Although less politically radical friends, such as H.L. Mencken, spoke of Dreiser's relationship with communism as an "unimportant detail in his life," Dreiser's biographer Jerome Loving notes that his political activities since the early 1930s had "clearly been in concert with ostensible communist aims with regard to the working class."
Premda su njegovi politički manje radikalni prijatelji, kao H.L. Mencken, Dreiserov odnos s komunizmom smatrali "nebitnom pojedinosti u njegovom životu", Dreiserov biograf Jerome Loving bilježi da su njegove političke aktivnosti od ranih 1930-ih "bile u jasnom skladu s navodnim komunističkim ciljevima u vezi radničke klase.".