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The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography
Book by Harrington, Michael
260 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1988
35 people want to read
About the author
Michael Harrington
103 books72 followersEdward Michael Harrington was an American democratic socialist, writer, political activist, professor of political science, and radio commentator.
Early life
Harrington was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended St. Louis University High School, College of the Holy Cross, University of Chicago (MA in English Literature), and Yale Law School. As a young man, he was interested in both leftwing politics and Catholicism. Fittingly, he joined Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement, a pacifist group that advocated a radical interpretation of the Gospel. Above all else, Harrington was an intellectual. He loved arguing about culture and politics, preferably over beer, and his Jesuit education made him a fine debater and rhetorician. Harrington was an editor of The Catholic Worker from 1951 to 1953. However, Harrington became disillusioned with religion and, although he would always retain a certain affection for Catholic culture, he ultimately became an atheist.
Becoming a socialist
This estrangement from religion was accompanied by a growing interest in Marxism and a drift toward secular socialism. After leaving The Catholic Worker Harrington became a member of the Independent Socialist League, a small organization associated with the former Trotskyist leader Max Shachtman. Harrington and Shachtman believed that socialism, the promise of a just and fully democratic society, could not be realized under authoritarian Communism and they were both fiercely critical of the "bureaucratic collectivist" states in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Harrington became a member of Norman Thomas's Socialist Party when the SP agreed to absorb Shachtman's organization. Harrington backed the Shachtmanite realignment strategy of working within the Democratic Party rather than running candidates on a Socialist ticket.
Socialist leader
During this period Harrington wrote The Other America: Poverty in the United States, a book that had an impact on the Kennedy administration, and on Lyndon B. Johnson's subsequent War on Poverty. Harrington became a widely read intellectual and political writer. He would frequently debate noted conservatives but would also clash with the younger radicals in the New Left movements. He was present at the 1962 SDS conference that led to the creation of the Port Huron Statement, where he argued that the final draft was insufficiently anti-Communist. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. referred to Harrington as the "only responsible radical" in America, a somewhat dubious distinction among those on the political left. His high profile landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.
By early 1970s Shachtman's anti-Communism had become a hawkish Cold War liberalism. Shachtman and the governing faction of the Socialist Party effectively supported the Vietnam War and changed the organization's name to Social Democrats, USA. In protest Harrington led a number of Norman Thomas-era Socialists, younger activists and ex-Shachtmanites into the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. A smaller faction associated with peace activist David McReynolds formed the Socialist Party USA.
In the early 1980s The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left veterans, forming Democratic Socialists of America. This organization remains the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, which includes socialist parties as diverse as the Swedish and German Social Democrats, Nicaragua's FSLN, and the British Labour Party.
Academician and public intellectual
Harrington was appointed a professor of political science at Queens College in 1972 and was designated a distinguished professor in 1988. During the 1980s he contributed commentaries to National Public Radio. Harrington died in 1989 of cancer. He was the most well-known socialist in the United States during his lifetime.
Early life
Harrington was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended St. Louis University High School, College of the Holy Cross, University of Chicago (MA in English Literature), and Yale Law School. As a young man, he was interested in both leftwing politics and Catholicism. Fittingly, he joined Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement, a pacifist group that advocated a radical interpretation of the Gospel. Above all else, Harrington was an intellectual. He loved arguing about culture and politics, preferably over beer, and his Jesuit education made him a fine debater and rhetorician. Harrington was an editor of The Catholic Worker from 1951 to 1953. However, Harrington became disillusioned with religion and, although he would always retain a certain affection for Catholic culture, he ultimately became an atheist.
Becoming a socialist
This estrangement from religion was accompanied by a growing interest in Marxism and a drift toward secular socialism. After leaving The Catholic Worker Harrington became a member of the Independent Socialist League, a small organization associated with the former Trotskyist leader Max Shachtman. Harrington and Shachtman believed that socialism, the promise of a just and fully democratic society, could not be realized under authoritarian Communism and they were both fiercely critical of the "bureaucratic collectivist" states in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Harrington became a member of Norman Thomas's Socialist Party when the SP agreed to absorb Shachtman's organization. Harrington backed the Shachtmanite realignment strategy of working within the Democratic Party rather than running candidates on a Socialist ticket.
Socialist leader
During this period Harrington wrote The Other America: Poverty in the United States, a book that had an impact on the Kennedy administration, and on Lyndon B. Johnson's subsequent War on Poverty. Harrington became a widely read intellectual and political writer. He would frequently debate noted conservatives but would also clash with the younger radicals in the New Left movements. He was present at the 1962 SDS conference that led to the creation of the Port Huron Statement, where he argued that the final draft was insufficiently anti-Communist. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. referred to Harrington as the "only responsible radical" in America, a somewhat dubious distinction among those on the political left. His high profile landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.
By early 1970s Shachtman's anti-Communism had become a hawkish Cold War liberalism. Shachtman and the governing faction of the Socialist Party effectively supported the Vietnam War and changed the organization's name to Social Democrats, USA. In protest Harrington led a number of Norman Thomas-era Socialists, younger activists and ex-Shachtmanites into the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. A smaller faction associated with peace activist David McReynolds formed the Socialist Party USA.
In the early 1980s The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left veterans, forming Democratic Socialists of America. This organization remains the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, which includes socialist parties as diverse as the Swedish and German Social Democrats, Nicaragua's FSLN, and the British Labour Party.
Academician and public intellectual
Harrington was appointed a professor of political science at Queens College in 1972 and was designated a distinguished professor in 1988. During the 1980s he contributed commentaries to National Public Radio. Harrington died in 1989 of cancer. He was the most well-known socialist in the United States during his lifetime.
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June 23, 2011
Michael Harrington died of cancer in 1989, the year after his autobiography The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography was published. He was a writer of many political and social science books and was proud to wear the label of liberal. He was a democratic socialist, a philosophical Marxist working for many years within the left wing of the Democratic Party. He spent the last fifteen years of his life as a tenured professor of political science at Queen College, Long Island, NY.
Harrington has more than two dozen books listed on GoodReads including his best known The Other America: Poverty in the United States. He has not attracted very much attention on GoodReads possibly due to the fact that all of his books are over twenty years old and lean in a socialist direction. Harrington writes as an insider in most of the book, a person directly involved in his subject. His experience was often in depth and unique.
Raised as a Catholic with a Catholic school education, Harrington left the church but remained close to the Catholic culture.
Searching ‘catholic worker’ in GoodReads yields a number of books about the Catholic Worker Movement. As with Harrington himself, these books have not attracted much attention among the GoodReads readership. GoodReads does not seem to be a magnet for radical politics or thought.
This book is the story of a man who wore his heart on his sleeve and proudly stood up as a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ throughout his short sixty-one year life. It is told in a personal and intellectual way, but also with emotion.
You will be exposed to leftwing and socialist organizational development (DSOC, DSA, NAM, CLUW) that may numb all but the most historically connected and experienced progressive. But you will also be reminded of the struggles of Left organizations to respond to the new feminist demands of the seventies and eighties for equality between men and women.
Michael Harrington was significantly involved in New York politics, and specifically NYC politics in the era of Bella Abzug, Ed Koch, an early Mario Cuomo and Ruth Messinger in the 1970s. He writes of his personal and political relationships with these significant players in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Harrington was a political party builder and strategy person behind the politicians. (A lesser person might have become a party hack.) He was always pushing for the left liberal position as he saw it.
Still today we hear the complaint that Democrats “throw money at problems.” Harrington does his best to dispel this false ‘truism’ that is referenced over and over, even to this day.
Harrington had something of a knee jerk philosophy. He supported unions, among other things, automatically. I like that in a person!
And I like his resume. For example, he went to the Catholic Worker in 1951 and the Socialist movement in 1952. Harrington writes, “I became a professor of political science in 1972 because I wanted to get health insurance.” He had a wife and children. Thus he enters the world of academia and says, “The experience changed my life.” Being the intellectual that he was, it was a perfect match for Harrington. Learning and teaching at the college and university level was his career for the rest of his life.
Harrington writes about his move from Manhattan to a relatively affluent suburb of NYC, Larchmont. This is a story that emphasizes the personal aspects of decisions that are often used or misused for political gain.
The chapter on the Socialist International (SI) will interest you if you are interested in the history of the multi country (mostly European initially) aspects of socialism. This organization served at that time to give the flaccid U.S. socialist movement a small amount of pride as a part of a group that included countries that actually had active socialist political parties involved in governing. He carries the history of the SI into its involvement in the Caribbean (Jamaica, Grenada) and Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador). Harrington was an active and influential part of the Socialist International during that period and his account reflect that personal involvement.
You will read personal portraits of Willie Brandt (Germany) and Olof Palme (Sweden) by Michael Harrington based on his own experience with these world leaders who also happened to be socialists.
I said at the onset that The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography was published the year before Michael Harrington died of cancer. He knew that he was dying and wrote about that in the last chapter of the book.
However, before he got around to dying, he took the opportunity to write about his experience having his dozen books reviewed after his first book The Other America was such a success. In this reviewing the reviewers segment he refers to Proust among other literary giants and makes some literary comments that I can in no way claim to understand. He cemented my view of him as an intellectual, beyond hope of my understanding in many areas. But there is some wit that I could enjoy.
Then he got to dying. I had some hope of understanding since I had read On Death and Dying and had, after all, some experience as a social worker. My younger sister also died recently of another form of cancer so I felt a special relationship to the event. Proust comes up again somehow, but I just smile and pass it by. His description of his experience with cancer is written with a combined seriousness and humor. Most importantly, I can understand it so actually enjoy reading it. It took him five years from the discovery of the lump to his death. It takes thirteen pages in the book.
The ethical humanist in me is cheered by the fact that facing death, he finds that he wants to maintain his atheism.
There is an Index that is mostly people and organizations. And, in fact, that is just what the book is about. Most of them just happen to have some connection with socialism.
Under normal circumstances I would give The Long-Distance Runner three stars. But I am going to give it four. My reasoning is that this is the first review of this book on GR since it was published 23 years ago and the first rating as well. Maybe is someone sees it got four stars they will consider buying it from a used book dealer online and reading it. They might pass it by if it only has three stars. For me it was a book worth reading. Anyone who is interested in organizing and recent socialist history will find this book interesting. There might even be a five star review waiting out there in the future.
Michael Harrington died just at the beginning of the computer and electronic age. He is a little bit old fashion. Like Marcel Proust, he still has something to teach us.
Harrington has more than two dozen books listed on GoodReads including his best known The Other America: Poverty in the United States. He has not attracted very much attention on GoodReads possibly due to the fact that all of his books are over twenty years old and lean in a socialist direction. Harrington writes as an insider in most of the book, a person directly involved in his subject. His experience was often in depth and unique.
Raised as a Catholic with a Catholic school education, Harrington left the church but remained close to the Catholic culture.
As a young man, he was interested in both leftwing politics and Catholicism. Fittingly, he joined Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement, a pacifist group that advocated a radical interpretation of the Gospel. Above all else, Harrington was an intellectual. He loved arguing about culture and politics, preferably over beer, and his Jesuit education made him a fine debater and rhetorician. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...
Searching ‘catholic worker’ in GoodReads yields a number of books about the Catholic Worker Movement. As with Harrington himself, these books have not attracted much attention among the GoodReads readership. GoodReads does not seem to be a magnet for radical politics or thought.
This book is the story of a man who wore his heart on his sleeve and proudly stood up as a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ throughout his short sixty-one year life. It is told in a personal and intellectual way, but also with emotion.
This book, then, will deal primarily with the meaning of my encounters with the political and social movements of the Left during the seventies and eighties, nationally and internationally. I will, however, try to convey the experiences of my public self’s daily life: teaching at Queens College in the City University of New York; moving to the suburbs after thirty years in the Bohemian heartland of Greenwich Village; and what it is like to be a writer. And there is one experience I will describe that simply refuses to be reduced to its sociological dimensions: facing up to premature death through cancer.
I theorize too much. Ultimately, the most important thing I want to say about being a long-distance runner is that, prior to all the books and music and movies, there was in me a hunger and thirst for justice. For me this was a second nature, a drive more powerful and lasting than romantic love or sexual desire. And in a profound sense I feel that I showed no morality, no will, in actuating upon that instinct, because I could not have done otherwise.
You will be exposed to leftwing and socialist organizational development (DSOC, DSA, NAM, CLUW) that may numb all but the most historically connected and experienced progressive. But you will also be reminded of the struggles of Left organizations to respond to the new feminist demands of the seventies and eighties for equality between men and women.
Michael Harrington was significantly involved in New York politics, and specifically NYC politics in the era of Bella Abzug, Ed Koch, an early Mario Cuomo and Ruth Messinger in the 1970s. He writes of his personal and political relationships with these significant players in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Harrington was a political party builder and strategy person behind the politicians. (A lesser person might have become a party hack.) He was always pushing for the left liberal position as he saw it.
There is no doubt that “life” plays a conservatizing role in most biographies. Those blinding, all-encompassing radical certitudes, which sometimes are the epiphanies of youth, are not so dazzling any more. Instead, the complexities and shadows come into view. At the same time, marriage and parenthood are indeed two of the great forces making people bourgeois.
Still today we hear the complaint that Democrats “throw money at problems.” Harrington does his best to dispel this false ‘truism’ that is referenced over and over, even to this day.
The amount of money actually spent on the poor by the War on Poverty and Great Society was distressingly modest and, in any case, most of the programs that had been funded, such as Head Start and job training, had done reasonably well. The really massive increase in Washington’s outlays had gone to Social Security and it was rightly so popular that even the conservatives were loath to attack it. When Nixon charged that the sixties liberals had “thrown money at problems’ – spent wildly and ineffectively – he was being as loose with the truth as he was during the Watergate cover-up.
Harrington had something of a knee jerk philosophy. He supported unions, among other things, automatically. I like that in a person!
When I had my brief stint at a “straight” job – as a writer-trainee for Life magazine in 1950 – I was told by a friendly co-worker that the management didn’t like people who joined the American Newspaper Guild. I signed up immediately.
And I like his resume. For example, he went to the Catholic Worker in 1951 and the Socialist movement in 1952. Harrington writes, “I became a professor of political science in 1972 because I wanted to get health insurance.” He had a wife and children. Thus he enters the world of academia and says, “The experience changed my life.” Being the intellectual that he was, it was a perfect match for Harrington. Learning and teaching at the college and university level was his career for the rest of his life.
Harrington writes about his move from Manhattan to a relatively affluent suburb of NYC, Larchmont. This is a story that emphasizes the personal aspects of decisions that are often used or misused for political gain.
The chapter on the Socialist International (SI) will interest you if you are interested in the history of the multi country (mostly European initially) aspects of socialism. This organization served at that time to give the flaccid U.S. socialist movement a small amount of pride as a part of a group that included countries that actually had active socialist political parties involved in governing. He carries the history of the SI into its involvement in the Caribbean (Jamaica, Grenada) and Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador). Harrington was an active and influential part of the Socialist International during that period and his account reflect that personal involvement.
You will read personal portraits of Willie Brandt (Germany) and Olof Palme (Sweden) by Michael Harrington based on his own experience with these world leaders who also happened to be socialists.
I said at the onset that The Long-Distance Runner: An Autobiography was published the year before Michael Harrington died of cancer. He knew that he was dying and wrote about that in the last chapter of the book.
However, before he got around to dying, he took the opportunity to write about his experience having his dozen books reviewed after his first book The Other America was such a success. In this reviewing the reviewers segment he refers to Proust among other literary giants and makes some literary comments that I can in no way claim to understand. He cemented my view of him as an intellectual, beyond hope of my understanding in many areas. But there is some wit that I could enjoy.
Then he got to dying. I had some hope of understanding since I had read On Death and Dying and had, after all, some experience as a social worker. My younger sister also died recently of another form of cancer so I felt a special relationship to the event. Proust comes up again somehow, but I just smile and pass it by. His description of his experience with cancer is written with a combined seriousness and humor. Most importantly, I can understand it so actually enjoy reading it. It took him five years from the discovery of the lump to his death. It takes thirteen pages in the book.
The ethical humanist in me is cheered by the fact that facing death, he finds that he wants to maintain his atheism.
There is an Index that is mostly people and organizations. And, in fact, that is just what the book is about. Most of them just happen to have some connection with socialism.
Under normal circumstances I would give The Long-Distance Runner three stars. But I am going to give it four. My reasoning is that this is the first review of this book on GR since it was published 23 years ago and the first rating as well. Maybe is someone sees it got four stars they will consider buying it from a used book dealer online and reading it. They might pass it by if it only has three stars. For me it was a book worth reading. Anyone who is interested in organizing and recent socialist history will find this book interesting. There might even be a five star review waiting out there in the future.
Michael Harrington died just at the beginning of the computer and electronic age. He is a little bit old fashion. Like Marcel Proust, he still has something to teach us.
December 25, 2013
Harrington had enormous impact on me as an organizer. I met him a few times at DSA events and or lectures and found him refreshing for his ability to talk across issues and to gently beseech us all to link ourselves to each other and not to divide. His term for himself as being on “the left wing of the possible” has stayed with me and reminds me that practical action is what we are about, not academic theory. This autobiography still gets picked up from time to time, not only to remember the arc of the issues and the politics behind them (and even to revisit his amazingly unrelenting Marxism!), but also to revisit Harrington himself, our kind and energetic long-distance runner.
October 9, 2011
Excellent... beautifully written. I wish he was still around...for many reasons.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews