London writing, 1905 – Public Domain
For more than 100 years, his short story, “To Build a Fire,” was required reading for nearly every school kid in the US, most likely to teach them the necessity of survival, though the tale might also have been read as a paean to dying. The fictional nameless protagonist perishes alone in the cold and the snow, unable to build a fire. He’s a failure, not a success story. Now, on the anniversary of his birth in San Francisco, 150 years ago, Jack London, like his fictional protagonist, might be called another dead white male consigned to the slagheap of largely forgotten American authors. Maybe that’s where he should have landed decades ago, though the Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman called him “the only revolutionary writer in America.” What was she thinking and what did she mean by revolutionary?
It’s true that he belonged to the Socialist Party for 20 years and that he resigned, he explained in a letter, “because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle.” The US Socialist Party was against the US entering World War I. London was for it. An odd sort of socialist, he wanted to be rich, live in a mansion on an estate with servants and in the manner of the robber barons he claimed were his enemies. With a democratic socialist newly elected the mayor of New York, it might be worthwhile to reexamine the political career of the radical Jack London who ran for mayor of Oakland twice and lost twice. Unlike Zohran Mamdani, he didn’t have a grassroots organization and local organizers with him.
True, he embraced genuine issues; he lobbied for the eight-hour-day and the end of child labor in factories. Also, to his credit, he defended Charles Moyer, William “Big Bill” Haywood and George Pettibone, the three members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) on trial in Idaho and falsely charged with the murder of governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905. That same year and in the wake of the abortive revolution in Russia, he gave rousing speeches from Berkeley to Harvard in which he called for violence and assassinations to overthrow the old order and usher in the new.
At the same time, he also supported the US invasion of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and argued that American Indians should abandon their ways and embrace the ways of the white man.
In a letter dated June 12, 1899, he wrote “The negro [sic] races, the mongrel races, the slavish races, the unprogressive races, are of bad blood – that is, of blood which is not qualified to permit them to successfully survive the selection by which the fittest survive.” Eleven days later he wrote about “the niggers of Africa,” as he called them, and insisted that socialism was “devised for the happiness of certain kindred races.” Twelve days before Christmas in 1899, London reiterated his white supremacist views and explained to a friend, “the black has stopped, just as the monkey has stopped. Never will even the highest anthropoid apes evolve into man; likewise the negro [sic] into a type of man higher than any existing.” Jay Craven, who directed the 2021 movie version of London’s autobiographical novel Martin Eden, was wise enough to cast Black actors in the roles of the fictional white characters and thereby forestall criticism.
London’s defenders have argued that he merely echoed the predominant views of his time. True, Jim Crow ruled much of the nation, but W. E. B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, the same year that The Call of the Wild was published, and in 1909, Du Bois and friends founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Oddly enough, though perhaps not, London was raised by a Black woman who he called “mammy” and described himself as her “white pickaninny,” surely knowing it was a racial slur.
While London was a socialist, he was also an imperialist, a jingoist and a racist; in short a man with contradictions galore that reflected the deep-seated social and political contradictions of American society in the aftermath of the Civil War and the run-up to World War I, a war he wanted the US to join and defeat the Germans. From 1896, when he joined the Socialist Party, until 1916 when he left it, London wasn’t a democratic socialist.
In the essay “How I Became a Socialist,” first published in Comrade in 1903, he wrote that fear of falling into the “Social Pit” pushed him into the Socialist Party. “The woman of the streets and the man of the gutter drew very close to me,” he explained. “I saw them, saw myself above them…and I confess a terror seized me.” As his daughter Joan London pointed out in her biography of her father, he was attracted to strong charismatic figures, not grassroots organizers and organizations. He had much in common, Joan argued, with Mussolini. George Orwell noted that he had “a fascist strain.” By his own admission, London never attended a Socialist Party meeting.
A celebrity socialist, a socialist with a famous name, as well as a dynamic speaker with an entourage that included Mother Jones and Emma Goldman, he was used by the movement to promote the cause of socialism. He rarely if ever made sacrifices for it. Celebrities can be a liability; they popularize causes but they also draw attention to themselves and their careers as they did in the Sixties. In fact, socialist publications promoted London’s work and helped to make him a best-selling author. On a rare occasion, he was called a fake socialist who lived a life of luxury on Beauty Ranch in Sonoma County, far from the political fray.
If teachers had assigned his work to explore his contractions, London would have been the perfect author to place on reading lists. But for decades London scholars ignored his white supremacist views, jingoism and his fear and abhorrence of miscegenation. There were exceptions, such as Philip Foner, the editor of Jack London: American Rebel, a collection of London’s writings on social issues. Foner pointed out that London never denounced the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the South Pacific, though on one occasion he joined enslavers and observed their expedition into the jungle.
For the most part, biographers and critics have defended London and his books. True, there were always some cracks in the crowd of worshippers, but what seems to have made a real difference in the world of London scholarship and pedagogy was Black Lives Matter. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, teachers could not continue to be uncritical apologists for the author of Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf. Students didn’t buy the accolades they were selling.
Now, with Trump in the White House, racism resurgent and the return of statues for generals of the Confederacy, London might be regarded in some circles as something of a cultural hero. But not so fast. London’s The Iron Heel, predicted the coming of an oligarchy in the US. In that prophetic work, he describes a sinister conspiracy to quash freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, imprison outspoken opponents and critics, control news and information, install a professional army of paid mercenaries, create a secret police force, and wage global warfare for economic hegemony. It has always sold far better around the world than in the US. Read The Iron Heel , of course, and then read his least racist books, The People of the Abyss, about the poverty at the heart of the British Empire, and The Road, about his experiences as a hobo traveling across the US, and his arrest and incarceration in Buffalo, New York.
Let’s hope that Mamdani isn’t sucked into the celebrity circuit and that his family, friends and the citizens of New York help to keep him honest in a city that gave birth to Trump and Giuliani.
Jack London American Rebel
- by Foner, Philip S
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Sunday Sermon 2
Yet it predicts WWI and the real reasons for it.
Jack London The Iron Heel
Detailing of the rise of the "Iron Heel," a group of Capitalists, and the Socialist revolution that is crushed beneath it.
"It was the Plutocracy, weighing and balancing, that defeated us by dividing our strength. It was the Plutocracy, through its secret agents, that raised the cry that socialism was sacrilegious and atheistic; it was the Plutocracy that whipped the churches, and especially the Catholic Church, into line, and robbed us of a portion of the labor vote. And it was the Plutocracy, through its secret agents of course, that encouraged the Grange Party and even spread it to the cities into the ranks of the dying middle class.
The hard times at home had caused an immense decrease in consumption. Labor, out of work, had no wages with which to buy. The result was that the Plutocracy found a greater surplus than ever on its hands. This surplus it was compelled to dispose of abroad, and, what of its colossal plans, it needed money. Because of its strenuous efforts to dispose of the surplus in the world market, the Plutocracy clashed with Germany. Economic clashes were usually succeeded by wars, and this particular clash was no exception. The great German war-lord prepared, and so did the United States prepare.
The Oligarchy wanted the war with Germany. And it wanted the war for a dozen reasons. In the juggling of events such a war would cause, in the reshuffling of the international cards and the making of new treaties and alliances, the Oligarchy had much to gain. And, furthermore, the war would consume many national surpluses, reduce the armies of unemployed that menaced all countries, and give the Oligarchy a breathing space in which to perfect its plans and carry them out. Such a war would virtually put the Oligarchy in possession of the world-market. Also, such a war would create a large standing army that need never be disbanded, while in the minds of the people would be substituted the issue, "America versus Germany," in place of "Socialism versus Oligarchy."
Chapter XIII. The General Strike
The Iron Heel (1908) [A concordance is available for this work]
A futuristic tale of facist tyranny and socialist revolution considered a classic work of American radical literature. Much admired by Eugene Debs, Leon Trotsky, and George Orwell.
See:
Sunday Sermon
Plutocrats Rule
THE AMERICAN VOTER GETS TO CHOOSE BETWEEN:
AUTOCRACY,
PLUTOCRACY
OR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
DEFINITIONS OF THESE TERMS CAN BE FOUND IN 
JACK LONDON'S IRON HEEL 1907
A CLASSIC AMERICAN NOVEL OF CLASS WAR
Imdb.comwww.imdb.com/title/tt0064045/
The Assassination Bureau (1969) - IMDb
The Assassination Bureau: Directed by Basil Dearden. With Oliver Reed, Diana ... Jack London · Robert L. Fish · Stars · Oliver Reed · Diana Rigg ·...
The Assassination Bureau - Trailers From Hell
The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.
Jack London, Robert L. Fish
Penguin, Oct 1, 1994 - Fiction - 208 pages
London’s suspense thriller focuses on the fine distinction between state- justified murder and criminal violence in the Assassination Bureau—an organization whose mandate is to rid the state of all its enemies.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
