# Holy Crap! H.G. Wells was a totalitarian! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 10, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844 "2010-08-10T17:12:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/1 "2010-08-10T17:12:18Z")
Apologies if this is old news to anyone. I’d known of course that Wells was a socialist progressive, and I’d thought that like others who held fashionably leftist views in early-twentieth century Britain, Wells was simply a naive idealist who believed in things that in hindsight are now regarded as quaintly uptopian: that the way to abolish war was to establish a world government; that religion was a primitive superstition that would wither away in a modern world, that economic activity would and should be controlled by the government, etc. Then I read the actual text of his novel, [The Shape of Things to Come](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/w45th/) I’d seen the movie, which dwells mainly on the collapse of civilization as we knew it and it’s rescue by a technocracy. But the novel spells out in gruesome detail what the move didn’t: just what measures the fledgling world government would take to secure it’s control. The only hint of mercy in “‘The Dictatorship of the Air’” is that it posesses a knockout gas that allows it to merely subdue, rather than kill, rebellious populations. In every other respect, the Dictatorship follows a program that Vladamir Lenin would have approved of. To give just one example, religion is repressed by the power of the state- kosher butcher shops are forcibly closed and the Jews are assimilated. What stands out in the novel is Wells’s attitude that all conventional morality is simply the relic of a pre-industrial society, and that the world of the future would have utterly different (by our lights, inhuman) values. And that Wells openly proclaims this and regards it as self-evidently admirable. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/2 "2010-08-10T17:29:53Z")
It’s a very long time since I read it, but what makes you think he’s presenting a Utopia? ---
**Author:** ![GHO57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df788c/32.png) [@GHO57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GHO57)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/3 "2010-08-10T17:33:56Z")
You mean Stalin? Not Lenin. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/4 "2010-08-10T17:37:26Z")
There appears to be a number of people, from all ends of the political or religious spectrums, who appear to think that their own vision of society/government is superior to all others, and that folks should be made (forced) to live under that (benevolent, of course) rule. For their own good, you see: The “mob” is too stupid to be given the power to choose it’s own way. These strongly held values seem, sometimes, to instill a belief of righteousness, and that the ends justify the means. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/5 "2010-08-10T17:38:54Z")
Sure. Progressivism - the idea that the educated elites can better manage the lives of the masses than said masses could themselves, was a big deal back then. It was the driving force behind feminism, Prohibition, public schooling, eugenics, and so on. Wells was merely extrapolating it to the future. Of course while policies change, the idea that wise elites should use top-down political tools to make “good decisions” for the masses, and that this supposed efficiency is more important than liberty, has hardly died out. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/6 "2010-08-10T18:02:55Z")
Hey, ya let freedom take care of things & the rich pampered owners become weak infantile surface-dwelling Eloi while the sturdy lowly workers become strong simian subterranean Morlocks. Ya wanna be Morlock food? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/7 "2010-08-10T18:03:04Z")
Tangentially relevant essay by George Orwell: [“Wells, Hitler, and the World State”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part15) (1941). > [@](#): > > Mr Wells, like Dickens, belongs to the non-military middle class. The thunder of guns, the jingle of spurs, the catch in the throat when the old flag goes by, leave him manifestly cold. He has an invincible hatred of the fighting, hunting, swashbuckling side of life, symbolised in all his early books by a violent propaganda against horses. The principal villain of his OUTLINE OF HISTORY is the military adventurer, Napoleon. If one looks through nearly any book that he has written in the last forty years one finds the same idea constantly recurring: the supposed antithesis between the man of science who is working towards a planned World State and the reactionary who is trying to restore a disorderly past. In novels, Utopias, essays, films, pamphlets, the antithesis crops up, always more or less the same. On the one side science, order, progress, internationalism, aeroplanes, steel, concrete, hygiene: on the other side war, nationalism, religion, monarchy, peasants, Greek professors, poets, horses. History as he sees it is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man. Now, he is probably right in assuming that a “reasonable”, planned form of society, with scientists rather than witch-doctors in control, will prevail sooner or later, but that is a different matter from assuming that it is just round the corner. There survives somewhere or other an interesting controversy which took place between Wells and Churchill at the time of the Russian Revolution. Wells accuses Churchill of not really believing his own propaganda about the Bolsheviks being monsters dripping with blood etc, but of merely fearing that they were going to introduce an era of common sense and scientific control, in which flag-wavers like Churchill himself would have no place. Churchill’s estimate of the Bolsheviks, however, was nearer the mark than Wells’s. The early Bolsheviks may have been angels or demons, according as one chooses to regard them, but at any rate they were not sensible men. They were not introducing a Wellsian Utopia but a Rule of the Saints, which, like the English Rule of the Saints, was a military despotism enlivened by witchcraft trials. The same misconception reappears in an inverted form in Wells’s attitude to the Nazis. Hitler is all the war-lords and witch doctors in history rolled into one. Therefore, argues Wells, he is an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately. But unfortunately the equation of science with common sense does not really hold good. The aeroplane, which was looked forward to as a civilising influence but in practice has hardly been used except for dropping bombs, is the symbol of that fact. Modern Germany is far more scientific than England, and far more barbarous. Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the aeroplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age. Science is fighting on the side of superstition. But obviously it is impossible for Wells to accept this. It would contradict the world-view on which his own works are based. The war-lords and the witch-doctors MUST fail, the common-sense World State, as seen by a nineteenth-century liberal whose heart does not leap at the sound of bugles, MUST triumph. Treachery and defeatism apart, Hitler CANNOT be a danger. That he should finally win would be an impossible reversal of history, like a Jacobite restoration. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/8 "2010-08-10T20:09:04Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > You mean Stalin? Not Lenin. He meant Lenin. Lenin was a dictator who exterminated millions. Lenin wasn’t as bad as Stalin, just like Mussolini and Franco weren’t as bad as Hitler. But “not as bad as Stalin” is a pretty low hurdle. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/9 "2010-08-10T20:44:07Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > What stands out in the novel is Wells’s attitude that all conventional morality is simply the relic of a pre-industrial society, and that the world of the future would have utterly different (by our lights, inhuman) values. And that Wells openly proclaims this and regards it as self-evidently admirable. Yes, as others have said, his views weren’t too much different from what you’d expect to find among the group of progressive, upper-class English gentlemen at the time. It’s more a reflection on how poorly our educational system covers history that many people are unaware of the currents of thought that went through Britain and other western countries in the early 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![GHO57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df788c/32.png) [@GHO57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GHO57)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/10 "2010-08-10T21:11:57Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > > [@GHO57](#): > > > > You mean Stalin? Not Lenin. > > He meant Lenin. Lenin was a dictator who exterminated millions. Lenin wasn’t as bad as Stalin, just like Mussolini and Franco weren’t as bad as Hitler. But “not as bad as Stalin” is a pretty low hurdle. Really? I was looking at the example… > [@](#): > > Vladamir Lenin would have approved of. To give just one example, religion is repressed by the power of the state- kosher butcher shops are forcibly closed and the Jews are assimilated. you know… with the freedom of religion being ensured in the first USSR constitution… and Lenin’s stance against antisemitism and all that. It just sounds like it fits Stalin better. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/11 "2010-08-10T21:22:06Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > > [@Lemur866](#): > > > > He meant Lenin. Lenin was a dictator who exterminated millions. Lenin wasn’t as bad as Stalin, just like Mussolini and Franco weren’t as bad as Hitler. But “not as bad as Stalin” is a pretty low hurdle. > > Really? > > I was looking at the example… > > > [@](#): > > > > Vladamir Lenin would have approved of. To give just one example, religion is repressed by the power of the state- kosher butcher shops are forcibly closed and the Jews are assimilated. > > you know… with the freedom of religion being ensured in the first USSR constitution… and Lenin’s stance against antisemitism and all that. It just sounds like it fits Stalin better. And I don’t think Lenin would have done anything to alienate Trotsky, who was Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/12 "2010-08-10T21:24:07Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Lenin was a dictator who exterminated millions. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/13 "2010-08-10T21:53:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Cite? My post is my cite. ---
**Author:** ![GHO57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df788c/32.png) [@GHO57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GHO57)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/14 "2010-08-10T22:15:52Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > [@Lemur866](#): > > > > Lenin was a dictator who exterminated millions. > > Cite? Yea.. I was wondering about it too since I haven’t seen statistics to imply that. Sure, people died in the civil war… and the '21 famine killed what, 5 million-ish people. But exterminate seem a bit strong… besides, I was saving it for later 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/15 "2010-08-10T22:17:27Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > > [@Lemur866](#): > > > > Lenin was a dictator who exterminated millions. > > Cite? > [@](#): > > A Soviet famine in 1921 began with a drought that caused massive crop failures. The initial death toll was greatly magnified when Lenin refused to acknowledge the famine and sent no aid. The Soviets later estimated that 5.1 million died. [Cite.](http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/05/08/f-natural-disasters-history.html) ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/16 "2010-08-10T23:09:37Z")
Y’know, if you’d just watch the season opener of Warehouse 13, you’d have known about H.G. Wells’ evil ways. She’s the Big Bad of Season 2. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/17 "2010-08-11T01:18:11Z")
Says BrotherCadfael"Y’know, if you’d just watch the season opener of Warehouse 13, you’d have know about H.G. Wells’ evil ways. She’s the Big Hottie of Season 2." Fixed that for ya. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/18 "2010-08-11T02:01:10Z")
A quibble. A minor point, but that’s the trouble with quibbles… I can see how one could see Well’s notions as “totalitarian” but I reserve that term for structures that are imposed rather than structures which evolve. I think Wells saw his future society as one that would necessarily evolve from rationalist principles, or, if they did not evolve, there would be no future for mankind, “totalitarian” or otherwise. I don’t see anything like a suggestion that a technocrat cabal will seize power. Lenin, by comparison, also believed in a rationalist culture, and believed it inevitable, that is the core principle, the inevitability of History. But he firmly believed in the imposition of such a society, a dictatorship of the proletariat, led by the revolutionary cadres, and imposed by force upon the majority, regardless of their will or their views. In my view, Lenin perfectly deserves the epithet “totalitarian”, if for no other reason than his ruthless commitment to a political ideal. Welles would write, Welles would argue, Welles would beseech and implore. I don’t seeing him shooting anyone. Unless, of course, it was his only opportunity to get his hands on a genuine 1920’s Style Death Ray. Then, maybe. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/19 "2010-08-11T02:25:10Z")
Well read the story for yourself if you haven’t already. The rationalist world state “evolves” up to the point where it’s time to suppress the holdouts, regressives and obstructionists; then it’s unapologetically imposed. And anyone who thinks that that is wrong is simply holding on to primitive, outmoded concepts. :rolleyes: If Wells had been born in Russia rather than Britain then instead of being an armchair pundit he might have fit in perfectly with the Bolsheviks. Or perhaps it’s a case of the cynical saying “totalitarianism is philosophy given political power”. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2010, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844/20 "2010-08-11T03:16:09Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > He has an invincible hatred of the fighting, hunting, swashbuckling side of life, symbolised in all his early books by a violent propaganda against **horses**. The principal villain of his OUTLINE OF HISTORY is the military adventurer, Napoleon. If one looks through nearly any book that he has written in the last forty years one finds the same idea constantly recurring: the supposed antithesis between the man of science who is working towards a planned World State and the reactionary who is trying to restore a disorderly past. In novels, Utopias, essays, films, pamphlets, the antithesis crops up, always more or less the same. On the one side science, order, progress, internationalism, aeroplanes, steel, concrete, hygiene: on the other side war, nationalism, religion, monarchy, peasants, Greek professors, poets, **horses**. Goddamned _Horses_! Foisting industrialization off on Humanity so they can throw off their yoke of oppression. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-h-g-wells-was-a-totalitarian/549844.md?page=2)