Michael Harrington | |
|---|---|
 Harrington in 1988 | |
| Chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America | |
| In office March 20, 1982 – July 31, 1989 | |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| National Chairman of the Socialist Party of America | |
| In office July 7, 1968 – December 31, 1972 | |
| Preceded by | Darlington Hoopes |
| Succeeded by | Office abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Edward Michael Harrington Jr. (1928-02-24)February 24, 1928 |
| Died | July 31, 1989(1989-07-31) (aged 61) Larchmont, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic Socialists of America(since 1982) |
| Other political affiliations | ISL(1953-1958) SPA(1958-1972) DSOC(1973-1982) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Education | College of the Holy Cross (BA) University of Chicago (MA) Yale University |
Edward Michael Harrington Jr. (February 24, 1928 – July 31, 1989) was an Americandemocratic socialist. As a writer, he was best known as the author ofThe Other America (1962). Harrington was also a political activist, theorist, professor of political science, and radio commentator. In 1982, he was a founding member of theDemocratic Socialists of America, and its most influential early leader.
Harrington was born inSt. Louis, Missouri, on February 24, 1928, to an Irish-American family. He attended St. Roch Catholic School andSt. Louis University High School, where he was a classmate (class of 1944) ofThomas Anthony Dooley III. He attended theCollege of the Holy Cross, where he obtained his B.A., and later graduated from theUniversity of Chicago with an M.A. in English literature. Harrington also attendedYale Law School, dropping out after one year.[1]
As a young man, Harrington was interested in both leftist politics andCatholicism. He joinedDorothy Day'sCatholic Worker Movement, a communal movement that stressed social justice and nonviolence. Harrington enjoyed arguing about culture and politics, and his Jesuit education had made him a good debater and rhetorician.[2]
Harrington was an editor of the newspaperCatholic Worker from 1951 to 1953, but he soon became disillusioned with religion. Although he always retained a certain affection for Catholic culture, he ultimately became anatheist.[3]
Harrington's estrangement from religion was accompanied by an increasing interest in Marxism and secular socialism. After leavingThe Catholic Worker, Harrington became a member of theIndependent Socialist League (ISL), a small organization associated with the formerTrotskyist activistMax Shachtman. Harrington and Shachtman believed that socialism, which they believed implied a just and fully democratic society, could not be realized by authoritarian communism, and were fiercely critical of the "bureaucratic collectivist" states inEastern Europe and elsewhere.[4]
In 1955, Harrington was placed on theFBI Index, whose master list contained more than 10 million names in 1939. From the 1950s through to the 1970s, FBI directorJ. Edgar Hoover added an untold number of names of U.S. activists he considered "dangerous characters", to be placed in detention camps in case of a national emergency.[5] Later, Harrington was added to themaster list of Nixon political opponents.[6]
AfterNorman Thomas'sSocialist Party absorbed Shachtman's ISL in 1957, Harrington endorsed Shachtman's strategy of working as part of theDemocratic Party rather than sponsoring candidates as Socialists.[7] Although Harrington identified personally with the socialism of Thomas andEugene Debs, the most consistent thread running through his life and his work was a "left wing of the possible within the Democratic Party."[8]
Harrington served as the first editor ofNew America, the official weekly newspaper of the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, founded in October 1960. In 1962, he publishedThe Other America: Poverty in the United States, a book that has been credited with sparkingJohn F. Kennedy's andLyndon Johnson'swar on poverty.[9] ForThe Other America, Harrington was awarded aGeorge Polk Award andThe Sidney Award.[10] He became a widely read intellectual and political writer, in 1972 publishing a second bestseller,Socialism.[11] His voluminous writings included 14 other books and scores of articles, published in such journals asCommonweal,Partisan Review,The New Republic,Commentary, andThe Nation.[8]
Harrington often debated classical liberals/libertarians likeMilton Friedman and conservatives likeWilliam F. Buckley Jr.[12][13] He also debated younger left-wing radicals.
Harrington was present in June 1962 at the founding conference ofStudents for a Democratic Society. In clashes withTom Hayden andAlan Haber, he argued that theirPort Huron Statement was insufficiently explicit about excluding communists from their vision of aNew Left.[14]Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. called Harrington the "only responsible radical" in America.Ted Kennedy said, "I see Michael Harrington as delivering the Sermon on the Mount to America," and "among veterans in the War on Poverty, no one has been a more loyal ally when the night was darkest."[10]
By the early 1970s, the governing faction of the Socialist Party continued to endorse a negotiated peace to end the Vietnam War, a stance that Harrington came to believe was no longer viable. The majority changed the organization's name toSocial Democrats, USA. After losing at the convention, Harrington resigned and, with his former caucus, formed theDemocratic Socialist Organizing Committee. A smaller faction, associated with peace activistDavid McReynolds, formed theSocialist Party USA.
Harrington was appointed a professor of political science atQueens College inFlushing, New York City, in 1972. He wrote 16 books and was named a distinguished professor of political science in 1988.[10] Harrington is also credited with coining the termneoconservatism in 1973.[15]
Harrington said that socialists had to go through the Democratic Party to enact their policies, reasoning that the socialist vote had declined from a peak of approximately one million in the years around World War I to a few thousand by the 1950s. He considered running for the Democratic presidential nomination in1980 against PresidentJimmy Carter, but decided against it after SenatorTed Kennedy announced his campaign.[16] He later endorsed Kennedy and said, "if Kennedy loses or is driven out of this campaign, it will be a loss for the left".[17][18]
In 1982, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with theNew American Movement, an organization of New Left activists, forming theDemocratic Socialists of America. It was the principal U.S. affiliate of theSocialist International, which includes socialist and labour parties such as theSwedish andGerman Social Democrats and theBritish Labour Party,[19] until it voted to leave in 2017.[20] Harrington remained chairman of DSA from its inception to his death.
During the 1980s, Harrington contributed commentaries to National Public Radio.[21]
Harrington embraced a democratic interpretation of the writings ofKarl Marx while rejecting the "actually existing" systems of theSoviet Union,China and theEastern Bloc. In 1988, Harrington said:[22][23]
Marx was a democrat with a small "d". [....] The Democratic Socialists envision a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism and racial equality. I share an immediate program with liberals in this country because the best liberalism leads toward socialism. [....] I want to be on the left wing of the possible.
Harrington made clear that even if the traditionalMarxist vision of a marketless, stateless society were impossible, he did not understand why this had to "result in the social consequence of some people eating while others starve".[24]
Before the Soviet Union's collapse, the DSA voiced opposition to that nation's bureaucratically managed economy and control over itssatellite states.[25] The DSA welcomedMikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union. SociologistBogdan Denitch wrote in the DSA'sDemocratic Left (quoted in 1989):[25]
The aim of democrats and socialists should be… to help the chances of successful reform in the Soviet bloc. […] While supporting liberalization and economic reforms from above, socialists should be particularly active in contacting and encouraging the tender shoots of democracy from below.
Harrington voiced admiration forGerman Social Democratic ChancellorWilly Brandt'sOstpolitik, which sought to reduce antagonism between Western Europe and Soviet states.[26] AZionist, Harrington supportedIsrael on socialist grounds, in contrast to the DSA's eventualanti-Zionist stance following his death.[27][28]
From May 30, 1963, until his death, Harrington was married to Stephanie Gervis Harrington, a freelance writer and staff writer for theVillage Voice.[29][30] Gervis Harrington published articles inThe New Yorker,New York Magazine,The Nation,The New York Times Magazine,Harper's,The New Republic,The Village Voice,Vogue,Cosmopolitan,Newsday and other publications.[29] After Harrington's death, she raised their two children and continued her work as a writer. Gervis Harrington died on November 8, 2008, at age 71.[29]
In 1978, the periodicalChristian Century quoted Harrington:
I am a pious apostate, an atheist shocked by the faithlessness of the believers, a fellow traveler of moderate Catholicism who has been out of the church for 20 years.
Harrington observed of himself and his high school classmate Tom Dooley, "each of us was motivated, in part at least, by the Jesuit inspiration of our adolescence that insisted so strenuously that a man must live his philosophy."[31]
In his 1983Wilson Quarterly article "The Politics at God's Funeral",[32] Harrington wrote that religion was passing into oblivion, but he worried that the passing of legitimizing religious authority made Western societies lose a basis for virtue or common values. He proposed that democratic socialism help create a moral framework to salvage the values of progressive Judaism and Christianity "but not in religious form.”[33]
In 1988, Harrington wrote:
The politics of international economic and social solidarity must be presented as a practical solution to immediate problems as well as a recognition of that oneness of humankind celebrated in the Biblical account of the common parents of all human beings.[34]
Harrington died ofesophageal cancer inLarchmont, New York, on July 31, 1989.[35][36][37] TheCity University of New York has established The Michael Harrington Center for Democratic Values and Social Change at Queens College in his honor.[38]
I support Israel as an internationalist. Israel is a democratic country whose people are passionately defending its self-determination.
Michael Harrington, the author of The Other America, was the most charismatic figure on the American left in the past half century. His case for a democratic socialism takes on new meaning in the age of globalization
