55 pages • 1-hour read
The Iron Heel
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Themes
Capitalism as a Dehumanizing System
One of the novel’s central critiques of capitalism is that it is a dehumanizing system that abstracts labor into exchange value and ignores the material conditions and livelihood of the working class. The Oligarchy rationalizes their exploitation by deeming the proletariat as their inferiors and comparing them to lower animals. In his speeches, Ernest challenges capitalist abstraction by emphasizing the materiality of the worker’s lives, advocating for equitable standards for subsistence, and insisting on the dignity of the working class.
Ernest first expounds on the importance of materialism as an antithesis to metaphysics at Dr. Cunningham’s dinner for the clergymen. He rebukes the men’s reliance on religion to discuss the working class and claims, “You have left the real and solid earth and are up in the air” (10). After listing the physical achievements of scientists, he asks of the metaphysicians, “[W]hat tangible good have they wrought for mankind?” (12). Although directed to the clergyman, Ernest’s critique of metaphysics is a lead-in to a critique of capitalism and its abstraction of labor from the human being. The clergy’s livelihood depends on the support of the capitalist class, and Ernest tells them, “[I]n return you preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them” (20). Ernest insists on the material reality of working-class conditions and the material consequences of exploitative modes of production, which neither the Church nor the capitalists acknowledge.
Ernest grounds his socialist perspective in “facts, always facts” (19), which are tangible and calculable. He repeatedly drills the numbers of people who are suffering and discontent in his speech to the Philomath Club and lists “fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and not properly fed,” (86), “three million child laborers” (86), “the million and a half revolutionists in the United States” (86), and “the twenty-three millions and a half in the rest of the world” (83). Ernest’s rhetorical strategy reverses the language of the capitalists who treat humans as numbers to turn a profit. Instead, he uses his calculations as a tally of injustices and resistance.
Throughout the novel, the working class are described in dehumanizing language. Avis uses the terms “scum,” “stench,” “slow,” and “stupid” to describe Jackson and his home (43-44). At the Chicago Commons, she compares the mobs to “great hairy beasts” and “misshapen monsters” (327). Avis uses these terms rhetorically to describe how capitalism demeans the working class and naturalizes social inequalities. When Ernest exposes the Bishop to the ways that class disparity is socially constructed and institutionally maintained, the Bishop “learn[s] a deeper cause than innate depravity” (107). Ernest characterizes the Oligarchy as men who abide by “pig-ethics” and are “alive—with rottenness” (32, 82). The men at the Philomath Club are “brutes” who “snarl” and “growl” and are “fat with power and possession” (84, 87). To Ernest, inhumanity resides in the capitalist class. In sum, he focuses on materiality and the laborer’s livelihood to demonstrate how capitalism violates the dignity and decency of not just the working class but humanity at large.
Class Consciousness as a Path to Solidarity and Revolution
In The Iron Heel, Ernest succeeds in transforming the perspectives of Dr. Cunningham, the Bishop, and Avis and enables them to see, or become conscious of, the capitalist exploitation that was previously invisible to them. The three converts learn about the social inequalities inherent in the capitalist system and the institutions and attitudes that normalize class disparity and the exploitation of labor.
Class consciousness is a term from Marxist theory that proposes that the working class must become aware of the capitalist systems that exploit them in order to unite in a revolution. For Ernest, getting others to reach this awareness requires challenging their common assumptions of how the world works. These norms often legitimize or obscure capitalist exploitation rather than critique it. Marx refers to these ruling ideas as ideology, and the common refrain in Marxist theory is that the dominant ideology is the ideology of the dominant class.
The central transformation occurs when Avis, who begins the novel skeptical of Ernest’s political theories, recognizes how her bourgeois values perpetuate class inequalities. When she first reads Ernest’s book, she accuses him of “foment[ing] class hatred” (27). To her, encouraging the proletariat to fight for their rights “appeal[s] to all that is narrow and brutal in the working class” and is “anti-social” (28). Avis’s worldview assumes the inferiority of the working class as part of the natural social order, which, by extension, validates her elite status. When she discovers all the institutional roadblocks that deprived Jackson of his rightful compensation, she awakens to the systemic violations of workers’ rights. She realizes, “I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in which I had always lived, and to find the frightful realities that were beneath” (65). Avis becomes conscious of the ways that the Oligarchy rewards greed and punishes critics and describes capitalism as a “tacit conspiracy” against the working class (64). The realization becomes the pivotal point that leads her to join the socialist cause and fight for change.
For Dr. Cunningham and the Bishop, Ernest guides them on a path to class consciousness by exposing the ways that capitalism legitimizes its abuses by coercion and indoctrination via social institutions. Ernest claims, “No one to-day is a free agent. We are all caught up in the wheels and cogs of the industrial machine” (56). Cunningham and the Bishop are both libeled in the press and displaced from their professions and homes. As the two men confront the reality of working-class conditions, they demonstrate a critical awareness of capitalist ideologies of exploitation. The Bishop proclaims, “You led me from theories about life to life itself. You pulled aside the veils from the social shams” (199). Avis describes her father as a man who “ha[s] no false sense of values” (181). Although both men reach their own level of class consciousness and devote their lives to the socialist cause, the First Revolt fails due to the stratification of the working class.
In the novel’s conclusion, the institutionalization of labor castes precludes the hopes for class collectivity. Ernest laments, “How can we hope for solidarity with all these cross purposes and conflicts” (234). The novel’s treatment of class consciousness and ideology illustrate what later Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci theorized as hegemony and Louis Althusser conceptualized as ideological state apparatuses. London’s violent and dystopian climax reveals that class consciousness is ineffective without class solidarity.
Female Agency and Activism in Revolutions
As the only main female character, Avis initially represents a spectrum of tropes on traditional womanhood, such as the bourgeois maiden and the doting wife. Avis’s transformation into a political activist illustrates how gender intersects with class, and she becomes a revolutionist for both the socialist cause and female agency.
London describes two types of women in the novel that Avis finds herself positioned between. The first are “society women” who are the wives and daughters of the Oligarchy (68). They perpetuate the 19th-century “cult of true womanhood” in their domesticity and decorum and appear as hostesses of elite social events. During Ernest’s controversial speech at the Philomath Club, the men voice their objections while “the women shr[i]nk, and fear [i]s in their faces” (84). Despite their meek demeanor, these women also hold considerable power that Avis attributes to their class. She observes of Mrs. Wickman and Mrs. Pertonwaithe that “[t]hey [a]re powers, these two women, what of the money that [i]s theirs. The power of subsidization of thought [i]s theirs to a remarkable degree” (69). The ideas and values that the society women uphold are those of the capitalist class, and Avis discerns that the women are mimics of the men rather than independent thinkers. She contends, “They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands—the ethic of their class” (69). Avis’s critique highlights how these women, her peers, align themselves more with the privilege of the patriarchy than with other women in society. As Avis becomes more involved in the Revolution, she realizes that class solidarity also means female solidarity.
The other group of women that Avis comes to recognize and advocate for is the women of the working class. When Avis investigates the social injustices of Jackson’s trial, she connects his experiences with those of other workers, especially the invisible labor of women. She reflects, “I remembered Ernest's women of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a week” (60). The realization awakens Avis to the understanding that a fight for workers’ rights entails a fight for women workers. In contrast to the shrinking women of high society, the women of the Revolution confront adversity head-on. In her assessment of the General Strike, Avis remarks, “[T]he women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set their faces against the war” (213). Avis comes to represent the female agency and activism of all the women involved in the Revolution.
Avis’s role in the Revolution initially starts out in peripheral ways that do not subvert traditional gender roles. She is the hero-worshipping wife of her revolutionary husband and becomes “his secretary” when she assists with his writings (187). As the novel progresses, especially when Ernest is imprisoned and diminished from the narrative, Avis is no longer an accessory or accomplice but a central revolutionist in her own right. She braves the ’Frisco Reds when she is called to trial and asserts, “I, alone in the midst of a score of men, was the only person unmasked” (280). While Ernest is in prison, she works on propaganda, spy networks, and refuges for her comrades in hiding. She excels in the world of espionage and recalls her role as a spy in Germany with pride: “Incidentally, I may state that in my dual role I managed a few important things for the Revolution” (284). In several instances, Avis uses the stereotypes of female frivolity to her advantage and performs bourgeois femininity to evade suspicions of her activism. She travels as a society woman replete with lapdogs, and at the Chicago Commune, she dodges a soldier’s queries by proclaiming, “Oh, I’m going to be married […] and then I’ll be out of it all” (334). Avis’s subversion of traditional femininity functions both on the level of plot and in the novel’s ideological critique of gender and class.
Avis is the novel’s first-person narrator, and the primacy of her voice highlights the agency and political contributions of women in the socialist movement. The novel depicts other women in the Revolution with strength and courage, such as Avis’s female comrades who travel with her and convene at the refuge or the iconoclastic Anna Roylston, nicknamed the “Red Virgin” (265), who rejects marriage and motherhood to serve the cause. Although Meredith’s Foreword undermines Avis’s authority, and her self-description as Ernest’s “hero-worshipper” downplays her own heroic qualities (289), Avis’s narrative offers an interpretation that women’s agency, intelligence, and bravery were vital to the Revolution.
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