April 14, 2021 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
This 1906 novel by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Sinclair's primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States.
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. Very few works of literature have actually changed the course of history, but The Jungle is just such a work. It touched this nation and the world, and it contributed enormously to the landmark passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This book is said to have decreased America’s meat consumption for decades.
1. Have you ever been in a meat packing plant? What was it like? The Jungle is considered “agitation rather than art”, according to Morris Dickstein. Sinclair himself insisted that his book was intended not as an expose of the meat industry but as an argument for socialism, to which he had recently been converted. Much socialist activity was happening in the US. Upton Sinclair was sent in 1904, by the publisher of “Appeal to Reason” in Girard, Kansas to examine conditions in the stockyards of Chicago. The resulting novel, based on seven weeks of intensive research, was serialized and achieved great notoriety even before it came out as a book.
The book begins with a Lithuanian wedding of Jurgis Rudkis and Ona Likoszaite, who become characters in the novel. They spend more than a year’s income on the wedding day feast (the veselija). “The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun…Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days.” (p. 12).
2. Why would people spend so much on a wedding? Why do you think the author begins the story with a wedding?
“The stench was almost overpowering, but to Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul dancing with joy – he was at work at last. He was at work and earning money!” (p. 44)
3. Have you experienced joy in a job? When and where? Did it last?
This is a story of human challenge and tragedy. Jurgis buys and loses a house, his wife and children die, he confronts injustice in a variety of places and yet he presses on, even before discovering hope in politics. “Marija, who takes to prostitution to support the family and educate children, shows considerable growth, and our respect for her is enhanced. Elzbieta is the picture of the all-suffering, all-sacrificing, all-forgiving mother who, undaunted by the heavy odds against her, fights back.” (p. 83 Mookerjee)
4. Where does courage and persistence come from? How do you hang in there when the world seems against you?
“He went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul, and setting his heel upon them. The train thundered deafeningly, and a storm of dust blew in his face; but though it stopped now and then through the night, he clung where he was – he would cling there until he was driven off, for every mile that he got from Packingtown meant another load from his mind.” (p. 214)
5. Did Jurgis find a better life in the country? Why did he return to Chicago? How did you discover “your place” in the world?
“The voice of the poor, demanding that poverty shall cease! The voice of the oppressed, pronouncing the doom of oppression! The voice of power, wrought out of suffering – of resolution, crushed out of weakness – of joy and courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair! The voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying prostrate – mountainous, colossal, but blinded, bound and ignorant of his strength. And now a dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling with fear; until suddenly he stirs, and a fetter snaps – and a thrill shoots through him, to the farthest ends of his huge body, and the banks are shattered, the burdens roll off him – he rises – towering, gigantic; he springs to his feet, he shouts in his newborn exultation---". (p. 307)
6. Have you experienced a “discovery” of such magnitude? Is this a “born again” experience?
“The Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity. It was the new religion of humanity – or you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application of all the teachings of Christ.” (p. 315) “A Socialist believes in the common ownership and democratic management of the means of producing the necessities of life and a Socialist believes that the means by which this is to be brought about is the class-conscious political organizations of the wage-earners.” (p. 336-337). “I would seriously maintain that all the medical and surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be of less importance than the application of the knowledge we already possess, when the disinherited of the earth have established their right to a human existence.” (p. 3440
7. How convincing is this novel and especially the speeches of the final chapters on your thinking about socialism?
May 12, 2021 Why America Needs Socialism: The Argument from Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Other Great Thinkers by G.S. Griffin
This book presents a contemporary case for socialism built on the words and ideas of history’s greatest leaders, thinkers, and artists. Exploring their views and connecting them to present day struggles, Griffin is crucial reading for anyone seeking to learn from the past in order to change today’s world in revolutionary ways.
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