|
Michael Harrington is probably best remembered
as the author of The Other America: Poverty in the United
States. Published in 1962, it documented how, after two decades
of unprecedented prosperity, there were still a substantial number
of Americans who were poor and that it was not simply a matter
of race or rural isolation, but something that was endemic all
across our country. The book was not the first to document this
state of affairs. But it was eloquent, thorough, and well timed
to catch a growing wave of liberalism in the early 1960s. It
was, in fact, given credit for inspiring the Johnson Administration's
"War on Poverty".
The timing of the book was also fortunate
in that Harrington was just finding his voice as a public speaker,
allowing him to take advantage of the "buzz" to become
a player in mainstream politics. This also enabled him to become
the last public spokesman of any consequence (to date) for democratic
socialism in the United States.
This particular speech by Michael Harrington
was given in early 1971 at the Reynolds Club at the University
of Chicago. The meeting was sponsored by the University of Chicago
chapter of the Young Peoples Socialist League. In many ways,
the speech is classic Harrington: a mix of the pragmatic and
the utopian, with an awareness of the complexities that ideology
often obscures.
|