Socialism

New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. [10], 436, [2] pages. Notes. Index. Some wear and soiling to DJ. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington Jr. (February 24, 1928 - July 31, 1989) was an American democratic socialist, writer, author of The Other America, political activist, political theorist, professor of political science, radio commentator and founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America. In 1973, he coined the term neoconservatism. Harrington served as the first editor of New America, the official weekly newspaper of the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, founded in October 1960. He wrote The Other America: Poverty in the United States. For "The Other America," Harrington was awarded one of the George Polk Awards and The Sidney Award. He went on to become a widely read intellectual and political writer, in 1972 publishing a second bestseller, "Socialism. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. referred to Harrington as the "only responsible radical" in America. Ted Kennedy said, "I see Michael Harrington as delivering the Sermon on the Mount to America," and "among veterans in the War on Poverty, no one has been a more loyal ally when the night was darkest." Harrington stated that socialists would need to go through the Democratic Party to enact their policies reasoning that the socialist vote had declined from a peak of approximately one million in the years around World War I to a few thousand by the 1950s. In 1982, the Democratic Socialists of America was formed. Harrington was the chairman of DSA from its inception to his death. Harrington surveys socialism from its beginnings, starting with the many visions of Utopia that man pursued up to the nineteenth century and the advent of Karl Marx. He succeeds in demystifying Marx and Engels, whose words are now used to justify theories and practices they would despise, and his very personal and original exposition of the 'unknown'--and democratic--Karl Marx was controversial. The various manifestations of a world-wide trend toward collectivism, often confused with socialism, are explored. Some of the movements, Harrington argues, have used socialist rhetoric to rationalize new forms of exploitation. He advocated the socialist transformation of capitalism, Communism, and the Third World was not only desirable but an urgent necessity. The socialist vision of a truly new society in which necessities of life are free, work is a creative choice, and a democratically shared abundance makes the brotherhood of man possible for the first time inhuman history is described in rich detail.