DREAM OF DELIVERANCE

February 1, 1986
Harrington, a political scientist, erects in this volume an elaborate tripartite schema to explain 20th century American politics. She sees American policies, both domestic and foreign, as driven by the interplay of three groupslocalist (small business, agrarian); functionalist (corporate, managerial); and majoritarian (wage-earners). She argues that these three groups believe wrongly that both maximum liberty and equality can be achieved without loss to any of their individual interests. She maintains that modern industrial society undercuts that belief because the unrestrained economic power of the functionalists allows them always to gain at the expense of the others. Not surprisingly, she concludes in this turgidly written volume that political intervention is necessary to properly allocate society's economic resources.