In the summer of 1936 Lovecraft made an interesting admission:

This is one of the few times Lovecraft explicitly mentions the Depression as signalling a radical change in his beliefs on politics, economics, and society; but perhaps he need not have made such an admission, for his letters from 1930 onward return again and again to these subjects.

There was little in Lovecraft's personal circumstances that led him to the adoption of a moderate socialism; he did not—as many impoverished individuals did—become attracted to political or economic radicalism merely because he found himself destitute. First, he was never truly destitute—at least, not in comparison with many others in the Depression (including some of his own friends), who lost all their money and belongings and had no job and no roof over their heads; second, he scorned Communism as unworkable and culturally devastating, recommending an economic system considerably to the left of what the United States actually adopted under Roosevelt but nevertheless supporting the New Deal as the only plan of action that had any chance of being carried out.

And yet, Lovecraft's conversion to socialism was not entirely surprising, first because socialism as a political theory and as a concrete alternative to capitalism was experiencing a resurgence during the 1930s, and second because Lovecraft's brand of socialism still retained many of the aristocratic features that had shaped his earlier political thought. The latter point I shall take up presently; the former is worth elaborating briefly.

The United States has never been an especially fertile soil for socialism or Communism, but there have been occasions when they have been a little less unpopular than usual.