You're correct that he complained about that, but the point was supposed to be about the exploitation and abuse of laborers.

I mean the same thing happened to Orwell. He was a democratic socialist who literally went to war with the fascists in Spain but people think Animal Farm is meant to be a rebuke of communism generally (and not Stalinism specifically).

Well, the point of the jungle is that we need to form a socialist worker's state. Instead, everyone freaked out about sausages.

He had a quote along the lines of "I aimed for the heart and hit the stomach"

edit: > "I aimed for the public's heart," Sinclair later wrote, "and by accident hit it in the stomach."

That point being, to promote socialism.