China Mieville writes ornate, gothic fiction. His plots sweep through the world of Bas-Lag, of which Iron Council is the third novel to populate, drawing complex characters and exotic flora and fauna in their wake. Predatory trees, motion elementals, and multi-dimensional demons prey upon and become protagonists. But despite the extraordinary range of Mieville's imagination, Iron Council is about something very human: socialist revolution.

The dictatorship of the city of New Crobuzon is losing its grip, caught in a vicious colonial war with another empire. Dissension grows daily, and radicals of different creeds and species plot to overthrow the government. Word reaches the revolutionaries that a long-lost legend is still alive: citizens who escaped the government's reach and live free. While some radicals set out to find them, others foment rebellion from within the city’s borders. When the revolution comes, it sets in force a chain of events no one can predict or control.

That this takes place in a world where magic and science, humans and non-humans co-exist, is not so uncommon - though Mieville brings an unmatched breadth of description to his universe. Characters refer casually to everyday wonders, and new ones appear on every second page. However, what sets Iron Council apart from regular sci-fi is its politics. Much like the complexity of Bas-Lag's fantastic elements, multiple political themes overlap.


The hardman of British scifi - China Mieville

New Crobuzon is a dictatorial state slipping towards fascism. It has gangs of human thugs preaching purity - in this case, purity of the species rather than the race. The city’s corporate magnates push a railroad out into the countryside, wiping out indigenous residents who wage a hopeless battle against the newcomers. As with our history, fascist terror becomes the backdrop for colonial capitalism.

But most importantly, Iron Council's protagonists fight back, and it's here where Mieville shines. The book is about socialist politics. There are anarchist and socialist sects, strikes and anti-fascist riots. It’s couched in fantasy, but anyone who's familiar with the far left will recognize the references Mieville drops in throughout. For example, Ori, a young revolutionary meets a member of a rebel gang, who tells him,

"I don't give a spit about what Flex or any of his lot would have said. You can kiss good-bye to philosophizing. We ain’t interested in the toil concept of worth, or graphs of the swag-slump tendency and whatnot... I don't care if they can lecture like we was at the university." They stood still among the flies and the warm smell of meat, among the cries of the sellers. "What I care about's what you do, mate. What can you do for us?"

Well, it starts with gasoline and a rag...

This is the classic anarchist rebuke towards Marxists. The 'toil concept of worth' and 'swag-slump' (Marx's labour theory of value and crisis) are irrelevant to the struggle. Philosophy is useless when it comes time to act. Mieville suggests this mirrors anarchist elitism, its refusal to see workers' capacity to revolt, as when Ori argues to a socialist,

"You want to talk inspiration?" he said. He was angry again, at her monomaniac prescription. "That I’ll give you," he said. "You’ll thank me, Jack. What we’re doing, what we’re doing... we need to wake people up."
"They’re already awake, Jack. That’s what you don’t see."
He shook his head.

Of course, Ori lives to regret his lack of political understanding. But not before he's accused of 'running with the Bonnot gang' - a delightful touch, since the Bonnot gang was the French anarchist bombsquad that Victor Serge belonged to in his youth. Mieville throws these references in casually throughout, for the selfish pleasure of the Marxist reader.


Truth is stranger than fiction - the Paris Commune

And though it took me a while, I finally recognized the history Mieville's recounting. He detests what he calls "feudalism-lite", the automatic association between the fantasy genre and reactionary, oppressive social forms of lords, knights and landed property. But he recognizes the power that genre holds to capture our imagination, so he puts it to radical uses. Iron Council is a retelling of the Paris Commune, from the government on the verge of defeat by a foreign enemy, to the desperate rising that rapidly turns into a revolution, to the counter-revolution it then must battle. Mieville's protagonists are outside of history, and Iron Council embodies the revolutionary solidarity our own revolutions so tragically lacked. The nearest equivalent is the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw.

This may seem petulant - a 'what if' scenario written by the losers of history (i.e. the Marxists), in a world where it turns out differently. But Mieville isn't a Stalinist, and he's not writing realism. His revolutionaries are fully human - or fully whatever species they happen to be. They have faults; they make mistakes. Like all revolutions, there's no guaranteed victory, but Mieville's final message is the most important: you still have to try. There are no short-cuts. Otherwise, anarchist martyrdom or state collaboration will go down to defeat, on Earth or in Bas-Lag.


"My lady, for you, I will extract the surplus product from 10,000 peasants through a complex system of land holdings!"
"Forsoothe! Do not forget to suppress the rising merchant class!"

Iron Council has its weaknesses. The Spiral Jacobs story arc gets built well and then dropped too quickly, and the associations of anarchist heroes with agents provocateurs struck me as unfair. A map of Bas-Lag would have helped to follow the frequent crossings. But these are minor complaints. That Mieville can write a book that appeals well beyond the tiny circles of the far left, one full of grotesque, beautiful creatures, is a tribute to his talent. That he can tell us a story about revolutionary Marxism, on a planet where Marx never existed, is a tribute to the strength of historical materialism as a system of thought and action.