The Iron Heel

<b>(Book 762 from 1001 books) - The Iron Heel, Jack London</b><br /><br />The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908, A dystopian novel about the terrible operations of an American oligarchy at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and the struggles of a socialist revolutionary movement. 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 Ever-hard 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.<br /><br />تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه جولای سال1972میلادی<br /><br />عنوان: پاشنه آهنین: با سه مقدمه از: آناتول فرانس، ب‍ل‌ وای‍ان‌ ک‍وت‍وری‍ه‌، ف‍ران‍س‍ی‍س‌ ژوردن‌؛ نویسنده: جک لندن، مترجم محمد صبحدم؛ تهران، فرخ، سال1331، در318ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، نشر کتاب، سال1362؛ سال1363، در318ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م<br /><br />پاشنه آهنین اثر «جک لندن» نویسنده ی «ایالات متحده آمریکا» است؛ این رمان نخستین بار در سال1908میلادی در «ایالات متحده آمریکا» منتشر شد؛ «جک لندن» در این رمان جامعه ی خیالی آینده در «ایالات متحده آمریکا» را، تصویر می‌کنند، که در آن گروه‌های سلطه‌ گر مالی، به کنترل همگی امور جامعه و جهان می‌پردازند، و برای تأمین سلطه ی خود، از جنگ و کشتار و جنایت، رویگردان نیستند؛ «جک لندن» در «پاشنه آهنین»، اندیشه‌ های سوسیالیستی و اجتماعی خود را، طرح می‌کنند؛ نویسندگانی همانند «جرج اورول»، و «سینکلر لوئیس»، از این کتاب تأثیر گرفته‌ اند، و «تروتسکی» و «آناتول فرانس» آن را ستوده‌ اند<br /><br />تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 20/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

The Iron Heel by Jack London is Upton Sinclair meets Wolf Larson. <br><br>Described by many as the first of the modern dystopian novels, this one takes a strongly socialist stance, clearly espousing this ideology in lengthy diatribes. While reading this work I frequently compared to Ayn Rand’s <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/662.Atlas_Shrugged" title="Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand" rel="noopener">Atlas Shrugged</a>, but in contrast. Both novels ambitiously seek a prophetic tone, but both ultimately wind up as monological propaganda with straw man arguments propped up in opposition. <br><br>The Iron Heel does have the good taste to not run over 1,000 pages. Another of London’s works, the short story <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/20792150.The_Mexican__Single_Story_" title="The Mexican (Single Story) by Jack London" rel="noopener">The Mexican</a> espouses London's feelings as well, deeply sympathetic to socialist causes and centers around romantic heroism of its champions. <br><br>One aspect of the Iron Heel that was amazing, and truly prophetic was London’s uncanny ability to forecast power plays of government, especially the rise of Hitler’s Germany, some thirty years after the release of The Iron Heel. Social and political critics of modern day capitalism could also look to this 1908 publication to show how the rich get richer and labor unions have been bought out and find themselves underpowered to react.<br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1576979610i/28650604.jpg" width="400" height="400" alt="description" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy">

<br><strong> <em>to-read-before-it-gets-banned</em> </strong><br><br>This is an important book. It's so important that the editors of the German Wiktionary site decided to use a quote from the book for the entry IMPORTANT. I think I never used the phrase must read for a book in any one of my reviews. And I'm still not doing it here. But I'd answer YES! if you ask “Should I read this book?”<br><br>Those of you who read other works by Jack London and think that this is some adventure story set in Alaska or on a ship at sea or something? Forget it. It's a Dystopian of pure breed: The everlasting struggle between good and evil. The good guys here are the ordinary people, i.e. us, and the evil one is the caste of oligarchs running the country along with their puppet show of politicians and the judicial branch, working in their favor.<br><br>Avis Cunningham gets to know young Ernest Everhard in her father's house in 1912. Everhard is an educated member of the working class, a genuine socialist, and impresses the young woman with his knowledge of the conditions of inequality in their country. The two fall in love and eventually marry. Their battle is henceforth the class enemy, the oligarchs upper class, called the Iron Heel by Everhard. At the beginning of the 1930s it comes to the inevitable bloody revolt against the oppressors. The revolt fails. Everhard, like thousands of others, is executed. The fight, however, continues. The events of the turbulent period from 1912 until the Revolution in 1932 is written down by Avis Everhard in the so-called Everhard Manuscript and is the content of this novel.<br><br>You might say that I spoiled the ending, however, all this information is readily available in the foreword, which is an important part of the novel, and must be read in any case (I know that some GR users like to skip forewords). The foreword and explanatory footnotes in the text have been written by a man, Anthony Meredith, 700 years later, when the manuscript was discovered. At that time (by the year 2600) the tyrannical Iron Heel is only history and we're in the era called “Brotherhood of Man”, a true utopia, an era the working class hero Everhard unfortunately could not live to see.<br><br>A couple of things are remarkable about this novel: There's a strong female first person narrator in a book written by a man, which was quite unusual at the time the novel was written. The author makes no bones about his own political views as a socialist; he obviously didn't care much about readers being offended. I also find Jack London's foresight in this book amazing. He obviously learned a lot from his time in the slums of London (see The People of the Abyss). Unfortunately you have to say that the social structures have not changed decisively in the 100+ years since the publication. The oligarchic tyranny is more powerful than ever, politicians are no more for the people, and the oppression of the masses has become even more strongly. All that is missing is a revolution to make this novel become totally true.<br><br><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img alt="Creative Commons License" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380148217i/680962.png" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a><br>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" rel="nofollow noopener">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

Jack London wrote a dystopia! Did you know that? I didn't! It is terrible.<br /><br />The first 75% is pure political screed. And not very well scrode, either; it's hysterically and ineptly scridden. Jack London was a socialist, and this book makes socialism look bad through its sheer incompetence. (By the way, that Lincoln quote <a href="http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.asp" title="Snopes link" rel="nofollow noopener">didn't happen.</a>) The fact that I happen to agree with the basic ideas here doesn't make the book any less boring.<br /><br />When the plot finally does kick in, it's...well, who cares what it is? Without discussion*, if it hasn't kicked in by the halfway mark, it's too late and it's a shite book.<br /><br /><i>* Isn't that annoying, when I say "Without discussion"? It feels bossy and obnoxious, right? The very words make you want to argue, even if my point is perfectly agreeable. Well, London uses that phrase like ten times in this book.</i><br /><br />What I was going to say is, just when the plot is about to get going, 150 pages too late (no plot spoilers here but still, minor)... <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="dacef945-d6b7-4a8c-9310-75cf6110ec1b" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="dacef945-d6b7-4a8c-9310-75cf6110ec1b">it ends, in the middle of a sentence. <i>Literally in the middle of a sentence.</i> The last of many irritating footnotes explains that the "manuscript" just cuts off here, and what a shame because we were just getting to the interesting part. That is a lie, though; this is a made-up book written by Jack London, which means that Jack London could have just written the interesting part, if he wanted to. He's certainly written interesting parts before, it's not like it's beyond him. Maybe he could have written one of the stories he sortof mentions in passing, like the 69-year-old grandma assassin. That could have been a cool story. But no! Instead, he did the opposite of that. Of all the possible parts of this book, he wrote the least interesting one.</label><br /><br />Iron Heel feels like a political pamphlet, with the outline for an interesting novel jotted in the margins. Without discussion, the book London didn't write would have been better than the one he did.

Abandono a 100 páginas de terminarlo porque DIOS MÍO QUE ABURRIMIENTO.<br />Esto no es una distopía, no es una novela, es un puñetero discurso anticapitalista de 300 páginas, a quien pueda interesar, ya sabe...

To be fair, <i>The Iron Heel</i> is a novel comprised of pro-Socialism propaganda, but it’s still filled with truth because London had so much truth to work with. London did not need to invent stories of workers losing their limbs while working for subsistence wages. London did not need to invent stories of children working for pennies in factories where they rarely enjoyed the light of day. He did not need to create Capitalists that profited from all this and professed that they were the source of joy and success in society. So yes, label <i>The Iron Heel</i> for what it is, propaganda, but do not think that in doing so, you've somehow disproven the truths that this book contains.<br /><br />The propaganda aspect of the book stems from London’s overt effort to instill greed on the part of Capitalism while maintaining complete silence regarding this basic human condition on the part of Socialism. Throughout the book, the benefactors of Capitalism are identified as people who knowingly or unknowingly enjoy rich lives paid for by the blood of workers and the souls of children. This is contrasted brightly by the intelligent and wise leaders of the Socialist movement searching for justice for all. In reality, greed is a human condition that transcends every form of societal organization including Socialism.<br /><br />The second point of the book brings to life the plausible way in which the governance of the United States could digress into a government of the wealthy. It highlights the methods that the wealthy would use to control the vast population of lower classes. In this part of the book, London illuminates his Iron Heel. He presents a process where the governing institutions of the US are changed into the tools of a small number of rich authoritarians: the oligarchy. In doing so, he hits upon multiple parallels that will appear in authoritarian governments of London’s future, from Hitler’s Germany to present-day Trumpism in America. London also brings to life the mass carnage of warfare that the world will eventually see in both world wars.<br /><br />The continued relevance of <i>The Iron Heel</i> stems from its truths and its visions. The book could have been better if London had recognized and addressed the shortcomings of his own beliefs. But as it is, for what it is, the Iron Heel still withstands a lot of scrutiny over a hundred years after its original publication.<br /><br />---Bonus Material<br />---Comments on the Claimed Failures of Socialism<br /><br />First off, there has never been a purely Socialist state in modern times. There has never been a country where production and proceeds have been owned and shared by all inhabitants equally. There has never been a Brotherhood-of-Man, as Jack London would label such a system. Therefore, to hold up Socialism as a failure is to hold up a political system that is indeed a mixture of Capitalism and Socialism, cherry pick the failures, and label them as Socialism. The claim that Socialism leads to failure is erroneous from the initial inception of that claim.<br /><br />But to carry the argument further, even though Socialism is as erroneously labeled as it is, there are a select number of countries that are held up as examples of the failures of Socialism. Countries such as Brazil, Cuba, the Soviet Union, etc.. These countries are put forth by zealots of Capitalism (erroneously labeled as it is) as proof that Socialism is the all-inclusive word that completely suffices in explaining the failure of these states. Such assertions not only fail to recognize the similarities between the political systems of the failures and the successes but they also stop short at arriving at the true cause of such failures.<br /><br />The true problem with any form of social organization is greed that leads to corruption. I think if one were to objectively look at every failed societal organization that ever existed, one would find that corruption was the key to its demise, far more so than any political philosophy that those societies were trying to emulate. Greed must be recognized and even harnessed at levels that allow societies to prosper, but controlled to levels that prevent (or weed out) corruption. Greed cannot be eliminated and it certainly cannot be ignored.<br /><br />The manner in which greed can be regulated and thus, corruption minimized, is to form a government where corruption will not be tolerated. It’s actually not that difficult. Greed is common and it’s easy to understand. People know greed when they see it, but they are tolerant of its presence. A government where checks and balances exist is a necessary component, and placing people in government with high moral standards is also a necessity. In the United States, we have the former, but we recently experimented with avoiding the latter. Let us hope that we have learned from our mistakes.

My father loved Jack London. When I was a child, in his library, the little room under the stairs, there were faded copies of 'White Fang' and 'Call of the Wild' that had both seen better days. I wish Dad had got beyond the boy's own adventure output that made London famous; I think it would have helped to explain some things that troubled him throughout his life.<br /><br />For 'The Iron Heel' is a fine socialist text but it is not just this. Certainly the book influenced George Orwell and a stream of thought that would eventually become 1984. A dystopian novel, a love story, a tale of courage and prescience and sacrifice and failure. The life and work of Ernest Everhard as recounted by his wife, Avis, but presented as history, her words scarred with asterisks that lead to footnotes added seven centuries in the future, in B.O.M. (Brotherhood of Man) time. The historian, Anthony Meredith, adds insight regarding the times in which Ernest and Avis lived but also explains the myriad of generations of change that separate him from them. It is a compelling format that gives the work dimension, adding to the tragedy of Ernest and Avis, that is also that of the masses.<br /><br />The Iron Heel is a mighty boot that walks on the faces of the workers. It is the power of a small majority, the Oligarchy. It is a representation of the wealth of the few (the 1%?) while, by design, the masses are made to suffer in squalor. The middle classes are destroyed and vast corporations have their fingers in a sumptuous array of pies. Like many dystopian novels, it isn't far removed from the truth. Fascism or societal control or capitalism or whatever you want to call it is identified as something at first discreet, the thing that is spoken of in conspiracy theories and generally disbelieved. Then it is the all-pervading system that loops Man in chains.

So...apparently Jack London was a witch who could see into the future. A well written and thoughtful book, who's anti capatilist message is really needed in our times of terribleness. But I'll be honest, it was so close to reality I found it a little depressing.

<i>The Iron Heel</i> is said to have been a great influence on later dystopian fiction, but London's book is completely lacking the subtlety and skill of Orwell, Huxley, or Burgess. Where the latter authors tell carefully crafted fables, London relies on heavy handed, exhausting, and apparently plagiarized polemics. Although they are almost ideological antonyms, this book is much more akin to Rand's <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> than Orwell's <i>1984</i>. At least Rand's tome managed to engage the reader before embarking on endless and monotone pontifications. London doesn't bother here. The first hundred pages of this novels are exclusively avenues for London's sermonizing. London also writes about his hero in the same rapturous, heavy breathed way that Rand does, like a thirteen year old girl writing bad <i>Twilight</i> fan fiction.<br /><br /><i>The Iron Heel</i> is structured as a manuscript written by a soon to be martyred heroine about her recently martyred husband. The 'manuscript' describes events taking place between 1912 and 1932 and is annotated by an editor writing several hundred years in the future. This whole premise is laid out in an introduction by the 'editor,' introducing the reader to a brutal oligarchy which came to power during the events of the book and had been only recently overthrown by a Socialist Brotherhood. I give London credit for creating an innovative and intriguing structure that gives the book a sense of momentum from the start. Unfortunately, London proceeds to squander this momentum by boring the bejesus out of the reader with several polemics. The first one serves to introduce the reader to London's hero, his views, the issues of the day, etc. But then London has his character deliver another one, and another one, and another one. It would be one thing if these speeches and dialogues were compelling or well-crafted. They are not. Instead, they are tedious, unvaried and repetitive. Interspersed with this are 'annotations' provided by the editor of the future, which manage to be both obnoxious and cringe-worthy. <br /><br />Now, I must be honest. I did not finish this book. I was intrigued by the introduction, but was beginning to be wary by the first chapters. I read several more chapters and quickly found myself ringing the one star alarm. I decided to give it another try the next day, but today my reaction was no better. I read around half of this thing and I was dreading the second half. Looking at the wikipedia summary, apparently London becomes less devoted to speechifying and starts to describe the onset of the oligarchy, the "Iron Heel." The wiki page provides a timeline, and there appears to be quite a bit of actions. But I read half of this thing, and there was absolutely no plot movement. The half I read convinced me that I wasn't missing much by skipping the second half and reading a wikipedia summary. London is hardly a great writer of prose, and I hardly trust him to instill a sense of nuance into his plot. What I expect follows is a dry, heavy handed, and dull recitation of events. I should be clear that I don't hate this book for London's politics.This is the first book since <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> that I've abandoned permanently before completing, but I feel no shame in doing so. <i>The Iron Heel</i> may be an influential work, but it is better remembered for being influential than for its own merits. On it's own merits, it can only be considered a poorly-written piece of polemical propaganda.

It would be going too far to say that it does for capitalism what 1984 does for communusm but it is the closest a book I have read has gone to deserve that claim. Not very typical work of Jack London, the first part of the book introspective rather than full of action and is quite intellectual. The first half in particular sees protagonists breaking the arguments of philooshers, religion and capitalism as he takes away the curtain that hides the ugliness of capitalists from those enjoying their benifits. Except for a few compassionate and bravely honest souls, the capitalists reply by use of power they have gained through money.<br /><br />While the historian called communism an unnecessary step backwards, the book itself presents is full of criticisms on capitalism. I wonder what kind of society existed in imagined future of London's worldm