Introduction

Throughout the first twenty-odd years of his life, Jack epitomized the struggle between the working man and the heartless capitalist.  Without knowing just how to define it yet, Jack was learning the essence of the class struggle.  However, it was not until his days as a student that Jack was to learn the specific socialist terminology to put with the feelings of helplessness he had while working for capitalists.

            Jack had given up making a living from hand to mouth toiling in a factory and had taken up with the drifters.  He drifted all around the country for a time and then returned to Oakland.  Upon his return he enrolled in Oakland High School.  At age nineteen, he was easily the oldest person in the school.  However, since he had to work to support himself, he did not see it as overly necessary to fit in with his fellow students, but rather devoted much of his free time to his interest in socialism. 

            Among Jack’s acquaintances were a number of other socially-concerned students, and one of them lent him a copy of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Within this pamphlet “[h]e found all the questions that had been piling up in his mind during his life as a newsboy, factory hand, pirate and hobo clearly answered in the revolutionary pamphlet written by Marx and Engels in 1847.  His own experience in the class struggle, he now saw, was no accident.”[1]  One passage, the final paragraph, of the pamphlet especially appealed to Jack:

The socialists disdain to conceal their aims and views.  They openly declare their ends can be attained only by a forcible overthrow of all existing conditions.  Let the ruling class tremble at the socialistic revolution.  The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.  They have a world to gain.  Working men of all countries, unite![2]

 

            After reading this, Jack’s life went through some irreversible changes.  In April of 1896, he joined the Socialist Labor Party and he also stopped living as an individualist because he recognized himself as a member of the proletariat.[3] 

Jack London’s involvement with socialism started early in the struggle.  He was a socialist well before the world had heard of Lenin, and even before Marx was well-known outside academic circles.  However, the socialism that Jack knew was not the socialism that the world was ready for.  The party of Eugene Debs faded into obscurity.  Reforms within the capitalist system did away with the need for a violent revolution.  Basically, the middle-class intelligentsia had taken over the party of the proletariat.  One month after Jack’s resignation from the party, the International Socialist Review charged the middle class with usurping the struggle from the proletariat.  “From this type come suggestions that the class struggle, that impregnable fortress of the revolutionary workers, be dropped as obsolete because, presumably, it is unpopular in the drawing rooms of the ultra respectable middle class…To be brief, they would sugarcoat the pill so effectively that the masters might some day step down gracefully and fall in line!!!”[4]

            Jack never lived to see the triumph of the proletariat in Russia, nor the collapse of his own party in America.  If he had, he would probably have expected both.  He saw the problems that plagued the Socialist Party.  In order to gain votes, it had watered down its message.  So what if Eugene Debs got almost a million votes in the 1912 election, the party had sold its soul.

The Research Process

            Initially it was very difficult to research Jack London’s socialism.  This difficulty was for three main reasons.  The first reason is that Jack London is remembered primarily as a novelist and thus most work on his life ends up being literary analyses.  At every step of the research process I had to sift through four or five works on Jack London’s life to find one that was relevant to socialism.  I can say now that I know far more about London’s development as a writer than I ever cared to when I started the research process.

            The second reason my research was difficult is that the violent, revolutionary socialism of Jack London’s day is no longer a viable political system.  The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact effectively killed any sort of modern scholarship on the subject.

            The third thorn in my side during this research project, and any research project at Northwestern, is the obsolete, asbestos-filled Ramaker Library.  Half of my research had to be done using interlibrary loan, which does not allow for much time to have a book in hand, especially given the course load I had this semester.  Also along the lines of my dealings with interlibrary loan was the problem book scarcity.  It took me three weeks to obtain a copy of London’s War of the Classes.  In the end the book had to come all the way from Colorado College.  Apparently Ramaker is not the only library in the country that does not have a huge selection of books.

            With all that said, and my potshot at Ramaker Library taken, I have to say that it was fascinating doing research on this topic.  There was nothing more gratifying than reading Joan London’s (Jack London’s daughter) embarrassed references to her father’s days as a socialist or some snobbish literary analysis of The Call of the Wild grudgingly pay homage to the socialist author.  Even with this sick pleasure aside, it was intriguing to research such an obscure topic.  I had to dig and dig through piles of mostly-worthless sources to glean tiny bits of information that were relevant to my topic, and it was very satisfying.  All my cunning was called into the arena to extract the evolution and eventual renunciation of Jack London’s life as a socialist piece by piece and it was great.

 

 

Calder-Marshall, Arthur.  Lone Wolf: The Story of Jack London.  Methuen and Co., Ltd.  London (1961).  Available at NWC.

 

            Calder-Marshall’s work is significant because it emphasized Jack London’s unique character.  However, despite the few gleanings that were useful in the case of London’s socialism, this book was primarily about London’s development as a human being, more to the point, his development as a writer.  Since Jack London is most well-known for his works of fiction, this book dealt with that.  Much time was spent on Jack’s early life that was important to his socialism in that it established his flawlessness as a member of the proletariat, but it was not exactly put into that context.

 

Foner, Philip S.  Jack London: American Rebel.  The Citadel Press, New York (1964).  Available at NWC.

 

            This book was helpful because it dealt with Jack London’s socialism more than most.  The title “American Rebel” dealt mainly with his rebellion against the capitalist system as a young writer.  However, the irony of London’s wealth, achieved after his first successful novel, was lost on the author.  The book was an odd mix of stories of Jack London’s involvement with the Socialist Party and his rather eccentric spending habits.  For instance, Jack spent over $100,000 remodeling his boat.  This may not seem incredibly odd except for the fact that a similar boat could have been purchased brand new for about one fifth of the price (if not less).

 

Labor, Earle. Jack London.  Twayne Publishers, Inc., New York (1974).  Available at NWC.

           

            Fitting with the author’s name, this book dealt with London’s efforts with the labor class.  This is a very tongue-in-cheek way to deal with this book, but that cannot be helped, the author simply has a very fitting name.  Back to the point, Labor’s book had great tidbits on Jack’s early socialist writing that were very helpful in writing the paper.

 

London, Jack.  The Iron Heel.  Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago (1907).  Interlibrary Loan.

 

            This was London’s quintessential socialist novel.  It took him much effort to find a publisher for it, but it was well-received by the socialist/communist press around the world.  In fact, it was the only book written by an American to make the communist-approved reading list.  The book is a novel about the socialist revolution that London predicted against the ruling capitalist class, who had, in the time in which the novel was set, formed a conspiratorial organization called simply the Oligarchy.  This group ruled the world and kept the proletariat down.  The most interesting part of the book was that it was set up as a history of events that had transpired hundreds of years before the book was written.  Apparently, the socialist revolution had succeeded sometime in the 24^th century and the book was set as a historical account of the events that transpired during the lifetime of one of the heroic socialist figures of yore, Ernest Everhard.  Oddly prophetic, The Iron Heel predicted the fascism that would rise in Europe after London’s death.  (It’s actually a ripping-good read, you should check it out).

 

London, Jack.  Letters from Jack London.  Edited by King Hendricks and Irving Shepard.  The Odyssey Press, New York (1965).  Available at NWC

 

            As the title might suggest, this was a collection of letters written by Jack London.  However, only one of the letters was useful in writing a paper on socialism.  This letter was important in that it showed London’s devotion to the socialist cause and that it demonstrated London’s use of “Yours for the revolution” as how he signed his letters during that period.

 

London, Jack.  People of the Abyss.  Pluto Press (2001).  Interlibrary Loan.

 

            This book was London’s account of the plight of the working class people in London.  Jack London was stranded in London and lived among the working class there for several months and was shocked to find that the people there were worse off than many in America.  This experience fortified his resolve to fight for the people.  While not dealing explicitly with socialism, this book served as yet another reminder of Jack London’s concern for the working class.

 

London, Jack.  War of the Classes.  (NOTE:  this source was in pamphlet form and did not have any sort of publishing date.  It was older than the hills).  Interlibrary Loan.

           

            This book was helpful in that it was basically a slightly autobiographical account of Jack London’s socialist thought.  It was not very insightful, nor was it very detailed.  However interesting it was to read, it was not incredibly helpful in writing the paper.

 

London, Joan.  Jack London and His Times: An Unconventional Biography.  The Book League of America, New York (1939).  Available at NWC

 

            Joan London was Jack London’s daughter.  She loved her father and was very proud of her.  This was very evident in the book.  It was several hundred pages of how incredible, magical and wise Jack London was.  With this in mind, Joan London barely glanced over the socialism that was very important for twenty years of Jack London’s life.  Caught up in the times, Joan London, in an attempt to paint her father/hero in the best possible light, merely glanced over Jack London’s brief (read lifelong) flirtation with a very unpopular political movement.  Needless to say, this book was not incredibly helpful when writing a paper about said unpopular political movement.  However, Joan London’s access to some of the most intimate details of Jack London’s life was very helpful in establishing the facts of the early years of his life.

 

Mood, Fulmer. “Jack London and His Times: An Unconventional Biography.” American Literature, 1940, Vol. 12 Issue 1, p126.  EBSCO Host.

 

Fulmer’s review of Joan London’s book was glowing and he put it in a class of its own among biographies of Jack London.  Apparently he missed the self-indulgent tone of the book when reviewing it.  Granted, he did give a nod to all the facts presented in the book, but it was hardly useful for my purposes here.

 

Raney, David. No Ties Except Those of Blood": Class, Race, and Jack London's American Plague.´ Papers on Language & Literature, Fall2003, Vol. 39 Issue 4, p390.

 

            This paper, despite its deceptive title, had more to do with the plight of the poor in America and class warfare than Jack London’s socialist theory.  It was useful in that it provided another account of London’s sympathy and empathy for the proletariat, but other than that it was not incredibly useful.

 

Shore, Elliot.  Talkin’ Socialism: J.A. Wayland and the Radical Press.  University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 1988.  Dr. Anderson’s book  (that’s you).

 

            This book was helpful mostly for establishing what was going on in the greater socialist movement effecting the country during Jack London’s life.  While Jack London himself was not mentioned with any real frequency in the book, it was very helpful to determine the zeitgeist among the proletariat of the times. 

 

Stone, Irving.  Jack London, Sailor on Horseback.  Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, NY (1938).  Available at NWC

 

            This book was mostly a romantic account of Jack London’s life, not romantic in the lovey-dovey sense, but rather whimsical and magical.  It was not very useful at all, but some tidbits here and there were gleaned from it.  The most important role this book served was to check information against Joan London’s book.  Since Joan was Jack London’s daughter, it was often difficult to pick out what was actual fact and what was simply hero-worship.  Stone’s book served to determine what side of the truth fence the events in Joan London’s book fell on.

 

Walcutt, Charles Child.  Jack London.  University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1966).  Available at NWC.

           

            Like other books on this list, this also had limited usefulness as far as researching Jack London’s socialism, but at the same time it had good bits on his early life.  Since it was often difficult to obtain reliable information on London’s early life, it was good to gather as many sources as possible to determine the reliable information from the not-so-reliable.  Despite all this the book was not that useful, especially since it did not mention socialism at all.

 

Whittemore, Reed. ”Rediscovering `The People of the Abyss' by Jack London.”  Georgia Review, Winter93, Vol. 47 Issue 4, p733.  Interlibrary Loan.

           

            Since The People of the Abyss was an important book by Jack London on the plight of the international proletariat (namely that in East London) this article provided a nice glimpse of why the book is still important.