202
MICHAEL HARRINGTON
formations. But the necessary political
will
is lacking in this country
and one cannot wish or exhort or romanticize it into existence. The
truth, as Renan once remarked, is in this case sad. And the true
revolutionist is not he who talks most boldly but he who, with the
limited options now before us, is patiently, radically trying to go
forward to the next step.
The key to social change, it seems to me, is in an alliance of
the civil rights movement with labor, and I cannot see how anyone
can go beyond such a limited, problematic and undramatic perspective.
Such a development, difficult as it is to achieve, would be the only real
hope for making advances and for providing the poor, the youth and
the liberal and radical middle classes with a rallying point, and with
a political relevance.
The American unions are not, to put it mildly, in a revolutionary
mood, and sometimes even their reformism becomes routine and
cautious. A section of the labor movement, fearing that the Negroes
are seeking white jobs, is in the grip of a reactionary backlash. This
situation is not helped when the AFL-CIO Executive, whose meetings
sometimes are like an old-timers' reunion, refuses to endorse a March
on Washington which is blessed by Cardinal Spellman. One could
go
on with such criticisms. And at the end of a long, dispiriting indict–
ment, a hard fact would still remain: the unions are the largest, most
politically significant force for economic and social change in the
United States. In the political spectrum of this society, labor is
as
far Left as the masses go, an observation which can be verified by
checking the electoral, .organizational and financial base of the liberal
bloc in Congress.
Now, it can be said that this is a terrible commentary on the
society, that what it reveals is that history is tragic. However, those
concerned with actually moving this nation out of some of its anti–
human impasses cannot take such a long view.
Secondly, the degree to which the worker
is
content has been
exaggerated, curiously enough, by some on the Left. Working con–
ditions are still brutal enough to provoke outrage, as the auto workers
demonstrated last year. And
if
the fear of automation has thus far
been allayed by the conservative strategy of guaranteeing work for
the present generation and licensing the corporations to be irresponsible
about the future, there is still a growing consciousness that the com-
