RONALD RADOSH
69
out for perfidy , for becoming "out and out Reaganites ," and for mak–
ing their way "into the corridors of American power under a Right–
wing Republican administration." Here , Harrington is aiming at
Carl Gershman , who currently chairs the National Endowment for
Democracy, and whom Harrington describes as a "trusted Cold
Warrior. " The left-wing magazine
The Nation
has attacked the Na–
tional Endowment for Democracy for financing the Nicaraguan
La
Prensa,
and General Pinochet has attacked its financial support of the
Chilean democratic opposition. And a recent
New York Times
front–
page story revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy,
through the
A.
F .
L.
-C .
I.
o .
Free Trade Union Institute (run by
another Social Democrat , Eugenia Kemble), is most responsible for
giving
Solidarity
in Poland the financial werewithal to survive. Har–
rington ostensibly supports both of these social movements . What, I
wonder, does he have to say about his former colleagues whose cur–
rent work make opposition in Chile and Poland possible? Does he,
like those on his left, condemn this as interventionism? Is he too go–
ing to oppose
Solidarity
because it is the recipient of National Endow–
ment for Democracy funding?
While it is true that a small minority of the Social Democrats'
membership , such as Linda Chavez, moved towards Reaganism,
most of their members did not . Moreover, some of those he singles
out for praise are actually in the Social Democrats rather than the
Democratic Socialists of America, or are members of both organi–
zations . The American Federation of Teachers, which he cites as
a union under the Social Democrats' influence, had as its keynote
speaker in 1988 none other than Democratic Socialists of America
member William Julius Wilson, whose book Harrington says
documented and analyzed "the problem of the underclass better than
anything written before it." Yet Wilson, a member of the Demo–
cratic Socialists , also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of
the supposedly conservative Social Democrats .
Actually, the problem Harrington fails to address is that as the
Reagan era comes to an end, his
bete noire
of neoconservatism is
becoming increasingly irrelevant. Having started by proclaiming the
Soviet Union an unmitigated "evil empire," President Reagan is
ending his term by adopting his own version of detente, much to the
consternation of hard-liners who opposed his Intermediate Nuclear
Forces Treaty . Thus Lipset has argued that neoconservatism "bas–
ically has ceased to exist ."
Glasnost,
Lipset provocatively suggests ,
combined with new reductions in East-West tensions, will re-
