Michael Harrington (full name Edward Michael Harrington) was an influential left-wing activist. He founded the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization which works to advance far-left politics, including within the Democratic Party, and claims to be the largest socialist group in the United States.

He was also involved in prominent left-of-center activist initiatives, from the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, to various socialist causes starting in the 1970s, to protests against late Cold War anti-communist foreign interventions in the 1980s. Harrington was also known for his writing, especially his book The Other America, which detailed his views on wealth redistribution and which some left-leaning observers have credited with inspiring the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s “War on Poverty” policy initiative.

While he was known for his criticisms of United States government policy, both domestic and foreign, Harrington engaged with various government agencies throughout his career: this included participating in seminars organized by the Department of State and teaching at the Department of Defense’s National War College. Harrington died in 1989 at age 61, and he and his work have since been praised by the DSA, other left-wing institutions, and representatives of the labor movement. ^{1 2}

Michael Harrington grew up Catholic and attempted to merge his Christian beliefs with his left-wing political views, but eventually left religion altogether. Though he was fully immersed in socialist activism, he frequently came into conflict with his contemporaries on the more radical left, notably the often-militant Students for a Democratic Society, due to his insistence on working within the more mainstream left, including the Democratic Party. ³ This earned him harsh criticism from more explicitly socialist, Marxist, and Trotskyist activists at the time, but also qualified praise from modern-day “democratic socialist” observers. ^{4 5}

Political Ideology

Michael Harrington was raised Catholic and received a religious education, but later developed an interest in Marxist ideas. He once claimed that his Jesuit schooling “predisposed” him to both “the worst and best of Marx’s thought.” He also indicated that he held right-of-center views for at least part of his early life, but that he embraced the left during his time in graduate school. He remained at least a nominal Christian for some time, though he fell in with a particular left-wing stream within Catholic thought, spending several years working for the New York City-based Catholic Worker ministry of activist Dorothy Day. ⁶

Eventually, Michael Harrington dropped the religious component of his ideology entirely, and also moved away from anarchism, becoming involved with structured far-left groups such as the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL). Nonetheless, he opposed communism and especially the Stalinism of the early Soviet Union, arguing that these were opposed to authentic socialism. This stance would end up putting him at odds with younger, more militant leftist groups in the 1960s, most notably Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). ⁷ He did not, however, separate himself from them entirely at any point: at a 1967 socialist leaders’ conference, he downplayed the radicalism of SDS and its allies, arguing that “they will make mistakes, but they are the people…I’ll have to work with.” ⁸

Despite losing his faith, Harrington did not abandon religion as an aspect of his thinking. By the 1980s, he had appeared to develop misgivings over the perceived secularization of American society. In The Politics at God’s Funeral, he wrote that Karl Marx had been “naive with regard to the ease with which socialist values would replace religious values.” He also attempted to prove that Marx’s religious criticisms, which he downplayed as “careless,” did not mean he was fundamentally opposed to religious faith. Harrington came to oppose what he called the “cult of No God” which had developed in the Soviet Union and the communist sphere of influence, and he tried to demonstrate that this militant atheism was the “exact opposite” of what he saw as true Marxism. According to him, the ideal form of socialism would preserve the moral principles of traditional Christianity within a religiously neutral humanism. To achieve this, a “united front of believers and atheists would be necessary” to arrive at “a common transcendental which is neither supernatural nor anti-supernatural.” ⁹

Activism Career

After completing a master’s program in English literature at the University of Chicago in 1949, Michael Harrington moved to New York City and started working for Catholic Worker, where he edited the organization’s newspaper and participated in protests against the Korean War. However, he only remained with the group until 1952, when he left for the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL), a marginal remnant of the declining Socialist Party originally established by socialist organizer and politician Eugene Debs, an early activist in the Industrial Workers of the World. ¹⁰

YPSL soon split up, and Harrington initially followed the even further-left faction, but eventually returned to the group and worked as a national organizer throughout the late 1950s, traveling to college campuses across the United States to help start up local chapters. The Democratic Socialists of America credit him with influencing the inception of the “New Left” of the 1960s, which would become defined by the radical and sometimes militant activism of Students for a Democratic Society and its affiliated groups. ¹¹

In the late 1960s, Harrington became involved in the Civil Rights movement and sat on Martin Luther King Jr.’s advisory committee for several years. By the early 1970s, the YPSL had fallen apart, and Harrington co-founded a new Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which in 1982 merged with the New American Movement, another group which emerged from the New Left. This merger formed the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Harrington remained actively involved until his death in 1989, devoting particular effort to rallying the organization’s youth wing. ¹²

Writing Career

Michael Harrington wrote a total of 16 books on topics ranging from poverty and social class to the impact of technology on culture. Of these, the one widely considered his most influential is The Other America, which left-of-center observers have praised for apparently influencing the Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s campaign of wealth redistribution programs known as the “War on Poverty.” ¹³

The Other America

Harrington’s book The Other America: Poverty in the United States was published in 1962 and sold at least 70,000 copies within the first year; since then, it has sold more than 1 million copies in paperback alone. A review in Business Week, published just two years after the book was released, claimed that it was “already regarded as a classic work on poverty.” A later article in Time argued that it was one of the top ten most influential books of the 20th century. In The Other America, Harrington argued that poverty in the otherwise-affluent society of the United States was a much more serious problem than most Americans were aware. Harrington’s metric for poverty was the number of households with a yearly income that was less than $3,000 (in 1960s dollars). A 2012 review in Dissent magazine noted that Harrington’s view of poverty as enduring and pervasive became an argument for both advocates of wealth redistribution policies and opponents of perceived wasteful spending. ¹⁴

The Accidental Century

In 1965, Michael Harrington published an analysis of the major historical developments of the 19th and 20th century from his own socialist perspective. A review in Commentary magazine at the time noted that he was often at odds with the positions of mainstream “democratic socialism” in those years, even viewing some of them as “harmful.” ¹⁵

In The Accidental Century, Harrington argued that the intellectual classes of Western societies had misunderstood and mishandled the “sweeping and unprecedented technological transformation” which had taken place in the Western world in the preceding hundred years. He further made the case that this alleged lack of creativity in American and European political thought had led to most people being unaware that their lives could be much better. ¹⁶

Harrington predicted that revolutionary technological progress would continue, at least partially alleviating material poverty but dulling Western civilization’s creativity and vitality: in his words, a “degrading leisure would be society’s substitute for a degrading work.” According to Harrington, it would take “a tremendous burst of freedom of imagination” in politics, including revolutionary left-wing economic reforms, though he argued against efforts to seize power through force. ¹⁷

Socialism: Past and Future

Harrington completed and released Socialism: Past and Future shortly before his death. In it, he attempted to lay out what he saw as differences and contradictions between his ideal form of socialism and the authoritarian collectivist governments which had developed in the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence. He also offered recommendations for future socialist political activity in light of the apparent victory of globalized capitalism by the end of the 1980s. Harrington’s conclusion was that a “sudden leap” from traditional economic and political structures to socialism by means of revolution was impossible. Instead, Harrington argued for “visionary gradualism” which would entail a generation-long project of reforming the dominant ideology within societal institutions and in individual people’s minds. ¹⁸

Legacy

Michael Harrington helped found the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and remained actively involved with the organization until his death in 1989. ¹⁹ The DSA was a relatively minor political player until the 2010s. However, the presidential campaign of self-described “democratic socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and rising popularity of other far-left politicians such as House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) brought the group significant growth. Students for a Democratic Society, which Harrington worked with while also conflicting with over strategy, split into more and less extremist factions by the late 1960s, but was re-launched in 2006 and has since developed an influential presence on a handful of college campuses. ²⁰

Critical Assessments

Opinions of Michael Harrington’s ideas and accomplishments vary among socialist and left-wing observers. Doug Greene, the author of his 2022 biography released through the influential far-left publisher Zero Books, framed Harrington’s career as “a failure of vision.” Greene has called him “the most important American democratic socialist of the latter half of the 20th century,” and acknowledged that his “impact extended very much into the mainstream of U.S. politics.” However, Greene also highlighted Harrington’s many breaks from other “democratic socialist” activists of his time: these include his insistence that the anti-Vietnam War movement disavow communists and avoid political violence, as well as his alleged alignment with the American military establishment and with “capitalists” on supporting Israel and Zionism. In addition, Greene criticized Harrington’s insistence on working within the Democratic Party. Ultimately, Greene concluded that “Harrington’s work has been immensely damaging for socialism” and that he “got practically everything wrong,” though he did recommend reading his most popular work The Other America, as well as Socialism: Past and Future. Greene also noted that the Democratic Socialists of America, which Harrington helped found, had become influential within the American left by adopting his strategy of acting within the Democratic Party structure – “for better or for worse.” ²¹

In Michael Harrington’s own time, his further-left competitors frequently attacked him for trying to advance “democratic socialism” through mainstream Democratic Party channels. George Novack of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, claimed that Karl Marx would express “indignation” at Harrington endorsing Democratic politicians, since both Democrats and Republicans allegedly “represent capitalist ideology.” Peter Camejo, another prominent member of the Trotskyist party in the 1970s, stated that Harrington “should call himself what he is: a Democrat. And that means to defend capitalism.” ²²

Marxist publication Jacobin has offered a more positive assessment of Harrington’s legacy. Its 2019 retrospective of his life contrasted “Harrington’s boring old DSA,” which “hung on for three and a half decades … until it could reinvent itself,” with the more extreme Students for a Democratic Society, which split along ideological lines just a few years after its founding. Jacobin also credited Harrington’s strategy of pursuing “the left wing of the possible” with gradually pushing the Democratic Party towards policy proposals such as the Green New Deal and Medicare For All, even though this theory “excited nobody.” ²³

On the right, Michael Harrington has been described as an idealist who developed “serious misgivings” after some of his ideals came to pass. A 1985 assessment of his views in Chronicles magazine, which especially focused on his religious ideology, argued that Harrington had joined “a long line of thinkers who have prayed for the end of religious faith” but had later been forced to confront the negative consequences. Chronicles acknowledged that Harrington had come to realize the need for a “common transcendental” in society, but noted that his solution was an idealized Marxism, not religious beliefs and practices. Chronicles also argued that Harrington had failed to provide any examples of a society where this had succeeded. ²⁴

1. “Activist Michael Harrington Dies.” The Washington Post. August 2, 1998. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1989/08/02/activist-michael-harrington-dies/f7ea2164-ae8c-43bf-8651-ef7f0600221c/
2. Maurice Isserman. “Remembering Michael Harrington.” Democratic Socialists of America. February 23, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/michael_harrington_remembered_dl/
3. Gary Dorrien. “Michael Harrington: Socialist to the End.” The Christian Century. October 11, 2020. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.religion-online.org/article/michael-harrington-socialist-to-the-end/
4. Doug Greene. “Michael Harrington’s Failure of Vision.” Left Voice. July 25, 2021. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.leftvoice.org/michael-harringtons-failure-of-vision/
5. Maurice Isserman. “Michael Harrington, American Socialist.” Jacobin. July 31, 2019. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://jacobin.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-democratic-socialism
6. Gary Dorrien. “Michael Harrington: Socialist to the End.” The Christian Century. October 11, 2020. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.religion-online.org/article/michael-harrington-socialist-to-the-end/
7. Gary Dorrien. “Michael Harrington: Socialist to the End.” The Christian Century. October 11, 2020. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.religion-online.org/article/michael-harrington-socialist-to-the-end/
8. Maurice Isserman. “Remembering Michael Harrington.” Democratic Socialists of America. February 23, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/michael_harrington_remembered_dl/
9. Herbert London. “Socinian Socialism.” Chronicles. March 1, 1985. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://chroniclesmagazine.org/revisions/revisions-socinian-socialism/
10. Maurice Isserman. “Remembering Michael Harrington.” Democratic Socialists of America. February 23, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/michael_harrington_remembered_dl/
11. Maurice Isserman. “Remembering Michael Harrington.” Democratic Socialists of America. February 23, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/michael_harrington_remembered_dl/
12. Maurice Isserman. “Remembering Michael Harrington.” Democratic Socialists of America. February 23, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2023.

    https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/michael_harrington_remembered_dl/

13. “Activist Michael Harrington Dies.” The Washington Post. August 2, 1998. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1989/08/02/activist-michael-harrington-dies/f7ea2164-ae8c-43bf-8651-ef7f0600221c/
14. Maurice Isserman. “50 Years Later: Poverty and The Other America.” Dissent. December 1, 2012. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/50-years-later-poverty-and-the-other-america/
15. George Kateb. “The Accidental Century, by Michael Harrington.” Commentary. January 1, 1966. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.commentary.org/articles/george-kateb/the-accidental-century-by-michael-harrington/
16. George Kateb. “The Accidental Century, by Michael Harrington.” Commentary. January 1, 1966. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.commentary.org/articles/george-kateb/the-accidental-century-by-michael-harrington/
17. George Kateb. “The Accidental Century, by Michael Harrington.” Commentary. January 1, 1966. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.commentary.org/articles/george-kateb/the-accidental-century-by-michael-harrington/
18. Walter Kendall. “Review of Michael Harrington, Socialism: Past and Future.” New Interventions. September 1, 1996. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kendall/1996/michael-harrington.htm
19. ^[1]Maurice Isserman. “Remembering Michael Harrington.” Democratic Socialists of America. February 23, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/michael_harrington_remembered_dl/
20. Maurice Isserman. “Michael Harrington, American Socialist.” Jacobin. July 31, 2019. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://jacobin.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-democratic-socialism
21. Doug Greene. “Michael Harrington’s Failure of Vision.” Left Voice. July 25, 2021. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.leftvoice.org/michael-harringtons-failure-of-vision/
22. Doug Greene. “Michael Harrington’s Failure of Vision.” Left Voice. July 25, 2021. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://www.leftvoice.org/michael-harringtons-failure-of-vision/
23. Maurice Isserman. “Michael Harrington, American Socialist.” Jacobin. July 31, 2019. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://jacobin.com/2019/07/michael-harrington-dsa-democratic-socialism
24. Herbert London. “Socinian Socialism.” Chronicles. March 1, 1985. Accessed October 28, 2023. https://chroniclesmagazine.org/revisions/revisions-socinian-socialism/