In 1896, 105 years ago, the Oakland Times published a Letter to the Editor [...]

In 1896, 105 years ago, the Oakland Times published a Letter to the Editor written by Jack London where he urged readers and John McLees, who’s article he was responding to, to study socialism and “Read Carl Marx’s Capital”

The August 24 letter was responding to and critiquing another piece published in the Oakland Times just a few days prior, John McLees’s “The Single Tax Theory,” which argued for a single Georgist tax on economic rents

London encouraged readers to “get a grasp of the economics of socialism,” an adventure he himself had just embarked upon. Joining the Henry Clay Club in 1891 and the Socialist Labor Party in ‘96, he was exposed to the ideas of Marx, John Ruskin, and William Morris

He spent many of his Oakland days at the public library, where he checked out and first encountered The Communist Manifesto, and many of his nights at City Hall giving soapbox speeches.

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