1972: Michael Harrington debates George Novack

Novack and Harrington debate road to socialism in America

The Militant

12/01/1972

By MICHAEL SMITH

NEW YORK, Nov. 14-George Novack debated Michael Harrington on the subject "The Road to Socialism in America" before a Queens College audience today. Harrington, who recently resigned as cochairman of the Socialist Party-Democratic Socialist Federation, while retaining his membership, is perhaps the best-known person in the United States who represents himself as a socialist. Novack is a national leader of the Socialist Workers Party.

It was the first time since Farrell Dobbs debated Norman Thomas in the 1948 presidential campaign, Novak told The Militant, that a figure of stature in the Socialist Party was willing to debate a proponent of revolutionary socialism.

Harrington opened by stating that the debate was not about which party had better succeeded in creating socialist cadre. "If that were the debate I would concede defeat at the outset. The SWP has been extremely successful and dedicated in building a small group, much more so than the Socialist Party. Alas, that's not what I am debating."

Harrington contrasted his view of the current political situation in America-"my America," as he persisted in terming it-with that of the SWP. He called the SWP's analysis, which views the U.S. as being in the process of the deepest radicalization of this century, as "utterly fantastic," particularly in the light of Nixon's reelection. In Novack's view, "The Socialist Party has been suspicious of or hostile toward all the progressive and militant currents of the developing radicalization. It opposes Black nationalism, Black control of the Black communities, and the formation of an independent Black party. It is equally opposed to the Chicano Raza Unida parties.

"It has refused to advocate U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam or to participate organizationally in the mass antiwar demonstrations. It shows no understanding of or sympathy for the feminist or gay liberation movements. It supports the entrenched officialdom of the union establishment."

Harrington confirmed this assessment, especially with respect to the trade-union officialdom. "The workingclass, particularly in the AFL-CIO through George Meany ... on national health insurance, on full employment, on planning, on Social Security, on poverty, on all of these issues, represents the mass left wing of American society," he declared. Novack countered, asserting, "The Socialist Party here is nothing but houseboy for the AFL-CIO bureaucracy and an off-stage noise in the Democratic Party."

Harrington was angry that the SWP ran its own independent election campaign rather than support McGovern, as he did, and that the SWP attacked the Democratic Party as, in Novack's words, one of the "gold-dust twins of big business."

Novack pointed out that when Harrington resigned the cochairmanship of his party he issued a statement to the press saying he had vindicated the tradition of Debs.

"This is not so," replied Novack. "From the time he helped found the Socialist Party to the day of his death, Debs never supported the Democratic Party, which jailed him for his union activities and then for his antiwar stand." The SWP' s election campaign, Novack affirmed, followed the revolutionary tradition of Debs by breaking with the Democratic Party and starting to build a socialist alternative.

Replying to this, Harrington observed that Debs has been dead for40 years, and that "times and the Democratic Party have changed." He strongly suggested there remains the possibility, given certain structural changes in capitalism (which he did not elaborate), that a peaceful, electoral, gradual change to socialism will occur.

Harrington projected a strategy of winning a liberal congress two years from now and a Democratic presidency in 1976. "Liberalism is a precondition for socialism," he stated, and recommended that socialists join up with the liberals and their candidates.

Novack argued that reformist socialist parties, like Harrington's, have without exception "acted as caretakers of the capitalist regime" when they have been elected to .office. He gave the examples of the Israeli government of Golda Meir, Willy Brandt's German Social Democratic Party, and Harold Wilson's Labour Party in England. Indeed, Novack said, Harrington concedes this fact in his recently published book, Socialism.

In opposing Harrington's assertion that the Trotskyist view is unrealistic, Novack laid the charge on Harrington's doorstep. Harrington, he said, "wipes out the significance of all the victorious socialist revolutions in this century. The successful worker peasant revolutions from Lenin to Castro have not only been anticapitalist but even more, according to him, anti-socialist."

Unlike Novack, Harrington refused to support the revolutionary struggle in Vietnam and pointed to Sweden and England as his models of democracy. Harrington's presentation was characterized by one observer as both pessimistic and skeptical. "What is the road to socialism in America?" Harrington queried in his opening remarks. "I frankly don't think that my party has the answer. I don't think that George Novack's party does either."

Novack encouraged the people in attendance to join the Young Socialist Alliance and attend its convention over the Thanksgiving weekend in Cleveland. Harrington, on the other hand, did not mention the Young People's Socialist League, a cosponsor with the YSA of the meeting and the youth group affiliated with Harrington's Socialist Party.

THE MILITANT/DECEMBER 1, 1972