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STEPHEN ROUSSEAS
kind about Harrington's interpretation of President Kennedy's brand
of liberalism.
Harrington sees a new Left arising in the guise of the civil rights
movement. But he regards it as a movement which has abandoned the
"proletariat" and, in consequence, condemned itself to sterility by
disowning this "historic agent of social change." His criticism of the
new radicalism centers on its futile search for a "new" proletariat
in
the Negroes, the poor, and the campus radicals. Contrary to Hentoff,
Harrington rejects them all as politically nonviable because of the
relative smallness of their numbers. The poor make up only twenty
percent of the population, the Negroes (who are also a large part of
the poor) ten percent, and the campus radicals a trivial amount.
Except for the campus radicals and the activists in the civil rights
movement, who are themselves a part of the middle class, the poor,
because of their poverty, have little taste for politics and despite the
frantic efforts of the new radicals have increased their resistance to
political organization. Therefore, Harrington rejects Hentoff's thesis
that the new radicals will be able to tap the power potential of
the poor.
This is, perhaps, an oversimplification by Harrington, but I do
tend to agree with him on this issue. In effect he has pulled the
rug from under Hentoff's left foot. "There is no new proletariat,"
says Harrington, "... in the political sense of a decisive group whose
living conditions force it to rebel." The reason for this is fairly simple.
As
long as American society, despite
The Other America,
continues
to be relatively prosperous, there will be no effective "new" radicalism
to lead the way. The affluent Establishment will make
concessions
to
the impoverished and deprived minority from time to time, and the
more it does so, the less will the new radicals have to play with-the
less will they be able to base their political power on Hentoff's now
shrinking
"ranks of the speechless." At any rate, there will be turmoil
enough, but not the kind envisaged by the new radicals, and certainly
not enough upon which to base a new radicalism for the structural
reform of American society. And Hentoff's use of cybernation for a
"new" theory of the polarization of classes is hardly convincing.
Having reached
this
point, Harrington has written himself into a
box. Apparently, there is no hope for a radical resurgence. But the
socialist
in
Harrington won't give up hope. What is needed
is
a
