Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair was an American author noted for his muckraking expose of the meatpacking industry in South Chicago called The Jungle. He was also a socialist and sometime political candidate in California.

During the 1930s, Sinclair hoped that the great Depression was capitalism's last gasp. He was no supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1934, he organized and led a political movement known as "End Poverty in California" or EPIC. His ideas were not entirely Marxist, he was a gradualist in his socialism. His program consisted mainly of adding some "production for use" programs to the state administration while retaining all other aspects of capitalism. He won the Democratic nomination for the governorship but narrowly lost in the general election. Following this flirtation with mainstream politics, Sinclair returned to advocating collectivist solutions.