The Vindication of Michael Harrington

Quinn Albright
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

January 19th, 2029

President Bernie Sanders was only 24 hours away from leaving office with a historic set of achievements: unemployment was at a historic low, wages were rising at a rate far outpacing inflation, and as a result the aging president was leaving office with approval ratings higher than any president since Ronald Reagan.

Sanders’ policies were far reaching, from massively increasing the minimum wage, strengthening unions, and implementing single-payer, to granting statehood to Puerto Rico and Legalizing Marijuana. The president certainly wasn’t without his controversies; The irony however, was that most Americans simply didn’t care. The quality of their life was getting better. The punditry class raged, but most Americans saw through their rhetoric; Their paychecks were getting bigger, they had more say in their workplace, and unemployment had been practically eliminated.

President Sanders’ soon-to-be-inaugurated successor certainly promised to carry the mantle, running on a platform and rhetoric even more explicitly anti-capitalist. And this time, they were to govern with a mandate that Sanders never had. America had been transformed from the city-on-the-hill of every capitalist in the world into a thriving social democracy. America was in the embryonic stages of socialism.

Twelve years ago, he was largely brushed off as a joke. Even eight years ago, media pundits largely dismissed him based on his age. Times are different now, and one man more than anyone besides the president himself was vindicated.

A man named Michael Harrington.

Michael Harrington died July 31st, 1989. It’s impossible to imagine the pessimism he must have died in. One of the titans of the American left, a co-founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, Harrington died with neoliberalisms’ wretched teeth sunken into nearly every facet of American society. George H.W. Bush was president, the successor of the most fiercely right-wing president in the past century; Taxes had been slashed, unions had been slash-and-burned, and the Democratic party responded by cowering in fear and triangulating rightward. It truly is a shame that Harrington died in such a desperate time for the socialist movement, a time when it looked like capitalism had won.

Harrington’s vision was not complicated. Co-opt the Democratic party and transform it into a European-style social democratic party, with the DSA the anti-capitalist, left flank of the party. Though the idea found little success in Harrington’s own time, it found a voice in Bernie Sander’s 2016 run for president, which would go on to transform the Democratic party in less than five years.

Ideas like single-payer found their time had come, going from extreme minority positions to general public consensus in a matter of years. Election results showed, the first big electoral upset being that of DSA-backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez against Joseph Crowley, the second inline to become the Democrat’s leader in the house. Alongside these upsets, socialists increasingly made their voices heard. The Democratic Socialists of America had 6,500 at the time of the 2016 Democratic National Convention; 2 years later, they were nearing a membership of 50,000 members. Almost 8 times bigger, and with several congressional and state-level upsets under their belt, the DSA is today a major force in US politics.

I cannot for sure know where the United States is headed. However, if we’re on the path I think we are, Michael Harrington may go down in US history as a breathtaking and ahead of his time visionary.

In Solidarity,

Quinn Albright

Written by

Sewer Socialist & Left Internationalist. Northwest Ohio DSA co-founder, Friends of Nancy Larson Social Media Coordinator. 🌹🍉🔥

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade