The Vast Majority

About this book

Harrington studied at Holy Cross, Yale Law & the Univ. of Chicago. He was drawn left early, becoming a conscientious objector & Catholic Worker editor. He converted to socialism & was one of its eloquent voices for over 30 years. He supported himself by writing, lecturing & teaching at Queens College of CUNY as a political science professor. He gave his energy to socialist activities. Among other things he served as a delegate to internat'l socialist bodies, conventions & congresses; as chair of the board of the League for Industrial Democracy; as chair of the executive board of the Socialist Party; as chair of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee & as chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was active in the ACLU & other organizations concerned with labor, poverty, civil rights & liberties. He was a worthy heir of Norman Thomas, predecessor as chief spokesman for social democracy. Like Thomas he tirelessly advocated fair & humane socio-economic policies. Like Thomas, he was constrained by his role in the political system. Outside the USA socialists can rise to the top. But in America, owing to the movement's narrow base, they can only be marginal politically no matter how talented. Like his forebears, he chose this road out of a deep faith in socialist ideas & as a matter of principle. By keeping the democratic socialist tradition alive they insured that the left wouldn't consist solely of totalitarians. The cost of doing this is giving up hope of exercising power. Lacking power doesn't necessarily deprive one of influence & Harrington acquired some thru his writings. Few authors can claim to have affected history. He did this with his 1st book, The Other America ('62). Written at a time when other citizens were busy celebrating affluence, it had tremendous impact. In it he spoke up for what he called the "invisible poor": industrial rejects, migrant workers, minorities & the aged. The book came to the attention of the President. As Kennedy biographer A.M. Schlesinger Jr explained it, the book "helped crystallize his determination in '63 to accompany the tax cut (with) a poverty program." JFK was assassinated before his plan could be realized, but it was put into effect by Johnson. If Harrington had done nothing else his place in history would be assured. His 1st book was followed in '65 by The Accidental Century. He argued that the accidental revolution of the 20th century was the gap between technological progress & economic, social & religious consciousness. A more ambitious book than The Other America, it drew a picture of the defects in Western society making socialism imperative. His next book, Toward a Democratic Left ('68), addressed the question of how to bring about a good society. He called for a new political movement based on Black power, white youth, white collar labor unions, the New Left & religious groups. It seemed the elements for such a party already existed & needed only organization & leadership to become operational. Events were against him. 1968 witnessed not a pre-socialist democracy, but the election of Nixon & a setback. Of his later works, The Twilight of Capitalism ('76) is a critique based on his own revised version of Marxism. In The Next America ('81) he attacked the new conservative mood, arguing that America must go further left than is possible under New Deal liberalism. The Politics at God's Funeral ('83) argues that as god is dead we must henceforth rely upon democratic socialism. In making his case he displayed the attributes that set him apart from most social critics. Tho apostate, he treated religion with respect. Tho a socialist, he recognized that capitalism was able to reform itself & contribute to democracy. Tho some regarded his books, articles & speeches on behalf of his movement as irrelevant, no one doubts he's unmatched as a socialist champion. Even to critics he was always humanely decent. His anti-Communism is in contrast to some leftist intellectuals. Despite his professorship, he wasn't a conventional scholar. He practiced a higher journalism: a mixture of fact, analysis & polemic. Few Americans have so successfully called attention to nat'l shortcomings or raised more important questions. His books were coherent & well thought out. He took readers seriously. His arguments were honestly made & didn't distort or ignore inconvenient facts. Tho his style wavered between the eloquent & the slipshod, as one reviewer put it, at his best he was, in the words of another, "lucid, brilliant & epigrammatic." As a political program socialism made little progress in America. But with spokesmen like him it remains a moral & intellectual force. Harrington argued that his brand of socialism was essentially a highly modified Marxism which had been refined thru the 20th-century disasters of communism & various forms of state-socialism. His utopian socialism would be similar to Sweden's recent experiments with worker-ownership & to simil...