A Man of Conviction

To be born a child of privilege in the world’s most successful capitalist economy and then live your life as a Socialist in the era of Marxism’s exhaustion requires special qualities. Author and activist Michael Harrington, who died Monday at the age of 61, had them, including the gift of speaking truth to power.

As a young social worker and Catholic radical, he advanced the cause of labor, the poor and nonviolence while an editor of the Catholic Worker. Later, as the author of an influential book, “The Other America,” he helped shame a smug nation into admitting that, for many among us, the American dream was a nightmare of need.

One critic rightly called that work, which inspired the War on Poverty, “a call to conscience.” It was, and so were the other dozen books, hundreds of articles and thousands of speeches he made over the subsequent quarter century.

There was a time when socialists persevered in the belief that they themselves would live to see the day when man was no longer wolf to man. As chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America, Harrington had no such faith. What he did believe was that a healthy economy was an engine of justice, as well as production, and that people matter more than profits.