Are the Joads communists?

No, the Joads were just poor.

No. The union organizers in the novel are called "Reds" by some of the cops and owners. Historically, probably some were and some weren't. At that time, the only political solutions to the desperate situations people faced were coming from somewhere left of center.

You said it, Buster.

Socialism and/or communism sounds a hell of a lot better when the bankers chase you off your land with bulldozers ...

Today "Socialist" is the buzz word, everybody who voted for Obama and for Democrats are socialists too.

To.some people. As a dedicated anti-Communist for half a century, I disagree. I believe in noblesse oblige - everyone has the right to be treated fairly.

My parents lived through the Great Depression. Socialism/Communism start to sound good to an empty stomach. But my father joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and built parks and planted trees in Arizona. I have just been scanning some of the pictures he took and he noted on them that those were some of the best days of his life. After that he joined the Army Air Corps. So 20 years after my parents married, I was born and politics were always a lively discussion as I was growing up.

But, they were sharecroppers, Smog. They made the gargantuan mistake of selling the land.

That is the exact same choice that the (Lung's) were faced with in "The Good Earth" - 1937. They did not do what the Joads did, they kept their land & survived their catastrophe(s). & it was the wife who overruled the husband's decision to sell it.