[Marxism] Fw: Good summer reading: Jack London's 'The Iron Heel'

["Graham M." <gkmilner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For those living in the Northern hemisphere, 'The Iron Heel' would make good 
winter reading too.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Graham M. 
To: socialist alliance 
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 5:19 AM
Subject: Good summer reading: Jack London's 'The Iron Heel'


Dear Comrades,
                       The novelist Jack London (1876-1916) has been pilloried 
by some sections of the left for his Anglo-Saxon racism, and for adhering to an 
individualist philosophy partly derived from a reading of Nietzsche.   But in 
spite of these important blemishes, London was nevertheless committed to a 
revolutionary socialist world outlook that was strongly influenced by the class 
struggle socialist ideas of Karl Marx.  

   London was born and brought up in the San Francisco working class, and left 
school at age 11.   He led an adventurous life at sea and as an Alaskan gold 
prospector, before turning his adventures and his prodigious reading into the 
subject matter for a successful series of short stories and novels.   Early 
examples included the novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang.   How he 
turned himself into a successful writer is described in the revealing 
autobiographical novel Martin Eden.

   In 1907 London, whose strong socialist views were well known, published an 
extraordinary novel that laid out a grim and apocalyptic future before the 
international labour movement. - The Iron Heel.   Although it has strong 
dystopic aspects, the novel in fact predicts the ultimate triumph of socialist 
democracy several centuries hence.   The text takes the form of the annotated 
'Everhard Manuscript', which dates from a period of repression following an 
unsuccessful revolt against the Iron Heel, a regime established in the USA in 
the early 20th century bearing all the hallmarks of fascism.   The manuscript, 
written by Avis, wife of Ernest Everhard, a revolutionary socialist leader, 
breaks off in mid sentence, and the exact fate of the Everhards remains unknown.

   The Iron Heel is a political novel, and a novel of ideas, and because of 
this the characterisation is admittedly by no means profoundly developed.   But 
the early chapters of the novel, in which the ideas of Marxist socialism are 
put forward with great verve by Ernest Everhard, the working-class 
revolutionary leader, are instructive and inspiring.   The descriptions of the 
socialist movement in the USA, the presentation of the international dimension 
of the struggle against capital, and the picture drawn of mass struggles by the 
labour movement against the ruling class, are all well done.   But it is in the 
prescient description of the 'Iron Heel' - the rule of the capitalist 
oligarchy, with its stormtroopers, secret police, mass repression and 
provocations against the left, as well as its alliance with the labour 
aristocracy, that brings to mind the reality of post-World War I fascism in 
Europe.

   London was denounced by the reformist socialist leaders of his day for 
spreading pessimism and for reinforcing the 'apocalyptic' view of socialist 
advance.   His book caused a storm.   The latter chapters of The Iron Heel 
describe, in graphic detail, the failed revolt against the oligarchy - a revolt 
that had its central location in Chicago.   These chapters depict the heroism 
of the workers in the 'Chicago Commune', as they fight block by block, and 
skyscraper by skyscraper, against the soldiers and the mercenaries of the 
regime.   These scenes stay in the memory of the reader.

   Jack London's daughter Joan sent a copy of The Iron Heel to the exiled 
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico, in 1937.   Trotsky read the novel 
and was deeply impressed by it.   He wrote, of London's vision in the book:


   '...still more astonishing is the genuinely prophetic vision of the methods 
by which the Iron Heel will sustain its domination over crushed mankind...   
Over the mass of the deprived rise the castes of labor aristocracy, of 
praetorian army, of an all-penetrating police, with the financial oligarchy at 
the top.   In reading it one does not believe his own eyes: it is precisely the 
picture of fascism, of its economy, of its governmental technique, its 
political psychology!   The fact is incontestible: in 1907 Jack London already 
foresaw and described the fascist regime as the inevitable result of the defeat 
of the proletarian revolution'.   [Leon Trotsky On Literature and Art ed. Paul 
Siegel (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1970) pp.223-4]


   The Iron Heel may not currently be in print, but if not it may readily be 
obtained second-hand through internet sites like Abebooks.   Alternatively, the 
WA State Library system has compendium editions of the works of Jack London.


                                                                                
    In solidarity,


                                                                                
                    Graham Milner
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