As for the text, London wrote for the masses so his text overall is a short, breezy read. However, he was still a writer of his time and his original text is peppered with the evidence, so we’ve updated a few instances of archaic and hyphened words to reflect their modern usage.

Simple though the text seems, the great majority of our work for this edition lies in its nearly two hundred footnotes. We resolved to leave no stone unturned as we cross-checked London’s vast array of sources and researched his long list of quoted names. His original text also included eight footnotes of its own and to differentiate between those and our numbered additions, we have set the originals out using asterisks.*

To read our full thoughts, check out “Yours for the Revolution”

And read London’s take on writing here: Writers on Writing: Jack London

“Mr. London, in the role of Socialist, will be a surprise to some of his readers. But, according to his own word, he has long been a Socialist. Whether he writes on socialism, or The Call of the Wild, Mr. London’s style partakes of the strength and buoyancy of his own young and vigorous nature.” —The Albany Law Journal

“As simple and straightforward as a grizzly bear.” —Julian Hawthorne, Los Angeles Examiner

“His work is as timely today as when it was first written. After a century, London would hardly have to change any of these prophecies to update his portrait . . . As loudly and clearly as anyone in his generation, he heard and responded to the call of socialism that was echoing around the world.” —Jonah Raskin, The Radical Jack London

“Mr. London’s book is thoroughly interesting, and his point of view is very different from that of the closest theorist.” —Springfield Republican

“War of the Classes is no whit inferior in the vigour of its style and the sweep and rapid movement of its thought to any of Jack London’s work. Certainly no other American, and probably no English writer, has produced anything in the advocacy of socialism that can compare with it in forcefulness and literary merit.” —Robert C. Brooks, The Bookman

“Reading ‘The Tramp’ a century later, one can still appreciate the enormity of London’s ambitions for it.” —Jonathan Auerbach, Male Call: Becoming Jack London

“This new book is not so much an argument in favor of socialism as an attempt to show that we are rapidly coming to a socialistic state. Economically Mr. London is brilliant . . . He seems to be right in his belief that the trend toward socialism is remarkably strong just now, and certainly the financial, industrial, and political scandals of recent times are rapidly making socialists. Mr. London’s little book is well worth reading, and its closing essay is not the least significant chapter.” —Vogue

“It is a dismal but not fanciful picture of our ‘tooth-and-nail’ society which Mr. London has drawn . . . He is a powerful, impulsive writer, who is violent with a violence that comes from genuine indignation, and sensational because he seems to have known the sensations of bitter and intense experience.” —R.A. Scott-James, Modernism and Romance

“Jack London has the courage of his convictions; few men dare to say so plainly what they think of existing conditions and their outcome. Mr. London reasons clearly, and endeavors to show us just where the danger of the future lies, where we as a nation may stumble and fall, and how it is possible to get around this danger. The book is written with a purpose, strongly and vividly. It is not pessimistic, but tells the truth, in an effort to stimulate the world to think seriously and clearly, and then to act.” —C. Edna Bramble, Book News

“It would be easy to name a half dozen prominent writers of the last decade who occasionally admitted that they were socialists, but their socialism was generally of such a mild inoffensive sort that it didn’t hurt them much with their capitalist friends. London, however, is the genuine, old-fashioned, proletarian, class-struggle socialist.” —International Socialist Review

“We must commend Mr. Jack London for the perfect frankness with which he tells his audience what Socialism is, and what it aims to accomplish. He does not dissemble. He is not mealy-mouthed. He does not croak Socialism in timid disguises. He does not profess to regard it as a mere return to principle of the golden rule, or as a reform altogether beneficent that will harm nobody and make all the world happier. Mr. Jack London’s Socialism is a bloody war—the war of one class in society against the other classes. He says so. It is destructive Socialism. He glories in it . . . Very few socialists have Mr. Jack London’s courage.” —The New York Times

War of the Classes