The Iron Heel

 The Iron Heel by Jack London (Review) 

The Iron Heel is a novel written by Jack London and first published in 1908. It is an account based on a diary, found many years in the future, of revolution and counter revolution. While I enjoyed reading it, it is of rather limited literary merit and not an especially engaging story. However it is an attempt to create a socialist fable. It is said to have inspired George Orwell to write 1984. 1984 warns of a totalitarian society, nodding to Orwell’s hatred of Stalinist, implying like Animal Farm of a revolution gone wrong. 

Orwell is seen as on the left, often criticising Labour for its lack of socialist zeal, however his two best known works are fables deeply imbedded in British and indeed American culture, warning us against socialism. 1984 belongs with Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, suggesting good left intentions pave the way to an all-powerful state. 

Orwell’s output and how it was mobilised during the Cold War, along with Hayek, can wait another day. The Iron Heel is a warning of how faced with socialism the ruling class will respond with fascism. The Iron Heel creates a dictatorship and crushes the working class. Does it predict Trump re-elected in 2024 and proclaiming a state where rule by a new Emperor allows the preservation of an elitist system?

1907 is some time before Hitler and Mussolini but the Iron Heel is a dramatic tale of how a dictatorship of the ruling class retains power with both subtle propaganda and ruthless repression. Perhaps we need to read more London and less Orwell. Certainly it is instructive and in early pages makes a strong case for a socialist society based on working class democracy rather than rule by the leisured but brutal class of capitalists. A book largely forgotten, an early dystopia, but an attempt to create a political tool to promote liberation, flawed as it is, it deserves re-reading.