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MICHAEL HARRINGTON
poly of nuclear weapons, and the positive concern (not at all unlike
that of the nineteenth-century agriculturalists) to sustain and improve
America by integrating it even further into the world marketplace. I
have also pointed out that some Americans were moralistic crusaders,
and that a number of them feared the radical challenge to capitalism.
So back to the "innocence" of Russia. The historical question
comes down to this: did American leaders, fully aware of their great
relative and absolute strength, make a rational, appropriate response to
the Russian incursion into Eastern Europe, one that had some chance of
decreasing rather than intensifying its impact; or did they grossly
mis–
understand and distort the Russian action, turning it into a massive
and direct threat to the security of the United States because of the way
they had come to define the requirements, interests and objectives of
the American political economy? I think the evidence overwhelmingly
supports the latter explanation.
And I think that my history has far, far less to do with any pes–
simism among the young than the persistence of that attitude and
approach to world affairs among the nation's leadership, and (at least
until very recently) a sizable plurality of its citizens. I want again to
suggest that the left's share of the fault lies elsewhere, in the assump–
tion that we can have radical reform or a social revolution without the
hard, dedicated and effective work involved in building a social move–
ment.
Measured against that assumption, I suppose my book could be
called pessimistic. I point to no buttons to press, and I do not indicate
that the grass will become greener if only we recline upon it. I simply
argue that my book is realistic if we really want what we say we want.
We have to know more about how our neighbors think and feel, and
we have to offer them more than we have, if we are to become their
brothers and sisters. Or even if we are simply to become in their minds
and hearts those nuts next door with whom they will go along.
Michael Harrington
I have contrasting criticisms of William Appleman Williams
on the two points in his comment to which I want to reply: in the case
of his analysis of the problem of the majority within ascendant capital–
ism he is not at all Marxist enough; with regard to imperialism he is,
if unwittingly, too orthodox a Leninist.
Williams argues that if the history of imperialism was "predeter–
mined simply because the metropolitan elite controlled what were to
become the predominant means of production, then we are left- at
