That extraordinarily valuable citizen Michael Harrington is, among his many other public activities, Chairman of the Socialist Part), USA. So quiet a life do socialists now lead that one is nearly tempted to list this post as a harmless private avocation. Yet in the days of Eugene Debs, American socialism was a serious political movement. Michael Harrington would have it so again.

As Harrington recalls in Socialism (Saturday Review Press; 436 pp.; $12.50), his impressive analysis of the Socialist past and less impressive account of the Socialist present, Debs in 1912 actually collected 6 per cent of the Presidential votes. In 340 cities, 1,200 Socialists held office, among them 79 mayors. Even two decades later, in the 1932 Presidential campaign, Norman Thomas attracted nearly a million .votes and the Party boasted 1,600 local affiliates.