Part 7

The idea of the Open Conspiracy rests upon and arises out of a system of historical, biological and sociological realisations. In the case of people with sound knowledge in these fields we may look for these realisations already; such people are prepared for adhesion without any great explanatory work; there is nothing to set out to them but the project. They do already constitute the Open Conspiracy in an unorganised solution and will not so much adhere as admit to themselves and others their state of mind. Directly we pass beyond that comparatively restricted world, however, we shall find that we have to deal with partial knowledge, distorted views or blank ignorance, and that a revision and extension of historical and biological ideas and a considerable elucidation of economic misconceptions has to be undertaken.

For the past twelve years, the present writer has given much thought and work to the question of presenting these foundation ideas for a modern moral and political activity in a practicable form, and it will be the easiest method of statement for him to describe the outcome of his experiments and reflections. He reports therefore upon what he has done and is doing not because that is in any way final or universally applicable, but because it gives something sufficiently full and lucid to serve as a concrete illustration of his idea. He has schemed out a group of writings to embody the necessary ideas of the new time in a form adapted to the current reading public and he considers what he is doing as a sort of provisional “Bible,” so to speak, for some factors at least in the Open Conspiracy. As the current reading public changes, his work will become obsolescent so far as its present form and method go. But not so far as its substantial method goes. That he believes will remain.

These writings, this modern Bible scheme, has taken a threefold form and he believes the mental basis of the Open Conspiracy must necessarily retain this threefold form if only on account of its lucidity of presentation. He has already written and published the opening third of his scheme, first in a full and then in a compacter book, as the _Outline of History_ and as _A Short History of the World_. This furnishes a framework of fact within which the general political ideas of the reader can be put in order. It presents the history of life as a progress from fragmentation towards world unity, mental and material. A second third of this statement of fundamental modern ideas he is now preparing in collaboration with two more specially qualified writers. This will be a companion and parallel to the _Outline of History_ and it will be called _The Science of Life_. It will be a summary of what is known of the nature and possibilities of life. It will give the data for personal conduct within a biologically conceived world society, just as the _Outline of History_ gives a frame for the individual political life in a unifying world state. The remaining third of this encyclopædia, the third dealing mainly with inorganic and economic science, is still a mere sketch and skeleton. It will treat of economic and social organisation considered as the problem of man’s exploitation of extraneous energy for the service of the species. Its prospective title, _The Conquest of Power_, will perhaps convey the spirit of its design. The general idea of these writings is to present altogether, first a complete modern world outlook, politically speaking, then the moral data of the new time, and then the forecast of a collective economic policy, in a form accessible to a person of ordinary education. It is the presentation of the threefold basis for a modern ideology, historical, biological and economic. It is a pioneer attempt to get this written down connectedly.

For a considerable section of the moderately educated public, with historical ideas fragmentary and restricted to mere periods and countries, the compilation of the _Outline of History_ has served already, and still serves, as a stimulant and a release--and no doubt, when its work is supplemented by its two companions and when all that can be done now with life and matter is realised the three will help in a great number of cases to pull people’s minds together into a shape that will dispose them to full participation in the new movement. But at the most exaggerated estimate possible, these works constitute a merely provisional “Bible,” and the measure of their success will be marked by the promptitude of their replacement by worthier successors.

Such compilations cannot but have many of the characteristic defects of pioneer and elementary work; they have often to achieve their ends by going rather roughly over secondary difficulties that would otherwise delay their production indefinitely. Yet at the outset they will be of use in marking out the shape and scope of the general concepts of the Open Conspiracy. At the outset, the Open Conspiracy, as it reaches beyond the range of exceptionally well-informed and mentally active people, must be very largely an educational propaganda of such material. Only later can it hope to relinquish this part of its task to renascent educational organisations which can be trusted to ensure a firm foundation for the modern conception of life.

The form in which the Open Conspiracy will first appear will certainly not be that of a centralised organisation. Its most natural and convenient method of coming into being will be the formation of small groups of friends, family groups, groups of students and employees or other sorts of people meeting and conversing frequently in the course of their normal occupations, who will exchange views and find themselves in agreement upon the general idea. Fundamentally important issues upon which unanimity must be achieved from the outset are, firstly, the entirely provisional nature of all existing governments, and the entirely 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. People who do not grasp the vital significance of these test issues do not really begin to understand the Open Conspiracy. 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 with kindred groups for common ends. They can take up a variety of activities to develop a sense and habit of combined action and feel their way to greater enterprises.

We have shown already that the Open Conspiracy must be heterogeneous in origin. Young men and young women may be collected into groups arranged upon lines not unlike those of the Bohemian Sokols or the Italian Fasci. Such groups may easily have an athletic and recreational side. These initial groups will be of no uniform pattern. They will be of very different size, average age, social experience and influence. Their particular activities will be determined by these things. It is highly improbable that the name of the Open Conspiracy will be applied to any of them. That is just a provisional name in these Blue Prints. Their diverse qualities and influences will express themselves by diverse titles. A group of students may find itself capable of little more than self-education and personal propaganda; a group of middle-class people in a small town may find its small resources fully engaged at first in such things as, for example, seeing that desirable literature is available for sale or in the local public library, protecting books and news-vendors from suppression, or influencing local teachers. Most parents of school-children can press for the teaching of universal history and sound biology and protest against the inculcation of aggressive patriotism. On the other hand, a group of ampler experience and resources may undertake the printing, publication and distribution of literature, and exercise considerable influence upon public opinion in turning education in the right direction. The League of Nations movement, the Birth Control movement and most radical and socialist societies are fields into which groups may go to find adherents more than half prepared for them. The Open Conspiracy is a fuller and ampler movement into which these incomplete activities must necessarily merge as its idea takes possession of men’s imaginations.

From the outset, the Open Conspiracy will set its face against militarism. There is a plain present need for the organisation now, before war comes again, of an open and explicit refusal to serve in any war--or at most to serve in war, directly or indirectly, only after the issue has been fully and fairly submitted to arbitration. The time for a conscientious objection to war service is manifestly before and not after the onset of war. People who have acquiesced in a belligerent foreign policy by silence right up to the onset of war, have little to complain of if they are then compelled to serve. And a refusal to participate with one’s country in warfare is a preposterously incomplete gesture unless it is rounded off by the deliberate advocacy of a world _pax_, a world economic control and a restrained population, such as the idea of the Open Conspiracy embodies.

The putting upon record of its members’ reservation of themselves from any or all of the military obligations that may be thrust upon the country by military and diplomatic effort, will be, I think, the first considerable overt act of the Open Conspiracy groups. It will supply the practical incentive to bring many of them together in the first place. It will follow closely upon the beginning of the propaganda and it will probably necessitate the creation of regional or national _ad hoc_ committees for the establishment of a collective legal and political defensive for this dissent from current militant nationalism. It will bring the Open Conspiracy very early out of the province of discussion into the field of practical conflict. It will from the outset invest it with a very necessary quality of present applicability.

The anticipatory repudiation of military service, so far as this last may be imposed by existing governments in their factitious international rivalries, need not necessarily involve a denial of the need of military action on behalf of the world commonweal, for the suppression of nationalist brigandage, nor need it prevent the military training of members of the Open Conspiracy. It is simply the practical form of assertion that the normal militant diplomacy and warfare of the present time are offences against civilisation, processes in the nature of brigandage, sedition and civil war, and that serious men cannot be expected to play anything but a rôle of disapproval, non-participation or active prevention towards them. Our loyalty to our current government, we would intimate, is subject to its sane and adult behaviour.

These educational and propagandist groups drawing together into an organised resistance to militarism and to the excessive control of individuals by the makeshift governments of to-day, are the possible and probable form in which the Open Conspiracy will appear in the world. But they constitute only the earliest and more elementary grade of its activities, and we will presently go on to consider the more specialised and constructive forms its effort must evoke. Before doing so, however, we may say a little more about the structure and method of these initiatory groups.

Since they are bound to be different and miscellaneous in form, size, quality and ability, any early attempts to organise them into common general action or even into regular common gatherings are to be deprecated. 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 specialised ends. The groups will 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 group and hamper or estrange the more original and interesting forms.

There is a detestable sort of energetic human being which preys upon human societies, delighting in procedure, by-laws, votings, stereotyping and embarrassing “resolutions,” the “capture” of committees and organisations, the delegation of powers and suchlike politicians’ mischief. It is a blighting and accursed type, living and multiplying in rules and precedents as bugs in old wallpaper. The less the Open Conspiracy devotes itself to such elaborations in its gatherings, the better for its spirit. Always it will be well to keep its comprehensive organisation easy and simple.

Each group should come together and develop its ideas, frankly and freely, at something like a common level of understanding and in a friendly atmosphere. It would be advisable that most groups should assemble with some regularity, and since in a large part of the world Sunday is recognised as the day set apart from the concerns of the individual for the consideration of wider issues, that day may well be the usual day for group gatherings. A weekly meeting at which everyone attempts to be present seems to be indicated as the normal habit of a group. A member who finds weekly attendance at his group meeting irksome, probably belongs to the wrong group and should seek another.

A normal group in the early stage of its existence will find most of its energy engaged in confirming and cleaning up its conception of the Open Conspiracy and in dealing with people invited to join in, trying out its ideas upon interested visitors and so forth. It will also experiment in outside activities determined by its special circumstances. The ordinary group must bear in mind that these practical activities must at first be preparatory and mainly self-educational. It must not subordinate its general mental task in them.

The clear conception of the Open Conspiracy is a considerable but necessary intellectual effort. A group of historical, biological and economic ideas and interpretations has to be assimilated and they are not by any means simple and obvious ideas. And in addition--and what is perhaps the more difficult part--many prevalent habits of mind and current assumptions have to be got rid of. The conception of the Open Conspiracy involves, for example, a sceptical and destructive criticism of personal-immortality religions and also of the sacred formulæ of communism. It can work, and may go far in certain ways, with Christians or Communists, but it cannot incorporate them so long as they are Christians or Communists. Vague goodwill for mankind, or for progress, and adhesions based on some partial approval of its spirit, its methods or its objective, are of no real value to an enterprise so huge in its ultimate intentions.

For the furtherance of its aims, the Open Conspiracy may work in alliance with all sorts of movements and people, but to take them into its own essential substance is an altogether different matter. Propaganda and education are seed-sowing and only in revivalist religion is an immediate, a simultaneous reaping attempted with the sowing of the seed. The general run of people are more eager to do than to understand, and from the beginning of its first overt activities the Open Conspiracy will have to deal with the friendly advances of those who will want to share in its effort without any proper assimilation of the ideas that promote it. This will be another reason for projecting its practical activities into the form of _ad hoc_ associations, into which outsiders with different or undeveloped religious, political, social and philosophical views may come without penetrating as permanent members into the actual groups, and it will also justify the helpful participation of the Open Conspiracy groups in definitely restricted movements which attend only to a portion of its programme. But many of those who first come into touch with the Open Conspiracy simply as helpers and allies will no doubt go on to a careful study of its general concepts and so to complete participation.

The groups of the Open Conspiracy, it may be reiterated, will vary much in leisure, knowledge, ability and scope. In the student world, in the associated world of special social, political and philosophical studies and in the world where speculative thought is combined with writing and discussion, groups will appear which turn naturally to the development and expression of the Open Conspiracy as their distinctive contribution. The concepts of the Open Conspiracy will appear increasingly in books and periodicals until some of these latter become recognised definitely as means of communication within the movement. It will acquire or provoke its own periodic literature. Such circles of “intelligentsia” will also supply lecturers and leaders of discussions who will be drawn upon by other groups and group combinations for visits of stimulus and elucidation.

From that, the spreading, growing and ripening groups will go on to combine with one another for local and regional meetings. People who have met first in _ad hoc_ activities will find themselves developing naturally and progressively into social association and a loose general organisation with the Open Conspiracy. Such an organisation should leave the fullest scope for group or even individual autonomy in particular cases. The only binding restraint upon independent initiatives in the Open Conspiracy should be its broad essential requirements, namely:

(1) The complete assertion, practical as well as theoretical, of the provisional nature of existing governments and of our acquiescence in them;

(2) The resolve to minimise by all available means the conflicts of these governments, their militant use of individuals and property and their interferences with the establishment of a world economic system;

(3) The determination to replace private local or national ownership of at least credit, transport and staple production by a responsible world directorate serving the common ends of the race;

(4) The practical recognition of the necessity for world biological controls, for example, of population and disease;

(5) The support of a minimum standard of individual freedom and welfare in the world; and

(6) The supreme duty of subordinating the personal life to the creation of a world directorate capable of these tasks and to the general advancement of human knowledge, capacity and power.

The admission therewith that our immortality is conditional and lies in the race and not in our individual selves.

_Chapter XIII_

EARLY CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF THE OPEN CONSPIRACY

In such terms we may sketch the practicable and possible opening phase of the Open Conspiracy.

We do not present it as a movement initiated by any individual or radiating from any particular centre. It arises naturally and necessarily from the present increase of knowledge and the broadening outlook of many minds throughout the world. It is reasonable therefore to anticipate its appearance all over the world in sporadic mutually independent groups and to recognise not only that they will be extremely various but that many of them will trail with them racial and regional habits and characteristics which will only be shaken off as its cosmopolitan character becomes imperatively evident. The passage from the partial anticipations of the Open Conspiracy that already abound everywhere to its complete and completely self-conscious statement may be made by almost imperceptible degrees. To-day it may seem no more than a visionary idea; to-morrow it may be realised as a world-wide force of opinion and will. People will pass with no great inconsistency from saying that the Open Conspiracy is impossible to saying that it has always been plain and clear to them, that to this fashion they have shaped their lives as long as they can remember.

In its opening phase, in the day of small things, quite minor accidents may help or delay the clear definition and popularisation of its main ideas. The changing pattern of public events may disperse or concentrate attention upon it, or it may win the early adherence of men of exceptional resources, energy or ability. It is impossible to foretell the speed of its advance. Its development may be slower or faster, direct or devious, but the logic of accumulating realisations thrusts it forward, will persist in thrusting it on, and sooner or later it will be discovered, conscious and potent, the working religion of most sane and energetic people.

Meanwhile our supreme virtues must be faith and persistence.

So far we have considered only two of the main activities of the Open Conspiracy, the one being its propaganda of confidence in the possible world commonweal and the other its immediate practical attempt to systematise resistance to militant and competitive imperialism and nationalism. But such things are merely its groundwork undertakings; they do no more than clear the site and make the atmosphere possible for its organised constructive efforts.

Directly we turn to that we turn to questions of special knowledge, special effort and special organisation.

Let us consider first the general advancement of science, the protection and support of scientific research and the diffusion of scientific knowledge. These things fall within the normal scheme of duty for the members of the Open Conspiracy. The world of science and experiment is the region of origin of nearly all the great initiatives that characterise our times; the Open Conspiracy owes its inspiration, its existence, its form and direction entirely to the changes of condition these initiatives have brought about, and yet a large number of scientific workers live outside the sphere of sympathy in which we may expect the Open Conspiracy to materialise, and collectively their political and social influence upon the community is extraordinarily small. Having regard to the immensity of its contributions and the incalculable value of its promise to the modern community, science--research, that is, and the diffusion of scientific knowledge--is extraordinarily neglected, starved and threatened by hostile interference. This is largely because it has no strong unifying organisation and cannot in itself develop such an organisation.

Science is a hard mistress and the first condition of successful scientific work is that the scientific man should stick to his research. The world of science is therefore in itself, at its core, a miscellany of specialists, often very ungracious specialists, and, rather than offer him help and co-operation, it calls for understanding, tolerance and service from the man of more general intelligence and wider purpose. The company of scientific men is less like a host of guiding angels than like a swarm of marvellous bees--endowed with stings--which must be hived and cherished and multiplied by the Open Conspiracy.