Upton Sinclair’s EPIC Campaign is a Roadmap for DSA
SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the author and is republished from Democratic Left.
As we approach the 100th Anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election, the legacy of his presidency and the New Deal feel simultaneously more distant and relevant than ever. Between the recent resurgence of the NLRB, a conservative and obstructionist Supreme Court, and proposals like the Green New Deal, FDR’s legacy looms large. However, despite liberal hopes otherwise, Biden and Build Back Better are barely pale imitations of FDR and the New Deal. As the Democratic Party scrambles to reassess in the wake of Trump’s victory, I have no doubt that FDR’s name and legacy will be undeservedly tossed around some more.
Just as the Democrats can’t honestly claim FDR’s mantle, contemporary socialists can’t and shouldn’t either for a plethora of reasons. Luckily, there was a political figure in the 1930s who offered an explicitly socialist vision of governance: Upton Sinclair. Most remember Sinclair for his muckraking and literary achievements in The Jungle. Fewer remember him as an active member of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and the Southern Californian labor movement. However, in 1933, Sinclair would abandon the SPA, enter the crowded Democratic primary for the gubernatorial race and in a huge shock to California’s Democratic establishment, win. Unfortunately, Sinclair would ultimately lose the general election to Republican Frank Merriam.
We, as 21st century socialists, can learn much from Upton Sinclair’s failed 1934 California gubernatorial campaign. Sinclair found great success in utilizing the Democratic ballot line to offer a compelling vision of transformative change, spreading his message through mass media. Unfortunately a corporate-funded smear campaign killed Sinclair’s candidacy. However, even in Sinclair’s loss, I find inspiration as Sinclair’s run left a deep imprint on national and statewide politics.
What Went Right
Sinclair’s departure from the SPA led to Harold Ashe, the SPA’s state secretary, publicly denouncing him and his decision to join “the capitalist Democratic party, a party which justifiably is despised, scolded, and scorned as an organ, powerful and dangerous as an enemy of the working class and of the Socialist Party.” Sinclair had been the SPA’s nominee in the 1930 California gubernatorial election and received 50,000 votes (3.64%), but in 1934 the SPA received just 3,000 votes (<1%). The SPA would never field a candidate for California’s governorship again.
Denouncing Sinclair only condemned the SPA to further political irrelevance. I do not wish to relitigate the debate over the decision by DSA to not endorse Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, but I question what DSA gains by further alienating themselves from her. Additionally, as parts of DSA push for an immediate break from the Democrats and formation of a third party, Sinclair shows why that strategy wouldn’t work. Simply put, DSA relies on a progressive coalition of support that is accessible through the Democratic ballot line. Running as a third-party right now would consign DSA to the fate of the current Green Party or SPA of Sinclair’s time: electoral irrelevance.
Similarly, while many of Sinclair’s top advisors and campaign surrogates were socialists, the campaign attracted people who normally wouldn’t have joined anything nearly as radical. Seventy percent of the leadership were white-collar workers, ranging from lawyers and business owners to clerks and teachers. Many hadn’t previously been very politically active, or even registered to a political party.
How did Sinclair attract such wide-ranging support? A large part of it was his transformative and inspiring platform, cleverly titled “End Poverty in California” (EPIC). EPIC was laid out in Sinclair’s 1933 book, I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future. The book (really more of a pamphlet) is relatively short — coming in at just 64 pages — and cost just twenty cents (less than five dollars today), making it easy for mass-distribution. Sinclair takes the reader through a “history” of his victory and time as governor, laying out how he would end poverty through a sweeping pension program, the seizure of idle factories and farms, comprehensive tax reform, and more. Sinclair continuously emphasized the inefficiency and excess of the current capitalist system, the same inefficiency and excess that caused the Depression.
I’m not saying we should run “EPIC 2.0,” partially because former Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs is currently using the name for his non-profit. More seriously, a contemporary socialist candidate for any office should find inspiration in the bold vision of EPIC, but craft their platform to address the needs of the time, just as Sinclair did in 1933. We need not completely compromise our values to appeal to the masses, we just need to figure out how to communicate them in an effective and appealing way. This vision will attract socialists and non-socialists, helping us build an essential progressive coalition.
What Went Wrong
Big business killed Sinclair’s campaign. Corporations and rich executives, led by Hollywood’s studio moguls, blasted the airwaves, movie theaters, and papers with anti-Sinclair propaganda. This is a problem all socialist candidates face, with powerful moneyed interests both within and outside their districts intervening against them. It is a problem that socialists across the United States are grappling with actively. Anti-immigrant rhetoric and red-baiting are tools that have been and will continue to be used against the Left by our opponents.
An embellished quote from Sinclair that promised mass migration to California upon his election was pasted on billboards across the state. Anti-Sinclair newsreels were shown before nearly every film from multiple studios, depicting Okies, drifters, and the otherwise dispossessed hopping on trains to California in anticipation of Sinclair’s election. The implication was that California would become overrun with the destitute and “actual” Californians would lose out on job opportunities and economic security, all because of Sinclair and his utopian promises.
I’d be remiss to not mention the vast “repatriation” and forced deportation of Mexican Americans to Mexico in the early 1930s, which peaked around 1934. President Hoover had led the charge early in the Great Depression, which included deporting those suspected of being involved in the labor movement and possessing leftist beliefs or affiliations. Local governments, including Los Angeles, began their own repatriation programs. FDR didn’t support repatriation as enthusiastically as Hoover, but he didn’t stop them. By 1939, over half a million Mexican Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens, had been repatriated or deported.
Like in our time, anti-immigrant and anti-migrant fervor was raging through the populace as people blamed migrants for economic anxieties and exploitation. Sinclair’s campaign was effectively sunk by the imagined threat of migration that his win would encourage. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer to this. We need to confront the issue on multiple fronts: we need to run candidates that appeal to the multiracial working class, we need to combat anti-immigrant sentiment, and we need to vocally support the rights of immigrants. We cannot simply give in and adopt nativist and xenophobic policies, as some social democratic governments have.
Red-baiting, or fraudulently attempting to link a person to the Soviet Union or communism, has a long history. In the 1930s, anti-Sinclair groups circulated a fictitious pamphlet by the “Young Communists for Sinclair.” The same anti-Sinclair newsreels also included a “Soviet” (stereotypical Russian accent and all) saying he was “voting for Seenclair [sic] . . . because if his system worked so well in Russia, vy [sic] wouldn’t it work here?”
Luckily, the campaigns of socialists like Sanders and AOC have shown how effective messaging can largely circumvent red-baiting. We need to, as AOC and Sanders have largely done, effectively communicate the constructive, productive, and beneficial aspects of our ideology, emphasizing its roots in U.S. progressive tradition. Additionally, the more socialists we have in office to show that we aren’t Soviet-style communists, the easier this task becomes.
Even If We Lose
Even though Sinclair would lose and EPIC would die out without him to lead it, EPIC’s legacy would reverberate throughout the state and nation for generations. The California Democratic Party received a swell of new membership and the party was reoriented towards a more progressive and pro-welfare political agenda. The “Second New Deal,” which was far more ambitious than its predecessor, was largely inspired by Sinclair’s campaign. In particular, FDR’s adoption of progressive tax policy and establishment of the Works Progress Administration echoed similar propositions by Sinclair.
There is much more to learn from Sinclair’s campaign. If there is one main takeaway from this article, let it be that socialists need to do something. We cannot consign ourselves to political irrelevance by eschewing the possible compromise for impossible perfection. Writing this article was relatively easy, as is complaining on the internet, but running a campaign for political office is hard. And yet we must do what is hard and keep doing what is hard, even if we lose, because that is how we build a movement.