Examples Of Socialism In The Jungle

The American Nightmare
The difficult living situations for many people in the early 20th century were discussed in the novel The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair. The book describes an immigrant family’s struggle to survive after moving to America. The family experiences unsafe working conditions, dangerous child labor and poverty. Sinclair uses these images to shed light on some of America’s troubles, to disparage capitalism and to promote socialism.
The story’s main character, Jurgis Rudkus, goes through a great deal of hardship in this story. His family moves from Lithuania in hopes of chasing “the American Dream”. Instead they find that the higher wages they earn are offset by the much higher cost of living. Everyone in the family has

Instead, he found that the same poverty that existed in Lithuania existed in America. His family put all of their money together to purchase a very modest home, only to find that if they missed one payment, they would lose the home. This follows very closely to what actual immigrants to America experienced. The early 20th century was a rapidly growing time and people flocked from all over the world to come to America where most ended up in major cities such as Chicago. It was in these cities that multiple families were forced to live in broken down tenement buildings because they could not earn a living wage

However, they also had a much wider reaching idea of democratic control over the economy . This is where I tend to disagree with Sinclair and socialism. He mentions corruption in the system at the time and implies that socialism may be a system without corruption. I don’t feel that a political and economic system ran by the people is any less susceptible to corruption than capitalism is. After all, it is still just people and people will do dishonest things for power. America was built on capitalism and it definitely has its flaws, but I feel that it promotes prosperity best when paired with democracy. The socialist movement played a great role in reshaping the US capitalist system. It definitely needed tweaking in the early 20th century, and still does, but the socialist ideas help push us in the right