An excerpt of a piece I wrote for In These Times touching on points I’m developing more in some other writing this year . . . 

He wasn’t a household name, but for the last half of the twentieth century Michael Harrington was the most prominent socialist in the United States. International leaders like Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme said that if Harrington were European, he’d be a head of state — rather than simply a regular on late-night C-SPAN. William F. Buckley was more dismissive, noting, “Being called America’s foremost socialist is like being the tallest building in Topeka, Kansas.”

Since Harrington’s death in 1989, the decline of an already small American socialist movement has been even more pronounced. With even the most tepid forms of “liberalism” on the retreat in the United States, and something as economically rational as single-payer healthcare off the agenda entirely, more radical policies seem like the stuff of fantasy. Sure, socialism has its holdouts, but the truly committed domestic socialists now number in the thousands, not the millions. Much as Star Trek nerds make their pilgrimage to Trekkie conventions, this cadre flocks to Left Forum in New York City every year for heated arguments over this or that piece of sectarian esoterica.