I appreciated your multipart take on Michael Harrington. As a nearly lifelong fan of his overall work, I think you fairly nailed the contradictions and limitations of the "Socialism" book. It was certainly written with trying to reach New Left people, even as the movement(s) was/were already falling apart in 1972. Harrington never got to a Chomskyesque type of analysis, but he did improve. In his 1977 book, "The Vast Majority: A Journey to the World's Poor", Harrington provided an explanation for the, ahem, vast majority of Americans as to how their wealth had been built on imperialism and, specifically, how vast wealth had been transferred from India, Africa, and other places to the Brits, the West in general, and the USA. Just before that book, in "The Twilight of Capitalism"(1976), which was written in the aftermath of the first oil shocks, Harrington was both alarmed and sanguine about limits in resources and what that meant for a democratic-socialist project. I found his analysis of Marx at the start of that particular book, "The Oracle in the Ashes," and the next couple of early chapters, to be a better explication of Marx than the entirety of "Socialism." I am not expecting nor even suggesting you read these two works because I sense you've had enough--and frankly, over the past five decades, one may point to a plethora of sources making similar points.
For me, though, a younger Boomer (1957) who was in grade school when you were in the New Left, and who came of age after its collapse, I continue to find Harrington to be a good guide for my thinking about social democracy and democratic socialism. However, I know I must supplement Harrington with Chomsky, Said, Sen, and Adolph Reed, Jr., among others. I am, however, glad you found your way to a general agreement with Harrington in supporting a gradualist and hopefully humane movement towards a socialism that is liberatingly democratic, and overcame your genuinely correct frustrations you and others in the New Left had over Vietnam and race in America with various, though not all, Old Leftists. I think that is why New Leftists liked Isaac Deutscher and IF Stone, but detested Irving Howe, for example. :)
Law and order
Has a progressive cousin
Crusade against Korporate Kleptos
Glass tower executive suite
White collar crime
Surely
not shady street commerce
Large Bank" ruptured " firms
should be made into
Huge Public lemonade aide stands
Corporate profiteering as
Korporate krime
by queensbury means
Must be targeted relentlessly
Not Nader raided but
Direct action agit prop
Lots of arrests
everywhere all at once
The Net can co ordinated these uprisings
One by one actions lack punch
Security system stress
Requires a million feet stepping
Stepping onto executive floors
Across this great business land
Occ wall street was too pollyanna
Keep preaching, brother!
I appreciated your multipart take on Michael Harrington. As a nearly lifelong fan of his overall work, I think you fairly nailed the contradictions and limitations of the "Socialism" book. It was certainly written with trying to reach New Left people, even as the movement(s) was/were already falling apart in 1972. Harrington never got to a Chomskyesque type of analysis, but he did improve. In his 1977 book, "The Vast Majority: A Journey to the World's Poor", Harrington provided an explanation for the, ahem, vast majority of Americans as to how their wealth had been built on imperialism and, specifically, how vast wealth had been transferred from India, Africa, and other places to the Brits, the West in general, and the USA. Just before that book, in "The Twilight of Capitalism"(1976), which was written in the aftermath of the first oil shocks, Harrington was both alarmed and sanguine about limits in resources and what that meant for a democratic-socialist project. I found his analysis of Marx at the start of that particular book, "The Oracle in the Ashes," and the next couple of early chapters, to be a better explication of Marx than the entirety of "Socialism." I am not expecting nor even suggesting you read these two works because I sense you've had enough--and frankly, over the past five decades, one may point to a plethora of sources making similar points.
For me, though, a younger Boomer (1957) who was in grade school when you were in the New Left, and who came of age after its collapse, I continue to find Harrington to be a good guide for my thinking about social democracy and democratic socialism. However, I know I must supplement Harrington with Chomsky, Said, Sen, and Adolph Reed, Jr., among others. I am, however, glad you found your way to a general agreement with Harrington in supporting a gradualist and hopefully humane movement towards a socialism that is liberatingly democratic, and overcame your genuinely correct frustrations you and others in the New Left had over Vietnam and race in America with various, though not all, Old Leftists. I think that is why New Leftists liked Isaac Deutscher and IF Stone, but detested Irving Howe, for example. :)