Upton Sinclair Was So Right and So Wrong

Have you heard of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair? Of course you have, everyone has heard of it. Have you read it? Recently? Probably not. Why would you? Plenty new stuff with better covers to read these days that don’t read like a litany of horrors bundled up with a religious belief in the power of socialism.

My book club is reading this novel, which I last read in 8th grade. My biggest takeaway from it at that time was, “It’s really sad they all want to become socialist,” which just goes to show how deep the anti-collective, anti-socialist sentiment runs in Oklahoma and in my family in particular. I also remember it being fairly difficult to read.

I had chalked that up to my reading level at that time, but I’m finding the last 40 pages or so of the novel to be quite dense, and I’m realizing that maybe Upton just kind of … let it all out at that point. Most of the book is ostensibly a novel. The version that I have has an introduction by Jane Jacobs talking about how Upton Sinclair and his outrage are really the main character and thrust of the novel, which makes total sense. But the last portion of it devolves into a “conversation” amongst some socialists where the characters are really a thin veneer on some political propaganda.

Don’t get me wrong! I think Upton Sinclair got so many things right in this book, and it is sad (sure, let’s say sad) that many of the outrages he described are still equally outrageous 114 years later, such as the exploitation of immigrant labor in the meat packing industry, the horrors of the meat packing industry in general, and the mind-boggling divide between the wealthiest of us and the poorest of us (which, as luck would have it, is approaching the same level of disparity as it was when Upton wrote The Jungle).

He was just a bit rosy on how a proletariat revolution might pan out, but that doesn’t mean that all of his principles are rotten. One of the mouthpieces for his (or someone else’s) viewpoints in the novel was just talking about what wonders a managed economy would do, how everyone would work just one hour a day, or more if he or she wanted to, about how with community dishwashing machines, women would be freed from drudgery, about how we would no longer waste so much human potential in the industries of war or advertising and instead focus on things that were truly valuable.

And here we are 114 years later. Drudgery, perhaps, has been diminished, or more likely just shifted around. We all work more (in the US at least). Individuals have been turned into advertising machines for themselves as well as whatever brands can help them make a living (influencer culture), the benefits of efficiency accrue to a very small percentage of people, and the earth is dying.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we gave some of the principals of socialism a second look.