Book Review
Rules for Radicals
By Saul Alinsky
Reviewer’s introductory notes
It is impossible to understand politics in America, or anywhere for that matter, without awareness of the strategies and tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky in this book. By no means are these methods unique to the Alinsky model but no other book presents them as succinctly and boldly as Rules for Radicals.
With the exception of the Prologue, the reviewer’s format is to present a synopsis of a chapter as the author might write it, and then follow that up with the reviewer’s comments.
Professor Alinsky’s writing calls for numerous (sic) notations. We omitted them for the sake of simplicity. Everything enclosed in quotes is recorded verbatim from the book.
The author did not number his chapters. They are identified solely by name.
The book is short and simple but hard to read. Not for its complexity but because so much of it comes across as nonsense. Stick with it; don’t give up. The significance of it becomes more and more apparent as you proceed.
Prologue
Even before the Prologue, Alinsky sets the stage with a tribute to Lucifer the devil. Alinskys commends the devil for becoming the “ultimate radical” and respects him because he succeeded in winning his own kingdom.
The author’s prologue is a litany of misery. In his view, the world is a thoroughly miserable place. The prologue is replete with phrases like these — “the outcome of hopelessness and despair is morbidity” and “there is a feeling of death overhanging the nation”.
Alinsky correctly cites Leftist radicals as completely rejecting the common “goals of a well paid job, suburban home, automobile … and everything else that means success” to others.
Young radicals are unhappy because they see only the faults in the world, and no purpose in life. They are in a constant search for themselves. The middle class and affluent are mired in the likes of divorce and disillusionment. The whole world is such a discouraging place that anyone who is happy in it must be blind.
Alinsky seldom speaks of changing America. He talks mostly of changing the World. His vision of despondency transcends domestic issues.
Revolution with some violence is likely to be required in order to wrest the power of government from those now in control. But revolution must come at the end of the process, not at the beginning. A successful revolution is like a three act play - first set the stage, then develop the plot, then conclude with the main event. It is the function and duty of a community organizer to direct this process.
Act I is join the crowd, gain respect, acceptance, legitimacy.
Act II is development, spread discontent, build support for Act III
Act III is the revolution which will of necessity be violent.
Alinsky encourages radicals to fight but discourages those who are impatient and want to go directly to Act III. Starting at the conclusion is very ineffective and leads nowhere.
Purpose
The first chapter is called Purpose. It carries as a tagline this quote from the bible:
“The life of man upon earth is a warfare… Job 7:1”
There is a good reason to be optimistic although accomplishment of the goal is hopeless. If it’s hopeless, why do it? It’s like a climber ascending a mountain whose summit is infinity and can never be reached. When asked why strive for the impossible, Mt. Everest climber Mallory said “Because it is there”.
This seems senseless until you read the very last line of the chapter – “Happiness lies in the pursuit”. Fighting for the Revolution is is the only thing that gives purpose to life.
In the second part of Purpose we learn that everyone falls into one of three groups, called the trinity of classes. The classes are defined as 1)the Haves, 2) the Have-Nots, and 3) the Have-Some-Want-Mores. As you might expect by now, all people in all the groups are miserable according to Saul Alinsky
The Haves
The Haves “suffocate in their surplus” and cannot sleep because they “are living under the nightmare of possible threats to their possessions”.
The Have-Nots
The Have-Nots “are chained together by the common misery of poverty, rotten housing, disease, ignorance, political impotence and despair”.
The Have-Some-Want-Mores
The Have-Some-Want-Mores are psychologically disturbed “torn between [protecting] what they have, yet wanting change to get more”. They are “social and economic schizoids”. This group is Alinsky’s vision of the middle class.
Of Means and Ends
“The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe’s statement that “conscience is the virtue of observers and not agents of action; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter”. Alinsky adds his own note “He who sacrifices the mass good for his own personal conscience… doesn’t care enough for people to be corrupted for them.” Virtue becomes vice and vice is made into virtue with these classic rationales as to why the ends justify the means.
Professor Alinsky defines moral behavior with eleven rules of ethics. These are more a of a rambling essay on how and organizer is to treat questions of ethics than it is a set of rules. He begins with “One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with ones personal interest in the issue. That is to say, the more you care about the issue the less you should care about the methods you use to fight for it. The chapter concludes with a mandate to the organizer. Whatever your mission, “goals must be phrased in terms like Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Of the Common Welfare or Pursuit of Happiness or Bread and Peace”. This will assure your mission receives broad based support.
The theme throughout is that ethics are an impediment to accomplishment and thereby, in the final sense, not ethical at all.
A Word About Words
Power
Words that are soft-sounding and peaceful are soporific and ineffective. Such words are inappropriate for our purposes because “In the politics of life we are concerned with the slaves and the Caesars, not the vestal virgins”. The word “power” is often maligned but fear not to sue it. “To know power and not fear it is essential to its constructive use and control. In short, life without power is death; a world without power would be a ghostly wasteland, a dead planet!”.
Self Interest
“The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arrive and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gauze of New England puritanism and Protestant morality …. It is one of the classic American fairy tales”.
Compromise
“To the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word…. If you start with nothing, demand 100 percent, then compromise for 30 percent, you’re 30 percent ahead.”
Ego
Ego is self confidence. The community organizer’s “ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego”.
Conflict
The word “conflict” is much maligned in the media and by Madison Avenue [advertising]. However, “Conflict is the central core of a free and open society”.
The Education of an Organizer
“The building of many mass power organizations to merge into a national popular power source cannot come without may organizers”. Training organizers is a daunting task. Candidates come from every corner. from students to priests to union leaders and minority groups. Many trainees start but few go on to great accomplishment. The failure rate is high.
Certain qualities mark a candidate as more likely for success. A good candidate is curious; of every issue, he asks why? A good candidate is irreverent. “He is challenging, insulting, agitating. discrediting. He stirs unrest”. He has imagination, a good sense of humor and “a bit blurred vision of a better world”.
The best organizer is “A well integrated political schizoid. The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men an act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. He knows that there can be no action until the issues are polarized to this degree”.
Communication
If you can’t communicate, you can’t agitate. The ability to communicate is the one quality an organizer absolutely must have. To communicate the organizer must, 1) speak in familiar terms the people understand and 2) listen. He must talk in terms his followers can understand. Typically, this requires talking down when speaking to the people he is organizing.
As an example, take the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; an organizer who stresses the multiple thousands of people who died will not communicate well with his audience. Numbers with lots of zeros in them are outside the experience of most people. However, if he tells the personal story of a single family including the details of their suffering, the organizer will reach his people. Family problems and personal tragedies are within everyone’s realm of experience.
By the same token, a leader should not speak of issues in “generalities like sin or immorality or the good life or morals. They must be this immorality of this slum landlord with this tenement where these people suffer”.
In the Beginning
The talent to organize a community seldom comes from within the community itself. When a new organizer arrives on the scene he is greeted with suspicion. Therefore, the first order of business is to establish his credentials, to gain acceptance and trust. People in the community will ask “Who’s the cat?” “What’s he asking all those questions for?” “Is he really the cops or the FBI?” ” What’s his bag?” “What’s in it for him?” Who’s he working for?”, etc.
To gain the peoples trust a new organizer must show a intense anger over some issue. Expressing love for the community accomplishes nothing. It is only a sign of meekness. Anger, on the other hand, unites the organizer with the people in a common cause. It builds faith, faith in the ability and power of the leader to bring change.
The organizer “is to maneuver and bait the establishment so they will attack him as a dangerous enemy. The word enemy is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people, …but is not enough to endow him with the special qualities that induce fear and thus give him his own power against the establishment. This need is met by the establishment’s use of the brand dangerous”. That is to say, the organizer’s credentials are not fully established in the community until he has managed to get himself branded by the establishment as both an enemy and a dangerous one.
“The organizer’s job is to inseminate an invitation for himself, to agitate, introduce ideas, get people pregnant with hope and a desire for change and to identify you as the person most qualified for this purpose.” “Power is the reason for being of an organization. Power and organization are one and the same. When those in the status quo turn and label you an agitator, they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function – to agitate to the point of conflict”
Tactics
The tag line under this chapter heading is a quote from the great warrior Hannibal, “We will find a way, or make one.” The objective in this chapter is to learn “how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves”, i.e. how to organize the lower classes in order to take power away from the middle and upper classes. The message from Hannibal is not to constrain yourself to working within societal norms. Do whatever it takes to do to get the job done.
Prof. Alinsky provides 13 rules relating to tactics. They are listed here verbatim.
1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man’s most important weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
The final rule is by far the most important. The author devotes more pages to an understanding of this rule than to all of the first twelve rules combined. This, of course, is the tactic of personal destruction. Ridicule and personal destruction are the most powerful and effective tools known for deflating an enemy’s power and must be used to the fullest extent possible.
The Genesis of Tactic Proxy
“America’s corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.”
The title of this chapter is derived from the idea of using corporate shareholder proxies to achieve your own goals. Corporate stockholders have certain rights as to how the corporation conducts its affairs. These rights are exercised by voting and the voting document is called a proxy. The tactic involves persuading colleges, foundations and churches to vote their proxies in solidarity according to the organizer’s plan of attack.
Alinsky stumbled upon this idea when talking to three business administration college students who were opposed to the Vietnam war, but “recoiled from such actions as carrying the Viet Cong flag or burning their draft cards. However, they did believe in using proxies.”
The genesis of the proxy tactic is an example of why an organizer should hang loose. When a door opens unexpectedly, go through it. Be not concerned that it takes you off the path you had planned. Do not fall into the trap set by “our alleged educational system” that teaches “order, logic, rational thought, direction and purpose”. These ideas are invalid because they are too rigid. The organizer must be ready to go where the flow leads him.
The Way Ahead
The middle class is the largest group in America. The focus, now and in the future, must be on winning the middle class.
These “are a fearful people, who feel threatened on all sides:”. “Seeking some meaning in life, they turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defenders of the ‘American” faith”. “They don’t know what, if anything, they can do. This is the job for today’s radical – to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight”.
Students who come to college from a middle class background must be taught to reject their parent’s values and way of life as “materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt”. No one is better equipped to organize, agitate and convert the middle class than those who have escaped it.
_ _ 0 _ _
