America's 'Godfather of Socialism' Chose to Work Inside the Democratic Party, Not Build a Rival
Harrington bet that working inside the Democratic Party to reshape it would beat building a socialist party outside it — even if that meant campaigning for a pro-Vietnam War candidate in 1968.
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DSA grew from 6,000 to 120,000 members in six years
When Sanders declared himself a 'democratic socialist' at Georgetown in 2015, DSA had just 6,000 members with an average age over 60 — practically a retirees' club. What actually detonated its growth wasn't Sanders himself (he never joined DSA) but Trump's election: a wave of people engaging in politics for the first time felt mainstream Democrats weren't confrontational enough, and DSA became their outlet. Membership climbed to 120,000, making it the largest socialist organization in American left-wing history.
A papal encyclical shaped him before Marx did
Harrington grew up in a devout Catholic family, and what first shaped his politics wasn't Marx but a papal encyclical from the 1890s calling for attention to the working class and a softening of capitalism's harms. After leaving the Church, he threw himself into New York's left-wing circles, studying under Max Shachtman, who had grown disillusioned with the Soviet Union. Together they set the tone for 'democratic socialism': anti-authoritarian, anti-communist, and self-identified with the Western bloc. His famous line — 'you can't be a socialist and not love America' — also invited a rebuttal from critics: doesn't that amount to whitewashing America's history of imperialism?
The poverty survey was written for the middle class, not the poor
The Other America used census data to argue that America was far poorer than people assumed: Black workers earned only 58% of what white workers did, and once you added in Native Americans, Latinos, farmworkers, and the elderly, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the entire population fell below the poverty line. But Harrington wrote the book for the middle class, not the poor — he didn't buy the traditional Marxist path of the working class organizing itself to seize change. He believed real change would come from persuaded, politically well-placed elites.
A self-declared socialist sat in on White House policy meetings
After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson, who succeeded him, wanted to finish what Roosevelt had left undone. His team brought in Harrington — an openly declared socialist — for legislative consultations on anti-poverty budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, which eventually produced the 1964 War on Poverty. The experience convinced Harrington that running candidates as a standalone socialist party was 'a dead end that had already been tried for a century,' and that the real path was 'realignment' — pulling Black voters into the Democratic Party while pushing segregationist Southern Democrats out.
He stayed quiet on Vietnam to keep his White House access
Martin Luther King Jr. privately called himself a democratic socialist too, and he and Harrington grew close — King once joked that he only realized he was poor after reading Harrington's book. But when King began publicly denouncing the Vietnam War in 1967, calling the U.S. the world's largest purveyor of violence, Harrington — who also opposed the war — chose not to speak out loudly, worried that doing so would cost him his influence within the Johnson administration. He later admitted that he'd muted his real position to preserve his access to the White House, and it weighed on his conscience for the rest of his life.
In 1968 he campaigned for a pro-war candidate
After King and Kennedy were both assassinated, antiwar students rallied behind McCarthy, but Harrington backed Johnson's vice president, Humphrey — a pro-war candidate — on the grounds that he had the best shot at blocking Nixon, the lesser of two evils. Maurice Isserman, then a 17-year-old student activist, found this unacceptable and, like many young people, branded Harrington a 'sellout.' SDS soon turned openly Marxist-Leninist, splitting from Harrington for good.
Founding DSA required settling an Israel-Palestine split first
In 1982, Harrington merged his organization with another group made up of New Left veterans to form DSA — a merger rare in the history of the left. Before it could happen, the two sides had to settle a disagreement: Harrington was a committed Zionist who could recite Israel's national anthem, had supported Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars, and held the Palestinians more responsible for the conflict, while members of the other group were more sympathetic to the Palestinians. In the end, both sides set the disagreement aside in order to focus on defeating Reagan first.
On Israel-Palestine, DSA has now moved past him
Harrington himself held the Palestinians more responsible for the conflict and favored a two-state solution; when DSA was founded in 1982, the members more sympathetic to the Palestinians set that disagreement aside to focus on defeating Reagan first. His biographer says DSA's official stance today no longer even admits 'liberal Zionists' as members — far more radical than Harrington himself. It's hard to imagine he'd endorse that line, but if he'd lived another forty years, he'd probably have kept changing his mind too.
In their own words · checked verbatim
So let me take this opportunity to define for you what democratic socialism means to me. It means building on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans.
Bernie Sanders1:02
If I had designed American society, I think I would have designed it much more left-wing than it is. But I have to deal with the society as it is.
Michael Harrington4:17
you can't be a socialist without loving America.
Michael Harrington15:48
Tonight, the war on poverty. Hope or hopeless?
You know, Mike, we didn't know we were poor until we read your book.
Martin Luther King Jr.31:27
I was 17 in 1968. I was outraged. I didn't see voting for someone like Hubert Humphrey as at all acceptable.
Morris Isserman38:47
How much should you compromise to build political power? And at what point does the compromise become the politics?
Figures
| DSA membership in 2015 | 6,000 | 1:02 |
| DSA's average member age at the time | over 60 | 2:06 |
| Black wages as a share of white wages | 58% | 22:03 |
| Share of the population The Other America found poor | one quarter to one third | 23:06 |
| Length of the New Yorker review | 13,000 words | 25:14 |
| DSA's peak 1980s membership | 8,000 | 46:03 |
| Harrington's age at death | 61 (1989) | 48:07 |
Glossary
- DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)
- America's largest socialist political organization, founded by Harrington in 1982
- Rerum Novarum
- A papal encyclical issued in the 1890s calling for attention to the working class and a softening of capitalism's harms
- War on Poverty
- A package of anti-poverty policies launched by the Johnson administration in 1964
- realignment
- Harrington's strategy of reshaping the Democratic Party's voter base from within rather than founding a new party
- the left wing of the possible
- Harrington's slogan for pushing the furthest-left position achievable within the existing political framework
How to listen
Anyone tracking the American left's political spectrum, the Democratic Party's internal factional fights, or wanting to understand where DSA, AOC, and the Mamdani phenomenon come from.
39:48-44:02 packs in a lot of organization names from a left-wing split — if you can't keep the factions straight, just take the conclusion and skip the details.