The American system doesn't seem to work anymore. The nation's statesmen proclaim that they seek only to abolish war, hunger and ignorance in the wor… - Michael Harrington

America needs a majority party of the democratic Left. This is not a proposal for a tightly disciplined party on the old European model (I see no reason to add to the amusement of the politcal scientists who have been setting up, and shredding, that straw man for a generation). It is simply a recognition of the fact that, to solve problems which the Government passively records, there must be radical departures and a political movement capable of initiating them. The real ideologues in this period are those utopian pragmatists who believe that the society can bumble its way through a revolution. They are fanatics of moderation.

To be sure, the other America is not impoverished in the same sense as those poor nations where millions cling to hunger as a defense against starvation. This country has escaped such extremes. That does not change the fact that tens of millions of Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body and spirit, existing at levels beneath those necessary for human decency. If these people are not starving, they are hungry, and sometimes far with hunger, for that is what cheap foods do. They are without adequate housing and education and medical care.

It is an intolerable irony that societies that are anything but socialist should thus define what socialism is in the eyes of so many. It is an irony that has to be undone.