Essay on Uptian Sinclair And Socialism - 2267 Words

Upton Sinclair and Socialism nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Socialism has always been hard for me to understand. I never really grasped the concept of it until I read the book The Jungle and began to research for this paper. Before I begin I would like to go through a condensed version of the history of Socialism. It was founded in 1901 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Two groups came together to form the Socialists, the Social Democratic Party and the â€Å"Kangaroo† wing of the older Socialist Labor Party. These parties contained mostly immigrant workers from big cities (Jurgis from The Jungle was one such fictional worker). The new party expanded and included every type of extremist. They stood on the motto of â€Å"reform vs. revolution† and focused†¦show more content†¦In 1960 the book The Other America was published by Michael Harrington. This book took great favor within the Socialist Party. The left wing Socialists were beginning to die out and in 1968 the right wing Socialists held the majority of the members. Over the next years many splits, divisions and merging occurred under the control of the right wing Socialists and in 1982 the party was renamed the Democratic Socialists of America. The only state to have a Socialist ballot is the Socialist Party of Oregon, which formed in 1994. This is how it remains today. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In the beginning I read Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle in order to gain entrance into the Advanced Placement English class. The things I learned about Socialism, the meat-packing industry and Sinclair’s own views lead me to discover a new era of writers I didn’t know existed. These writers brought to the attention of the nation problems that were carefully shielded from the public’s eyes. Many of these authors such as Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Ida Tarbell and many others took a particularly Socialistic view and this was expressed in their writing. A few of the books that Sinclair wrote had an especially socialistic tone, such as The Jungle which was published in 1906. Conflictive to most people’s beliefs The Jungle was not written to reform the meat-packing industry and incite pure food acts. He stated, â€Å"I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the