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MONEY AND POLITICS
Race = Class (Caste) Part 2
Michael Harrington’s 1968 description of America is America
Michael Harrington, the last of the great Democratic-Socialists before Bernie Sanders emerged, dismissed America’s political economy in 1968. His book, Towards A Democratic Left broke it down. Many of the things that Bernie Sanders said when he ran in 2016 and that the Rev. Jesse Jackson said between 1984–1988 when he ran for President were part of Harrington’s blueprint for change. That is why the book is called Towards A Democratic Left. Harrington knew something much more forceful was needed to change America. And remember, he wrote this in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement.
Of Harrington’s gem of a book, John L. Ewell wrote in 2017 that “opening this book in 2017, nearly 50 years after it was published, is like opening a current political newspaper or magazine.” Ewell adds that “the issues seem remarkably similar despite the passing of decades. It is as if this book were written as a response to the 2016 Presidential Campaign.”
