With the election guttersniping over (for a few days anyhow) I took some time to read and ponder an item from the library: “Rules for Radicals, A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals,” written by Saul David Alinsky, published in 1971 by Random House.
Now, why would I, an upstanding capitalist pig, read an old book from an old leftie? Because Alinsky still matters, no matter where you are on the political spectrum.
By training, Chicago native Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) was an archeologist. But because archaeology wasn’t in demand during the Depression, he instead went to work for the state of Illinois as a criminologist. Alinsky moonlighted part-time as a union organizer for the CIO and then moved fully into “community organizing” by the end of the 1930s.
The promos for “Rules” declare that Alinsky showed “a generation […] how to effectively construct social change.”
Which generation? The Vietnam-era, anti-Establishment baby-boomer New Left, for example our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Her 1969 Wellesley College honors thesis was subtitled “An Analysis of the Alinsky Model” – and is worth a read simply because it exhibits Hillary’s formidable intellect. Geeze, no wonder baking cookies was not on her list of priorities.
“Rules” begins with: “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.” Next, as Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (another old moldy worth reading) was how to keep power, “Rules” is “written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
There are 13 “rules for radicals,” summarized all over the Internet. All informed citizens, left, right and center, should get familiar with these rules so they can tell when they are being “organized.” But the book gives the tactics embodied in the rules a full, nuanced strategic context.
Alinsky discusses politically value-laden terms such as power, self-interest, compromise, ego, and conflict – the last which Alinsky declares “the essential core of a free and open society.”
Then Alinsky segues into how organizers are made, or mostly born, discussing successes but mostly failures such as the “rare campus activists who could organize a substantial number of students” but be “utter failures” at organizing ghetto residents. He also discusses the qualities of a good organizer, including a huge ego (but no overt egotism), “a bit of a blurred vision of a better world,” as well as a “free and open mind, and political relativity.”
Alinsky also believed in any available means to a justified end, and encouraged ethical compromises in order to achieve a goal: “Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.” And there is this gem – “[M]ankind from time immemorial has always organized, regardless of what race or color they were, whenever they wanted to bring about change.”
To succeed, community organizers must be communicators above all. That communication includes “guided questioning” to move “leaders” toward the organizer’s desired outcome – manipulation “just as a teacher manipulates, and no less, even a Socrates.”
Is it coincidence that Bill Clinton won his presidency on “change” and President Obama won on a “hope and change” platform? Nah.
Alinsky’s message to 60s revolutionaries was to join the system, and make a revolution through reformation. In short, get a haircut, follow these rules, win the hearts of your army and you will have the political power to implement your revolution through reformation.
Reformation comes when the citizenry has “reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values.” The masses “won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.”
Things sure seemed ripe in 2008, didn’t they? Again, was it a coincidence that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sought the presidency? I doubt it.
But, with this election, it seems to me Alinsky’s adherents missed a critical caveat, which applies to “revolutionaries” all across the political spectrum…“To assume that a political revolution can survive without the supporting base of a popular reformation is to ask for the impossible in politics.”
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone – and happy reading, too.