The Iron Heel: Team Work

I signed up with the group to present Jack London's novel The Iron Heel. We decided that an interactive way to engage the class in a discussion of the book and the relevant ideas to society as we know it, would be through a take on the board game Monopoly. We split up the board between 8 section ranging in questions from scenes from the book, to comparing The Iron Heel to the other Dystopian Novels that we have read, to relating different critical theories to the novel, to questions relating current societal issues with ones brought up in the novel. Also we tried connecting two films, North Country and Battleship Potemkin to the novel. With North Country we felt that there could be a connection made between women's rights and the union with the struggle and downfall of the unions in The Iron Heel, and with Battleship Potemkin, we tried to make a connection between the Church standing by and promoting the ideals of the ruling class as is also seen in The Iron Heel. My task was to come up with two questions that could initiate a debate about the ideas Jack London is proposing in The Iron Heel; the ideas that an evolution to a communist state is inevitable, my questions that I proposed were:

Assuming that you do not agree with the ABC's of Marxism, then what is your solution to the distribution of surplus capital, which Marxism holds is given to underdeveloped countries?

Do you agree that there is market price manipulation? If not, why do you disagree. If so, provide current examples.

Overall the collaboration of the project went very well. In our meeting we divided the project up amongst the members of the group, and brought our ideas together and reworked any problem areas such as wording, etc. Overall the presentation was a success, the only thing I might have liked a little more work on would have been the film clips, other than that everyone in the group brought up very pertinent questions and ideas to the table.