Common Cents: Economic+Politics+Finance A Citizen's Survival Guide

by Michael Harrington

"Change is inevitable. Change is constant." – Benjamin Disraeli"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." – Charles DarwinThe world is changing. Fast. Economics, finance, politics. Revolutions in information, communication, economic liberalization, and political integration are bombarding us at a dizzying pace. Individually and collectively, we try to manage this change, seeking to adapt and thrive. One way we organize our collective action is through the exercise of public policy, but the landscape keeps changing and the old maps and blueprints seem inadequate to the task.If our leadership elites understand how to manage these changes, it is not apparent from the results. Regrettably, our traditional media sources seem unable or unwilling to help by providing straight answers untainted by ideology and political partisanship. The stock market jumps higher one day, and crashes the next, but what exactly has changed between yesterday and today? Or tomorrow? Meanwhile, Main Street enterprises and average families struggle to survive, much less thrive. In a self-governing democracy, how do we navigate this growing chaos? How do we return to a world we recognize?To start, we need to establish some touchstones to anchor our rational perceptions. Today, these touchstones must come from our own understanding. We need a basic intellectual foundation to guide our collective decisions because managing democracy is no longer the exclusive domain of the expert.Common Cent$: A Citizen’s Survival Guide seeks to satisfy this need. The guide is a basic primer that focuses on economics for non-economists and policymakers. Its author holds advanced degrees in economics, finance, and political science and has taught these disciplines at the university level. He has also worked in an investment management and financial consulting capacity. In contrast to conventional approaches, this guide offers a new way of understanding our society that departs from the economy as a mechanical system or programmable machine amenable to simple policy directives. Rather, the adopted metaphor is organic, holistic, and integrative. Our analysis focuses on resource inputs and outputs in a natural cycle over time. Rational, interactive human behavior becomes a key driver of this economic-financial-political ecosystem.In developing this approach, we can then tackle the nuts and bolts of the conventional policy world encompassing Federal Reserve monetary policy, the banking system, government fiscal policy, tax policy, public finance and social insurance entitlements. With a clearer perception as to how these various policies shape our world, we can gain a greater understanding of the ways we have been affected personally through the gyrations of the financial, housing, and labor markets. In this respect, we may discover that intuition is more powerful than technical expertise.This guide is not a compendium of solutions, but a framework for analysis so that we may design solutions together. Our financial and economic predicaments are not accidents of circumstance; we are not victims of fate. Our problems are of our own design due to misguided policies and faulty intellectual models of our world. The road back to sanity starts with small steps."A user-friendly manual that simplifies the political and economic policy landscape. A great resource. Send it to Washington!"

162 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2014

About the author

Edward 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.