I just finished reading The Iron Heel by Jack London, originally published in 1907. I wasn't quite sure what I would think of this book, but the description I had read sounded interesting. Once I started, I soon found myself highlighting many of the passages, and even a whole chapter, many of which will be presented below.
First a brief summary: The book tells of a labor leader in early 20th century America by the name of Ernest Everhard. The narrative is from a manuscript written by his wife, Avis Everhard, as he becomes a national leader against the growing oligarchy and eventually is elected to Congress. He is arrested on false charges, imprisoned, soon escapes and goes underground, and helps lead the start of a revolution against the oligarchy.
There are a couple of things to note. First, there is an additional narrative from 7 centuries afterward as a scholar reviews and makes a number of footnote comments throughout the book. They are frequent, but have more a feeling of how London would want the things to turn out in some future.
Second, this book does not have complex characters or plotting. It reads much more like a framework for the author to hang his own ideas on, and making everything just strong enough to hold it all together.
What is remarkable however, is that so many of the passages describe much of what we are seeing today.
To start, early in the book, there is a scene where a man is seen, and the upper class characters suggest that he should be at work, and that he is just lazy, confirming there own opinion of the working class. It turns out however, that he lost his arm in an accident at work, due to lax safety standards and overwork, and the factory refused to pay any benefits, and that the corporation used every means possible to prevent a fair judgment for the worker, including forcing other workers to lie about the event:
* The function of the corporation lawyer was to serve, by corrupt methods, the money-grabbing propensities of the corporations. It is on record that Theodore Roosevelt, at that time President of the United States, said in 1905 A.D., in his address at Harvard Commencement: "We all know that, as things actually are, many of the most influential and most highly remunerated members of the Bar in every centre of wealth, make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade the laws which were made to regulate, in the interests of the public, the uses of great wealth."
And the rest of the quotation is also relevant, even though it is not included in the book:
Every man of great wealth who runs his business with cynical contempt for those prohibitions of the law which by hired cunning he can escape or evade is a menace to our community; and the community is not to be excused if it does not develop a spirit which actively frowns on and discountenances him.
Although not quite as blatant as forcing their workers to lie, companies like the big investment banks, BP, and Massey Energy have caused enormous amount of damage to their own workers and our economy, and have gotten off largely free of any punishment.
Later, after Avis investigates and determines the truth, she tries to get some publicity in the newspapers:
I got hold of Percy Layton. He was a graduate of the university, had gone in for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship as reporter on the most influential of the three newspapers. He smiled when I asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all mention of Jackson or his case.
"Editorial policy," he said. "We have nothing to do with that. It's up to the editors."
"But why is it policy?" I asked.
"We're all solid with the corporations," he answered. "If you paid advertising rates, you couldn't get any such matter into the papers. A man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job. You couldn't get it in if you paid ten times the regular advertising rates."
And just as today, it was hard to get the news to include any negative information against the corporations, no matter how bad their behavior.
The next section has Ernest talking to a group of businessmen, smaller than the equivalent of the multinationals, but still generally wealthy capitalists:
I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most of the stock in the Sierra Mills. But I could not shake them as I had shaken the mechanics in their employ. I discovered that they had an ethic superior to that of the rest of society. It was what I may call the aristocratic ethic or the master ethic. They talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy and right. And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and inexperience. They were the most hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest. They believed absolutely that their conduct was right. There was no question about it, no discussion. They were convinced that they were the saviors of society, and that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working class were it not for the employment that they, and they alone, by their wisdom, provided for it.
...
"When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right. And then they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanction always comes. They are superficial casuists. They are Jesuitical. They even see their way to doing wrong that right may come of it. One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the theory of the divine right of kings--commercial kings in their case.
Kind of like the way that the free market libertarians and corporate conservatives believe that what they are doing is right no matter who is hurt in the process.
Ernest continues to confront business leaders and oligarchs over their own behavior, and how they were bringing the country down:
Ernest went on to his rise in society, till at last he came in touch with members of the upper classes, and rubbed shoulders with the men who sat in the high places. Then came his disillusionment, and this disillusionment he described in terms that did not flatter his audience. He was surprised at the commonness of the clay. Life proved not to be fine and gracious. He was appalled by the selfishness he encountered, and what had surprised him even more than that was the absence of intellectual life. Fresh from his revolutionists, he was shocked by the intellectual stupidity of the master class. And then, in spite of their magnificent churches and well-paid preachers, he had found the masters, men and women, grossly material. It was true that they prattled sweet little ideals and dear little moralities, but in spite of their prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they were without real morality--for instance, that which Christ had preached but which was no longer preached.
...
You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up (as you to-day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes.
Remember that only a few months ago, there were a couple of republicans that were discussing the constitutionality of child labor laws.
"When he says "free opportunity for all," he means free opportunity to squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied him by the great trusts. And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated these phrases so often that you believe them. You want opportunity to plunder your fellow-men in your own small way, but you hypnotize yourselves into thinking you want freedom. You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you are patriotic. Your desire for profits, which is sheer selfishness, you metamorphose into altruistic solicitude for suffering humanity. Come on now, right here amongst ourselves, and be honest for once. Look the matter in the face and state it in direct terms."
I think that is a classic response to the libertarians obsession with individual freedom.
And this gets to the crux of the problem with capitalism:
"And now, while we are on the trusts," Ernest went on, "let us settle a few things. I shall make certain statements, and if you disagree with them, speak up. Silence will mean agreement. Is it not true that a machine-loom will weave more cloth and weave more cheaply than a hand-loom?" He paused, but nobody spoke up. "Is it not then highly irrational to break the machine-loom and go back to the clumsy and more costly hand-loom method of weaving?" Heads nodded in acquiescence. "Is it not true that that known as a trust produces more efficiently and cheaply than can a thousand competing small concerns?" Still no one objected. "Then is it not irrational to destroy that cheap and efficient combination?"
This is the contradictory nature of capitalism. How can we all benefit, if we are all both consumers and workers, each wanting the best possible deals we can get for ourselves? We can all make compromises, paying a bit more for goods and services, and getting a bit less in our paycheck, and generally being ok about it so long as we have what we need to survive and succeed. Ultimately we are going to need to deal with this contradiction.
The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class. The employers' associations, that had helped the captains of industry to tear and rend labor, were now torn and rent by their quondam allies. Amidst the crashing of the middle men, the small business men and manufacturers, the trusts stood firm. Nay, the trusts did more than stand firm. They were active. They sowed wind, and wind, and ever more wind; for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and make a profit out of it. And such profits! Colossal profits! Strong enough themselves to weather the storm that was largely their own brewing, they turned loose and plundered the wrecks that floated about them. Values were pitifully and inconceivably shrunken, and the trusts added hugely to their holdings, even extending their enterprises into many new fields-- and always at the expense of the middle class.
Sounds a lot like the corporate mindset today, on Wall Street and their lobbyists.
As society is realizing what has happened, they elect a large number of socialists to Congress, but they have little if any power, and are soon arrested and imprisoned on false charges. They soon escape, and the long, slow revolution against the oligarchs begins, even though from the the fight takes centuries (as recounted from 7 centuries in the future).
I realize this is already getting into the TLDR range, so I won't add any more quotations here, just one concluding thought. The world that London describes is not ours today, even though these passages and many others are almost like a mirror to our own; a corporate dominated political system that cares not one bit for labor, and is aided and abetted by the media, the military, and even in part by churches. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I'd like to think that as bad as things are today, we might still be able to head off the worst of it.