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Jack London

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The Iron Heel Paperback – December 25, 2011

by Jack London (Author)

3.9 582 ratings

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Set in the future, “The Iron Heel” describes a world in which the division between the classes has deepened, creating a powerful Oligarchy that retains control through terror. A manuscript by rebel Avis Everhard is recovered in an even more distant future, and analyzed by scholar Anthony Meredith. Published in 1908, Jack London’s multi-layered narrative is an early example of the dystopian novel, and its vision of the future proved to be eerily prescient of the violence and fascism that marked the initial half of the 20th century.

Print length

264 pages
Language

English
Publication date

December 25, 2011
Dimensions

6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1619492288
ISBN-13

978-1619492288
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

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About the Author

Jack London (1876 1916) published an enormous number of stories and novels, including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Martin Eden.

Jonathan Auerbach is a professor of English at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Empire Books; 1st edition (December 25, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1619492288
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1619492288
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,060,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #42,479 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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3.9 582 ratings

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Jack London

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John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.

Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.

London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by published by L C Page and Company Boston 1903 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Jason Barnhart

Politics rarely changes

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2014

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Having read other Jack London pieces I thought I might add this to my literacy list. Pleasantly surprised to find it more interesting and entertaining than expected as well as still relevant in many ways and offering worthwhile perspectives and insights into the politics of our own age. It isn't a terribly challenging book and worth reading on at least a few points. If you like Jack London in general you might give it a go. The book being set in a geographic area I know well also shed light on what must be some of the foundations of current political and social thought in the San Francisco Bay area.

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AvisE

Frighteningly Prescient

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2014

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"I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in which I had always lived, and to find the frightful realities that were beneath." Avis Everhard

This book, considered to be one of the first modern dystopian novels, isn't one to read for its literary merits. I agree with others that it can be very heavy-handed and didactic. What it does do well is lay out London's political beliefs and the Marxist theory that underpins them in an accessible form. I was very surprised to discover that the book was written before WWI. London demonstrates extraordinary foresight when it comes to the competing economic forces that led to two world wars and which are today coming into sharp conflict once again. He sees with great clarity the way the labour movement has been corrupted and turned against the people it is supposed to represent. He knows how ruthlessly the oligarchy is capable of reacting when it is threatened and his descriptions of violence and repression are depressingly familiar. This book is more relevant today than ever.

When the workers unite internationally in opposition to war the ruling class's response is swift and brutal but they have a formidable foe in the organised working class movement. The oligarchy's strategy is "divide and conquer" and they do this by elevating a section of the working class and their representatives to a "labour aristocracy" while ramping up repression against the rest. The oligarchy is aided in its war on the working class by the fact that it controls the media and the judiciary, and this is clear when the socialist presses are shut down. It also has an army of mercenaries known as the "black hundreds" who are willing to do its dirty work whenever they are called upon.

Despite their apparent strength, the oligarchy cannot quash all opposition and the brutal reality of life under this system for the majority creates an underground movement of revolutionaries who are willing to die for their cause. They penetrate into the deepest recesses of the "iron heel" and assassinate the leaders that are deemed enemies to the working class. The oligarchy also infiltrate the socialist movement and there is much intrigue and betrayal. At the end of the book an uprising of the workers is thwarted by the oligarchy, but the revolutionaries in Chicago are tricked into thinking that it is going ahead, unaware that the Iron Heel is poised and waiting to crush them. What follows is an orgy of horrific violence where the "people of the abyss" (the most downtrodden in society) are slaughtered in their thousands and Avis Everhard, the narrator, barely makes it out alive.

London portrays the "people of the abyss" as barely human and I was disturbed by the fact that they were seen as expendable by the socialist leaders, providing a timely distraction when they revolted against the forces of the Iron Heel. The use of violence by a movement which is trying to create a more just and equal society is difficult to swallow for many, including myself, but it's an unfortunate reality of war. The oligarchy would not let go of their hold on power without a fight, no matter how widespread the opposition and their control of the political and legal systems mean it could not happen peacefully. London makes this clear when Ernest Everhard confronts a member of the oligarchy with the working class's desire to overthrow them:

"We will hunt the bear. We will not reply to the bear in words. Our reply shall be couched in terms of lead. We are in power. Nobody will deny it. By virtue of that power will shall remain in power....In roar of shell an shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched. We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and our it shall remain."

"I am answered," Ernest said quietly. "It is the only answer that could be given. Power. It is what we of the working class preach. We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are as hard as your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor."

The violence unleashed by the state in defence of its interests is always portrayed as acceptable and necessary while those who oppose it are branded as criminals. The only other alternative in the book war for the masses to accept their life in chains under the oligarchy which condemned them to live and die in poverty. The endless killing on both sides though was repellent to me.

One thing I really liked about the book was the way London touched on the spiritual beliefs of the revolutionaries. People who are willing to devote and sacrifice their own lives to a greater good without any belief in an afterlife fascinate me for so many reasons, not least of which is that they seem like the most spiritual people of all. Avis wrote of her husband:

"And all this he did with no hope of future reward. In his conception of things there was no future life. He, who fairly burnt with immortality, denied himself immortality - such was the paradox of him. He, so warm in spirit, was dominated by that cold and forbidding philosophy, materialistic monism."

Altogether an excellent read but I wish London had taken a little more care with the literary aspects of the book, especially in the first half, which could have gained him the wide readership this book deserved. I'll finish with one of my favourite quotes from the book:

"You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the whole you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel."

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Peter Carrier

"His test of truth is: 'Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?'"

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2018

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A warning of the dangers of capitalism as it runs to its extremes; the concerns outlined therein are even more obvious today than they were when the book was written... OVER A CENTURY AGO. It's a singular pity Jack London chose a socialist as his protagonist, as many readers will no doubt focus on the socialist position and choose to dwell on that ethos and it's attendant politics (and failures), rather than examine the logical consistency of London's utterly rational projection of capitalism at one of it's very possible end-points. To be fair, at the time of the writing, the list of options for opposition to or to contrast capitalism were slim.

Published in 1908, "The Iron Heel" demonstrated London's nigh-prescient ability to read the tapestry of global social change. A few of his predictions: economic danger in Europe that plays a role in plunging the world into war; casting Germany as the antagonist in said conflict; Russia's ongoing revolution and how that would impact other countries, including the US. He doesn't quite get the years right; for example, he offers 1913 as the beginning of the 'war that wasn't.' But even if he misses the 'when' of these events, he's frighteningly accurate regarding the 'what' of them.

Recommended for: fans of dystopian tales (1984, Brave New World, et al); those interested in fairly realistic speculative/historical fiction; anyone who read 'The Scarlet Plague' and wants more of Jack London preaching doom and gloom.

A few passages:

"We do not mind the truth that is in any man. If it is sincere," he amended.

"Then you separate sincerity from truth?" Ernest laughed quickly.

- - - - -

"You seem to worship at the shrine of fact," Dr. Hammerfield taunted him.

"There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet," Dr. Ballingford paraphrased."

- - - - -

"Our boasted civilization is based upon blood, soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of us can escape the scarlet stain."

- - - - -

"Never in the history of the world was society in so terrific flux as it is right not. 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."

- - - - -

"John C. Calhoun said: "A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interest, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And 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."

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Giuliano

Consegna 10 e lode tutto ok

Reviewed in Italy on December 3, 2023

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Anticipa con lucidità i temi di Huxley e anche di Orwell. Da leggere in lingua originale per non trasferirne la pesante scelta lessicale il linguaggio da favoletta nelle logiche della vetustà traduzione italiana.

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Ronny.Y

Good read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2023

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Good read.

Asterios Kechagias

Naive and not very well written

Reviewed in Germany on February 9, 2017

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I had never read a Jack London novel before I picked up this book, because of its dystopian theme. I have no idea, if London's naturalistic tales are better written, this one, though, is definitely not a well written novel.
Its first problem is the style: a woman's account written by a man has all the problems feminists have been fighting against ever since the rise of the feminist movement (and this is coming from someone who does not like feminists). This can be excused, though, if one takes into account when the novel was written, and the idea itself is commendable. The second and most important problem is the story itself, it is simplistic and not very interesting. And, to top this, it is cut short without any explanation at the end, as if London ran out of ideas.
The footnotes, on the other hand, are excellent and imagination stimulating. The story they tell is much more interesting than the main one. One cannot help but wonder, what this novel might have been, had the story taken place during the reign of the Iron Heel...
Getting back to the story, one can excuse the socialistic naiveté, since in those troubled times socialism was just as good an alternative as anything else. What cannot be excused or suffered is the sanctification of the socialist characters in it, especially of Ernest by his starry-eyed wife (see earlier comment about style and feminism). What does exactly London try to say here? That even if atrocities are committed by both sides, the socialists are absolved, because of their divine right to lead society to a socialist paradise? That's the justification that led to the gulags. How naive the novel is, is also made very clear (especially in our age of "alternative facts") by how Ernest always wins arguments by presenting people with and changing their minds through the use of irrefutable facts, as if the ever mattered...
Nevertheless, the novel is not without merits. The social commentary is accurate and still relevant today. The rigged system of politics and justice conspiring to keep the little man down can be identified in one form or another in all modern societies, be they liberal or authoritarian. And the view it gives readers into the tumultuous USA of the early 20th century is very interesting.
All in all, the book cannot be recommended, since it is neither fun nor interesting to read and its good points are too few and have been addressed better by more competent social commentators and dystopian fiction writers.

rudlajz

Read it!

Reviewed in Australia on February 23, 2017

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How close to the plot are we? The book is easy to read and flows fluently from start to end.

Kindle Customer

London in Heels

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2015

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The Iron Heel was an educational read, detailing the lives of Ernest and Avid Everhard who lay central to a fictional socialist uprising in the early 20th Century.

This is not one of London's greatest works but is a good read nonetheless. For me, the book goes into too great detail of conflict towards its end in what I cannot forsee being the result of a socialist revolution.

London is clearly personally versed in socialist rhetoric and the book certainly explains this perspective well for the reader. My recommendation would be for prospective readers to spend their time more wisely in reading Call of the Wild or White Fang which both depict human nature arguably better than The Iron Heel.

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