Remembering Jack London:
January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916
Greg Johnson
467 words
Spanish version here
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
But Jack London was no ordinary Leftist, for he was acutely racially conscious (see, for example, “The Yellow Peril“) and had such a marked Nietzschean/Social Darwinist ethical sensibility that Ragar Redbeard’s infamous Might is Right or The Survival of the Fittest was widely, though mistakenly, attributed to him. Thus London is also a favorite writer of New Rightists and White Nationalists, particularly West-Coast White Nationalists and those who hope for the re-emergence of a racially conscious Left.
Jack London, age 9, with his dog Rollo
London’s best known books are Call of the Wild and White Fang, drawing upon his experiences in the Klondike Gold Rush; The Sea-Wolf, a psychological thriller and portrait of a brutal sea captain; and The Iron Heel, a dystopian novel about oligarchy and revolutionary socialism which became one of the literary inspirations of William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries.
The Library of America has published two handsome hardcover volumes of London’s principal works: Novels and Stories: Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, Klondike and Other Stories
In 1905, Jack London bought a ranch in Sonoma County where he experimented with ecologically sustainable farming and ranching techniques. In 1916, Jack London died of kidney failure. He was only 40 years old. He left two daughters, plus 20 novels, 10 collections of short stories, three plays, three collections of essays, two autobiographical memoirs, and countless other works.
Counter-Currents has published the following works by Jack London:
- “Capitalism, Socialism, and Dysgenics“
- “How I Became a Socialist“
- “What Life Means to Me“
- “The Yellow Peril” (German translation here)
See also the following works about Jack London:
- Andrew Hamilton, “Jack London’s ‘To Build a Fire’“
- Instauration, “Jack London“
- Dietrich Wolf, “The Soul of Jack London,” Part One, Two, Three, and Four
The following articles mention Jack London:
- Jonathan Bowden, “Robert E. Howard & the Heroic“
- Julius Evola, “The Overcoming of the Superman“
- Greg Johnson, “West-Coast White Nationalism” (French translation here, Czech translation here)
- Spencer J. Quinn, “On Liberals & the White Ethnostate“
7 comments
If he believes in inequality, what makes him a Leftist? It can’t be socialism, for in such case Hitler would be a Leftist.
There are different flavors of socialism.
The “revolutionary” flavor of socialism that I think Dr Johnson is referring to here is more closely akin to communism…ie overthrowing capitalism, redistribution of wealth, dismantling class systems as they exist or existed in his day. One can believe in inherent inequality without believing it’s OK for rich children to have advantages over children born into poverty simply because their parents are rich. There are, after all, plenty of geniuses who are born into poverty and plenty of idiots who happen to have successful parents.
I’ve never deep dived into Jack London’s politics, but I know Hitler was against communism and wasn’t interested in destroying capitalism. He simply wanted to use capitalist systems for the betterment of the German people rather than aristocrats or the state.
Also I’m trying to simplify this for a couple of paragraphs. It’s never that simple.
”There are different flavors of socialism”
Yes indeed. Just as it would be unfair and inaccurate to compare Counter Currents with on the grounds that both are ‘right wing’, the socialist tag has been applied to political groups and actors who seem to have nothing in common. For this and other reasons, the simple left-right spectrum is grossly inadequate for categorising and understanding political ideas.
Jack London’s views would today be comparable to those of the Third Position, or social nationalism (disparaged as National Bolshevism, or Tankie socialism, depending on who’s laying on the invective). He quite correctly saw that capitalism was corrosive and that it led to outcomes that were inequitable – not in the sense that everyone should be absolutely equal – but that those who were productive were stripped of the value of their labour by those who owned the means of production.
Unlike today’s liberal globalists posing as ‘the Left’, however, London respected nations, organic communities and traditional ideas about masculinity and heroism.
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Second sentence should read “.. compare CC *with your most despised neo-con*”
Hitler WAS a leftist.
Thank you both for the responses!
I was under the impression that a belief in egalitarianism was definitive for Left and Right: pro makes one Left while con makes one Right. I thought ‘Old Right Versus New Right’ advanced that view.
Perhaps Left and Right are not parallel in that respect. I don’t think one can be a rightest egalitarian, unless today’s center-Right cucks are allowed in. A main point of Sam Francis’ attacks on these people is that there is no mainstream Right in this country, since race does not enter into their views and they hold to the “proposition nation” absurdity.
Thanks again.
I read Jack London because Evola mentioned him in IIRC “Ride The ????”
His “Call Of The Wild” was very good.
I recommend this edition: https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-call-of-the-wild-london-jack/1119355691?ean=9781435163737
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