The Iron Heel's Master Plan — The Iron Heel

Ernest sees the writing on the wall while his fellow revolutionaries remain optimistically blind. As revolutions succeed worldwide, America lags behind because the Iron Heel has learned a crucial lesson from their previous general strike defeat. Instead of fighting the unions head-on, the oligarchs are buying them off.

O'Connor and other labor leaders refuse to commit to future strikes, hinting at secret deals that make Ernest's blood boil. He realizes they've sold out, accepting better conditions for select unions while abandoning the broader labor movement. Ernest explains to Avis how this divide-and-conquer strategy will work: railroad workers, machinists, engineers, and steel workers will become a privileged labor caste with good wages and hours, while everyone else gets ground into slavery.

These favored unions control the industrial backbone, so the Iron Heel doesn't need to worry about other workers striking. Ernest predicts this system will eventually collapse as the labor castes become hereditary and weak, but it will take centuries. The oligarchs will use their massive surpluses to build magnificent cities and sponsor great art, creating a feudal system with artists instead of priests, labor castes instead of merchants, and a vast underclass in 'the abyss.' Though Ernest sees this slow evolution as inevitable, he continues fighting against it, hoping to accelerate change even as he doubts he'll live to see victory.