"All Art is Propaganda," Somebody Said, Somewhere

Looking back it seems that many an early twentieth century literary great claimed that "All art is propaganda." George Orwell seems the one most associated with the phrase, which he states in his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens. However, Upton Sinclair said exactly the same thing in exactly those words in his epic 1925 history of art, Mammonart, with which Orwell might have been familiar given Orwell's praises for Sinclair's work.

That far more people seem to associate the phrase with Orwell than with Sinclair, I suppose, reflects the greater respectability of the former than the latter these days. Like Orwell Sinclair shifted away from his earlier political stances, but Sinclair's greatest work, fiction and nonfiction, is generally associated with his time as a committed socialist, whereas Orwell is best known for, and celebrated for, producing a work that, in spite of his much more complex attitudes and intentions, came to be regarded as the supreme piece of Cold Warrior literature, overshadowing all the rest of his work--which has been all the better for his memory given the prejudices of the tastemakers.