"I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an oligarchy of you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it.", so says the protagonist in this scathing, prescient and moving account of where rapacious capitalism leads the US in the early twentieth century. In 1907 Mr. London was criticizing big box stores (trusts) and their destructive impact as they squeezed small, local stores.

There is much to process in this fictional account of what happens when the oligarchs take over, and I often found myself updating and considering how the same scenario will play out today, given that the oligarchs are attempting to fully seize control. So many of the protagonists observations and critiques regarding productivity numbers, inequality, etc, are as true now as they were in the early 1900's, and his warnings should have been heeded and still need to heeded... as if. Sadly it's a story that has repeated too often throughout human history, a small group of greedy individuals take and take while the masses suffer. 

I was surprised that he criticized the Luddites and their battle against mechanization and centralization. Given what I learned about the history of the Luddite movement from the excellent book 'Blood In The Machine' (Merchant), it's clear that the propaganda at the time this book was written had presented the biased version favoring the electric loom owners.

As prescient as much of the material is there are of course many differences between them and now, principally the idea that capitalism will collapse because of 'unconsumed capital' (Marx's doctrine of surplus value) vs the present reality that the race to the bottom (production costs, wages, externalities, etc), combined with inequality, that appears likely to ultimately destroy... or transition capitalism.

Unfortunately circumstances are worse now and the next reckoning will be more fatal for the working class. While much is the same (or worse) it was sobering to appreciate how much has changed regarding specifically the labor market and the workers power to negotiate. With AI and robotics the argument from the main character that without labor there is no capital has grown so much weaker. I know, this is not a profound observation, and while it didn't 'surprise' me, it was upsetting to read Earnest's enthusiastic defense of workers power and know that this is no longer true.

While this book still has much to offer a contemporary reader I suggest 'Everything For Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072'. It's a fantastic journalistic (in the style of World War Z) history of what happens as things break down BUT it's pragmatically optimistic.

FAVORITE QUOTES:
"'I know nothing that I may say can influence you,' he said.

'You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel.'"

"The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectiv-ity. The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experi-ence. The metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains him-self by the universe."

John C. Calhoun said: 'A power has risen up in the Government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.

Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: 'I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

"Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods?"
* I absolutely adore how London tears into religion as he equates the clergy with metaphysicians.