The Iron Heel

The Iron Heel  (novel)
Type	Fiction, novel
Author(s)	Jack London
Political novel by US writer Jack London describing how the oligarchy ('The Iron Heel') dominates and takes over the country.

The Iron Heel is a political novel in the form of science fiction by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. The novel consists mainly of the fictional manuscript of the socialist Avis Everhard, in which she tells of her husband's revolutionary struggle against a capitalist oligarchy in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century.

The main premise of the book is the rise of a mass movement in the US strong enough to have a real chance of winning national elections, getting to power, and implementing a radical socialist regime. The oligarchs feel alarmed and threatened by this prospect, to the point of seizing power and establishing a brutal dictatorship in order to avert it.

Overview

In the year 419 after the world socialist revolution, a manuscript from 700 years ago is discovered. Written by Avis, the wife of Socialist leader Ernst Everhard, it is about his struggle against the capitalist oligarchy. The document breaks off with the failed revolution in Chicago in 1918. Avis, a professor's daughter from a wealthy family, met Ernst in February 1912. Through him, she gains insights into a strange world: She listens to Everhard speaking to middle-class manufacturers and the Californian upper class about the poor living conditions of the workers and the capitalists' power-political interests, which are constantly aimed at growth. In doing so, he holds the class struggle against the Iron Heel - the Trusts and financial oligarchs that dominate US media and politics - are inevitable to dispossess the rich and build a socialist world government.

During this period, the capitalist oligarchy gradually expands its power, exploits the democratic institutions and dominates the world market. Domestically, it disempowers the middle class, drives indebted farmers into bankruptcy, and uses scabs to violently end workers' strikes and militia troops and splits the unions. After Everhard is elected to Congress for the American Socialist Party, the Iron Heel stage a bombing and frame him as the perpetrator. Along with the other socialist deputies, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. During his time in prison, a spy war ensues between the Trusts and the underground revolutionaries who free Everhard from prison in 1915. He organized a revolution in Chicago in the spring of 1918, but the oligarchy defeated the rebels. Avis and Ernst Everhard escape the pursuers and plan another revolution.

Contents

Foreword

In his foreword, Anthony Meredith, editor of the manuscript, rated the Socialist leader Ernst Everhard as a hero of the labor movement. The find is an important testimony from the early days of the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist oligarchy, 700 years ago. Everhard's actions ended with his execution in 1932.

In the opening chapters of her manuscript, Avis describes the build-up of her relationship with Ernst Everhard from respect to admiration to love and marriage. The then 24-year-old met the social philosopher for the first time in February 1912 in the house of her father John Cunningham. This is a professor of natural sciences at Berkeley University in California and open to Everhard's ideas. Guests discuss metaphysics and pragmatic science. Everhard accuses the philosophers and theologians present of ignoring the poor situation of the workers and of being paid pillars of the ruling capitalist class. A dispute develops between Ernst and Bishop Morehouse about the fair distribution of the profits of the work. He criticizes that the church does not condemn poor pay and child labor. As an example, he cites the accident involving the worker Jackson, who lost an arm and thus his job at the Sierra spinning mill, in which Cunningham is also involved, and received no compensation. This case affects the lives of both Morehouse and Avis.

Bishop Morehouse

After this conversation, Bishop Morehouse personally campaigns for the unemployed, takes two prostitutes into his villa and appeals to the audience at a meeting to combat public immorality in San Francisco to follow this example: The palaces of the church should follow Jesus, to be models of hospitals and homes for those who have gone astray and are in danger. It is the duty of the rich to do the same. The newspapers, financed by big business, do not report on the content of the speech, but only on a fainting spell and the bishop's vacation. Apparently they fear that the bishop's vision would bring down the system of government. After being forced into psychiatric treatment, Morehouse secretly sells his belongings, goes into hiding and supports poor people.

Jackson's Arm

Avis is initially repelled by Ernst's provocative manner in dealing with the discussion partners and irritated that he holds her, as a daughter from a wealthy family, and her father, as a shareholder and member of the propertied class, jointly responsible for the hardships of the workers. However, she is impressed by his directness and commitment to the poor, and over time falls in love with him. Just like for Bishop Morehouse, Jackson's fate is also the key experience for her. Avis wants to know why he lost his case for damages. She talks to him (chapter "Jackson's Arm"), his attorney, and the foremen who testified in court, and learns that everyone has been pressured by the company and feared for their jobs. So they accused Jackson of being careless. Avis investigates further: All of the interlocutors confirm either a direct or indirect dependence on the company, like the lawyer Ingram and the journalists, or they deny any responsibility, like Wickson and Pertonwaithe, the two main shareholders of the Sierra Spinners, and their wives. Avis then writes a newspaper article about Jackson's case, which is not accepted by any editor. All newspapers depend on the "master morality of capital" and publish their opinion that they create jobs and do not reward negligence.

In a lecture in front of an exclusive club of the richest people in the city, Ernst first presents his biography as a worker and his encounters with the socialist leaders and their demands on the employers. Then he criticizes the greed for power and money of the capitalists present, accuses them of failure in the organization of human working and living conditions and presents the plan of the socialists to gain power and change the situation by winning the elections. Then the rich would be expropriated and their money redistributed. The entrepreneur Wickson replies that they would not give up their power and would defend it by force of arms if necessary. Everhard then threatens him with a revolution.

In a meeting of medium-sized entrepreneurs in Cunningham's house (chapter "The Luddites") Everhard speaks about the surplus value theory of Marx and his prognosis about the rise and end of capitalism: The medium-sized companies that have bought up small, uncompetitive businesses cannot withstand the competitive pressure of the trusts and are taken over by them. It is the law of the market economy. The trusts rule the press and the government. This development leads to ever larger national and international units until the market economy collapses and an oligarchy dominates everything. There is no more competition. Everyone now works for the oligarchy, the Iron Heel that can crush anything. An alternative would be a socialist state that overturns the balance of power, distributes the wealth of the rich evenly and ensures fair wages and living conditions.

Reprisals against Everhard and his followers

With the 9th chapter begins the targeted fight of the Iron Heel against Ernst Everhard and Cunningham. After the first events in the spring, Avis, as Everhard's fiancée, and her father were increasingly excluded from events by their class: the oligarchy initially exerted gentle pressure and tried to keep them in their ranks. Cunningham is urged to go abroad for two paid research years to work on his book. Everhard receives an offer from the government to serve as United States Labor Commissioner. He sees this as a bribe and an attempt to separate him from the workers and deprive them of their leader. Both refuse. Then Cunningham loses his chair. He cannot find a publisher who will publish his book, and he is denounced by the press as a lunatic. He then loses his fortune through manipulation: his papers are stolen or forged and his shares disappear. He has to sell the house because he can't pay an alleged mortgage.

The congressional election

Ernst is running for a seat in Congress and experienced how the election campaign was hampered: the post office no longer carried the newspapers of the middle-class parties. This deprives them of their most important means of communication. A fall in food prices caused by the Trust leads to the abandonment of many farms due to over-indebtedness and the farmers becoming unemployed. So that they do not defect to the socialists, they are slandered as blasphemers and atheists. The medium-sized companies join the trusts and are then absorbed by them. Gangs of thugs, "The Black Hundreds", disrupt the workers' events and demonstrations. Paid scabs undermine their strikes (Chapter “The General Strike”). Fighting ensues and the military intervenes on the trusts' side and protects the scabs. Ernst discusses the strategy with his party: he is in favor of a revolution, the party is counting on a majority in the election. Ernst wins a congressional seat, but the hopes of the socialists are not fulfilled. In this situation, Avis and Ernst get married. He can no longer publish and earns his living through translations.

The Rule of Trusts

After the congressional elections in autumn 1912, the situation worsened. The trusts exacerbate the political situation. In the spring of 1913, there were sales problems in Germany due to the large number of unemployed people, and the companies tried to place their products on the world market. In order to eliminate their biggest competitor Germany, the USA declared war on it. But the socialists of both countries organize a general strike and get the declaration of war withdrawn. Thereupon the socialists deprived the Kaiser of power in Germany and expropriated the capitalists. While the Germans are busy with their domestic politics, the USA now dominates the world market and this strengthens the trusts. The consequences are system collapses all over the world. In Europe, after socialist revolutions, cooperatively organized states are formed. The British colonies break free. North and Central America and East Asia (Japan) are ruled by capitalist trusts.

In the USA, the trusts are taking over more and more farms and medium-sized factories. The former owners become workers or unemployed. So that the Socialist Party is not strengthened by this development, the big capitalists split the trade unions by separating the skilled workers from the rest by promising better wages. Their unions accept deal. The other workers, on the other hand, form the army of badly paid wage slaves. A caste order emerges. There are different strategies in the divided union. The skilled workers' unions are against a revolution and hope that elections will improve their situation. Ernst Everhard has a different vision: there will be a long struggle between the trusts and the wage slaves worldwide, until all workers unite and jointly overthrow the capitalist oligarchies and found a brotherhood of humanity that manages and cooperatively operates property for everyone so that everyone can live well. (Chapter 13 "The Beginning of the End")

The end of the parliamentary system

In Washington, the end of the parliamentary system is on the horizon. Everhard moves to the capital as a congressman with his wife. The socialists are in the minority. But the oligarchy wants all the power. It infiltrates the ranks of the Peasant Party and the workers with agent provocateurs, who incite them to revolt. There were rebellions and plundering, which were ended in April 1913 with harsh violence by the military and the militias that had been called up. The Peasant Party deputies accused of high treason lose their seats in Parliament to the oligarchy. (Chapter "The End")

The end of this development is, as it later turns out, the attack of the Iron Heel on parliament: during Everhard's speech against the oligarchy, a smoke bomb explodes in his vicinity. Ernst is accused of the attack and, along with other socialists, sentenced to life imprisonment on the rocky island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Avis, who was present in the auditorium, was imprisoned for six months as an alleged supporter.

Even before the trusts had won the open battle, Everhard and his comrades had set up combat brigades as a countermeasure. Thus arose a guerrilla war between the capitalist troops and the workers' brigades, which lasted for centuries and claimed many lives. The agents carry out assassinations in the ranks of the opponents and execute the spies and traitors they find. (Chapter "The End")

Hideout in Sonoma County

After the deputies were sentenced, the socialist activists went into hiding. Avis also changes her identity after her release and slips into the role of an oligarchy woman in disguise. She changes her posture, her voice and plays a different personality. With the support of the underground system, she travels undetected across the continent to California. She hides in the wilderness of Sonoma County near the small oligarch Wickson's hunting lodge near Glen Ellen, where no one suspects a prominent female revolutionary. Here she is cared for by underground fighters and gets in touch with Ernst. (Chap. "In the Shadow of the Sonoma Mountains")

In 1915, two years after the conviction, the prisoners were freed. Ernst and Avis are now spending the happiest 18 months of their marriage hiding in Glen Ellen, which is becoming a cultural center for opposition artists, scholars, students, musicians and poets. From here they maintain contacts with the socialists and build up a network. (Ch. "A Lost Oligarch")

The divided society

In the meantime, society has become more divided. On the one hand, the oligarchy has stabilized. It improves the income and living conditions of the skilled workers, administrators, police officers and mercenaries, the pillars of the system: shorter working hours, longer holidays, entertainment. The oligarchy earns more and more from the agglomerations and uses the ample financial surplus to build the modern skyscraper “wonder cities” of Ardis, Asgard and Serle, richly decorated with works of art, for their people. The life of the upper class is calm and disciplined. There are no strikes or lockouts, and the favored caste feels morally superior to the "whipped people of the abyss," the slave laborers. The children receive a good school education, can study and are trained in scientific and technical professions. They develop a leadership ideology. From an early age, they are socialized with an aristocratic mindset of superiority, regarding themselves as the "saviors of mankind" and preservers of civilization. They must dominate the beastly work slaves to prevent chaos: “The great driving force of the oligarchy is the belief that it is doing what is right, notwithstanding the […] oppression and injustice wielded by the Iron Heel[-]. (Ch. "The Roaring Beast of the Abyss")

On the other hand, the revolutionaries draw their strength from another sense of moral superiority, a sense of their own right to free the slave laborers. This "people of the abyss", the proletariat, stands apathetically between the two groups without any self-esteem. Without school education, they live in slums. These people have no free choice of work, no freedom of movement and are not allowed to bear arms. The oligarchy has them transported to work in road, canal, tunnel and fortification construction.

The failed Chicago Revolution

Ernst and Avis work on the underground network of socialists and prepare a revolution. Ernst chooses the industrial city of Chicago as a suitable location. In 1917, the Everhards left their haven and traveled the United States separately as agents on a secret mission. It's a shadowy world of secret service where nobody is allowed to know nobody. You are always in danger of being discovered and liquidated by hostile agents who have been smuggled into the organization or who have been bribed and defected by the enemy. In order to prevent identification, surgeons rework the faces of many agents: cuts in the larynx, tongue or nose change the way they speak.

The revolution is fixed for the spring of 1918. Ernst plans the process: blowing up important traffic routes, supply lines, police stations and communication links hinders the transport of the mercenaries. Secret agents create confusion and anarchy in the organs of the oligarchy. The "People of the Abyss" are activated and their anger directed towards the storming of the palaces. In this phase of paralysis, power is to be seized. But the secret plan is discovered by the Iron Heel's spy system. In this way, the oligarchy is prepared and can hide mercenaries in strategic places in good time. But the uprising is allowed to develop and the demonstrators are shot down in rows with machine guns. Avis arrives from New York on the day of the riot and notices the ambush too late. So she gets caught up in the column of the "People of the Abyss" in the street fight. Revolutionaries drop bombs on the fortress from airships. The mercenaries increasingly assert themselves against the insurgents in house warfare and burn down the working-class districts. Escaping through the streets covered with dead soldiers and workers, Avis meets Ernst. They leave the devastated city through a maze of rubble and hide from the Iron Heel, which pursues the scattered rebels across the land. After this defeat Ernst hopes for a new revolution, and the Socialists begin recruiting activists and repairing their underground network. (Chapter "Nightmares")

The further fate of the protagonists after 1918 is only hinted at by the editor in a note: Everhard was preparing another revolution and was discovered and executed shortly before it broke out in 1934. Avis then retired to Wake Robin Lodge and began her manuscript. Since the document remained fragmentary, broken off mid-sentence, and hidden in a tree, the editor assumes that mercenaries discovered and captured Avis, or that she escaped.

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References

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