Well then you can say possibly it was At the end of the preface to this book Eastman cites Upton Sinclair for the statement that Eastman s conversion from Bolshevism to the anti big government free market economy merely meant that he had gone from one extreme to the other Possibly it was statements such as the one Eastman goes on to make a few pages later when he characterised the Norwegian democratic welfare state as they have produced the closest imitation of an authoritarian state to be found on this side of the iron curtain 1 that led to Sinclair s perception of Eastman as a man who favoured extremist positions