 I'm going to be reading from the Iron Heel, which is a book that Jack London wrote. It foreshadowed the events that were to take place in Spain, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Hungary, Germany, and the United States. In 1906, Jack London wrote the Iron Heel. It was published in 1907. In an introduction to the book, H. Bruce Franklin of Rutgers University wrote, In 1922, the Fascists marched on Rome and toppled the government. Within two years, they were ruling Italy. In 1929, the Iron Heel was published in Italy. The translator, in a carefully guarded introduction foresees the battle that will burst forth who knows when between the platocracy and the people. Within months, the Fascist government had banned all cheap editions of the Iron Heel and other London's revolutionary books, labeling them as part of a plot to overthrow the regime. Expensive editions were allowed to remain in print, however, for the government saw no threat in this book as long as it stayed in the hands of the cultured classes. In May of 1933, ceremonial burnings of defamed books took place all over Germany in the presence of Captain Gound Academic Senates. On May 10th, 25,000 books were burned in Berlin. Jack London's books were included in those burned. But it is in America where London foresees the struggle between the impoverished masses who do most of the world's work and the privileged minorities who live off the profits. He points to the most essential fact about fascism. It is the form that the capitalist state assumes when the oligarchy feels that its economic and political power is seriously threatened by working-class revolution. I cannot lay too great stress upon this high ethical righteousness of the whole oligarch class. This has been the strength of the Iron Heel, and too many of the comrades have been slow or loathed to realize it. Many of them have ascribed the strength of the Iron Heel to its system of reward and punishment. This is a mistake. Heaven and Hell may be the prime factors of zeal in the religion of a fanatic, but for the great majority of the religious, Heaven and Hell are incidental to right and wrong. Love of the right, desire for the right, unhappiness with anything less than the right. In short, right conduct is the prime factor of religion. And so with the oligarchy, prisons, banishment and degradation, honors and palaces, and wonder cities are all incidental. The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right. Never mind the exceptions and never mind the oppression and injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The point is that the strength of the oligarchy today lies in its satisfied conception of its own righteousness. Germany 1933, the first wave of cleansing, some 1200 professors were purged from institutions of higher learning. This opened opportunities for advancement whose disciplines or sympathies were aligned with the Third Reich until it became their turn. The Third Reich Education Minister Rust asked the imminent mathematician David Hilbert, if his institute has suffered as a result of the departure of the Jews and their friends. The professor replied, suffered? No, it hasn't suffered, Herr Minister. It just doesn't exist anymore.