Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Penguin Classics (2006), Edition: annotated edition, Paperback, 304 pages
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Anthony Meredith, a scholar in about the year 2600 AD (or 419 B.O.M. - the Brotherhood of Man), annotates the "Everhard Manuscript", an account that chronicles the years from 1912 to 1932 when the great "Iron Heel" oligarchy rose to power in the United States..
User reviews
LibraryThing member ncgraham
Out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise that flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.
I chose to
This is the second of London’s novels that I’ve read, and as with The Call of the Wild, I found myself disagreeing with much of his philosophy, and at the same time enjoying his craft. I was particularly fascinated by the intertexuality—or, to be more accurate, the intratextuality—of The Iron Heel. The main narrative is a document penned by Avis Everhard, the wife of a prominent revolutionary from the socialist uprising of London’s imagined 20th century; it has been discovered, hundreds of years later, by a scholar who provides a frame narrative in the form of an introduction and footnotes. It is suggested that we take both narrators’ perspectives with a grain of salt—Avis is too emotionally bound up with the revolution, while the scholar is a bit snooty in his utopian enlightenment—and London has a lot of fun with the textual interplay. The fact that some of the footnotes are accurate late 19th and early 20th century anecdotes, and others are completely fictional, only makes sorting through the material more fun.
One of the results of this layering of narration makes the book unique as a piece of dystopian literature. It is simply this: we know there will be a happy ending. It will not come for a long time—centuries, in fact, all of them tragic and bloody—but the mere presence of an unbridled voice from the future proves that tyranny will end. And it seems clear that this future society is meant to be viewed as idyllic, even though certain aspects of our culture have disappeared over time, including the majority of H. G. Wells’s writings and the recipe for tamale. I couldn’t care less about Wells, but no tamales? Really? So much for Utopia.
One could complain about London’s characters, who often take a back seat to the larger conflict between the socialists and the Oligarchy (or Iron Heel). The most interesting to me were minor figures: Avis’s father, a scientist in all situations; Bishop Morehouse, a saint fighting for principles that few care about; Anna Roylston, a beautiful killer who makes the difficult decision to remain childless. Erenest Everhard, the presumed hero of the piece, is surrounded by such a halo of glory that is difficult to relate to him at all. Avis, the narrator, regularly subsumes herself in order to sketch his portrait, which is a pity, as she had the potential to become a much more interesting figure. The descriptions of their relationship frequently sent me into fits of laughter, although I admit that they disturbed me a bit as well. Take this one:
I lay long awake, listening in memory to the sound of his voice. I grew frightened at my thoughts. He was so unlike the men of my own class, so alien and so strong. His masterfulness delighted and terrified me, for my fancies roved until I found myself considering him as a lover, as a husband. I had always heard that the strength of men was an irresistible attraction to women; but he was too strong. ‘No, no!' I cried out. ‘It is impossible, absurd!’
“His masterfulness” indeed! One could pass this off as simple datedness, but judging from the little I know of London’s life, I’d say it was indicative of a deep-seated misogyny.
Again, my liking for the book is not based on any ideological similarities between London and myself. I am not in any sense a socialist. But I find his exploration of these issues fascinating, and his dialogical rhetoric surprisingly effective. The book does drag in places, but there are some powerful scenarios, such as Mr. Wickson’s revelation regarding the Iron Heel’s intentions, and certainly the Chicago Commune. Overall, I recommend the book.
Suggested audio pairing: Muse’s Absolution (also apocalyptic, anti-establishment, and—in places—a bit mushy).
I chose to
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open with this quote not only because it encapsulates the basic premise of The Iron Heel, but also because I think it gives the reader a good glimpse of Jack London’s writing style. I just love the phrase “rotten-ripe.” It conjures up a picture that no other pair of words might have. The use of alliteration for expressive effects always scores high with me (and London seems to love alliteration almost as much as I do—geeky, I know).This is the second of London’s novels that I’ve read, and as with The Call of the Wild, I found myself disagreeing with much of his philosophy, and at the same time enjoying his craft. I was particularly fascinated by the intertexuality—or, to be more accurate, the intratextuality—of The Iron Heel. The main narrative is a document penned by Avis Everhard, the wife of a prominent revolutionary from the socialist uprising of London’s imagined 20th century; it has been discovered, hundreds of years later, by a scholar who provides a frame narrative in the form of an introduction and footnotes. It is suggested that we take both narrators’ perspectives with a grain of salt—Avis is too emotionally bound up with the revolution, while the scholar is a bit snooty in his utopian enlightenment—and London has a lot of fun with the textual interplay. The fact that some of the footnotes are accurate late 19th and early 20th century anecdotes, and others are completely fictional, only makes sorting through the material more fun.
One of the results of this layering of narration makes the book unique as a piece of dystopian literature. It is simply this: we know there will be a happy ending. It will not come for a long time—centuries, in fact, all of them tragic and bloody—but the mere presence of an unbridled voice from the future proves that tyranny will end. And it seems clear that this future society is meant to be viewed as idyllic, even though certain aspects of our culture have disappeared over time, including the majority of H. G. Wells’s writings and the recipe for tamale. I couldn’t care less about Wells, but no tamales? Really? So much for Utopia.
One could complain about London’s characters, who often take a back seat to the larger conflict between the socialists and the Oligarchy (or Iron Heel). The most interesting to me were minor figures: Avis’s father, a scientist in all situations; Bishop Morehouse, a saint fighting for principles that few care about; Anna Roylston, a beautiful killer who makes the difficult decision to remain childless. Erenest Everhard, the presumed hero of the piece, is surrounded by such a halo of glory that is difficult to relate to him at all. Avis, the narrator, regularly subsumes herself in order to sketch his portrait, which is a pity, as she had the potential to become a much more interesting figure. The descriptions of their relationship frequently sent me into fits of laughter, although I admit that they disturbed me a bit as well. Take this one:
I lay long awake, listening in memory to the sound of his voice. I grew frightened at my thoughts. He was so unlike the men of my own class, so alien and so strong. His masterfulness delighted and terrified me, for my fancies roved until I found myself considering him as a lover, as a husband. I had always heard that the strength of men was an irresistible attraction to women; but he was too strong. ‘No, no!' I cried out. ‘It is impossible, absurd!’
“His masterfulness” indeed! One could pass this off as simple datedness, but judging from the little I know of London’s life, I’d say it was indicative of a deep-seated misogyny.
Again, my liking for the book is not based on any ideological similarities between London and myself. I am not in any sense a socialist. But I find his exploration of these issues fascinating, and his dialogical rhetoric surprisingly effective. The book does drag in places, but there are some powerful scenarios, such as Mr. Wickson’s revelation regarding the Iron Heel’s intentions, and certainly the Chicago Commune. Overall, I recommend the book.
Suggested audio pairing: Muse’s Absolution (also apocalyptic, anti-establishment, and—in places—a bit mushy).
Show Less
LibraryThing member gbill
Fascinating, and incredibly relevant today. London had seen poverty, the excesses of extreme capitalism, and a widening ‘wealth gap’ in the America of his day, and like many, advocated socialism as a more humane and fair system. Here he writes a cautionary tale about what he believed the
I don’t buy all of London’s views, and he obviously didn’t have the benefit of seeing just how disastrously communism would play out in the 20th century, but found his descriptions of the power dynamic between owners and workers, the rich and poor – and all of the implications of that – to be highly compelling. There are so many things to chew on here, as the book includes:
- Criticism of organized religion’s role in attempting to preserve the status quo, vs. preaching the real message of Christ … among other things, quoting several 19th century Southern church leaders justifying slavery.
- Political corruption in the form of lobbyists in Congress eating away at democracy and turning it into a plutocracy, despite voting and what people thought was rule of the people. He also points out decisions like Lochner v. New York (1905), which held that the New York law prohibiting work days longer than 10 hours and work weeks with more than 60 hours was unconstitutional – a sign that wealthy, conservative interests were at play, and which would continue on into the progressive era (something we may see repeating itself in the future).
- Echoes of Tolstoy’s idealistic suggestion to ending war – by the common man simply refusing to participate.
- The wealthy saying criticisms against them amounted to “class hatred” just as we see today on Fox News, and ironically without the self-reflection of what a system that accelerates the wealth gap amounts to. They also believe they are the saviors of society, when the protagonist finds them not only selfish, but surprised by their “absence of intellectual life.”
- London quotes statistics from 1900 as giving this breakdown of Americans: the Plutocratic (in this context, wealthy) class (1%), Middle Class (29%), and Proletarian Class (70%). It’s just fascinating to me to compare this to today, where we have increasing light shed on “the 1%”, which as of 2017 owned 40% of the nation’s wealth, and the bottom 90% owned a shockingly low 20%. In London’s vision, he sees the middle class being squeezed out of existence – and it’s this erosion that we see today.
- Criticism of the small businessmen who were angry about being run out of business by big businessmen, who could use economies of scale to better compete – saying that they had had no problem in successively driving others out of business, were motivated by the same principles, and were swimming upstream to think a system that produced lower costs could be undone. I thought this was fantastic. While I cringe over the big businesses today (e.g. Amazon), London’s comments through his character are insightful. His solution is not to limit the big business (“the machine”, as he calls it), but to have workers own it (or the government), spreading the wealth. He also believed in “excessive income taxes, graduated with ferocity, to destroy large accumulations.”
- The lengths to which the rich will go to preserve their wealth - buying off labor leaders, breaking unions and undermining them at every turn, sending agents out to incite violence so that armed force can be brought in, and most ominously, simply charging illegality of election results and then using violence. If that doesn’t make the hairs stand up on the back of your head, I don’t know what will.
The crisis that threatened American democracy in London’s time was alleviated with social programs following the Depression, leading to rise of the middle class – but we face the problem again in 2019 after decades of the middle class being eroded, starting with the Reagan-era economic policies and tax changes. The novel shows us how full circle we’ve come, and while I don’t think London’s solution of revolution or socialism/communism is the answer, I couldn’t help but feel while reading his book that we’re standing on the same precipice over an abyss, that selfish behavior leads to history inevitably repeating itself, and that grave outcomes are certainly possible – either in the form of violence and a civil war, or a plutocracy that continues to shed all pretenses of being a democracy. It’s chilling, chilling stuff, and fascinating to me how both systems can lead to autocratic power – via the Oligarchy as London describes it here (and which we see examples of), or via communist dictators who brutally enslave their people.
As a novel, it doesn’t hold up as well as it should, particularly in the chapters after the revolution breaks out, because it’s predominantly London essentially narrating events of violence. It’s also got a socialist leader who is too perfect – strong in mind and body, courageous, and uncannily prescient, and in that way, it reminded me of Chernyshevsky’s idealistic man in ‘What Is to be Done?’ Artistically the book works well in its first half, but starts faltering in its second half. I did like the journal format, footnoted centuries later by a fictional historian, an effective technique which allowed London to make comments on events from the late 19th century as well as the future, all seen from a distance.
One might consider reading this book in tandem with Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ because Rand presents a clearly different (and positive) view of industrialists – as leaders, thinkers, and creators, and instead criticized those that dragged them down via bureaucracy, or via 'levelizing' humanity (ala communism). Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, that absolute communism as in 20th century Russia/China is awful, and absolute capitalism as in the 19th century industrial revolution in Europe/America (and what we’ve trended towards over the last few decades) is also awful. A happy medium is what’s needed.
Quotes:
On business, he provides this footnote for ‘Wall Street’:
“Wall Street – so named from a street in ancient New York, where was situated the stock exchange, and where the irrational organization of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries of the country.”
On lawyers and the rich, from Theodore Roosevelt in a commencement speech to Harvard in 1905:
“We all know that, as things actually are, many of the most influential and most highly renumerated members of the Bar in every center of wealth, make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade the laws which were made to regulate, in the interests of the public, the uses of great wealth.”
On plutocracy, from John C. Calhoun:
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.”
And this one, which is stunning, which London says is Abraham Lincoln just before his assassination, but was actually written by John Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary a couple of decades after his death (still, wow!):
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudice of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
On the rich, from John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’:
“Whenever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of superiority.”
On the wealth gap, this from Lord Avebury, and Englishman in the House of Lords, in 1906:
“The unrest in Europe, the spread of socialism, and the ominous rise of Anarchism, are warmings to the governments and the ruling classes that the conditions of the working classes in Europe is becoming intolerable, and that if a revolution is to be avoided some steps must be taken to increase wages, reduce the hours of labor, and lower the prices of the necessities of life.”
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conflict inherent to capitalism between owners and workers would inevitably lead to – civil war, or revolution – and comes across even as advocating it. He does this by presenting a journal from one of the wife of one of the (fictional) early Socialist leaders, uncovered by historians in the future, after man had endured hundreds of years under the “Iron Heel” of an Oligarchy, and then were hundreds of years into a more enlightened “Brotherhood of Man”. I don’t buy all of London’s views, and he obviously didn’t have the benefit of seeing just how disastrously communism would play out in the 20th century, but found his descriptions of the power dynamic between owners and workers, the rich and poor – and all of the implications of that – to be highly compelling. There are so many things to chew on here, as the book includes:
- Criticism of organized religion’s role in attempting to preserve the status quo, vs. preaching the real message of Christ … among other things, quoting several 19th century Southern church leaders justifying slavery.
- Political corruption in the form of lobbyists in Congress eating away at democracy and turning it into a plutocracy, despite voting and what people thought was rule of the people. He also points out decisions like Lochner v. New York (1905), which held that the New York law prohibiting work days longer than 10 hours and work weeks with more than 60 hours was unconstitutional – a sign that wealthy, conservative interests were at play, and which would continue on into the progressive era (something we may see repeating itself in the future).
- Echoes of Tolstoy’s idealistic suggestion to ending war – by the common man simply refusing to participate.
- The wealthy saying criticisms against them amounted to “class hatred” just as we see today on Fox News, and ironically without the self-reflection of what a system that accelerates the wealth gap amounts to. They also believe they are the saviors of society, when the protagonist finds them not only selfish, but surprised by their “absence of intellectual life.”
- London quotes statistics from 1900 as giving this breakdown of Americans: the Plutocratic (in this context, wealthy) class (1%), Middle Class (29%), and Proletarian Class (70%). It’s just fascinating to me to compare this to today, where we have increasing light shed on “the 1%”, which as of 2017 owned 40% of the nation’s wealth, and the bottom 90% owned a shockingly low 20%. In London’s vision, he sees the middle class being squeezed out of existence – and it’s this erosion that we see today.
- Criticism of the small businessmen who were angry about being run out of business by big businessmen, who could use economies of scale to better compete – saying that they had had no problem in successively driving others out of business, were motivated by the same principles, and were swimming upstream to think a system that produced lower costs could be undone. I thought this was fantastic. While I cringe over the big businesses today (e.g. Amazon), London’s comments through his character are insightful. His solution is not to limit the big business (“the machine”, as he calls it), but to have workers own it (or the government), spreading the wealth. He also believed in “excessive income taxes, graduated with ferocity, to destroy large accumulations.”
- The lengths to which the rich will go to preserve their wealth - buying off labor leaders, breaking unions and undermining them at every turn, sending agents out to incite violence so that armed force can be brought in, and most ominously, simply charging illegality of election results and then using violence. If that doesn’t make the hairs stand up on the back of your head, I don’t know what will.
The crisis that threatened American democracy in London’s time was alleviated with social programs following the Depression, leading to rise of the middle class – but we face the problem again in 2019 after decades of the middle class being eroded, starting with the Reagan-era economic policies and tax changes. The novel shows us how full circle we’ve come, and while I don’t think London’s solution of revolution or socialism/communism is the answer, I couldn’t help but feel while reading his book that we’re standing on the same precipice over an abyss, that selfish behavior leads to history inevitably repeating itself, and that grave outcomes are certainly possible – either in the form of violence and a civil war, or a plutocracy that continues to shed all pretenses of being a democracy. It’s chilling, chilling stuff, and fascinating to me how both systems can lead to autocratic power – via the Oligarchy as London describes it here (and which we see examples of), or via communist dictators who brutally enslave their people.
As a novel, it doesn’t hold up as well as it should, particularly in the chapters after the revolution breaks out, because it’s predominantly London essentially narrating events of violence. It’s also got a socialist leader who is too perfect – strong in mind and body, courageous, and uncannily prescient, and in that way, it reminded me of Chernyshevsky’s idealistic man in ‘What Is to be Done?’ Artistically the book works well in its first half, but starts faltering in its second half. I did like the journal format, footnoted centuries later by a fictional historian, an effective technique which allowed London to make comments on events from the late 19th century as well as the future, all seen from a distance.
One might consider reading this book in tandem with Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ because Rand presents a clearly different (and positive) view of industrialists – as leaders, thinkers, and creators, and instead criticized those that dragged them down via bureaucracy, or via 'levelizing' humanity (ala communism). Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, that absolute communism as in 20th century Russia/China is awful, and absolute capitalism as in the 19th century industrial revolution in Europe/America (and what we’ve trended towards over the last few decades) is also awful. A happy medium is what’s needed.
Quotes:
On business, he provides this footnote for ‘Wall Street’:
“Wall Street – so named from a street in ancient New York, where was situated the stock exchange, and where the irrational organization of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries of the country.”
On lawyers and the rich, from Theodore Roosevelt in a commencement speech to Harvard in 1905:
“We all know that, as things actually are, many of the most influential and most highly renumerated members of the Bar in every center of wealth, make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade the laws which were made to regulate, in the interests of the public, the uses of great wealth.”
On plutocracy, from John C. Calhoun:
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.”
And this one, which is stunning, which London says is Abraham Lincoln just before his assassination, but was actually written by John Nicolay, Lincoln’s private secretary a couple of decades after his death (still, wow!):
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudice of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
On the rich, from John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’:
“Whenever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of superiority.”
On the wealth gap, this from Lord Avebury, and Englishman in the House of Lords, in 1906:
“The unrest in Europe, the spread of socialism, and the ominous rise of Anarchism, are warmings to the governments and the ruling classes that the conditions of the working classes in Europe is becoming intolerable, and that if a revolution is to be avoided some steps must be taken to increase wages, reduce the hours of labor, and lower the prices of the necessities of life.”
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LibraryThing member daschaich
A conflicted work, revealing a conflicted author: To mark the 100th anniversary of the 1908 publication of Jack London's The Iron Heel, The Socialist Standard published an article attacking the book as "a decidedly anti-socialist work... considered a classic of its time... for all the wrong
The Iron Heel is presented as an historical manuscript discovered some seven centuries in the future, a draft of memoirs written in the early 1930s by Avis Everhard, a socialist revolutionary. Avis, assisted by footnotes from a future historian, relates the process through which first America and then the world is taken over by a brutal plutocratic dictatorship -- dubbed the "Iron Heel" -- in the years after 1912. The victory of the Iron Heel comes about despite the best efforts of Avis and her husband, Ernest Everhard, a brilliant socialist philosopher-warrior-prophet-king, "a super-man, a blond beast such as Nietzsche has described" (12), and, of course, the fictionalized persona of London himself. Right from the start, we are informed that the Iron Heel is to triumph and reign for centuries, all opposition forced underground into endless guerrilla warfare, which London modeled on the violent conflict between certain Russian revolutionists and the Tsar's Empire.
The greatest strength of London's novel, emphasized by Jonathan Auerbach's introduction to the 2006 Penguin edition, is the way both the Iron Heel and the armed resistance opposing it mirror each other in their tactics, strategy, and even ideology. Both infiltrate each other's organizations, and then infiltrate each other's infiltrations; both judge and execute; both must kill or be killed; both know their cause is just and righteous, the source and protection of all that is good in the world; both view the masses/working class/common people as a primitive, backwards and barbaric force to be feared and manipulated against their enemies. The only character who does no harm is merely caught in the crossfire, anonymously gunned down in the streets of Chicago.
Unfortunately, such positive aspects of the novel are largely overwhelmed by other features both irritating and troubling. On the purely irritating end, the future historian's footnotes are sometimes used to good effect, but often simply tack on quotes or citations that are too pedantic or artificial to fit in text itself. Forking these off into footnotes doesn't help. And speaking of artificiality, the political debates in the earlier chapters often read less like dialogue than like a simplistic Marxist catechism -- occasional question, long uninterrupted response.
Much more disturbing is London's half romantic, half apocalyptic vision of ceaseless warfare between bands of Nietzschean supermen and the shadowy, oppressive state. Coupled with his (perhaps unconscious) racism and (very conscious) "social Darwinism", this helps account for the book's otherwise puzzling appeal to far-right "survivalists" and white nationalists. Indeed, although London's future historian comes from a peaceful, democratic socialist society, much of The Iron Heel is a thinly-veiled social-Darwinist attack on the Socialists of London's day. In the novel, the Socialists disregard Everhard's (London's) warnings about the coming struggle for survival. They are weak and pacifistic, relying on democracy, education, and mass organization to build the co-operative commonwealth, and so they fail. They are completely smashed by the Iron Heel, which persists for centuries before naturally falling apart under its own weight.
The style of The Iron Heel as a whole struck me as much more like that of Ayn Rand than that of Karl Marx or any other socialist. The chief difference from Rand's works is that instead of caring only for themselves, London's super-men care (for reasons that are far from convincing) only for a working class that is almost completely invisible. Common people are helpless to liberate themselves, and all the Iron Heel has to do to retain power is buy off (or kill off) whatever super-men rear their heads amongst the "people of the abyss". No wonder the International Socialist Review of the time panned the book as "well calculated to repel many whose addition to our forces is sorely needed".
Mussolini was far from the only ex-socialist whose views of struggle, strength, and survival led him to abandon democracy and buy into an Iron Heel of his own. Although Jack London died in 1916 at the age of 40, many see in his work strong suggestions that he was on a similar trajectory. In 1945, George Orwell mused that had London lived longer, "it is hard to be sure where his political allegiance would have lain... One can imagine him in the Communist Party, one can imagine him falling victim to the Nazi racial theory, and one can imagine him the quixotic champion of some Trotskyist or Anarchist sect." In the end, I found the actual story in The Iron Heel considerably less interesting than what the book reveals about its author.
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reasons". This naturally piqued my interest, and put the novel on my radar to pick up from the library.The Iron Heel is presented as an historical manuscript discovered some seven centuries in the future, a draft of memoirs written in the early 1930s by Avis Everhard, a socialist revolutionary. Avis, assisted by footnotes from a future historian, relates the process through which first America and then the world is taken over by a brutal plutocratic dictatorship -- dubbed the "Iron Heel" -- in the years after 1912. The victory of the Iron Heel comes about despite the best efforts of Avis and her husband, Ernest Everhard, a brilliant socialist philosopher-warrior-prophet-king, "a super-man, a blond beast such as Nietzsche has described" (12), and, of course, the fictionalized persona of London himself. Right from the start, we are informed that the Iron Heel is to triumph and reign for centuries, all opposition forced underground into endless guerrilla warfare, which London modeled on the violent conflict between certain Russian revolutionists and the Tsar's Empire.
The greatest strength of London's novel, emphasized by Jonathan Auerbach's introduction to the 2006 Penguin edition, is the way both the Iron Heel and the armed resistance opposing it mirror each other in their tactics, strategy, and even ideology. Both infiltrate each other's organizations, and then infiltrate each other's infiltrations; both judge and execute; both must kill or be killed; both know their cause is just and righteous, the source and protection of all that is good in the world; both view the masses/working class/common people as a primitive, backwards and barbaric force to be feared and manipulated against their enemies. The only character who does no harm is merely caught in the crossfire, anonymously gunned down in the streets of Chicago.
Unfortunately, such positive aspects of the novel are largely overwhelmed by other features both irritating and troubling. On the purely irritating end, the future historian's footnotes are sometimes used to good effect, but often simply tack on quotes or citations that are too pedantic or artificial to fit in text itself. Forking these off into footnotes doesn't help. And speaking of artificiality, the political debates in the earlier chapters often read less like dialogue than like a simplistic Marxist catechism -- occasional question, long uninterrupted response.
Much more disturbing is London's half romantic, half apocalyptic vision of ceaseless warfare between bands of Nietzschean supermen and the shadowy, oppressive state. Coupled with his (perhaps unconscious) racism and (very conscious) "social Darwinism", this helps account for the book's otherwise puzzling appeal to far-right "survivalists" and white nationalists. Indeed, although London's future historian comes from a peaceful, democratic socialist society, much of The Iron Heel is a thinly-veiled social-Darwinist attack on the Socialists of London's day. In the novel, the Socialists disregard Everhard's (London's) warnings about the coming struggle for survival. They are weak and pacifistic, relying on democracy, education, and mass organization to build the co-operative commonwealth, and so they fail. They are completely smashed by the Iron Heel, which persists for centuries before naturally falling apart under its own weight.
The style of The Iron Heel as a whole struck me as much more like that of Ayn Rand than that of Karl Marx or any other socialist. The chief difference from Rand's works is that instead of caring only for themselves, London's super-men care (for reasons that are far from convincing) only for a working class that is almost completely invisible. Common people are helpless to liberate themselves, and all the Iron Heel has to do to retain power is buy off (or kill off) whatever super-men rear their heads amongst the "people of the abyss". No wonder the International Socialist Review of the time panned the book as "well calculated to repel many whose addition to our forces is sorely needed".
Mussolini was far from the only ex-socialist whose views of struggle, strength, and survival led him to abandon democracy and buy into an Iron Heel of his own. Although Jack London died in 1916 at the age of 40, many see in his work strong suggestions that he was on a similar trajectory. In 1945, George Orwell mused that had London lived longer, "it is hard to be sure where his political allegiance would have lain... One can imagine him in the Communist Party, one can imagine him falling victim to the Nazi racial theory, and one can imagine him the quixotic champion of some Trotskyist or Anarchist sect." In the end, I found the actual story in The Iron Heel considerably less interesting than what the book reveals about its author.
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
"Did you notice how he began like a lamb—Everhard, I mean, and how quickly he became a roaring lion? He has a splendidly disciplined mind. He would have made a good scientist if his energies had been directed that way." (23)
I knew Jack London wrote a "yellow peril" invasion novel; I had not known
I read this before H. G. Wells's two "biocratic" novels, Anticipations and A Modern Utopia, simply because I got ahold of it first, but am writing it up afterwards, which is eminently appropriate, not just because it was published later, but because Anticipations was a direct influence on London. In Anticipations, Wells coined the term "People of the Abyss" to refer to what he considered the lowest classes, those who didn't even labor. London actually used the term as the title of a 1903 memoir he wrote about life in London's East End, and he recycles the term here as well. The form of this book feels a bit Wellsian, too, in that it's told in the form of a book manuscript from the future, one written in the mid-20th century, but not published until the 27th, and it includes footnotes from a 27th-century annotator making clear the 20th-century cultural context to a 27th-century audience. Though actually I don't think Wells wrote one of those "found future manuscript" books until The Shape of Things to Come, which was almost three decades later. (The World Set Free seems like a future history book, but this isn't made explicit, and it also comes after Iron Heel.) It is a format others were using around this time; Henry Lazarus's The English Revolution of the Twentieth Century and Frank Attfield Fawkes's Marmaduke, Emperor of Europe are the two that stick out to me. Did London read these? Maybe he read something like them, or maybe he invented his own take on the idea out of whole cloth. The idea of us reading future annotations aimed at an imaginary future audience is clever, and a neat innovation of London, who in explaining what the 20th century takes for granted, makes it clear what the 27th century does not take for granted.
The whole book is thus supposedly by Avis Everhard, the wife of Ernest Everhard, one of the key participants in a failed socialist uprising; it gives Ernest's life and the uprising from her perspective. There's some neat stuff here, especially Avis's slow radicalization and her as a deep cover agent. But much of the later sections of the novel are told at a remove, so we don't actually live the events along with her, but just hear them summarized in retrospect. As a book, it's basically fine, but it does give good insight into a particular kind of early 20th-century socialist thinking, one that I am attempting to surface (albeit in Britain) in my own project. Ernest is a man who believes that only violence can reject capitalism and bring about socialism, and as Harpham says, the main characters seem to be as disgusted by the lower classes they are supposedly helping as they are by the upper classes they are in opposition to. The "superman socialist" decides who lives and who dies, and if you die in the cause of socialism, the death is justified: "It would have meant […] great loss of life, but no revolutionist hesitates at such things" (220). As my epigraph above highlights, Everhard is not—unlike how Lifton defines the biocrat, and unlike the Samurai of Wells's two utopias—a man of science or medicine, but London is keen to highlight that he thinks like a scientist, but sees with even more clarity, and this is what gives him the moral authority that he needs to commit violence.
I knew Jack London wrote a "yellow peril" invasion novel; I had not known
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that he also wrote a piece of revolutionary science fiction until I was reading Geoffrey Harpham's 1975 essay "Jack London and the Tradition of Superman Socialism." Harpham uses the term "superman socialist" to describe the protagonist of The Iron Heel, Ernest Everhard. According to Harpham, the superman socialist “[m]erg[ed] the vision of Just Society with the idea of the romantic hero” (23). The superman socialist has “scientific, factual bases for his sense of superiority” (24), but he “renounces Nietzschean amorality in favor of the proper use of genius in struggling for a better social order” (25). The superman socialist knows his violence is justified because a better world emerges, no matter who dies to create it; Harpham argues that superman socialism uses the same rhetoric as the forces it opposed, calling it “a barbaric American Kiplingism in which the fit survived and the unfit perished, to nobody’s regret—a view which lent itself to a sanction not only of superman socialism, but of empire and militarism as well” (26). I found the concept very useful in writing about Victorian sf novels featuring Darwinism; it seemed to me that the superman socialist was another form of what I call, drawing on Robert Lifton, the biocrat. But I used the concept so much I really felt I ought to go read The Iron Heel for myself!I read this before H. G. Wells's two "biocratic" novels, Anticipations and A Modern Utopia, simply because I got ahold of it first, but am writing it up afterwards, which is eminently appropriate, not just because it was published later, but because Anticipations was a direct influence on London. In Anticipations, Wells coined the term "People of the Abyss" to refer to what he considered the lowest classes, those who didn't even labor. London actually used the term as the title of a 1903 memoir he wrote about life in London's East End, and he recycles the term here as well. The form of this book feels a bit Wellsian, too, in that it's told in the form of a book manuscript from the future, one written in the mid-20th century, but not published until the 27th, and it includes footnotes from a 27th-century annotator making clear the 20th-century cultural context to a 27th-century audience. Though actually I don't think Wells wrote one of those "found future manuscript" books until The Shape of Things to Come, which was almost three decades later. (The World Set Free seems like a future history book, but this isn't made explicit, and it also comes after Iron Heel.) It is a format others were using around this time; Henry Lazarus's The English Revolution of the Twentieth Century and Frank Attfield Fawkes's Marmaduke, Emperor of Europe are the two that stick out to me. Did London read these? Maybe he read something like them, or maybe he invented his own take on the idea out of whole cloth. The idea of us reading future annotations aimed at an imaginary future audience is clever, and a neat innovation of London, who in explaining what the 20th century takes for granted, makes it clear what the 27th century does not take for granted.
The whole book is thus supposedly by Avis Everhard, the wife of Ernest Everhard, one of the key participants in a failed socialist uprising; it gives Ernest's life and the uprising from her perspective. There's some neat stuff here, especially Avis's slow radicalization and her as a deep cover agent. But much of the later sections of the novel are told at a remove, so we don't actually live the events along with her, but just hear them summarized in retrospect. As a book, it's basically fine, but it does give good insight into a particular kind of early 20th-century socialist thinking, one that I am attempting to surface (albeit in Britain) in my own project. Ernest is a man who believes that only violence can reject capitalism and bring about socialism, and as Harpham says, the main characters seem to be as disgusted by the lower classes they are supposedly helping as they are by the upper classes they are in opposition to. The "superman socialist" decides who lives and who dies, and if you die in the cause of socialism, the death is justified: "It would have meant […] great loss of life, but no revolutionist hesitates at such things" (220). As my epigraph above highlights, Everhard is not—unlike how Lifton defines the biocrat, and unlike the Samurai of Wells's two utopias—a man of science or medicine, but London is keen to highlight that he thinks like a scientist, but sees with even more clarity, and this is what gives him the moral authority that he needs to commit violence.
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LibraryThing member greeniezona
Well, if I wasn't a socialist before....
My first Bookslut 100 read of the year. Not so much I was expecting, based on both my prior exposure to Jack London and the description of this as a dystopian sf novel. It took me forever to read as only a few pages would be enough for me to get a righteous
Overall I would recommend this to those interested in under-appreciated works of the dystopian sf canon. Readers not ready to put this book in its historical context may be impatient with it.
My first Bookslut 100 read of the year. Not so much I was expecting, based on both my prior exposure to Jack London and the description of this as a dystopian sf novel. It took me forever to read as only a few pages would be enough for me to get a righteous
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rage going, and I'd have to put the book down and walk away for a bit. Not, you know, Octavia Butler rage inducing, but the fact that it would occur to me to make such a comparison at all is a little surprising. Like Butler, where it succeeded is where it felt familiar/possible/looming right around the next corner. Where it failed were the sudden zip-forwards just when we'd transitioned from backstory/motivation to action. Not constant, but there were a few places where I thought, "Wait, we're skipping over this part of the story, why?"Overall I would recommend this to those interested in under-appreciated works of the dystopian sf canon. Readers not ready to put this book in its historical context may be impatient with it.
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LibraryThing member Hae-Yu
Though praised by the likes of George Orwell, The Iron Heel is decidedly... socialism by the numbers. Perhaps the story explained standard socialist polemics to a contemporary audience in an appealing narrative and in that, gains its value. Since I have a high regard for Orwell, this novel was
The majority of the book is composed of speeches by the book's hero, Ernest Everhard, against various factions as narrated by his wife. These speeches are normally straw man arguments, wherein the author puts specious arguments in the mouths of the opponents and then shoots them down.
One particular episode that stands out is the accusation that theologians are logical relativists. I find it extraordinarily ironic that a materialist, atheist hero is defending absolutism and accusing theistic theologians of standing on relativistic grounds.
While disparaging liberal democracy, the story does not, in any way, describe the future socialist government or society. Various hints can be discerned in the footnotes by the imaginary future editor, but nothing concrete. Like many socialists of his day, he knew what he didn't like, but the future was empty platitudes.
Unlike Orwell, London had no original thought on the philosophy of socialism, at least in this book, instead restating contemporary socialist dogma. Perhaps his greatest contribution was predicting the shape of impending totalitarian governments (not just the fascists) with their spy games, double agents, agent provocateurs, underground opposition, ubiquitous informers, oppressive atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, summary executions, sham trials, disappearances, and so on. Although he predicted the Iron Heel would rise from the plutocracy, instead it came from the students, the lower bourgeois and the working classes.
The book's greatest flaw is the use of the hero's wife, Avis Everhard, to tell the tale. Jack London could not write women. Just as the Sea Wolf's romantic dialogues were incredibly annoying, Avis' unending maudlin fawning quickly gets old. Unfortunately, the whole story is told from her point of view. In the pseudo-Foreword, London himself probably recognized his fault by saying "forgive Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modeled her husband" and that he was "not so exceptional as his wife thought him to be."
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disappointing.The majority of the book is composed of speeches by the book's hero, Ernest Everhard, against various factions as narrated by his wife. These speeches are normally straw man arguments, wherein the author puts specious arguments in the mouths of the opponents and then shoots them down.
One particular episode that stands out is the accusation that theologians are logical relativists. I find it extraordinarily ironic that a materialist, atheist hero is defending absolutism and accusing theistic theologians of standing on relativistic grounds.
While disparaging liberal democracy, the story does not, in any way, describe the future socialist government or society. Various hints can be discerned in the footnotes by the imaginary future editor, but nothing concrete. Like many socialists of his day, he knew what he didn't like, but the future was empty platitudes.
Unlike Orwell, London had no original thought on the philosophy of socialism, at least in this book, instead restating contemporary socialist dogma. Perhaps his greatest contribution was predicting the shape of impending totalitarian governments (not just the fascists) with their spy games, double agents, agent provocateurs, underground opposition, ubiquitous informers, oppressive atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, summary executions, sham trials, disappearances, and so on. Although he predicted the Iron Heel would rise from the plutocracy, instead it came from the students, the lower bourgeois and the working classes.
The book's greatest flaw is the use of the hero's wife, Avis Everhard, to tell the tale. Jack London could not write women. Just as the Sea Wolf's romantic dialogues were incredibly annoying, Avis' unending maudlin fawning quickly gets old. Unfortunately, the whole story is told from her point of view. In the pseudo-Foreword, London himself probably recognized his fault by saying "forgive Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modeled her husband" and that he was "not so exceptional as his wife thought him to be."
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LibraryThing member k8_not_kate
This was pretty painful to read, although it does feature some surprisingly reasonable arguments for socialism from the perspective of the early 20th century. Other reviewers have mentioned that The Iron Heel is like a collectivist Atlas Shrugged, which couldn't be more accurate. Reading it, you
On the up side, London's device of scholarly footnotes sprinkled into Avis' "manuscript" was clever. The Iron Heel is worth reading if you love dystopia and/or if you are looking for an interesting foil to Atlas Shrugged. Otherwise, skip it.
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can't help but see Ernest Everhard as an inverted John Galt. Atlas Shrugged and The Iron Heel even have the same literary deficiencies: they are both melodramatic, feature horrible dialogue, and totally lack subtlety. However, I gave Atlas Shrugged five stars and the Iron Heel only three. This is mainly because London didn't write an almost cinematic epic like Rand did. The Iron Heel isn't long enough to portray the downfall of America in a convincing way, and it's significantly less entertaining than Rand's work. Also, while we're comparing Everhard to Galt, in a similar comparison between Avis and Dagny, London's heroine doesn't stand a chance. Avis' character almost feels like an afterthought, thrown in merely to tell Ernest's story. Sure, Dagny isn't exactly a realistic character either, but at least you're rooting for her as you read Atlas Shrugged.On the up side, London's device of scholarly footnotes sprinkled into Avis' "manuscript" was clever. The Iron Heel is worth reading if you love dystopia and/or if you are looking for an interesting foil to Atlas Shrugged. Otherwise, skip it.
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LibraryThing member tacomawhite
Interesting futuristic accounting of America that is overtaken by the working class. It tells a narrative account of how this takes place through the voice of the hero's wife. London shows a great deal of foreknoledge of what actually happens with the spread of corporatism in America and the world.
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Nice quick read. Show Less
LibraryThing member librian2012
I haven't read this yet. I've skimmed it, and it seems awesome, and very interesting. It's been inspiring to both leftist and right-wing thinkers... I was going to include it in a display on Dystopian Fiction last year, but our library doesn't have a copy. I've read both White Fang and Call of the
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Wild. This is definitely on the list. Show Less
LibraryThing member mossjon
Dystopian, or very dated alternate history, which drowned me in Marxism and the evils of capitalism as viewed through the lens of the very early 20th century. My perspective, a century later, shows many of these ills have been legislatively remedied. Not much of a story or plot, no real character
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growth; mostly essay or lecture on socialism, topped off with stomping feet, neo-terrorism and the beginnings of a non-nuclear Cold War. Show Less
LibraryThing member bongo_x
Totally over the top, turn of the last century Socialist propaganda, but I was totally hooked. Fascinating and thought provoking. I thought the way the footnotes were worked in was kind of clever.
LibraryThing member Carl_Alves
The Iron Heel calls itself a novel, but it really isn’t. Basically, it’s a sad excuse for a novelist to expouse his political beliefs on a bully pulpit and call it a novel. There’s no real plot in the story. What there was, is page after page of London spouting his beliefs on socialism.
Carl Alves – author of Reconquest: Mother Earth
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It’s almost as if he had written these long essays on the virtues of socialism and after the fact, decided to make it into a novel. Even if I agreed with his position, which I don’t, it’s completely inappropriate to call this a novel. If I wanted to read about socialism, I would get a non-fiction book on the subject. There is nothing remotely redeemable about this novel, if you want to call it that. I would highly recommend avoiding this, even if you are a practicing socialist.Carl Alves – author of Reconquest: Mother Earth
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LibraryThing member John
The Iron Heel is sometimes mentioned as the first ‘dystopian’ novel, but if we think of the early classics that pretty much defined the genre: We, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, then I would say that The Iron Heel is not of that group. In the ‘classics’, we have a brooding,
The Iron Heel has none of these attributes. The book was published in 1907, the story is set in the United States around 1910-1915, supposedly told on the basis of a manuscript discovered some 700 years later when society, so it is hinted, has evolved to a much higher, much more peaceful level. London depicts a United States split into opposing camps with the Oligarchy (unrestrained capitalists who control all production and media) as the Iron Heel that crushes the working class, aided by a secret police and military forces composed as Mercenaries on one side, and the increasingly indebted working class on the other side, which socialists and ‘revolutionists’ try to organize, first in a political struggle, but when that is quashed, a violent one. The USA is reduced to the level of a class/social war with no quarter given on either side and with the tactics and terror of one side perfectly mirrored in the other.
The book is less a novel than a framework within which London espouses, at some length, his views on the virtues of socialism versus the pernicious nature of capitalism, and his belief that the former must triumph if there is to be human dignity and a fair distribution of the benefits of labour. London was writing at a time when the majority of workers worked in appalling conditions with few if any benefits and no social net of support against the power of corporations and economic and commercial trusts that controlled many aspects of the economy . You can feel London’s white-hot heat of indignation and outrage with the conditions of many in the working class, and his sense that that the powers of society are strongly coordinated against them and committed to keeping them there.
This, however, does not make for a good novel, a political treatise maybe, but not a novel . The politics gets a little turgid. The characters are cardboard cut-outs designed to represent certain views or sides in the struggle and they play their allotted roles; they interact only within those roles and there is little of what we might call character development. Even those who do seem to evolve, do so within their representative roles: the Bishop who sees the error of espousing Church doctrine that only buttresses the status quo at the expense of the livelihood and health of workers; the main protagonist, Avis, who starts as an unquestioning rich, spoiled girl but has her eyes opened and becomes a committed revolutionist; her father, a well-respected academic, who is crushed economically and shunned socially when he tries to tell the truth about society’s ills; Ernest Everhard, the fire-breathing, myth-destroying, philosophy-preaching socialist revolutionist who shreds the specious arguments of the ruling class and exposes their fallacies.
There are hints of prescience when London describes world-wide currents with the British Empire, “falling apart”, revolt in India, cries of “Asia for the Asiatics”, and Japan’s dream of a continental empire in which it dominated Asia (recall that this book was published in 1907). And London puts his finger on one of labour’s weakest points when he has Ernest lament, “Confusion thrice confounded! How can we hope for solidarity with all these cross purposes and conflicts?”, not to mention the powers-that-be weakening their opposition with selective improvements in working conditions, for certain elements of the working class.
There is no doubting London’s sincerity in outrage with conditions for workers whose labour provides the basis for vast accumulations of wealth in the early part of the 20th century, and the struggle, often violent, to ameliorate those conditions in the face of powerful social and economic powers.
I am glad to have read this so that I understand references to it, but would not recommend it to friends as a novel to be savoured.
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malevolent political power that controls all aspects of life in society, though there may be barbarians on the fringes, and the stories develop around individuals who for various individual reasons, usually to do with intellectual or physical freedom, run afoul of the controlling political power and, in some cases, pay the price. The Iron Heel has none of these attributes. The book was published in 1907, the story is set in the United States around 1910-1915, supposedly told on the basis of a manuscript discovered some 700 years later when society, so it is hinted, has evolved to a much higher, much more peaceful level. London depicts a United States split into opposing camps with the Oligarchy (unrestrained capitalists who control all production and media) as the Iron Heel that crushes the working class, aided by a secret police and military forces composed as Mercenaries on one side, and the increasingly indebted working class on the other side, which socialists and ‘revolutionists’ try to organize, first in a political struggle, but when that is quashed, a violent one. The USA is reduced to the level of a class/social war with no quarter given on either side and with the tactics and terror of one side perfectly mirrored in the other.
The book is less a novel than a framework within which London espouses, at some length, his views on the virtues of socialism versus the pernicious nature of capitalism, and his belief that the former must triumph if there is to be human dignity and a fair distribution of the benefits of labour. London was writing at a time when the majority of workers worked in appalling conditions with few if any benefits and no social net of support against the power of corporations and economic and commercial trusts that controlled many aspects of the economy . You can feel London’s white-hot heat of indignation and outrage with the conditions of many in the working class, and his sense that that the powers of society are strongly coordinated against them and committed to keeping them there.
This, however, does not make for a good novel, a political treatise maybe, but not a novel . The politics gets a little turgid. The characters are cardboard cut-outs designed to represent certain views or sides in the struggle and they play their allotted roles; they interact only within those roles and there is little of what we might call character development. Even those who do seem to evolve, do so within their representative roles: the Bishop who sees the error of espousing Church doctrine that only buttresses the status quo at the expense of the livelihood and health of workers; the main protagonist, Avis, who starts as an unquestioning rich, spoiled girl but has her eyes opened and becomes a committed revolutionist; her father, a well-respected academic, who is crushed economically and shunned socially when he tries to tell the truth about society’s ills; Ernest Everhard, the fire-breathing, myth-destroying, philosophy-preaching socialist revolutionist who shreds the specious arguments of the ruling class and exposes their fallacies.
There are hints of prescience when London describes world-wide currents with the British Empire, “falling apart”, revolt in India, cries of “Asia for the Asiatics”, and Japan’s dream of a continental empire in which it dominated Asia (recall that this book was published in 1907). And London puts his finger on one of labour’s weakest points when he has Ernest lament, “Confusion thrice confounded! How can we hope for solidarity with all these cross purposes and conflicts?”, not to mention the powers-that-be weakening their opposition with selective improvements in working conditions, for certain elements of the working class.
There is no doubting London’s sincerity in outrage with conditions for workers whose labour provides the basis for vast accumulations of wealth in the early part of the 20th century, and the struggle, often violent, to ameliorate those conditions in the face of powerful social and economic powers.
I am glad to have read this so that I understand references to it, but would not recommend it to friends as a novel to be savoured.
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LibraryThing member mamorico
What begins as a battle of the classes in America becomes a global war as a state oligarchy, known as “the Iron Heel,” moves to crush all opposition to its power. Prophetic and inspirational. An important book.
LibraryThing member bzedan
Friggin' meaty downfall of civilisation, and rise of the oligarchies. Sometimes reads like an inverse Atlas Shrugged, only in a good way. There is a hearty chunk of intrigue and mobs and Pinkertons and strike breakers. It's written in that style I'm kind of stupidly fond of, where there are
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footnotes (!) and general notation that indicates a scholar/historian came across the text some many years (in this case, three centuries) after it was written. Annotated fictive text. Kinda love it. I guess this guy mostly wrote nature stuff. Show Less
LibraryThing member Dreesie
An unusual novel, largely written as a journal/story of a rebel in the 20th century movement against the Iron Heel dystopian society. Used as a historical document hundreds of years in the future, Avis Everhard describes how the Iron Heel took over the US, with the oligarchs enslaving more and more
Because this was written over 100 years ago, certain aspects are very out of date, particularly anything having to do with technology. But certain aspects seem very up to date, because this sounds like a government Donald Trump would design. We already live in an oligarchy, but people still deny it. Just as they did in this book.
The writing is somewhat awkward, though this is my first London. Maybe this is just how he wrote?
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of the population, moving them at will to do work, and keeping them in ghettos. Everhard describes what happened to people--her father, her husband, a Catholic Bishop friend--who spoke out against the beginnings of the oligarchs as they crushed certain unions and gave huge favors to others to gain their support.Because this was written over 100 years ago, certain aspects are very out of date, particularly anything having to do with technology. But certain aspects seem very up to date, because this sounds like a government Donald Trump would design. We already live in an oligarchy, but people still deny it. Just as they did in this book.
The writing is somewhat awkward, though this is my first London. Maybe this is just how he wrote?
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LibraryThing member encephalical
The first part of the book has some of the preachiest speechifying one could ever hope to encounter in a dystopian scifi novel. If you enjoy dialectic, do not skip. Once that's all out of the way, the pace picks up appreciably. Prescient in the way an oligarchy would come to control the mass media,
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which we appear to have arrived at presently. One thing that struck me about this book was how much London, a socialist, writing about people working towards a socialist utopia of equality, still wrote within the class, race, and gender norms of the day. Show Less
LibraryThing member CJ82487
I was assigned this novel for an American Fiction course and was not immediately impressed. It is slow to start, but is written as diary entries and once the action begins, it is hard to put down. The scenes of the revolution particularly in the end are descriptive and detailed and provide a clear
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mental image. The ending was abrupt but fitting for the story. While not something I would necessarily pick for myself, in the end I did enjoy reading it. If I had not known any better, I would have thought it to be a piece of non-fiction prose due to the realistic quality. London's dystopia novel could easily been written today because the underlying messages and themes are just as relatable in today's society as they were then. Show Less
LibraryThing member Kristelh
Written in 1908, it is considered to be one of the first dystopian novels. It also is written as a first person narrative from a woman’s POV in manuscripts found later, much later, so it is looking back in history. The novel has many flaws and it is also full of socialist view points but it is
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also quite amazing how forward looking Jack London was in some aspect. While this is considered ‘soft’ science fiction, it is a political statement. You know from there very beginning sentences that things are not going to go well for the revoluntionaries. Jack London believed that society was evolving in much the way as nature was said to evolve. The book probably does have historical importance for it’s influence on other science fiction and dystopian novels that would follow. Show Less
LibraryThing member francesanngray
I think the book would have benefited from some editing and rearranging of the text to make it more readable.
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
The Iron Heel by Jack London is considered one of the first modern dystopian novels. Published in 1908, the story paints a picture of a futuristic society that becomes repressive and it is obvious that the author presented this as a warning that if society continued along its current path then this
While I personally did not care for the book, finding it entirely too heavy handed, I can see why it is considered to be influential. George Orwell praised the author and credited him with prophesying the rise of Fascism that was destined to tear the world apart in the 1930s and 40s. This story, although portraying the future, deals with the politics of the time rather than any technical advances as his main character’s focus appears to be on the unequal distribution of wealth and power that leaves the working class struggling for justice and equality.
While Jack London is mostly identified as a writer of adventure novels, this particular book is a sympathetic nod to socialist causes. Although it was unusual for a male author to use a female as his first person narrator, I did appreciate that Jack London did so here. He also appeared quite comfortable pointing fingers at governments, religious organizations and big business and skewering them with a few home truths.
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repressive society would be the result. This book highlights his interest in Socialism and his strong leftist leanings.While I personally did not care for the book, finding it entirely too heavy handed, I can see why it is considered to be influential. George Orwell praised the author and credited him with prophesying the rise of Fascism that was destined to tear the world apart in the 1930s and 40s. This story, although portraying the future, deals with the politics of the time rather than any technical advances as his main character’s focus appears to be on the unequal distribution of wealth and power that leaves the working class struggling for justice and equality.
While Jack London is mostly identified as a writer of adventure novels, this particular book is a sympathetic nod to socialist causes. Although it was unusual for a male author to use a female as his first person narrator, I did appreciate that Jack London did so here. He also appeared quite comfortable pointing fingers at governments, religious organizations and big business and skewering them with a few home truths.
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LibraryThing member hskey
Really glad I was recommended this. I don't think the story is quite as compelling as Brave New World or 1984 but a poignant story and the fact that it was written before even World War 1 is incredible, London was scary accurate in many predictions. A lot of the sentences in this book, particularly
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from Ernest Everhard, are relevant even today. The format of the book was really compelling and the ending was chilling. I wish I'd paid more attention, to the point where I went back and read the first 10 pages or so and the book made a lot more sense. Scary stuff, but quite good even for today. Show Less
LibraryThing member brakketh
Very enjoyable and brief read taken from a fictional manuscript describing the life of a revolutionary during the rise of the oligarchy in America.
LibraryThing member Garrison0550
Not my favorite Jack London book, but it wasn't terrible.
Language
Original publication date
1907
Physical description
304 p.; 7.6 inches
ISBN
0143039717 / 9780143039716