The Iron Heel
Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian," it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and 1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.
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What Hacker News says
- In the same vein, his It Can't Happen Here is also well worth reading, as is Jack London's The Iron Heel. The more things change the more they stay the same.
- "White Fang" and "Call of the Wild" are Jack London's best known novels, not his best novels IMHO. I prefer "Martin Eden" and "the Iron Heel", and am a bit mystified as to how his entire literary career has been boiled down to two dog books.
"Martin Eden" is about a mixed class relationship, with a wealthier woman becoming involved with a working class man. This is no "Lady Chatterley's Lover", but based partly on his parents' experience, not just his own.
- > No, they are popular because someone who lived 80+ years ago got it right, when all the Pompous People got it wrong. When everyone who was anyone was a Communist and thought Stalin was just great, and the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War was the essence of Purest Virtue.
What did he get right? His analysis of the Soviet Union that we read is Animal Farm is plain Trotskyism. I don't see any original thought. The idea that all would have been well if just Trotsky instead of Stalin won the power struggle does not hold up to any serious thought. If anything "mister world revolution" would have been by far the worse alternative.
What did the POUM, that weird Trotzkyist faction that he joined in the civil war, achieve again? Nothing. If anything the Republican movement suffered from lack of unity. Those weird sectarian splitter groups did more harm than good.
> Really now? Before 1948? If you wouldn't mind, please enumerate those "substantial" things and tell us who did them all better, before Orwell.
We could always cite the classic Brave New World but how about The Iron Heel by Jack London which perfectly predicted the rise of fascism. So many better takes out there.
- Also see Eco's "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt".[1]
I'd also recommend reading David Neiwert's essays on his blog Orcinus[2], who (more than 15 years ago, long before the rise of Trump, Proud Boys, the alt-right, QAnon, etc) was already extensively discussing Eco's essays and related analysis of fascism and proto-fascism as it manifested in "patriot", militia, and "white nationalist" movements in the US, who Neiwert did extensive investigative reporting on (and published books on this as well).
His "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism"[3] and "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism"[4] are good summaries of his work.
Also related are Sinclair Lewis' 1935 "It Can't Happen Here"[5] and Jack London's 1908 "The Iron Heel"[6].
[1] - https://interglacial.com/pub/text/Umberto_Eco_-_Eternal_Fasc...
[2] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
[3] - https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/The%20Rise%20Of%20Pseudo%20Fas...
[4] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pd...
- Also Jack London's "The Iron Heel": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel
- "Ecotopia" by: Earnest Callenbach
"Self Reliance" by: Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Iron Heel" by: Jack (fuckin) London!
