Michael Harrington
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Edward Michael Harrington Jr. (February 24, 1928 – July 31, 1989) was an American
democratic socialist Democratic socialism is a left-wing economic and political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-mana ...
. As a writer, he was best known as the author of '' The 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 the Democratic Socialists of America, and its most influential early leader.


Early life and education

Harrington was born in
St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...
, on February 24, 1928, to an Irish-American family. He attended St. Roch Catholic School and St. Louis University High School, where he was a classmate (class of 1944) of Thomas Anthony Dooley III. He attended the College of the Holy Cross, where he obtained his B.A., and later graduated from the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
with an M.A. in English literature. Harrington also attended
Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...
, dropping out after one year. As a young man, Harrington was interested in both leftist politics and
Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
. He joined Dorothy Day's Catholic 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. Harrington was an editor of the newspaper '' Catholic 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 an
atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
.


Career

Harrington's estrangement from religion was accompanied by an increasing interest in Marxism and secular socialism. After leaving ''The Catholic Worker'', Harrington became a member of the Independent Socialist League (ISL), a small organization associated with the former
Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
activist Max 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 in
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
and elsewhere. In 1955, Harrington was placed on the FBI Index, whose master list contained more than 10 million names in 1939. From the 1950s through to the 1970s, FBI director J. 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. Later, Harrington was added to the master list of Nixon political opponents. After Norman Thomas's Socialist Party absorbed Shachtman's ISL in 1957, Harrington endorsed Shachtman's strategy of working as part of the Democratic Party rather than sponsoring candidates as Socialists. Although Harrington identified personally with the socialism of Thomas and Eugene Debs, the most consistent thread running through his life and his work was a "left wing of the possible within the Democratic Party." Harrington served as the first editor of '' New America,'' the official weekly newspaper of the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, founded in October 1960. In 1962, he published '' The Other America: Poverty in the United States'', a book that has been credited with sparking John F. Kennedy's and
Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. He became president after assassination of John F. Kennedy, the assassination of John F. Ken ...
's War on Poverty. For ''The Other America'', Harrington was awarded a George Polk Award and The Sidney Award. He became a widely read intellectual and political writer, in 1972 publishing a second bestseller, ''Socialism.'' His voluminous writings included 14 other books and scores of articles, published in such journals as '' Commonweal'', '' Partisan Review'', ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'', '' Commentary'', and ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...
''. Harrington often debated classical liberals/libertarians like
Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and ...
and conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr. He also debated younger left-wing radicals. Harrington was present in June 1962 at the founding conference of Students for a Democratic Society. In clashes with Tom Hayden and Alan Haber, he argued that their Port Huron Statement was insufficiently explicit about excluding communists from their vision of a
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer ...
. 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." 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 to Social Democrats, USA. After losing at the convention, Harrington resigned and, with his former caucus, formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. A smaller faction, associated with peace activist David McReynolds, formed the
Socialist Party USA The Socialist Party of the United States of America (also Socialist Party USA or SPUSA) is a socialist political party in the United States. SPUSA formed in 1973, one year after the Socialist Party of America splintered into three: Social De ...
. Harrington was appointed a professor of political science at Queens College in Flushing, New York City, in 1972. He wrote 16 books and was named a distinguished professor of political science in 1988. Harrington is also credited with coining the term
neoconservatism Neoconservatism (colloquially neocon) is a political movement which began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party along with the growing New Left and ...
in 1973. 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 in
1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union, grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning Sys ...
against President
Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
, but decided against it after Senator Ted Kennedy announced his campaign. He later endorsed Kennedy and said, "if Kennedy loses or is driven out of this campaign, it will be a loss for the left". In 1982, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left activists, forming the Democratic Socialists of America. It was the principal U.S. affiliate of the
Socialist International The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism, consisting mostly of Social democracy, social democratic political parties and Labour mov ...
, which includes socialist and labour parties such as the Swedish and German Social Democrats and the British Labour Party, until it voted to leave in 2017. Harrington remained chairman of DSA from its inception to his death. During the 1980s, Harrington contributed commentaries to National Public Radio.


Political views

Harrington embraced a democratic interpretation of the writings of
Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
while rejecting the " actually existing" systems of the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
,
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
and the
Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...
. In 1988, Harrington said: Harrington made clear that even if the traditional
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
vision of a marketless, stateless society was impossible, he did not understand why this had to "result in the social consequence of some people eating while others starve".Bella Stumbo
"A Socialist Utopia"
. ''Los Angeles Times''. April 12, 1987. Retrieved November 8, 2009.
Before the Soviet Union's collapse, the DSA voiced opposition to that nation's bureaucratically managed economy and control over its
satellite state A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbiting a larger ob ...
s. The DSA welcomed
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
's reforms in the Soviet Union. Sociologist Bogdan Denitch wrote in the DSA's ''Democratic Left'' (quoted in 1989): Harrington voiced admiration for German Social Democratic Chancellor
Willy Brandt Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and concurrently served as the Chancellor ...
's '' Ostpolitik'', which sought to reduce antagonism between Western Europe and Soviet states.Isserman. ''The Other American''
pp. 351–52


Personal life

From May 30, 1963, until his death, Harrington was married to Stephanie Gervis Harrington, a freelance writer and staff writer for the '' Village Voice''. Gervis Harrington published articles in ''The 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. 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.


Religion

In 1978, the periodical '' Christian Century'' quoted Harrington: 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." In his 1983 ''Wilson Quarterly'' article "The Politics at God's Funeral", 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.” In 1988, Harrington wrote:


Death and legacy

Harrington died of
esophageal cancer Esophageal cancer (American English) or oesophageal cancer (British English) is cancer arising from the esophagus—the food pipe that runs between the throat and the stomach. Symptoms often include dysphagia, difficulty in swallowing and weigh ...
in
Larchmont, New York Larchmont is a Village (New York), village located within the Town (New York), Town of Mamaroneck (town), New York, Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York. Larchmont is a suburb of New York City, located approximately northeast of Midt ...
, on July 31, 1989.Herbert Mitgang, "Michael Harrington, Socialist and Author, Is Dead," ''The New York Times'', August 2, 1989, p. B10. The
City University of New York The City University of New York (CUNY, pronounced , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven ...
has established The Michael Harrington Center for Democratic Values and Social Change at Queens College in his honor.


Media appearances

* Harrington was a guest speaker on the television series '' Free to Choose'' and argued against some of
Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and ...
's theories of the free market. * In 1966 he appeared on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s television program '' Firing Line''. He explained his opinions on poverty and debated Buckley on government attempts to address poverty and its consequences.


Works

* '' The Other America: Poverty in the United States.'' New York: Macmillan, 1962. * ''The Retail Clerks.'' New York: John Wiley, 1962. * ''The Accidental Century.'' New York: Macmillan, 1965. * "The Politics of Poverty," in Irving Howe (ed.), ''The Radical Papers.'' Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1966; pp. 122–43.
''The Social-Industrial Complex.''
New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1968. * ''Toward a Democratic Left: A Radical Program for a New Majority.'' New York: Macmillan, 1968; Baltimore: Penguin, 1969 paperback ed., with new afterword. * * ''Fragments of the Century: A Social Autobiography.'' New York: Saturday Review Press, 1973. * ''Twilight of Capitalism.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977. * ''The Vast Majority.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977.
''Tax Policy and the Economy: A Debate between Michael Harrington and Representative Jack Kemp, April 25, 1979.''
with
Jack Kemp Jack French Kemp (July 13, 1935 – May 2, 2009) was an American politician, professional Gridiron football, football player, and U.S. Army veteran. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party from New York, he served a ...
, New York: Institute for Democratic Socialism, 1979. * James H. Cone
"The Black Church and Marxism: what do they have to say to each other"
with comments by Michael Harrington, New York: Institute for Democratic Socialism, 1980. * ''Decade of Decision: The Crisis of the American System.'' New York: Touchstone, 1981. * ''The Next America: The Decline and Rise of the United States.'' New York: Touchstone, 1981. * ''The Politics at God's Funeral: The Spiritual Crisis of Western Civilization.'' New York: Henry Holt, 1983. * ''The New American Poverty.'' New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1984. * ''Taking Sides: The Education of a Militant Mind.'' New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1985. * ''The Next Left: The History of a Future.'' New York: Henry Holt, 1986. * ''The Long Distance Runner: An Autobiography.'' New York: Henry Holt, 1988. * '' Socialism: Past & Future'', New York: Arcade Publishing, 1989


Biography

* Isserman, Maurice ''The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington.'' New York: Perseus Books 2001 *Doug Greene, ''A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism.'' Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2021.


See also

* Bernt Carlsson * Democratic Socialists of America * New American Movement * Socialist Youth League


References


Further reading

* Maurice Isserman, ''The Other American : The Untold Life of Michael Harrington.'' New York: HarperCollins/Public Affairs, 2000. * George Novack, "The Politics of Michael Harrington," ''International Socialist Review,'' vol. 34, no. 1 (Jan. 1973), pp. 18–25. * Doug Greene, ''A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism.'' Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2021.


External links


Michael Harrington Center at Queens College, NYC


at marxists.org
Tribute to Michael Harrington, C-SPAN
(November 10, 1989)
Michael Harrington Papers
at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University
Fathom Journal - Democratic Socialism, Israel and the Jews: An Interview with Michael Harrington (1975), with new preface by Mitchell Cohen (2020)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harrington, Michael 1928 births 1989 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century atheists Activists from New York (state) Activists from St. Louis American anti-communists American anti–Vietnam War activists American atheists American male non-fiction writers American people of Irish descent American political party founders American political philosophers American political writers American social democrats College of the Holy Cross alumni Deaths from esophageal cancer in New York (state) Former Roman Catholics Members of the Democratic Socialists of America from New York (state) Members of the Socialist Party of America People from Larchmont, New York Queens College, City University of New York faculty University of Chicago alumni Writers from St. Louis Yale Law School alumni