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Description
Celebrate the centennial of Jack London's The Iron Heel, a seminal work of dystopian fiction that explores the relentless struggle between the oppressive capitalist class and the burgeoning socialist movement. This anniversary collection offers readers a fresh perspective on the novel's chilling predictions and its relevance to contemporary society. Featuring insightful essays and contextual materials, it highlights the enduring impact of London's vision on modern thought and activism. Read more
Publisher : Grapevine (06th November, 2024)
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : November 6, 2024
Language : English
File size : 1.5 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
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Top Amazon Reviews
An absolute stunning book! Although written over 100 years ago, it’s eerie while reading to see some of London’s authoritarian predictions playing out before our eyes in 2020. For fans of We, 1984, Brave New World etc. you will not be disappointed!
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2020 by Colin Plourde
This is a book I reread every few years, one of the early dystopian novels that are truly worth reading.
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2018 by Donald Goman
If I had to assign to this work a specific theme, I would call it Jack London’t socialist education. Given the actual voting history of these United States during Jack London’t lifetime, that fact hardly comes as a surprise. “The rise of (the Socialist) vote clearly indicates the swift growth of the party of revolution. Its voting strength in the United States in 1888 was 2068; in 1902, 127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in 1908, 1,108,427; and in 1910, 1,688,211 (P. 49 footnote). That kind of explosion is almost unthinkable in today’s political world, although the recent storm of enthusiasm for Donald Trump could prove me wrong. And what does Jack London make of all this? “‘Never in the history of the world was society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One can only dimly feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day. One can feel the loom of them–things vast, vague, and terrible’” (p. 89). Then continued on p. 90: (a)nd that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: ‘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 prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.’ These few citations should give you a fair idea of what this novel is all about. The Call of the Wild or White Fang it’s not, It’s not even Martin Eden. But if you can spare the time and energy to read a couple of hundred pages of Jack London’s prose, I assure you: you won’t be disappointed. RRB 27 October 2022 Hudson, New York, U. S. A.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2022 by R. Russell Bittner
I purchased this book and immediately moved it to the front of my queue because of Leon Trotsky’s recommendation in discussions held in Mexico with leaders of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States prior to the founding conference of the Fourth International. These discussions led to the creation of the founding resolution of the Socialist Workers Party. The book is an entertaining read and, as a Marxist, I found it very inspiring. The story is concise for what it accomplishes and at no point did I find it boring or dragging. Jack London’s conception of social development does contain deviations from Marxist theory, which I discuss my understanding of below, but I most certainly recommend it for the same reasons Trotsky does. It really is incredible what Jack London, writing only two years after the first Russian Revolution, was able to foresee. He saw the possibility of a rising fascism before it was actualized and accurately correlated its rise with the defeat of the working class. London's portrayal of the development of people in struggle could not have been Marxist and at the same time allowed for the kind of analogies he used. The main characters served as a microcosm of class relations with Ernest Everhard acting as the vanguard in pre-revolutionary times. As the story develops the representatives of the various classes and institutions crystalize along the battle lines of class divide. Analogizing Bishop Morehouse to Christ was very moving, and had I read Iron Heel while the faith was still with me, I like to think I would have been convinced by London’s case of the irreconcilable interests of the Church and the message of Christ, and more broadly, the contradiction between capital and Christ's teachings. London did a great job, through Ernest Everhard and Bishop Morehouse, of showing how the Church cannot but serve capital. The transfiguration of Ernest, however, was unsettling. Not because I was unaware of Avis' bourgeois view of him, but because I am unsettled by any portrayal of a single man as representative of the working class or of the working class as needing some paternal figure to serve as its savior. I have the same view as Leon Trotsky on Jack London's timeline for the development of revolution. Trotsky only says that London's view is too long, but does not offer why that is. My view is that London's prognosis for capital's dictatorship concedes too much. In London's America just after the turn of the 20th century, the contradictions of capital are dulled by segregation of social classes and castes into geographic regions; with the People of the Abyss (a worst-off section of the working class and the unemployed being portrayed as the surplus population) being confined to ghettos, the Mercenaries and labor aristocracy developing their own towns throughout the country, and the oligarchs living in great advanced cities of high culture and technology. The footnotes from the society commenting on the manuscript seven centuries into the future give a hint as to the influence for London's thinking. The prevailing bourgeois aspirations for improving the quality of life of humanity were preoccupied with the idea that great cities could be built that would afford its inhabitants all the luxury, leisure, and abundance that technology could provide, but without a revolutionary restructuring of social relations. HG Wells is cited by London as an example of this kind of aspirational thinking, and London's own conception of social development, wherein the collapse of capital is forestalled by the geographic segregation of classes and castes, is an artifact of that thinking. London can hardly be blamed for it since he was no theoretician, and even if he were, Marxists understand that we cannot avoid capital's influence on our thought. Another misconception of class struggle by London is seen in his portrayal of the "People of the Abyss," who are nothing less than the toiling majority who had not the benefit of a union and work in key industry. I've seen it argued that the People of the Abyss are not the proletariat, but some other section of society; that the working class is absent from London's depiction of America and that this is a literary device to advance the plot. That could be true, but it doesn't take away from the point I want to make, which is that the vanguard's work in London's America is separate from the day-to-day activities of the working class. Marxists understand that it is the very day-to-day activities of the proletariat that constitute the education which the vanguard requires for its leadership of the working class. Not a single character in The Iron heel could exist without the working class, and that is especially the case with the main characters who represent the vanguard. That's not to say that during times where the party is made illegal by the bourgeoisie that there aren't comrades who only do underground activities, but the idea of a vanguard isolated from the activities of the masses during the revolutionary period is bourgeois separatism. My interpretation was that the People of the Abyss are the only visible section of the working class in The Iron Heel and are merely working poor proletarians under conditions of fascism. That there exists a labor aristocracy, and better off sections of the working class, does not obviate society’s need for the labor of the People of the Abyss. Though there was no mention of their work being dependent on a wage, and though they were contrasted with the working class (which wasn’t itself described), the only detailed description that we’re confronted with from this section of the working class is by Avis Everhard wherein she describes the hands of a man she calls a “slave” as being “more hoof and claw than hands, all twisted and distorted by the toil of all his days, with on the palms a horny growth of callous a half inch thick.” We did not call members of the working class who were condemned to concentration camps during the second imperialist war and made to do forced labor “non-proletarians” or “lumpenproletariat.” This is not sophistry. I think this point is important because it changes how one views the vanguard portrayed by Jack London. That view, of course, has the benefit of mid-20th century fascism in hindsight.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2025 by Michael Zimmerman Michael Zimmerman
The description of this book goes so far as to say "Each book in the collection contains the ... cover from the first edition (but it is not just a photocopy.)", but, unfortunately, it's worse than a photocopy. While the item preview makes this look like a high quality cover (or at least something nice for the money) the reality is using a photocopy would have been better. It seems like someone scanned the first edition's cover back in 1998, scaled it up, and printed that scan larger, blockier, and fuzzier onto this paperback. Not just to judge the book by its cover: Overall, the price is good if you just want a cheap copy of the story, but if you want something that looks nice you might want to find a different version.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2020 by Jake