The Iron Heel

By: Jack London

Narrated by: Jacques Richey

Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

The Iron Heel by Jack London is a dystopian novel first published in 1908. The narrative is unusual in being a first-person narrative of a woman protagonist written by a man.

Predicting future changes in society and politics, it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. The main narrative covers the years 1912 - 1932, in which the Iron Heel oligarchy arose in the United States.

Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own oligarchies and were aligned with the U.S. while in Asia, Japan created an empire in Asia, and Europe became socialist. (London remains silent as to the fates of South America, Africa, and the Middle East.)

In North America, the Oligarchy hold power for three centuries until it is overthrown by a revolution which ushers in the Brotherhood of Man.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks

Dystopian history of class warfare

History of the rise to power and overthrow of the government by the wealthy class. Details bloody battles for the city of Chicago.

Review

Great book, and although this was written over a hundred years ago, Jack London did a great job at making some accurate predictions and his insight into corporate greed, and its power is very accurate.

Political thoughts:

1) I love the Bishop in this book. He goes to prove a point that the Church should advocate more for those in poverty and he's deemed crazy and cast out. There are some parallels to this in modern society. I think of a Christian minister who said that yes, Black Lives do Matter and his congregation turned on him. Or those ministers who are ousted for saying that the LGBTQ community should have equal rights. Those who have money and are funding the church, can often have a large say in the direction it goes

2) Very smart about the trusts. The less businesses there are in an industry, the easier it is for them to get away with price fixing (we are literally seeing this now after Biden took office and we see it with Big Pharma).

3) I found it interesting that the Oligarchy divided the unions by granting some industries more money/less hours and screwing over others. I should note that this was before the joining of the AFL-CIO. In my experience the only unions that do not have the back of other unions are the police and sometimes the fire (think of the latest legislation that the Republicans did in Florida when they gave carveouts to the police/fire unions from losing their union). I believe this is much less likely to occur. Also, the media is much more far reaching to control a message immediately, even before facts are gathered.

4) Parts of this reminded me of the Red Scare/McCarthyism.

5) Anyone who considers themselves a leftist or an activist would enjoy this book.

The Iron Heel

This was fantastic. Story moves really well. Narrator delivers well. Chapter 26 on Chicago’s downfall was treacherous. Brutal book.

boring polemic on how cool a political movement is

This is a DNF, did not finish, for me.

I enjoyed Jack London adventure novels and usually read them every few years because they are that good. Heck, even a few of his later novels like The Scarlett Plague are decent for that era of writing. But this book, is huge miss in my view.

I made it about 25% of the way before I just bored of the constant soap box efforts of how unjust the world was in London's view. Even more telling was when you read about his later views on socialism of that early 20th century and he turns away due to a number of reasons.

As others have said you get more from this book with the Wikipedia article than the actual reading of it. It is just filled with polemic after polemic about how capitalism is some level of hell and that the way to salvation is via the revolutionary spirit and implementation of socialism. Whatever plot there is about the implementation of this "Iron Heel" and the eventual overthrow by socialists is lost by the paragraph of paragraph of how corrupt and evil society is and that all have blood on their hands.