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Patricia Marc's interview each week at this time your city station brings you an interview with a leading figure in the arts politics or the sciences and here now to introduce today's program is Patricia Marx I'm delighted to have as my guest today Michael Harrington who is much as anyone stirred America's conscience about poverty and social injustice Mr Harrington's bestselling book The Other America helped bring about the end he poverty programs of the one nine hundred sixty S. a member of the Socialist Party he has been a leader in the civil rights and disarmament movements of the past decade and is currently chairman of the board of the league for industrial democracy His most recent book is entitled toward a democratic left. Mr Dean the opening statement of this book is a very strong one you say the American system doesn't work anymore what do you mean by this well I mean basically two things. First of all I'm really not talking about the democratic political process which I'm very much for. But what I mean is that you have a situation where in January of one nine hundred sixty four the president declares an unconditional war on poverty and in January of one nine hundred sixty eight that same president's Council of Economic Advisors tells us that there are more dilapidated housing units in the slums than there were a war four years ago that's a system not working when you're trying to abolish poverty and you have government agencies the tell you in one of its most important dimensions slum housing poverty is actually on the increase Secondly I think this also applies to foreign policy. For years now ever since really Harry Truman the Marshall Plan point for we have theoretically been committed to providing. Sufficient assistance to developing countries so that they can develop their economies democratically and yet now at the midpoint in the are more than the midpoint in the U.N. Development decade all the figures are that in the world there is more hunger all the figures are that the United States actually is taking more money out of Latin America in terms of the money our private corporations take out in the servicing of public debt than we're putting in. We find that despite all the promises the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development meeting in New Delhi basically turns its back on the poor nations the New York Times that describes the results as a bag of rubber bones for the poor nations which is accurate and therefore we are all that were proclaiming our desire to help nations industrialize. Democratically and nonviolently we're actually keeping them down and this creates the setting and I think former Secretary of Defense McNamara was right making the point This creates a setting for a century of violence so in terms of our maimed or mystic and international goals abolishing poverty at home and providing a democratic alternative to totalitarian and industrialization abroad the system doesn't work Mr Errington you say that the rhetoric is there the commitment is there at least verbally. How do you what do you scribe the lack of action then is this a deeply hypocritical statement on one side of what's necessary to change well I think one of the fundamental reasons for the high rhetoric in the time of action is that the rhetoricians don't understand what radical things they're saying I think when President Johnson proposed the war on poverty he thought that we'd have a big Happy National Community Chest at which business and labor and poor people would sit down and love one another and abolish poverty he didn't understand that poverty is deeply built into the structure and economic mechanisms of the society and that in order to abolish it would require some conflict and not simply consensus for example. One of the main reasons why people in the ghetto are so unemployed and underemployed is that almost all of our investments in transportation for the last generation have been in the private automobile transportation for middle class and rich people are the result is and there was a conference just. The end of April in New York on this very subject the result is all the good jobs have been moved to the suburbs or most of them the result is as the McCone Commission reported on the Watts riots that one of the main reasons for the riot was that the adult males had to spend fifty cents an hour each way to even go look for a job now if you're going to reverse that policy of isolating the ghetto of keeping the black and white poor away from the good jobs if you're going to reverse that that's going to require a massive investment in public transportation Now if that takes a form let's say subways that the Ford Motor Car Company is not that involved in I think it's reasonable to assume that Ford in the automobile industry and perhaps the oil industry will fight it because they have an economic stake in the public subsidy to the private automobile and I think what was not understood particularly by President Johnson with his consensus rhetoric. There's the amount of political conflict that's going to be required because to deal with the problem of poverty is going to take extensive planning extensive social investments and that means shaking up some of the established forces in American society but as you do find that the structure itself has to be changed. You know the corporations are very few in number the number of people that are in the subways and are inconvenienced by the situation you describe are enormous. Why isn't it that these people have a voice and the corporations. Seem to be the ones that are running a situation I think the gimmick is this Americans think that the poor people are on the dole and corporations are off being reliant on the good old American tradition entrepreneurial and the like the reality is that it's pierce this reality in part that I wrote the book The reality is in my opinion that the corporations actually receive much more subsidy than anybody else in the society the point is that the corporate subsidy is very discreet you can't see it a people don't stop and think that the fifty billion dollars that we're spending on a highway program begun by Republicans is a subsidy to the automobile industry which gets to use fifty billion dollars worth of capital so to speak for nothing. People don't understand that the housing industry which built suburbia received credit to build suburbia supported by the federal government at below market interest rates as a matter of fact I think I can document or I do document in the book the fact that the amount of money that the government has provided for middle class and wealthy homebuilders is much much greater than they have that has been provided for the needs of the poor Now this appears that my point is that this very unjust and discriminatory situation is made to appear as if it were taking place on the basis of free enterprise actually what it is as a massive government governmental intervention for the corporation and against the poor people so the final answer right back to your question is the only way that a counter purpose or a new purpose can be imposed upon the government expenditures the only way that social money can be made to behave socially rather than anti socially as now is if you have a new political movement if you have a militant majority movement committed to changing these policies how are you going to get that movement Well that's a tough question to put it mildly I'd say basically my hope is this that the large number of people who want social change who by the way are by far and large liberals that is to say they don't envision revolutionizing the system they want to reform the system these people are now in so far as they are politically organized mainly in the Democratic Party I'm talking about the middle class liberals and radicals the negroes the young people and the American labor movement which on domestic issues is the largest and most cohesive institution in favor of some kind of social purpose for social expenditure. The problem of this movement is in part right now that it's split but more basically the problem is that this liberal movement has been in a Democratic Party in which for a number of reasons the conservative Dixiecrats have a much greater strength than their numbers really justify. Among the reasons are that the Dixiecrats come from a one party section of the country where if a man gets elected to Congress he can stay in for a lifetime without really having to worry about it so they get very high seniority so that the chairman of the standing committees of the Congress the United States are disproportionately Dixiecrats the problem it seems to me then is for the liberal forces and the radical forces in America to create not a third party but a first party that is to say a majority party of their own and I suspect in concrete political terms in America today what that means is that the struggle now taking place inside of the Democratic Party has to be pushed all the way. And there has to be a victory of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party resulting into my mind in a realignment of American politics where the Southerners would the southern reactionaries would be driven literally out of the party and that would go to the Republicans where they belong so I think that in a media terms then the the hope for creating a majority for new policies a la is through a victory of the liberal force in the Democratic Party Mr Errington What is the platform What is it that you see this Democratic left his first priority standing for in terms of domestic policy Well most broadly and in terms of what I've already said to impose a social purpose on the social spending. Through this can only be done through planning. To say for example that it is insane to have billions of dollars of agricultural subsidies which have the consequence of driving poor black and white people off the land in the south into the cities of the north what for which they're totally unprepared therefore you've got a plan that so that our you have to plan so that our social spending has a social purpose Secondly I think this requires really redesigning America in a way and here I would decide a very curious ally former President Eisenhower in the May Reader's Digest comes out for an excellent program he has I think a completely wrong way of getting it put through but he says there must be we must deal with the slum problem by building new cities all over the United States and hooking them up to the old cities by mass transportation I think we need to do precisely that to do that is going to require not a tax cut but social spending plan I could put it this way it seems to me that the real contra position of conservative versus liberal dash radical in the post Vietnam period is no longer the thirty's counter position on should the government intervene into the economy that issue has now been subtle The real debate is how I think the conservatives are going to call for an intervention primarily in terms of tax reduction maximizing the private sector. And I think the liberals and radicals are going to have to fight for social spending plans social investments and things like Newtown. As a result of this analysis I believe in Weymouth Buckley Jr and want to Cajun a Southern I'm crazy to believe it but I think it is the case that Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay really are the conservatives in the society conservatives in the Churchillian sense conservatives who are willing to make that much accommodation to change as is necessary to preserve basically the status quo I think that's what I would call tax cut Keynesianism conservative Keynesianism and what I am for is a social investment and planning form of Keynesianism that's what I think the platform of a democratic left majority party should be but you've been using that to liberals and radicals and then you even said liberal dashed radical and can you define the differences in where you're not form differs from additional liberal but well let me go about it a couple of different ways first of all. My platform coincides with much of the liberal movement. In concrete American political terminals the mess left wing in America today is liberal if you wander stand by liberal the concept of people who want change but not basic change the people who want reform but not revolution the people who want a better version of the society rather than a new society. That's where the great ness of the American social change movement this today. Therefore since I want to address myself to that and. A great deal of what I'm advocating is precisely along those lines that is to say you could have a program of planned social investment of the type which I advocate without changing the corporate domination of the private economy however I as a socialist view this program and I say so in the book quite openly and candidly as a first installment only to me what it amounts to is extending somewhat the areas in which the Democratic political power determines the allocation of resources rather than the economic private power I am frankly in favor of expanding that area and totally that is to say of substituting as a social principle the idea of democratic decision for private decision here and no I think it's a waste of time in America to propose that we have a revolution tomorrow morning because there is not going to be one so here and now what I am proposing is that democratization of economic power which I think is possible which means that I am addressing myself both to liberals who agree on the immediate issue and I am urging radicals to give up apocalyptic visions on the margin of the society and to get into the struggle and to begin to democratize what can be democratized so in a way this liberal dash radicalism which where you're at at this point is you're trying to bring the two together by proposing kind of reforms that are possible and that may lead to a more profound revolutionary change right I would say that my main criticism of the new left and one that inspired this book in part. Is that many of the young radicals today know precisely what they're against but they're very vague about what they're far and how they're going to get their. And what I'm trying to insist on this book is that the real radical. Is someone who starts now and doesn't wait around for some distant day when some proletariat or another is going to rise up and save the entire society one of the main points in your book is the need for increase in the process of democracy and increased democratization. Allowing the people to decide where the money should be in the resources should be now what I wonder about is is so so frequently one hears of the people not wanting their resources allocated towards public spending that they'd rather have a tax cut and have more money for private consumption than for public consumption and that people are are basically racist the white majority in the country now what makes you believe that an increase of democracy democratization will lead to the kind of programs you were want Bruce is the exact opposite of what you stand for well first of all I'm not an inevitable list that is to say I think it's quite possible that if the American people really knew how their government monies were being spent that is to say they're being spent to subsidize the better off rather than the poor it's possible I might say following what I am saying however is that the only possibility of changing that is to make people aware that this is the situation by making them aware you might bring out the worst in their nature but by making them aware you at least have the possibility of bringing out the best. Secondly take an issue like the racism of the American people I think that's a very tricky question as a matter of fact one of the things that most people didn't notice about the riot commission is that it said White racism was responsible but then defined white racism not as a psychological attitude but as an economic and social reality built around things like housing. Education and Employment. But I'm convinced that there are two possible ways that the this race issue can go on the one hand it is quite possible. That we will have competition between the black and white poor for scarce resources and housing education and work and they'll tear each other apart that the labor movement will decide to become a kind of am a looking out only for its own material self interest and ignoring social problems and trying to put the Negro down. That the middle class liberals will get disenchanted because there will be so much violence and turmoil as a result of this and that will become a kind of a jailhouse society in which the whites are the jailers on the Blacks or the inmates but in which everybody lives in a jail that's possible on the other hand I think the only hope to overcome this racist tendency is if we build anough housing so that poor people don't have to compete with one another for terrible housing but everybody has sufficient housing if we create genuine full employment so that the white worker doesn't feel that a black worker on a march for jobs is proposing to substitute white unemployment for Negro unemployment if in SR O. where Dr King large the white people were not terrified that this was a movement basically to take away the savings of a lifetime and to devalue their property but if they understood that now there was housing for everybody then I think the opposite possibility would open up. Also on the race question particularly I'm convinced that a good part or a good portion of the problem of race is a problem of class that is to say that white middle class people who hate negroes. Really to a considerable extent much larger than they know are hating lower class people not negroes that they would have the same attitude towards poor whites who would have the cultural patterns of poor negroes I'm therefore convinced that if you will ballance the economic basis of racism in the United States you will have abolished about eighty percent of the problem of race and you will then reduce the problem of race I think to a manageable proportion that is to say to that irrational hatred that people have of other people who are different that I think can be dealt with so what I'm saying in answer to your question is yes you're pessimistic prognosis to my mind is quite possible it's possible that we will use democratic planning institutions to institutionalized racism and poverty Quite possibly but the only hope to defeat racism and poverty is if we have those institutions and so I'm not totally optimistic but somewhat What is your attitude towards the role of violence in bringing about this kind of. Reform that you're the Q one well basically and in the long run it has to be nonviolent you can destroy and tear down and call attention to one dramatize with violence perhaps but the job of democratically planning investments has to be done in a nonviolent way which is that there is it cannot be done by force it requires discussion debate intelligence it requires those kinds of virtues and practices which flourish only a nonviolence. Now secondly I think that it's tragic that so many Negroes have felt with considerable justification to my mother that the only way to get the white man to listen to them was through violence when Byard Ruston I went with Dr King out to Watson one nine hundred sixty five and one of the Negroes out there said this is our manifesto and Barrett said well let me see your manifesto I would like to read it and this young man replied No you see the riot was our manifesto this was something that Whitey could understand I think as a matter of fact although I'm not for violence although I think that nonviolence has to be the way that one has to say that the riots did create a certain kind of response on the part of white people although in the long run and this has been true as the riots have become more intense and more violent it seems to me that the tragic thing is that Negroes do most of the paying for the riots in terms of the dying the destruction of homes the flight of business the attitude of insurance companies Negroes get the bill for riots the society is still run. By a white power structure it's not going to pay. But at least the early riots I think had the effect of opening up the eyes of some Americans so the real needs of the society and you could say that in a sense the report of the Kerner Commission on Civil disorders is an example of a positive response to riots that John Lindsay and Kirner in the Senator Harris the rest of the people on that commission were driven to a rather radical statement by having witness the alternative of violence but finally what I'm afraid of none is that up until now it seems to me in general the positive response to violence is probably prevail. But I am fearful that as the violence escalates as the society becomes more uncertain of itself the backlash will prevail and if that happens and I think we're within one inch of it happening right now then the Congress and the government will decide to deal with the problem of riots with a nightstick and not with Democratic social planning and then to my mind the riots will become not simply strategically or wrong but totally nonproductive and totally counterproductive that is to say they will bring down their repression on the heads of the negroes and will result really. Setting off anti-democratic trends in the society as a whole. This year and you know what is your gut response to what's going to happen you in the other American one nine hundred fifty nine began a whole movement towards reform the poverty program the new frontier the Great Society is has been at least the rhetoric has been stated now you see violence in the reform movement and the country splitting apart what do you think's going to happen we see I think that the basic cause are the most important cause of that splitting up of the defeat of the hopes for reform as the war in Vietnam in one nine hundred sixty four when Johnson won he won on a fairly decent rhetorical program about doing something about these problems he had a gigantic political movement a tremendous victory a congressional majority for the first time in the United States really since one thousand thirty eight a liberal majority in the Congress and he was able to accomplish a certain amount but by the summer of one nine hundred sixty five. The escalation really begin in earnest. The energies were taken away from poverty and devoted to Vietnam. And I think this created a situation where so much had been promised and so little had been delivered that those to whom so much had been promised got angrier and angrier and angrier and it resulted in a tremendous splits a fratricidal struggle within the liberal movement a feeling on the part of more and more negroes that all whites were a bunch of lying hypocrites that white liberalism was the true face of the enemy so I think I trace so much of this to Vietnam My feeling is therefore if the war in Vietnam goes on then I am not hopeful at all the minute that war ends then I think we have a completely new political situation in America I believe that a serious Democratic left political movement has to not simply promise but put down specific concrete targets and dates of fulfillments of targets. About a year and a half ago A Philip Randolph released his freedom budget it's not a perfect document it should be updated now but the concept behind it is what we need a ten year budget dedicated to doing away with all the slums in the United States spelling out in dollars and cents department by department of the government precisely what would be done in order to get full employment and do away with the slums. So I think that there is once the war in Vietnam is over there is the possibility of beginning to do some of these things there is the possibility of assembling a Democratic left. Between now and that happy day when the war ends I'm convinced that those of us who see the need for this kind of change have to be preparing for it and let me end on that point that when I went to Washington in one thousand nine hundred eighty four briefly to consult with Sargent Shriver for a couple of weeks of the very beginning of the poverty program one of the things that struck me was that we didn't have enough money appropriated or planned to be appropriated for the poverty war but the second thing that struck me was that even if the president had appropriated all the money that I thought necessary we really didn't know how to spend it we have not done the thinking and what I'm concerned about is now in this very difficult political time when there are not that many political openings we'd be preparing to understand how to move so that the second this horrible war ends and there's a possibility of having a democratic left coalition in the United States that we're capable of taking advantage of the opportunity. Mr Harrington I want to thank you for this interview my guest has been Michael Harrington author of The Other America and most recently toward a democratic left thank you and goodbye for now you have been listening to Patricia Marx interviews join us again next Friday at five when once again we bring you Patricia Marx interviews.