The Other American: The Untold Life of Michael Harrington. - Review - book review

The Other American: The Untold Life of Michael Harrington by Maurice Isserman Public Affairs. 400 pages. $28.50.

Michael Harrington held the slot of "America's socialist"--the only adherent of his viewpoint whom the American news media admitted into the national political debate for two decades. Probably best known for The Other America, his 1962 book widely credited with providing the intellectual impetus for Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," Harrington was the founder of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Maurice Isserman has written several books on twentieth century American leftwing political history. In this biography of Harrington, he supplements his usual encyclopedic research with a personal familiarity with both the man and the New Left. Isserman feels Harrington might have exerted a much greater influence on that movement if not for his relative silence on the Vietnam War during its early years: "In his response to the central issue of the 1960s, Michael let pass the chance of a lifetime to make a democratic socialist perspective relevant to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who supported the anti-war movement."

Harrington carried the torch for the conviction that as long as human beings live in the short run, they will not be satisfied with the argument that under capitalism everything will work out--in the long run. Instead, he argued, they would try to create a system that worked the inequities out in the shortrun--in other words, socialism. Currently, that viewpoint may resemble more an ember than a torch, but we should be grateful to him for keeping it glowing a little more brightly.

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