The Iron Heel

I've been valiantly withstanding a two-fisted dose of apocalyptic or dystopian fiction recently, which got me thinking of different approaches to the issue. On one hand, my Fallout: New Vegas campaign continues to entertain.

Ghouls bite. Gentlemen vaporize.

As my unmatched might makes all foes tremble (I don't mean to brag, but I do carry both machete and muh shotty) I've been increasingly venturing among the map's more treacherous culverts where dangers are as often as not environmental instead of interpersonal. Visions of social collapse in the late 20th century clustered around various anxieties that the technological genie which had so rapidly transformed the world could just as easily turn on it. Rockets, nukes, robots, chemicals, or maybe just cars, post-apocalyptic works lead with conveniently inhuman symbols of wrongness. As do more modern fare from among the closely related dystopian genre, like Equilibrium or Snowpiercer. But though that tendency crept in from the start with, say, Metropolis, the great works of mid-century dystopian fiction (1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World) though they present a great many technological marvels, consistently and mercilessly refocus on human misuse of those marvels, on human frailty and viciousness.

 

So maybe we shouldn't be surprised that looking even further back to the century's onset, we find an even deeper focus on dystopia as an inherently social decline. I'd of course heard of Jack London's 1908 The Iron Heel as his famous socialist tract (unless you count The Sea Wolf where the political message is more symbolic) but did not bother with it until now because it doesn't come very highly recommended as a work of either literature or futurism. Though certainly noteworthy in historical context for inspiring the next couple generations, that latter, more refined output rightly eclipsed it.

 

Its main problem is basically trying to do too much at once. It is, for instance, peppered with real-world references illustrating London's grounding in the evidence of human nature, but the footnotes (some a page in length) though fascinating case studies in ruling class sadism, become too pedantic. It's unclear how much of the narrative was retrofitted to the author's need to list real-world outrages of 19th-century labor disputes, but it's more than enough to interfere with the plot instead of supporting it. His attempt to build Ernest Everhard (how that's for a manly name?) into a larger-than-life higher man like Wolf Larsen (still cooler) doesn't transfer well from a maritime frontier setting to office politics and political offices. He cycles too quickly through minor characters for their otherwise well-conceived personalities to pay off for the reader's attention investment.

 

As an apocalyptic procedural, it's hampered by its journal-style limited viewpoint conflicting with the need to describe society-wide changes. Compare to It Can't Happen Here's quite similar tale of a fascist/corporatist takeover of the United States, only far better fleshed out by adding minor viewpoints. Of course, the latter author did benefit from a couple decades' worth of incipient disillusionment with Socialist ideology brought about by evidence of Communist repression. London viewed conflict entirely through socialist doctrine as rich oppressing poor, while Sinclair, with the benefit of thirty years' added evidence, could admit the rabble "enjoy being bullied" by their lauded strongman dictator.

 

As futurism, the book blows hot and cold. It harps too much on socialism's edenic promises of a "scientifically" inevitable transition from capitalism to proletarian rule. But it shows stunning foresight of Cold War espionage, extrapolated from labor dispute agents provocateur. He foresees quite astutely a mass campaign to consolidate farming by forcing bankruptcy which indeed seem to have come to pass in following decades. But again he fails to predict the role of religious revivals in indoctrinating the masses into worship of wealth as divine favor, placing a conscience-stricken priest as friend of the poor as a major character. He utterly fails to address the coming impact of mass media. Worst, while the climactic conflict in most such works reflects back upon the central theme (be it tech or ray-dee-ay-shun! or class or brainwashing, what-have-you) The Iron Heel's last third or so fizzles into a generic fog of war which could have described most any armed clash and fails to further the narrative.

 

Yet still, London did retain one advantage over other writers, his habitual keen awareness of instinctive power struggle, especially during an easily overlooked point midway through. He sends his hero to speak truth, not to power necessarily but to the middle class refusing to align itself with collectivist ideology, comparing the petit-bourgeois wailing against encroaching trusts to Luddites.

 

"Here are you, a century and a half later, trying to break machines. By your own confession the trust machines do the work more efficiently and more cheaply than you can. That is why you cannot compete with them. And yet you would break those machines. You are even more stupid than the stupid workmen of England. And while you maunder about restoring competition, the trusts go on destroying you.
[...]
You, sir, are a poor gamester. When you squeezed out the three small groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination, you swelled out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and sent your wife to Europe on the profits you had gained by eating up the three small groceries. It is dog eat dog, and you ate them up. But, on the other hand, you are being eaten up in turn by the bigger dogs, wherefore you squeal.
[...]
You don't say that you like to squeeze profits out of others, and that you are making all the row because others are squeezing your profits out of you. No, you are too cunning for that. You say something else. You make small-capitalist political speeches [...] 'Our original principles are all right,' 'What this country requires is a return to fundamental American methods — free opportunity for all,' 'The spirit of liberty in which this nation was born,' 'Let us return to the principles of our forefathers.' When he says 'free opportunity for all,' he means free opportunity to squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied him by the great trusts. And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated these phrases so often that you believe them. You want opportunity to plunder your fellow-men in your own small way, but you hypnotize yourselves into thinking you want freedom. You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you are patriotic. Your desire for profits, which is sheer selfishness, you metamorphose into altruistic solicitude for suffering humanity."

 

Yikes!

Gut-punch.

 

There's no warning trefoil for that. It's a perfectly camouflaged Terminator. There's no system in place to alert you the man chanting the same slogans as you at the rally in fact protests only the system's power to prevent him from enslaving you himself. There's no mass-entertainment genre devoted to cranking out summer blockbusters about it.