The Last Socialist. - Review - book review

National Review, May 1, 2000 by Ronald Radosh

For the rest of his life, Harrington's fight would be with those who started out in the socialist ranks and moved towards conservatism. He defended liberal social programs when many were beginning to question their under pin nings. As the Reagan era dawned, he was unprepared and forlorn as the nation moved in a direction he never thought possible. He marched for a "nuclear freeze," praised the spread of socialism in Europe and Latin America, gave crucial support to the Sandinistas and to Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential bid. Yet as Isserman writes, it "was hard to avoid the implication that both he and the movement he represented may well have outlived their time."

With Harrington's passing, the socialist tradition in America came to an end. There is much to admire in his life-his personal courage, his commitment to social justice, and his lifelong devotion to creating a democratic-socialist movement in the nation in which it was least possible. In Maurice Isserman, he has a biographer who does justice to his life's work.