The Iron HeelThe Iron Heel is interesting as an example of a "dystopian" novel which anticipates and influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Jack London's (1876-1916) socialist politics are explicitly on display here. Its description of the capitalist class forming an organised, totalitarian, violent oligarchy to crush the working-class forewarned in some detail the Fascist dictatorships of Europe. Given it was written in 1908, this prediction was some-what uncanny, as Trotsky noted while commenting on the book in the 30s. |
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Page 6 - He was a natural aristocrat—and this in spite of the fact that he was in the camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a superman, a blond beast such as Nietzsche*** has described, and in addition he was aflame with democracy.