36
NORM FRUCHTER
national scale. Result? They could force some compromise. Harring–
ton is right to argue that differing political perceptions determine the
solution. But what "the new radicals" hold against Harrington, against
Rauh, against Bayard Rustin, is that they took the wrong side in that
confrontation. Rather than arguing with the administr,ation for the
maximum possible offer to the MFDP, their primary role was to at–
tempt to argue the MFDP into accepting the pittance offered. What
they decided, those official radicals, was that the maximum unruffled
image of Johnson'S Great Coalition was worth more than the claims of
the MFDP; they did Johnson's work, not Fannie Lou Hamer's. Well,
now they have Johnson, and they're stuck with him. They made a
political choice, and
all
of those "new radicals" in the country who
value the example and potential of the MFDP more than they value
the potential of coalition politics will not depend on the understanding
and support of Rustin, Harrington and the coalition crew. And the
point is
not
that no coalitions or compromises will be necessary; they
come up every day. What
is
involved is the identity of both parties to
the compromise. When organizers and local people make the demands,
and established radicals and liberals join local and national administra–
tions in urging those organizers and local people to accept crumbs and
stop upsetting the balance of power, perhaps those organizers and
local people can be forgiven if they identify established liberals and
radicals as part of that institutional system they seek to change.
3. Part of the usual co.alition argument stresses the possibility of
achieving, through unified trade union, civil rights, church and liberal
pressure, an expanded public works program, vastly increased wel–
fare programs, increased expenditures in public education---:a bal–
looning welfare state. That argument has dropped off of late, probably
because the coalitionists have begun to understand the point that
"the new radicals" have been insisting on since they began their work
in the ghettoes-the mechanisms of the welfare state are as responsible
for damage as are the mechanisms of private finance and industry.
Harrington is, or was, involved with the Poverty Program on the
national level; does he know that the programs are a political grab–
bag in most cities, a contemptible joke on the poor? He actually has
the temerity to conclude that because only 2.7 percent of eligible
"poor" voted for a community action council in Philadelphia,
a
con–
scious, political
class cleavage between the poor and the rest of so–
ciety" is probably not growing. Can he conceive the opposite con-
