As you might guess, I have a different opinion. The article shows the failure of the leftist way of life. The point of the story is not that Susan is a hero, but that she's an interesting case study.
You are absolutely correct in writing that the article shows the failure of the leftist way of life. It's just that Horowitz is just a little too glowing in his tribute to his old friend.
Don't you wonder what her parents thought all those years ago about their beloved daughter, whom they'd struggled to provide a Vassar education, who was now a junkie, a thief, and a prostitute? Don't you feel sorry for the shame and grief they must have felt in their old age? And who raised that daughter? I certainly hope she went to live with her father while Susan was hooking for drugs. And what about the 5 aborted souls who never had a chance at life at all? May God have Mercy on her.
I am heartbroken for all the damaged and broken people she left behind. Not Susan. She made her own conscious choices and abused her own body, apparently with no thought to the havoc she was wreaking upon those around her.
She was not living in a vacuum all those years without any research or other evidence that what she was doing to herself and others was harmful. There was plenty written at the time about the damaging effects that her choices would have on herself and others. She chose to ignore all those warnings and to pursue her own selfish ends and to try to persuade others to follow her on that fateful trip.
Susan could knit a scarf around the world with gold thread, and I wouldn't be impressed. There was a legion of women like her in Berkeley in the 1960s, and they are still affecting our society for the worse.