Review of Jack London's The Road

Full of tenderness and attention, as Jack London himself tells us, his biographers have claimed that he only became a hobo to study sociology. This is reminiscent of the hero in Sinclair's “King Coal”, who, the son of a multimillionaire, tries for a while to live, toil and fight together with coal carpenters, but after experiencing the practical class struggle, returns to his father's house filled with utopian ideas and probably spends the rest of his days there in a philanthropic frame of mind. Probably, because the return is the end of the story. However, if you want, you can also infer that Sinclair is trying to say here that bourgeois and proletarian are irreconcilable opposites, neither comes to the other, there is only struggle between them, uncompromising class struggle. But “King Coal” is a novel and its hero is unlikely. Sociology is studied in America, just like elsewhere, at the universities that Sinclair records in “Parade March”. Jack London did not study sociology until practical life had long since made him recognize class society. His experiences on the railroad tracks provided him with the first material for his later dialectical novel “Iron Heel”. Jack London, who administers Marxism to his readers by the spoonful via the “Iron Heel”, has enjoyed enough Marxist lessons on the railroad tracks to be able to do this fully and completely. Jack London is the poet of the working class. Even when the bourgeoisie reads him, because the latter only wants the adventurous and skims it off the top. (The publisher wants to publish Jack London's best, socialist works last). Jack London was a worker, a hobo, suffered and wrote for his class comrades, and remained faithful to his convictions until his death. He did not come from the circles of King Coal and did not care for the opportunity to get there. The proceeds of his writing made him economically independent; his ideology did not change, it remained dependent on the class will of the proletariat. He speaks the phraseless language of the worker, he has his muscle power and freshness, lives without calculating the future, is in constant conflict with the rulers. His life-threatening position on the buffers of the frantically rushing train, his skillful begging lies to get a meal, his misfortune to be caught, to go to prison completely innocently (in this case), his eternal fear of the policeman, his role as the overreacher of General Kelly's vagabond army, he takes it all for granted, never saying: “How unfair”, or “couldn't this be different?” He is a worker and knows the role he plays in society and knows the only possible solution: parry and fight! The strongest will win. And he always wants to be the strongest. He kicks all his little opponents in the face, only shying away from the organization, the system of the bourgeois state. Here he feels compelled and must bow down; knowing that the individual alone cannot run against society, he preaches the battle of class against class. The power of his voice, the clarity of his words will one day help to create solidarity in struggle among all the downtrodden. And millions of poor people like him will abolish the social order that murders unemployed, hungry proletarians on the railroad tracks.

PM1 , Cologne.

• 1Paul Mattick