MICHAEL HARRINGTON
81
Jewel Movement carefully)? Yes . But it doesn't lead to a one–
sentence dismissal of the socialist program for the third world and a
fanatic, distorting obsession with communism as the only, and ut–
terly decisive, issue .
Secondly, just as I-and all of the European social democ–
racy-sold out democratic principles to curry favor with the Marx–
ist-Leninists , so I developed the theory of neoconservatism in order
to unfairly read my right-wing social democratic opponents out of
the liberal movement by labeling them as neoconservatives. My
reaction to a massive shift in American intellectual and political life
is thus reduced to a nasty little factional manuever which then - and
I do not know if I am supposed to be delighted or ashamed at the
power imputed to me, though I am certain that I am surprised-had
a major impact upon the nation's politics. Would that my con–
spiracies were indeed so marvelously effective! I would try them
more often .
Unfortunately, Radosh can cite Seymour Martin Lipset's fan–
ciful "Neoconservatism: Myth and Reality" in
theJuly/August, 1988
issue of
Society
in behalf of his own fantasy . This is unfortunate since
Lipset is a serious , and usually fair, analyst-but not this time.
According to Lipset, I coined the term
neoconservative "in order to
discredit the right wing of the dissolved party, Social Democrats,
USA, and their intellectual fellow travelers . . . . What Harrington
was endeavoring to do was to tell the left-of-center world, particu–
larly the militant New Left students who regarded self-described
left social democrats like himself and Irving Howe as nonradicals,
there was a difference between them and right-wing hawkish social
democrats ." [my emphasis] My "labeling," Lipset continues, was
remarkably effective: it convinced the traditional rightists to wel–
come the neos; worse, it confused people about the "Jackson" Demo–
crats by making them think that the latter were "hard-line right–
wingers on domestic as well as foreign issues, whereas in fact almost
all
of them remained supportive of welfare planning state and New
Deal
policies."
This is nonsense , even if the nonsense of an otherwise decent
and intelligent man.
I first learned that I had "coined" the term
neoconservative
in an
article by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the fall 1985 anniversary
issue of
The Public Interest.
Of some significance, Moynihan did not
take umbrage at the term and rather gaily referred to me and my
