Jack London’s The Iron Heel prefigured totalitarian capitalism dystopia in 1908

Evidence

291 The Iron Heel is the title of a novel by Jack London, published in 1908, in which a member of a socialist society which had achieved victory after centuries of struggle presents documents recalling the beginnings of the preceding, centuries-long domination of the Iron Heel, i.e. of capitalism prepared to use naked and total violence. The novel earned Jack London the accusation from his socialist friends of being defeatist and discouraging. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 3296

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s discussions of state capitalism and totalitarian domination; also resembles dystopian fiction frameworks like We and Parable of the Sower in the reading list. — connects to: Jack London’s 1908 dystopia prefigured twentieth-century totalitarian capitalism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 3296
• CANDY: A light, tweetable oddity: the 1908 novel that got London branded defeatist by his fellow socialists for predicting a centuries-long capitalist tyranny.