174 SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

relationship to the American Left. In our view it now becomes a part of the Establishment, an ideological front group for Corporate Liberalism.” (McReynolds, ei. a/., 1969).

It should be noted that I have consciously refrained from providing a liberal’s critique of Harrington’s book. This could be done from one of at least two perspectives: the academic economist’s, who, retaining the competitive model, would argue that basically the system functions efficiently, the errors being “external diseconomies,” e.g., pollution. (See Dorfman for a good introductory discussion.) The second might be represented by Galbraith’s book (1969); he defends the oligopolistic system as both necessary and efficient and attacks academic economists for not discussing reality. Neither view satisfies me, but both should be consulted.

REFERENCES

Baran, P. and Sweezy, P. 1966 Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly

Review Press. Berube. M. and Gittell, M. (eds.) 1969 Confrontation at Ocean Hill-Brownsville.

New York: Praeger. Charmical, S. and Hamilton, C. 1967 Black Power. New York: Vintage Books. Dorfman, R. 1964 The Price System. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-

Hall. Galbraith, J. 1967 The New Industrial State. New York: Signet

Books. Gould. M. 1967 A Theory of Deviant Behavior: The Use of

Psychedelic Drugs by College Students. Un- published 9. A. Thesis, Reed College, Port- land, Oregon.

Harrington. M. 1968 Toward a Democratic Left. New York:

1969 “Afterword.” Toward a Democratic Left.

Hartz, J. 1955 T h e Liberal Tradition in America.

Harcourt, Brace and World.

MacMillan.

Baltimore: Pelican.

New York:

Keynes, J. M. 1965 The General Theory of Employment, Interest,

and Money. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Lenin, N. 1967 “What is to be done?” Selected Works, v. 1.

New York: International Publishers. Luxembourg, R. 1961 The Russian Revolution. Ann Arbor: The

University of Michigan Press. Magdorf, H. 1969 The Age of Imperialism. New York: Monthly

Review Press.

Man, K. and Engels, F. 1964 The German Ideology. Moscow: Progress

Marris, R. 1964 The Economic Theory of “Managerial”

Capitalism. New York: The Free Press. McReynolds, D. ei nl. 1969 “Letter.” The New York Review of Books

(12) (May 22): 44.

Publishers.

Parsons, T. 1969 “On the concept of political power,” in Socio-

logical T h e o j and‘ Modern Society. New York: The Free Press.

Forthcoming “Social Stratification Revisited” Socio- logical Inquiry.

Shonfield, A. 1965 Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of

Public and Private Power. New York: Oxford University Press.

REPLY TO GOULD

MICHAEL HARRINGTON

“. . . since the accursed counterrevolution has driven us into this accursed pigsty, let us work even there for the benefit of the revolution, with- out whining, but also without boasting.” (Lenin, 1953:269)

I d o not begin my response to Mr. Gould with this quotation because I am a Leninist. I do so because I assume that both Mr. Gould and I would agree that Lenin was a revolu- tionary, a principled opponent of the “system”; and also because in this particular instance he was talking shrewd radical politics. The time was 1907 and the issue was whether the Bolsheviks should boycott the Duma. In 1905 and 1906 Lenin had been against participating in the campaign for representation in what he regarded as a fraudulent institution designed to protect the status quo. But in 1907, when rhe Duma had in his view become much more rightist, he was in favor of working within it.

Why did Lenin thus change his mind and seemingly contradict himself? Because he believed that in 1905 and 1906 revolution was on the agenda and participation in the Duma would only engender “constitutional illusions,” but in 1907 thought it necessary to take the defeats of the mass movement into account. Therefore he could not refuse to enter “even the most reac- tionary institutions.”

I summarize this relatively ancient history because it illuminates the problem of activists and theorists in dealing with the America of the late sixties and the seventies. For Mt. Gould my basic contradiction derives from the fact that I “work within the present economic and polit- ical system.” In contrast to my unworkable compromises, he seeks to transfer the “cognitive

REVIEW SYMPOSIA 175

Here and now, and for the foreseeable future, it is unrealistic (to put it mildly) to think that masses of Americans are going to make a sudden leap to revolutionary consciousness. Under a Nixon Administration and in a society with strong trends toward the law-and-order right, white, middle class-radicals will provoke repres- sion, and not achieve liberation, by relying on extra-parliamentary confrontations appropriate to other periods and conditions. In the wake of the 1968 defeat, and with George Wallace in the wings, it is imperative to organize a majority coalition for that is aU that is remotely possible, as one who lives in the United States of 1969, rather than Petersburg in 1917 or the Cuban mountains of 1958, should know.

But, I suspect Mr. Gould would reply, Har- rington’s tactics contradict his sociological anal- ysis. Toward a Democratic Left demonstrates that business operates within the welfare state to maximize profit rather than social good and then advocates that a new coalition use that very same state, with its businessmen, to promote social good. If the theoretical model is valid, then the strategic conclusions are a program for defeat. And if my perspective will actually work, then my theorizing must be faulty.

Let me respond on two levels. First of all, I think Mr. Gould does some injustice to what I propose. I am not deluded about indicative planning (The Accidental Century contains a critique of its French variant) and my main argument is not that the government should persuade businessmen to do this or that, but rather that there must be planned social invest- ments and a qualitative expansion of the non- profit sector. I also indicated that, in order to offset the “natural” tendency of the system to reward the affluent when the government induces prosperity-the “law of increasing returns to the rich,” Harold Wilson once called it-there must be programs specifically designed to counter this trend. I did not suggest that Keynes was a radical, but that he could be either a reactionary (tax cuts to the wealthy as an economic stimulus) or a liberal (social investments). Under present political conditions, I view this liberal interpreta- tion of Keynes as the next step, nothing more- and nothing less.

Having said this, let me assure Mr. Gould that I agree with him in the long run. That is, if the movement which I suggest on power and, over a considerable period, only used it for increments of change but not for transforming structural inequities-like the outrageous mal-

tion which the system leaves open to them. But so long as non-violent and democratic change is pas- sible one must not violate the civil liberties of others, even in the best causes and those who do usually turn out to have bad causes with shining names.

map” of various groups in society and ‘‘to generate for them a ‘radical consciousness’, a frame of reference which defines their interests not in terms of their positions (class and others) in this social system, but in terms of their posi- tion in a transformed social system.” Emo- tionally the mood of Mr. Gould’s review is to counterpose his faith in direct, militant and extra-parliamentary action to my advocacy of a new majority coalition. Analytically, he does note that he, too, is for participating in the sys- tem for his alternative would not “simply depend upon electoral politics,” i.e., it would partly depend upon them and their American institu- tional structure.

The fundamental problem with such an anal- ysis is that it lacks any sense of politics, of the shifting limits of what is possible at a given moment and the necessity of basing tactics upon present conditions as well as upon long range considerations and ultimate goals. Making the dialectical connections between the political moment and the objective needs of an epoch is not, alas, ever going to be “grounded in a scientific social theory,” as Mr. Gould hopes. It requires imagination and intuition as well as survey data (which is why Norman Mailor’s insights are often so much more valuable than those of thoughtful “professional”)-and the audacity to accept contradictions, as in Lenin’s case.

The paradox here is that I even agree with many of Mr. Gould’s ultimate aspirations (though not their formulation) and wrote an entire book, The Accidental Century. saying just that. Of course one should want to basically transform this entire society: its economic structure, its motivations and all the rest. But having come to that conclusion, then one must think of how to move, here and now, most rapidly toward that goal.

At certain points, direct action of the most militant kind is on the agenda. That is why I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., and was arrested twice. At certain points, political action within the mainstream is the best way to bring about possible change. That is why I campaign- ed for Robert Kennedy and, after he was murdered, for Eugene McCarthy. At certain points, direct action of the most militant kind is counter-productive. Confrontation for con- frontation’s sake in 1968 did indeed effect millions of Americans, particularly white workers, by driving them to the right; and in 1969, such tactics were used to disrupt a mass peace demonstration in New York.’

‘As a civil libertarian there are certain militant tactics which I would rule out so long as there are imperfect, but real political freedoms. An anti- fascist underground may well have 10 resort to violence since that is the only form of communica-

176 SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

and pictures me as seeking to curry favor with the union president and being fearful of the rank and file. That is nonsense heard through the keyhole, and I would only refer the reader to my reply to MacDonald in The New York Review of Books. In the same mood-for you see this is to prove the human corruption which results from my bad sociology-I am charged with having Hubert Humphrey, along with Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, as a “favorite.” There is no acknowledgement that my choice was Kennedy; that after his death I campaigned for McCarthy as the best way to get a maximum mobilization against the war (Mr. Gould would find that difficult to square with his thesis that I feel that we should not “mention the war” in our campaign); and in October (at Harvard among other places), I advocated a vote for Humphrey as a lesser evil to Nixon and as a much more meaningful alter- native than running around in the streets on election day and advocating militant tactics which 99 % of the people rejected.

But all these choices were complex, dBcult and even painful, and these aspects of men groping with limited possibilities do not figure in Mr. Gould’s grand theory. Moreover, con- templating the ABM program, the Supreme Court, the retreat on civil rights and the quarter loaf that is the New Federalism, I have not regretted my decision. But the best is saved until last. For, in validating his expectations of my imminent co-option, Mr. Gould concludes his entire analysis with the horror story of my acquiscence in the League for Industrial Democracy Annual Award to Hubert Humphrey in 1969.

If Mr. Gould took such a great interest in- and attributes such predictive and theoretical significance to-this instance, he might have looked into it. He would have found out that at the Friday night session of the Annual Con- ference prior to the award, I publicly dissociated myself from it at an open meeting. I read a prepared statement saying that, although I did not regret my lesser evil vote for Mr. Humphrey and feel some personal sympathy for him, I could not, because of his support of the horror in Vietnam, concur in an award to him. This action was reported in the Village Voice and was widely known in those same circles which Mr. Gould consulted for his damning evidence. I did not attend the Award luncheon for this principled, political reason.

If the mis-statements of my personal actions in the past do not bode well for Mr. Gould’s ability to predict them in the future, they are of a piece with his ignoring of human and political detail, which will not matter to the twenty-first century but do count now.

For to return to my main theme, the real

distribution of American income and consequent- ly of American social and political power- those ‘‘natural“ and anti-social tendencies of the system will triumph. So my point of view is contradictory, dangerous and the only possible one I can see under present political circum- stances. In America today, revolution is not on the agenda and to act as if it were is to invite counter-revolution-and in the long run, as Keynes dictum has it, we are all dead.

Secondly, and on a more methodological level, Mr. Gould taxes me for thinking that “only economic ‘necessities’ have great weight in mitigating against progressive change.” He overlooks an entire chapter in which the same economic and social facts are used to underpin two antagonistic scenarios: the war of the ex- poor against the poor; the alliance of the ex- poor with the poor. And it is precisely political, psychological and other factors which allow for such variant paths taking off from the same point of departure. But I would turn around and suggest to Mr. Gould that he is guilty of the error he ascribes wrongly to me. I am told that I “ignore the functional relationship which must exist between the economy and the polity,” e.g., that business power is also political power (italics added in the quotation).

In fact, I did not ignore this relationship-the analysis of Smith-Keynesianism devotes an entire chapter to showing how business, with good intentions and genuinely happy conscience, turns social projects to its own purposes-but I do have a more complicated notion of it than Mr. Gould. Here again I believe that he is indulging himself in essentially timeless either-ors and overlooks the contradictory, depressing and hopeful reality before us.

Similarly, Gould’s overly deterministic link- ing of America’s often reactionary and imperial foreign activities to structural necessities over- looks the limited, but real, possibilities for international decency. For documentation, I can only refer the reader to the three chapters of the book which deal with this country’s “almost- imperialism.” But politically, I would add that ultra “Marxist” theories of imperialism-fating us to global evildoing until there is a revolution -are radical appeals for quiescence. For then McCarthy and Kennedy never should have chal- lenged Johnson but waited for a vague, dimly defined apocalypse instead. Fortunately they were unsystematic and so is part of the American system.

Before concluding, let me raise something of a point of personal privilege. For Mr. Gould claims to be able to predict my future but he cannot even get my past straight.

He urn Dwight MacDonald’s erroneous betrayal of a private conversation as proof of my attitude on the New York Teacher’s strike

P.EVIEW SYMPOSIA 177

disagreement between Mr. Gould and myself is not over high principle. I am for as much radical and democratic change as he; but I am also concerned with the next step. I do not believe revolution is on the map or that a further escalation of extra-parliamentary mili- tance will aid anyone but Richard Nixon and George Wallace. Therefore my tactics are much less dramatic than Mr. Gould’s under the present circumstance, and much more revolu- tionary in that they actually threaten the status quo. If a new majority party can be created through the present struggle within the liberal wing of the Democrats-uniting the poor, the “new class’’ of the knowledge economy, the blacks, and the white workers-that would not

transform American basically, it would involve many of the dangers Mr. Gould fears, but it would be a giant step forward.

Toward a Democratic Left sadly assumed the limits of political possibility in America now and in the near future, or rather, tried to analyze them. Mr. Gould ignores them. On this point, he should read Lenin on the Duma and then come back to my book more carefully.

REFERENCE

Lenin, V. I. 1953 “Against Boycott” In Marx, Engeh Marxism.

Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House.