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The Next Left: The History of a Future
Offers an analysis of the political scene today, contending that the conservative victories of the mid-eighties will not and cannot last
197 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Michael Harrington
104 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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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 20, 2017
Seize the Opportunity
I read this book after I finished Mike Harrington's last book, "Socialism: Past and Future". Despite the titles, I should have read this book first, because it seems to contain much of the detailed research that would strengthen the credibility of "Socialism".
It reads much more like a Democratic Socialist Manifesto, in that it analyses the causes of political problems and explains the basis of political solutions.
It starts with the declaration:
"The Western Left will confront the possibility of political power within the next five years, and perhaps sooner rather than later."
It is this Left that was to be the Next Left of the title. Writing in 1986, Harrington's concern was that it might not be prepared for the task, that "it may simply lack the creativity to deal with a crisis that has already bankrupted so much of American liberal and European socialist ideology."
Hence, Harrington confessed: "I write to forestall such a failure and, in some small way, to help the next Left seize its coming opportunity."
You could say the same of the plight of the Left in this Age of Trump, which within either four or eight years, will become the Post-Trump Era. Only who knows at what expense?
Members of today's Left, the present Left, could do worse than read either of these books.
"It's the Economy, Stupid"
Much of the book is concerned with economic analysis, something that was probably anathema to the New Left that arose in the sixties. However, it's this failure to address the economy that has made the New Left and its successors almost unelectable by a broader cross-section of the American public.
While I'm a great consumer of culture, I have always felt that the Left's prioritisation of cultural politics at the expense of economic politics (or what Marx called Political Economy) began its downfall. In Marxist terms, it prioritised the superstructure over the base. In more recent terms, it prioritised identity politics rather than class politics. No worker could look at this type of agenda and think it would further their economic needs or interests.
Instead, economic issues were associated with the boring, old-fashioned Old Left.
Ironically, it was the failure to address the economic and political needs of the American working and middle classes that enhanced the public support for Donald Trump and made a Democrat candidate difficult to elect in 2016. Obama's legacy might also fall victim to this irony, even though he did much of the hard work necessary to revive the American economy after the Global Economic Crisis. Double ironically, this crisis was potentially caused by adherence to Chicago School economic policies.
Harrington makes a concession to the New Left in how he discusses the economic issues:
"Productivity is social and political as well as economic..."
He also quotes Freud in an attempt to avoid reductionism:
"Major psychic events, Sigmund Freud rightly said, are 'over-determined,' the result of a convergence of causes, not of a single cause. So, others have added, are economic and social events."
Political Potence
Harrington's book, therefore, is economic, social, political and moral. Although it's just over 30 years old, it remains just as relevant and prescient as it was when it was written. The Next Left must plan to be potent now:
"What is needed...is not just another program. What is needed is a restatement of the basic moral vision of the Western Left."
"The next Left cannot content itself to sit around waiting for some catastrophe to save it from its own political impotence."
See here to read how Democratic Socialists of America (the organisation founded by Harrington) currently defines its moral vision.
It's clear that democracy is both a means and an end.
March 13, 2017
I read this book after I finished Mike Harrington's last book, "Socialism: Past and Future". Despite the titles, I should have read this book first, because it seems to contain much of the detailed research that would strengthen the credibility of "Socialism".
It reads much more like a Democratic Socialist Manifesto, in that it analyses the causes of political problems and explains the basis of political solutions.
It starts with the declaration:
"The Western Left will confront the possibility of political power within the next five years, and perhaps sooner rather than later."
It is this Left that was to be the Next Left of the title. Writing in 1986, Harrington's concern was that it might not be prepared for the task, that "it may simply lack the creativity to deal with a crisis that has already bankrupted so much of American liberal and European socialist ideology."
Hence, Harrington confessed: "I write to forestall such a failure and, in some small way, to help the next Left seize its coming opportunity."
You could say the same of the plight of the Left in this Age of Trump, which within either four or eight years, will become the Post-Trump Era. Only who knows at what expense?
Members of today's Left, the present Left, could do worse than read either of these books.
"It's the Economy, Stupid"
Much of the book is concerned with economic analysis, something that was probably anathema to the New Left that arose in the sixties. However, it's this failure to address the economy that has made the New Left and its successors almost unelectable by a broader cross-section of the American public.
While I'm a great consumer of culture, I have always felt that the Left's prioritisation of cultural politics at the expense of economic politics (or what Marx called Political Economy) began its downfall. In Marxist terms, it prioritised the superstructure over the base. In more recent terms, it prioritised identity politics rather than class politics. No worker could look at this type of agenda and think it would further their economic needs or interests.
Instead, economic issues were associated with the boring, old-fashioned Old Left.
Ironically, it was the failure to address the economic and political needs of the American working and middle classes that enhanced the public support for Donald Trump and made a Democrat candidate difficult to elect in 2016. Obama's legacy might also fall victim to this irony, even though he did much of the hard work necessary to revive the American economy after the Global Economic Crisis. Double ironically, this crisis was potentially caused by adherence to Chicago School economic policies.
Harrington makes a concession to the New Left in how he discusses the economic issues:
"Productivity is social and political as well as economic..."
He also quotes Freud in an attempt to avoid reductionism:
"Major psychic events, Sigmund Freud rightly said, are 'over-determined,' the result of a convergence of causes, not of a single cause. So, others have added, are economic and social events."
Political Potence
Harrington's book, therefore, is economic, social, political and moral. Although it's just over 30 years old, it remains just as relevant and prescient as it was when it was written. The Next Left must plan to be potent now:
"What is needed...is not just another program. What is needed is a restatement of the basic moral vision of the Western Left."
"The next Left cannot content itself to sit around waiting for some catastrophe to save it from its own political impotence."
See here to read how Democratic Socialists of America (the organisation founded by Harrington) currently defines its moral vision.
It's clear that democracy is both a means and an end.
March 13, 2017
August 1, 2007
I have a mild addiction to the not-too-distant past's vision of the present, hence this book. Arguably the premise of the book is to show how the American political arena may be ready for the Left to take over after Reagan's era ends - and that somewhat did manage to happen, sketchily and temporarily, with Clinton. More interesting, though, is the exact and illuminating way in which Harrington illustrates how the New Deal-type social programs ultimately dovetailed with the interests of Ford and other major industrialists, and how the slump of the 80's was the result of the programs designed for the interests of the corporations overreaching themselves. I'm very much looking forward to exploring Harrington's other books after sampling this one.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews