LETTERS The Iron Heel by Jack London paperback 75p from the Journeyman Press, 97 Ferme Park Road, London N8 98A THE APPEARANCE AGAIN in paperback of Jack London's Iron Heel, first published in 1907, is perhaps a good time to renssess this milestone in the somewhat spurse history of socialise fiction.
The publishers obviously see the book as a prophetic vision of the rise of fascism and fascist mothods-the cover design shows a jackboot stamping on a pro-Allende plucard. And to some extent this is true, since it was first published 15 years before the rise of Mussolini. However it contains serious weaknesses of a type which are too often over Jooked when judging novels and poetry which identify with the workers movement. eternal and somchow above the bitter clase battles raging around them. Conpared with the subtlety and vivid insights into the limitations and strains of male temale relationstips in class societies of even a bourgeois writer Like Thomas Handy in Jude the Obscure, for example, Written in the same decude Tendon 1sa non starter yet it is the job of socialist writers to build on the gains and most devcioped tendeocles of bourgeois culture not fall far behind them.
BASIC CONCEPTS
The novel has its strong paints, how ever. In the early sections London sets out to explain some of the basis concopts of marxist theory and the ways that cupitalism works, through debates and discussions that brothard las with Caden Su Som businesser Thi he does admirably, Similarly Avi's Lo vestigation of the case of a worker called Jackson who has bad his um lom off in a mill accident revealing to her the inter relation of industry, the state and the