Herbert George Wells

New Worlds For Old Herbert George Wells

New Worlds for Old identifies two "Main Generalizations of Socialism": "The ideas of the private individual rights of the parent and of his isolated responsibility for his children are harmfully exaggerated in the contemporary world. "The idea of the private ownership of things and the rights of owners is enormously and mischievously exaggerated in the contemporary world."Wells advocates the replacement of a "social system, based on Private Ownership" with one based on the "spirit of service," arguing that this will be more productive as well as more just. He devotes several chapters to addressing objections to socialism, then analyzes the history of socialism. Wells places the origins of socialism in "a disconnected series of protests against the extreme theories of Individualism and Individualist Political Economy" and notes that the word dates from 1835; in its initial phase, he says, it was "immediately revolutionary" and teemed with "rash, suggestive schemes.