Re: [Marxism] GP entrails [In defense of Harrington and American Menshevism]

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:15:12 -0500 Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> 

> 
> There should be a law against people like Michael Harrington (or 
> Norm 
> Geras, et al) quoting Marx.

Actually, I am rather fond of some of Harrington's books,
especially his book on religion which Mark Lindley and
I discussed in our essay, "Six ProminentAmerican Freethinkers."
(http://monthlyreview.org/mrzine/fl161208.html).

I am inclined to think that he should have stuck to book
writing, since as a political activist, he was, especially
during the 1960s,  a disaster. As the Tom Hayden
quotes that Lou has provided show, Harrington
pretty much singlehandedly poisoned relations
between SDS and the New Left generally
and the Old Left, despite the fact that 
people like Hayden, Haber, Oglesby etc.
had all started off as great admirers of
Harrington.  Harrington pushed his
anticommunism to great extremes and
attempted to block any sort of cooperation
between liberals and social democrats
like himself and those that he judged
to be "Stalinoids" or soft on Stalinism.
That sort of thinking considerable damage
to the antiwar movement during the late 1960s.
Years later, he did regret some of the
damage that he had done, but I don't
he rethought the assumptions that
had led him to do the damage in
the first place.

> 
> For people interested in a good critique of Michael Harrington, you 
> 
> can read Maurice Isserman's biography which is sympathetic in many 
> ways. However, you can get an idea of what troubled Isserman from 
> Tom 
> Hayden's review of the book:
> 
> The Shachtmanites were vectors of a toxic leftist tradition that 
> Michael himself once described (in reference to Bella Abzug!) as 
> "high-minded viciousness, an ugly inheritance from Karl Marx's 
> dyspeptic, angry attitude toward all opponents."
> 

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