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"we are taken into the future and shown an America ruled by a tiny oligarchy, and here too there is a revolt that fails."
-- Kurt Vonnegut

The Iron Heel is in many ways more prophetic than either 1984 or Brave New World. Orwell merely exaggerated, exemplified and hypertrophied elements of a Stalinist dictatorship which had existed for decades, while the ruminations of Huxley set still further in the future remain something of an allegory. London was describing with exactitude a streamlined mechanised totalitarian dictatorship, backed by big business, specifically designed to crush the labour movement, when no-one dreamt of such a thing, and which would not actually be in place for decades.
-- Ben Granger