Essay About Social Democratic Party And Wing Of The Older Socialist Labor Party

Uptian Sinclair and Socialism
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Upton Sinclair and Socialism
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 “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 “reform vs. revolution”
and focused mainly on the labor unions, “this included the concepts
of revolution by education and of building the new society within the
shell of its old.
In 1912 they had elected two members of Congress and more
than seventy mayors. The most members it every attained at this
time was 100,000 and even had a presidential candidate, Eugene
Debs, who received almost a million votes. However soon the party
began to have internal problems due to diverse ideologies. During the
war half did not believe in the war and half believed in Stalin and his
Communist ways, therefore, the party split.
The party had become weak and did not enter a political
candidate for the presidential election. However, once the Great
Depression began the Socialist party took a turn back to full tilt and
gained strength. It ran Norman Thomas as their Presidential
Candidate. He never won but continued to run, losing
votes every
time he ran. Finally in 1948 with only 80,000 votes Thomas declared,
“a Socialist presidential race was a futile effort and an utter waste of
the partys resources.”
This warning was pushed aside and the party ran Darlington
Hoopes in 1952. He received merely 20,203 votes and in the
election he received only a woeful 2,126 votes in the race of 1956.
The Socialist Party in this nation had come to a crashing final end in
terms of elections. It now only had an underdeveloped 2,000
members nationwide. In 1960, the first time since 1924 the Socialist
party did not enter a presidential candidate on the ballot.
It was at this time the party took a swing away from the
presidential candidacy and swung full force into the civil rights
movement. 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.
In the beginning I read Upton Sinclairs 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
Sinclairs own views lead me to discover a new era of writers I didnt
know existed. These writers brought to the attention of the nation
problems that were carefully shielded from the publics 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 peoples beliefs The Jungle was not
written to reform the meat-packing industry and incite pure food acts.
He stated, “I aimed at the publics heart, and by accident I hit it in the
stomach.”
He wrote this book to persuade people in the direction of
Socialism and away from Capitalism. “It is difficult to get a man to
understand something when his salary depends upon his not
understanding it.” (Upton Sinclair)
Upton Sinclair had many factors working against him, eventually
leading him to a life as a Socialist. He was born in 1878 to his parents
Upton Beall and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. His father was an alcoholic
which caused Sinclair to be staunch