in any kind of globalist collectivist utopian ideal. It still requires a deep division of humanity, a division into those who with the power and those that submit. How do you permanently achieve such a division? Hitler is long dead, but believe me, there are those prepared to take his place. Wells himself even had his own chilling final solution. He doesn't go into it in this book, but read his chilling "The World Set Free."
This is not to say that "The New World Order" is only for naive cocktail party liberals or tinfoil hat conspiratorial conservatives. On the contrary, I think now more than ever we all should be studying these ideas and keeping them in mind whenever we watch what is going on in our country and across the world. Now more than ever, when we say diversity is our strength, we need to put our actions where our mouth is--preserving diversity of culture, economies, and opinions.
After all, empire-building and colonialism still result in the same problems no matter whether you call it imperialism or a New World Order.
SCORE: Three stars purely for the impact of this important book on politics, human rights, and social engineering over the decades since the last World War. But it is not a rigorous academic study with conclusions that are supported, nor does it give meaningful details on how a new world order would be attainable. This book is purely an emotional plea for world sanity with no real solution. Yet, it should be read as a primer to understand a certain mindset in places like Washington DC or Downing Street or Brussels or Davos.