John Steinbeck and Socialism:

[Igel]

3. Best that it be disputed.

What he'd have had in mind isn't the purified, retroactively redefined "socialism" of 2012. But the "socialism" as instantiated in the '40s, '50s, or '60s--depends when you'd have him quoted.

You'd have Steinbeck, either after knowledge of Stalin's atrocities became known in the West or after they became known in the USSR, saying how wonderful the only exponent of socialism to date was.

If it was just after the war, then the terror inflicted by socialism on Eastern Europe hadn't happened yet. If in the '50s and '60s, then he'd have known about it, too, and been praising socialism's repression of strikes and uprisings in Poland and Hungary.

Best let it be a bad misquoting of his general put-down of American "communists", which isn't a bad thing. It makes it easier to be a True Communist now.