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PRAGMATIC UTOPIANISM AND RACE: H. G. WELLS AS SOCIAL SCIENTIST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2017

DUNCAN BELL*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

H. G. Wells was one of the most celebrated writers in the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Famed for his innovative fiction, he was also an influential advocate of socialism and the world-state. What is much less well known is that he was a significant contributor to debates about the nature of social science. This article argues that Wells's account of social science in general, and sociology in particular, was shaped by an idiosyncratic philosophical pragmatism. In order to demonstrate how his philosophical arguments inflected his social thought, it explores his attack on prevailing theories of race, while also highlighting the limits of his analysis. The article concludes by tracing the reception of Wells's ideas among social scientists and political thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic. Although his program for utopian sociology attracted few disciples, his arguments about the dynamics of modern societies found a large audience.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

I'd like to thank the following for their valuable comments on the paper: Sarah Cole, Simon James, Krishan Kumar, Patrick Parrinder and the Modern Intellectual History referees. Eliza Garnsey provided superb research assistance. Invaluable financial support was provided by the Leverhulme Trust. All the usual disclaimers apply.

References

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4 Wells, H. G., “The Contemporary Novel” (1912), in Wells, An Englishman Looks at the World (London, 1914), 148–70, at 160Google Scholar. Wells wrote to Balfour, praising his skepticism: Wells to Balfour, 26 Aug. 1904, in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, ed. David Smith, 4 vols. (London, 1998), 2: 41.

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16 J. Graham Brooks, writing to H. G. Wells (5 Sept. 1920), quoted in Hardy, “H. G. Wells and William James,” 131.

17 James to Wells, 4 Dec. 1906, in Correspondence of William James, 11: 290.

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33 Wells to Mudie-Smith, 6 Feb. 1904, in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, 2: 8. Initially, the papers of the society were published in three hardbound volumes of Sociological Papers (London, 1905–7), published by Macmillan. In 1908 a regular journal, the Sociological Review, was founded.

34 Wells to Branford, [May?] 1905, Foundations of British Sociology Archive (FBS), Keele University, GB 172. The Martin Wight chair was initially shared by Hobhouse and Edward Westermarck.

35 Wells to Balfour, 10 May 1905, in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, 2: 72. Wells made a case for the state endowment of “talent” in Mankind in the Making (London, 1903), chap. 10.

36 See [Lewis Mumford?], “H. G. Wells,” memo, FBS papers, GB 172 LP/11/1/2. In January 1905 Wells became an associate of the Institut international de sociologie.

37 Sociological Papers, 1: 284.

38 Halliday, R. J., “The Sociological Movement, the Sociological Society, and the Genesis of Academic Sociology in Britain,” Sociological Review 16/3 (1968), 377–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a sympathetic account of Hobhouse see Scott, John, “Leonard Hobhouse as a Social Theorist,” Journal of Classical Sociology 16/4 (2016), 349–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Wells, Mankind in the Making, 37–40; Sociological Papers, 1: 58–60.

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42 Branford to Wells, 6 May 1905, FBS papers.

43 Wells to Branford, 25 March, 9 May, 17 Oct., ? Oct., 1905; Branford to Wells, 9 Nov. 1905, FBS papers.

44 H. G. Wells, “The So-Called Science of Sociology,” in Wells, An Englishman Looks at the World, 192–207, at 192.

45 Ibid., 194.

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49 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 195, 196.

50 Ibid., 199.

51 Ibid., 198. Wells suggested that Darwin did not follow the scientific method, as conventionally understood (ibid., 198). On this intriguing claim see Kumar, “Wells and the So-Called Science,” 214–15 n.

52 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 197.

53 Ibid., 197.

54 Wells, First and Last Things, 41; Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 200. See also the summary in Wells, H. G., An Experiment in Autobiography, vol. 2 (London, 2008; first published 1934), 657–8.Google Scholar

55 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 199–201, 201.

56 Wells, New Worlds, 221–2.

57 Wells, A Modern Utopia, 61, 62. Conversely, he attacked (unnamed) contemporary economists who refused to generalize and were left “wallowing in a mud of statistics” (63). He cited Giddings's Principles of Sociology and Bagehot's Economic Studies as valuable correctives. For further criticisms of political economy, see Wells, H. G., The Future in America: A Search after Realities (London, 1906), 18.Google Scholar

58 Wells, New Worlds, 222. He argued that Marx inherited many of their conceptual problems (224–5, 229–30).

59 Ibid., 223.

60 Wells, A Modern Utopia, 61.

61 Durkheim, “On the Relation,” 197–8.

62 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 192, 202. For further critiques of Spencer see Wells, A Modern Utopia, 38; Wells, New Worlds, 112.

63 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 193. See also Wells, A Modern Utopia, 184, 213; Wells, First and Last Things, 40. Frederic Harrison, the leading British positivist, declared that Wells (and Shaw and Chesterton), could “hardly be accepted as ‘the sources’ of scientific sociology.” Frederic Harrison, review of C. Masterman, The Condition of England, Sociological Review 2/3 (1909), 396. Wells would have concurred.

64 As Martha Vogeler notes, here Wells mischaracterized Comte. Martha Vogeler, “Wells and Positivism” in Parrinder and Rolfe, Wells under Revision, 181–91, at 185.

65 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 194. McLean, Steven, The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science (Basingstoke, 2009), 190–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Wells's ideas about competition were influenced by Spencer. However, such ideas were common in Victorian evolutionary debate, whilst Wells's critiques of Spencer's philosophy, biology and politics were frequent and scathing.

66 H. G. Wells, “The Age of Specialisation,” in Wells, An Englishman Looks at the World, 240–45, at 244.

67 Wells, The Future in America, 101–2.

68 For a discussion of Wells's shifting views on the prophetic mission (“the anticipatory habit”) see Wells, The Future in America, chap. 1; Patrick Parrinder, Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy (Liverpool, 1995), chap. 2.

69 James to Wells, 6 June 1905, in Correspondence of William James, 11: 56; James to Wells, 15 April 1908, in ibid., 12: 8.

70 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 201.

71 Ibid., 203. So too were Atkinson's Primal Law, Andrew Lang's Social Origins, even Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Carlyle's The French Revolution, though the latter two displayed a “greater insistence upon the dramatic and picturesque elements in history” (203).

72 Wells, “The So-Called Science,” 206.

73 Ibid., 204.

74 Ibid., 205. See also Wells, A Modern Utopia, 217.

75 Wells, A Modern Utopia, 218, 224. On fin de siècle racial discourses see Lorimer, Douglas, Science, Race Relations and Resistance: Britain, 1870–1914 (Manchester, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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78 For examples see Wells, Anticipations, 54, 63, 137; Wells, Mankind in the Making 127; Wells, A Modern Utopia, 32, 138. David Smith claims in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, 2: 202, “There is less racism in the writings of Wells than virtually anyone in public life at that time.”

79 Wells, A Modern Utopia, 215, 216–17, 219.

80 Ibid., 219.

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92 Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago, 1903)Google Scholar, chap. 3. In Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (New York, 1920), 59, Du Bois invoked Wells as a sympathetic anti-imperialist. In an obituary in the Chicago Defender, 1 Dec. 1945, quoted in Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 3, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst, 1997), 93 n., he called Wells a “great genius.”

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95 Wells, The Future in America, 169, 170.

96 Ibid., 169, 171, 177.

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108 Wells, “Race Prejudice,” 383

109 Wells, Anticipations, 163.

110 Ibid., 168.

111 Ibid., 177.

112 Ibid., 158.

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117 Wells, Anticipations, chap. 8; Wells, Mankind in the Making, vii.

118 Wells, The Future in America, 123; H. G. Wells, “The American Population,” in Wells, An Englishman Looks at the World, 275–329.

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123 Wells, letter to Fortnightly Review, ? September 1905, in The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, 2: 81, 79.

124 Sociological Papers, 3: 373–4.

125 Sociological Papers, 3: 371–2

126 Sociological Papers, 3: 371–2, 375, 370–71, 374–5, 376. For a later response, acknowledging the diversity of sociology but, contra Wells, insisting that it could be scientific, see Rivers, W. H. R., “Sociology and Psychology,” Sociological Review 9 (1916), 113, at 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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150 Coker, Francis, Recent Political Thought (New York, 1934), 101–2, 121, 145, 333, 352.Google Scholar While often critical of Wells, William Walling, the prominent American socialist, nevertheless drew on him when comparing British socialism and American progressivism. William Walling, Progressivism—and After (New York, 1914), xxv–vii, 28–9, 241. See also his Socialism as It Is (New York, 19192), xi–xii, 3, 62–3, 155–60, 296, 325.

151 James to Wells, 4 Dec. 1906, in Correspondence of William James, 11: 290.

152 For a particularly positive example see the review by Auerbach, Jeffrey in North American Review 184/608 (1907), 292301.Google Scholar

153 Wells, The Future in America, 140. He reiterated the argument in New Worlds for Old, 111, 245.

154 Merriam, American Political Ideas, 386–7; Finer, Herman, Foreign Governments at Work (Oxford, 1921), 16Google Scholar; Vincent, G. E., “The State University in America,” Sociological Review 9/1 (1916), 4044, at 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mecklin, J. M., An Introduction to Social Ethics: The Social Conscience in a Democracy (New York, 1920), 9, 429Google Scholar; Hocking, William, Morale and Its Enemies (New York, 1918), 8082CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wallas, Human Nature and Politics, 192.

155 Coker, Francis, Readings in Political Philosophy (New York, 1914), xiii.Google Scholar

156 Droppers, Garrett, “Sense of the State,” Journal of Political Economy 15/2 (1907), 109–12, at 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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158 Clayton, Bruce, Forgotten Prophet: The Life of Randolph Bourne (Columbia, 1984), 70, 75, 101, 137–8, 238.Google Scholar

159 Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (Princeton, 2014), 4Google Scholar; Wells, The Future in America, 21.

160 Lippmann, A Preface to Politics, 118–20 (see also 10, 53, 111, 179–80); Lippmann, Walter, “Taking a Chance” (1915), in Lippmann, Force and Ideas: The Early Writings (London, 2000), 97–100, at 97Google Scholar. Wells is also discussed in Lippmann's Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest (New York, 1914), 286–7, 289–90, 318, and Public Opinion (New York, 1921), 140–41, 232.

161 Wyck Brooks, Van, The World of H. G. Wells (New York, 1915), 178.Google Scholar

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163 Partington, Building Cosmopolis. See also Rosenboim, Or, The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950 (Princeton, 2016)Google Scholar, chap. 7; Bell, “Imagining the World State.”