The Jungle #4: Socialism

Although he abandons any pretext of a narrative and fails to use the indent key in these last few chapters, Sinclair sure taught me a lot about Socialism. I found all of his ramblings quite fascinating even though he did end up repeating himself more than once, and Socialism sounds like quite a nice thing. But it only works in theory, because those who created it forgot about one key thing—human nature.

I guess since this was written in 1906 and WWII hadn’t happened yet, it’s perfectly understandable for the author to miss how easily corruptible Socialism is.

            Socialism is corruptible because it concentrates the power in the hands of a few. True, they don’t get much in the way of material wealth, but they can still control nearly every material aspect of society. Socialism also tends to crush motivation. The greatest motivation is personal gain, but this system wouldn’t allow for one individual to get rich. The good people of the society would contribute because they know it would come back around to them, but there are lots of selfish people out there, and they would take advantage of the system.

            Clearly, from all I’ve seen in this book, pure capitalism is not the way to go either. The same fault in human nature causes this system to entirely exploit human resources, and run the weaker sections of the population into the ground. Not to go all “americuh" on you, but the socialist leaning capitalist economy we have here in America seems to work pretty well.

            It’s also clear why Jurgis was so attracted to the prospect of Socialism, because it was a cure to all that had ailed him throughout his life in America. It would protect the vulnerable citizens of the country from being exploited. He wouldn’t have to work 12-16 hours a day just to survive, and sometimes not even that. A big part of his fascination with this type of economy is probably has some less selfish aspects as well. If he hadn’t been chewed up and spit out by capitalism, the people in his family who died would have had a much higher chance of surviving. 

The Jungle #3: Grief and Opportunity

I don’t really think that Marija had enough money to make her sink into the mud, because just a few coins wouldn’t add enough weight for that to happen. That comment was probably more metaphorical, talking about the weight the money would put on your mind for fear of losing it. The author was probably also making a reference to how greed is bad.

            On the topic of women only getting paid half wages, I’m pretty sure it was like that in India too, if women were even allowed to work at all. That whole mindset of women being inferior is silly.

            In this last section, Jurgis is finally pushed over the edge by the death of his wife and both of his sons. He runs away from those who still remain in his family and hitchhikes on a train to the open country. This really brought to mind how grief often makes people overreact quite a bit. For Jurgis, this didn’t turn out too awfully, because he was able to live the life of his dreams during the summer after he left. I’m still not sure if this was a good decision, because he ended up having quite a hard time surviving the winter after he broke his arm. But if he had stayed on with his family, the conditions probably wouldn’t have been any better. What do you think of his decision?

            Jurgis’ situation after he breaks his arm really makes me grateful that we have decent social services in the country today, not to mention good labor laws. The country has really turned into the land of opportunity, where anyone can succeed if they work hard enough.