https://themilitant.com/2018/12/22/workers-take-political-power-or-face-iron-heel-of-capitalist-rule/
Workers take political power or face ‘Iron Heel’ of capitalist rule
Vol. 83/No. 1
January 7, 2019
Leon Trotsky in exile in 1931. Jack London’s daughter, Joan London, sent
Trotsky his book The Iron Heel. Trotsky was impressed, saying the
American novelist correctly describes the “abyss the bourgeoisie will
hurl you down,” if a proletarian revolution doesn’t “finish with them.”
Leon Trotsky in exile in 1931. Jack London’s daughter, Joan London, sent
Trotsky his book The Iron Heel. Trotsky was impressed, saying the
American novelist correctly describes the “abyss the bourgeoisie will
hurl you down,” if a proletarian revolution doesn’t “finish with them.”
The excerpt below is from Art and Revolution: Writings on Literature,
Politics and Culture by Leon Trotsky. It is one of Pathfinder’s Books of
the Month for January. Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian
Revolution and of the early Communist International. After V.I. Lenin’s
death, he continued Lenin’s fight for proletarian internationalism
against a bloody political counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin. The
review is of Jack London’s The Iron Heel that was published in 1908.
London was a well-known novelist and propagandist for socialism. His
daughter, Joan London, sent Trotsky a copy. This excerpt is from
Trotsky’s reply, written in October 1937. Copyright © 1970 by Pathfinder
Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY LEON TROTSKY
The book produced upon me — I speak without exaggeration — a deep
impression. Not because of its artistic qualities: the form of the novel
here represents only an armor for social analysis and prognosis. The
author is intentionally sparing in his use of artistic means. He is
himself interested not so much in the individual fate of his heroes as
in the fate of mankind. By this, however, I don’t want at all to
belittle the artistic value of the work, especially in its last chapters
beginning with the Chicago commune. The pictures of civil war develop in
powerful frescoes. Nevertheless, this is not the main feature. The book
surprised me with the audacity and independence of its historical foresight.
The world workers’ movement at the end of the last and the beginning of
the present century stood under the sign of reformism. The perspective
of peaceful and uninterrupted world progress, of the prosperity of
democracy and social reforms, seemed to be assured once and for all. …
The Iron Heel bears the undoubted imprint of the year 1905. But at the
time when this remarkable book appeared, the domination of
counterrevolution was already consolidating itself in Russia. In the
world arena the defeat of the Russian proletariat gave to reformism the
possibility not only of regaining its temporarily lost positions but
also of subjecting to itself completely the organized workers’ movement.
It is sufficient to recall that precisely in the following seven years
(1907–14) the international social democracy ripened definitely for its
base and shameful role during the World War.
Jack London not only absorbed creatively the impetus given by the first
Russian Revolution but also courageously thought over again in its light
the fate of capitalist society as a whole. Precisely those problems
which the official socialism of this time considered to be definitely
buried: the growth of wealth and power at one pole, of misery and
destitution at the other pole; the accumulation of social bitterness and
hatred; the unalterable preparation of bloody cataclysms — all those
questions Jack London felt with an intrepidity which forces one to ask
himself again and again with astonishment: when was this written? Really
before the war?
One must accentuate especially the role which Jack London attributes to
the labor bureaucracy and to the labor aristocracy in the further fate
of mankind. Thanks to their support, the American plutocracy not only
succeeds in defeating the workers’ insurrection but also in keeping its
iron dictatorship during the following three centuries. We will not
dispute with the poet the delay which can but seem to us too long.
However, it is not a question of Jack London’s pessimism, but of his
passionate effort to shake those who are lulled by routine, to force
them to open their eyes and to see what is and what approaches. The
artist is audaciously utilizing the methods of hyperbole. He is bringing
the tendencies rooted in capitalism: of oppression, cruelty, bestiality,
betrayal, to their extreme expression. He is operating with centuries in
order to measure the tyrannical will of the exploiters and the
treacherous role of the labor bureaucracy. But his most “romantic”
hyperboles are finally much more realistic than the bookkeeperlike
calculations of the so-called sober politicians. …
[T]he thirty-year-old “romanticist” saw incomparably more clearly and
farther than all the social democratic leaders of that time taken
together. But Jack London bears comparison in this domain not only with
the reformists. One can say with assurance that in 1907 not one of the
revolutionary Marxists, not excluding Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, imagined
so fully the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capital
and labor aristocracy. This suffices in itself to determine the specific
weight of the novel.
The chapter “The Roaring Abysmal Beast” undoubtedly constitutes the
focus of the book. At the time when the novel appeared, this
apocalyptical chapter must have seemed to be the boundary of
hyperbolism. However, the consequent happenings have almost surpassed
it. And the last word of class struggle has not yet been said by far!
The “Abysmal Beast” is to the extreme degree oppressed, humiliated, and
degenerated people. Who would now dare to speak for this reason about
the artist’s pessimism? No, London is an optimist, only a penetrating
and farsighted one. “Look into what kind of abyss the bourgeoisie will
hurl you down, if you don’t finish with them!” This is his thought.
Today it sounds incomparably more real and sharp than thirty years ago.
But still more astonishing is the genuinely prophetic vision of the
methods by which the Iron Heel will sustain its domination over crushed
mankind. London manifests remarkable freedom from reformistic pacifist
illusions. In this picture of the future there remains not a trace of
democracy and peaceful progress. Over the mass of the deprived rise the
castes of labor aristocracy, of praetorian army, of an all-penetrating
police, with the financial oligarchy at the top. In reading it one does
not believe his own eyes: it is precisely the picture of fascism, of its
economy, of its governmental technique, its political psychology! The
fact is incontestable: in 1907 Jack London already foresaw and described
the fascist regime as the inevitable result of the defeat of the
proletarian revolution. Whatever may be the single “errors” of the novel
— and they exist — we cannot help inclining before the powerful
intuition of the revolutionary artist.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •‘Yellow vest’ protests force gov’t concessions
•New Year’s greetings to our readers behind bars!
•Join SWP in taking books, ‘Militant’ to workers doors
•‘We are human beings, not robots!’ Amazon workers protest conditions
•Turkish rulers threaten to attack Kurds seeking autonomy in Syria
•Rail bosses push crew cuts, longer trains, risk lives in drive for profit
Feature Articles •‘What does Cuba teach? That revolution is possible’
Also In This Issue •Hungary protests oppose law letting bosses force
overtime
•Workers donate ‘blood money’ bribes to build SWP
•Celebrate Nan Bailey’s five decades building SWP
•UK out of EU is best terrain for workers’ struggles there
•Join fight against prison censorship of ‘Militant’!
On the Picket Line •Mental health clinicians strike across California
•United flight attendants protest crew size cuts, grueling schedules
•Oakland teachers rally for smaller class sizes, higher wages
•Walmart worker hits bosses’ abuses over intercom
Books of the Month •Workers take political power or face ‘Iron Heel’ of
capitalist rule
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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J.K. Rowling
“ I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing
in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist! ”
― J.K. Rowling