Again, one of the most sensitive reviews posed a tough question: What were the political implications of such a book? Joseph Henry Jackson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, notes that the text would please no political faction-as the author himself admitted in his final paragraph. "A good deal here," notes Jackson, "will probably annoy the devout Left, for the two Americans, visiting with the best will in the world, were often irritated by the way things were done in Russia, by the miles of red tape that had to be unwound whatever they wanted to do…" He continues, "On the other hand, the case-hardened Right will also be irritated by the book, on the ground that nobody's got any right to be saying a good word on behalf of any kind of Russian excepting a dead Russian."

Indeed, this trip to Russia brought back for both Steinbeck and Capa the specter of their own political agendas. The suspicion that The Grapes of Wrath, with its magnificent endorsement of "we" over "I," was communist propaganda lingered in the minds of some, certainly the FBI, who had maintained a file on Steinbeck since 1943. The truth was that Steinbeck had long despised the communist agenda: In Dubious Battle, a novel about striking workers in California, shows the communist organizers to be self-serving, willing to sacrifice the people's needs for the party's. When writing The Grapes of Wrath, with its emphasis on fair treatment for the working man, Steinbeck insisted that the lyrics for the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed on the endpapers so that there would be no doubt about his patriotism. "The fascist crowd will try to sabotage this book because it is revolutionary," he wrote his publisher. "They will try to give it the communist angle. However, the Battle Hymn is American and intensely so… if both words and music are there the book is keyed into the American scene from the beginning."