Jack London accurately detailed utter failure of financial elite

Just about a hundred years ago, Jack London wrote http://www.jacklondons.net/writings/IronHeel/toc.html|The Iron Heel> about the oligarchy in America taking open control of the government to crush the rising political power of the working and middle class.



The words Jack London put in his characters mouth in The Iron Heel still ring true, though it needs some additions:

When you are no longer allowed in one country to work women and children around the clock for starvation wages, you simply move your factory to another country that will let you abuse your workers.

And you figured out the way to keep moving the factories forever: break the economies of the countries that are strong, so when you have finally worked your way down to the poorest of poor here, the formerly rich countries will be grateful for your starvation wages jobs. Isn't that what is happening to America today?

When one of your country club brethren charges you too much for health insurance for your employees, rather than drive a hard bargain with your fraternity brother, you simply stop giving health insurance to your employees and let them fend for themselves.

If anything in America tends to produce a more vigorous democracy like decent education in K-12 or college, you tell your bought off politicians in state capitals and Washington to starve it of funds or kill it outright.

You publicly claim to believe in competition, but use your pawns in Washington to tax your small competitors and subsidize you. And when someone comes along with a better product that would bury something like say, GASOLINE, you buy up the patents and if it isn't a patentable technology, you launch a massive PR campaign to crush it.

One person in America can do the work that a thousand did a hundred years ago, and yet they can only survive by incurring debt and more debt, and working two jobs and then three.

All so you can put more and more money in the bank than you can ever spend in your lifetime. Do you think your descendant four generations out will thank you for your hard work (if you did any) to accumulate your fortune, or will they be a moral and intellectual cripple like Paris Hilton and so many of the idle rich?

And those who inherited great wealth, don't you secretly know that you are incompetent and even helpless to defend yourselves without your army of middle and working class drones who manage your money, cut the crust off your toast and wipe your ass?

George Orwell said http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2008/01/orwells-1984-war-economy-exists-to.html">essentially the same thing as London in 1984:

Or if there is some shadowy agenda behind it all. I remember seeing one man who made millions and millions off the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, basically helping it happen (though there were many) and where is he today? A millionaire. Yet the damage to America was so vast. Al Qaeda could never pull something like it off. Reminds me of a story I read here about DHS hiding locations of waste dumps of some coal bi-product, because they were a threat to national security, as AQ could blow them up (or something) creating environmental havoc. But DHS isn't allowed to ask why these giant messes are there in the first place. The have to accept that the environmental bombs have been laid around, then proceed to hustle around making sure nobody can find the fuses.

For them.

I like the old riddle: What's the difference between a revolutionary socialist and a liberal? A liberal believes the system is broken. A revolutionary socialist believes its working as designed.

Like in Obama's AMA speech, when he was explaining that if medical costs kept rising and people kept getting less, the economy would crash and it would be bad for the doctors practices. Its the same thing with most of these things: I mean you could argue that that the millionaire who created the subprime mortgage succeeded, but its bizarre how so many other businesses who got screwed (and taxpayers who funded it all through the bailout) are willing to stand around applauding the individual who took their money and destroyed their future. What I'm saying is that if things are running by design, crashing the United States economy is definitely part of the design. I guess that makes me a liberal, because I think that's unlikely. OR some strange things are going on!!!*

*edit: which is entirely possible too. These are indeed strange times.

but really like it!

one of my personal favorites.

K&R.

K&R. I think of all those who tried to warn us through the decades and how we didn't heed their message. Not that we "readers" didn't get it...but there was so little we could do to fight against it.

Maybe in the late 60's and 70's there was some success...but it got derailed. Time to build on that foundatio...and for a new generation to move principles begun in that time, forward. Honor, Dignity, a man being worth his Word as a bond. Equal Rights for all, and a "playing field" as level for all of us with health care and worker's rights as is possible.

Jack London was indeed a visionary... and then the realists who followed writing about the Great Depression. Our times lead me back to Netflixing old Dickens videos, mini-series. How many times can one find several versions of Dickens Greatest novels. Yet, each one brings forth something not seen in another version that makes his works live on. The books themselves are worth a re-read.

But...Jack London being more current than Twain or Dickens nailed it as a visionary of what was to come.

Thanks...!

:kick:

Love it

Great book

Here are few bits of it I found profound...


Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work. The strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides, the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set their faces against the war. They did not want their men to go forth to die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the people. It struck their sense of humor. The idea was infectious. The children struck in all the schools, and such teachers as came, went home again from deserted class rooms. The general strike took the form of a great national picnic. And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so evidenced, appealed to the imagination of all. And, finally, there was no danger to be incurred by the colossal frolic. When everybody was guilty, how was anybody to be punished?


Regarding WW2...
`And the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless that such idiots really are managing our interests,' was Ernest's comment. `They have enabled us to sell more abroad, which means that we'll be compelled to consume less at home.


And....`Ghent has taught the oligarchs how to do it,' Ernest said. `I'll wager they've made a text-book out of his "Benevolent Feudalism."'

Can anyone SEE the suburbs in this paragraph?
As a result, driven back upon themselves from every side, the traitors and their families became clannish. Finding it impossible to dwell in safety in the midst of the betrayed proletariat, they moved into new localities inhabited by themselves alone. In this they were favored by the oligarchs. Good dwellings, modern and sanitary, were built for them, surrounded by spacious yards, and separated here and there by parks and playgrounds. Their children attended schools especially built for them, and in these schools manual training and applied science were specialized upon. Thus, and unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of this segregation arose caste. The members of the favored unions became the aristocracy of labor. They were set apart from the rest of labor. They were better housed, better clothed, better fed, better treated. They were grab-sharing with a vengeance.


And here is another reason I can't deal with christianity...

Southern Church's outspoken defense of chattel slavery prior to what is known as the "War of the Rebellion." Several such illustrations, culled from the documents of the times, are here appended. In 1835 A.D., the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved that: "slavery is recognized in both the Old and the New Testaments, and is not condemned by the authority of God." The Charleston Baptist Association issued the following, in an address, in 1835 A.D.: "The right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has been distinctly recognized by the Creator of all things, who is surely at liberty to vest the right of property over any object whomsoever He pleases." The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor of Divinity and professor in the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia, wrote: "Extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves, together with the usual incidents to that right. The right to buy and sell is clearly stated. Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the Jewish policy instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and practice of mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the New Testament and the moral law, we are brought to the conclusion that slavery is not immoral. Having established the point that the first African slaves were legally brought into bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage follows as an indispensable consequence. Thus we see that the slavery that exists in America was founded in right."


I hate the wealthy oligarch pig authoritarian psychopaths,we live in a Kakistocracy,truly.

Then I took the full name of London's character as my name in DU: http://www.online-literature.com/london/martin_eden/">Martin Eden.

Jack London was brilliant, and definitely on our side. It's amazing that in many aspects very little has changed in the last century.

cus that would be weird.

;)


Sorry, couldn't resist.

I might bite.:evilgrin: