|
Saul Alinsky: A Discover The
Networks Profile
DiscoverTheNetworks.org
Born to Russian-Jewish parents in Chicago in 1909, Saul Alinsky was a
Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the tactics of
infiltration -- coupled with a measure of confrontation -- that have been
central to revolutionary political movements in the United States in recent
decades. He never joined the Communist Party but instead, as David Horowitz puts
it, became an avatar of the post-modern left.
Though Alinsky is rightfully understood to have been a leftist, his legacy is
more methodological than ideological. He identified a set of very specific rules
that ordinary citizens could follow, and tactics that ordinary citizens could
employ, as a means of gaining public power. His motto was, “The most effective
means are whatever will achieve the desired results.”
Alinsky studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
during which time he became friendly with Al Capone and his mobsters. Ryan Lizza,
senior editor of The New Republic, offers a glimpse into Alinsky’s personality:
“Charming and self-absorbed, Alinsky would entertain friends with stories --
some true, many embellished -- from his mob days for decades afterward. He was
profane, outspoken, and narcissistic, always the center of attention despite his
tweedy, academic look and thick, horn-rimmed glasses.”
According to Lizza:
"Alinsky was deeply influenced by the great social science insight of his
times, one developed by his professors at Chicago: that the pathologies of the
urban poor were not hereditary but environmental. This idea, that people could
change their lives by changing their surroundings, led him to take an obscure
social science phrase -- ‘the community organization’--and turn it into, in the
words of Alinsky biographer Sanford Horwitt, ‘something controversial,
important, even romantic.’ His starting point was a near-fascination with John
L. Lewis, the great labor leader and founder of the CIO. What if, Alinsky
wondered, the same hardheaded tactics used by unions could be applied to the
relationship between citizens and public officials?"
After completing his graduate work in criminology, Alinsky went on to develop
what are known today as the Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power. In
the late 1930s he earned a reputation as a master organizer of the poor when he
organized the “Back of the Yards” area in Chicago, an industrial and residential
ethnic neighborhood on the Southwest Side of the city, so named because it is
near the site of the former Union Stockyards; this area had been made famous in
Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle. In 1940 Alinsky established the
Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), through which he and his staff helped
“organize” communities not only in Chicago but throughout the United States. IAF
remains an active entity to this day. Its national headquarters are located in
Chicago, and it has affiliates in the District of Columbia, twenty-one separate
states, and three foreign countries (Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom).
By the late 1960s, the Black Power movement would drive Alinsky and his
organizing crusades out of the projects in African-American neighborhoods,
leaving him no choice but to shift his focus to white communities. For this
purpose, he established the Citizens Action Program (CAP), in 1970. As Stanley
Kurtz writes in his 2010 book Radical in Chief: "Alinsky was...convinced that
large-scale socialist transformation would require an alliance between the
struggling middle class and the poor. The key to radical social change, Alinsky
thought, was to turn the wrath of America’s middle class against large
corporations."
In the Alinsky model, “organizing” is a euphemism for “revolution” -- a
wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of
power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical
transformation of America’s social and economic structure. The goal is to foment
enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the
social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted -- a revolution whose
foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of
salvation. Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than
that status quo’s complete collapse -- to be followed by the erection of an
entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow
the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and
vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal “changes”
are needed.
As Alinsky put it:
“A reformation means that the masses of our people have reached the point of
disillusionment with past ways and values. They don’t know what will work but
they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and
hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do. The
time is then ripe for revolution.”
“[W]e are concerned,” Alinsky elaborated, “with how to create mass organizations
to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of
equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for
education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those
circumstances in which men have the chance to live by the values that give
meaning to life. We are talking about a mass power organization which will
change the world...This means revolution.”
But Alinsky’s brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping,
overnight transformations of social institutions. As Richard Poe puts it,
“Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to
penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.”
He advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence
within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes
from that platform. This was precisely the tactic of “infiltration” advocated by
Lenin and Stalin. As Communist International General Secretary Georgi Dimitroff
told the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935:
"Comrades, you remember the ancient tale of the capture of Troy. Troy was
inaccessible to the armies attacking her, thanks to her impregnable walls. And
the attacking army, after suffering many sacrifices, was unable to achieve
victory until, with the aid of the famous Trojan horse, it managed to penetrate
to the very heart of the enemy’s camp."
Alinsky’s revolution promised that by changing the structure of society’s
institutions, it would rid the world of such vices as socio-pathology and
criminality. Arguing that these vices were caused not by personal character
flaws but rather by external societal influences, Alinsky's worldview was
thoroughly steeped in the socialist left’s collectivist, class-based doctrine of
economic determinism. “The radical’s affection for people is not lessened,” said
Alinsky, “...when masses of them demonstrate a capacity for brutality,
selfishness, hate, greed, avarice, and disloyalty. It is not the people who must
be judged but the circumstances that made them that way.” Chief among these
circumstances, he said, were “the larcenous pressures of a materialistic
society.”
To counter that materialism, Alinsky favored a socialist alternative. He
characterized his noble radical (read: “revolutionary”) as a social reformer who
“places human rights far above property rights”; who favors “universal, free
public education”; who “insists on full employment for economic security” but
stipulates also that people’s tasks should “be such as to satisfy the creative
desires within all men”; who “will fight conservatives” everywhere; and who
“will fight privilege and power, whether it be inherited or acquired,” and
“whether it be political or financial or organized creed.” Alinsky maintained
that radicals, finding themselves “adrift in the stormy sea of capitalism,”
sought “to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy
of the name of human civilization.” “They hope for a future,” he said, “where
the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a
comparative handful.” In short, they wanted socialism.
In 1946 Alinsky wrote Reveille for Radicals, his first major book about the
principles and tactics of “community organizing,” otherwise known as agitating
for revolution. Twenty-five years later he authored Rules for Radicals, which
expanded upon his earlier work. His writings, and the tactics outlined therein,
have had a profound influence on all “social change” and “social justice”
movements of recent decades.
Alinksy’s objective, which he clearly stated in Rules for Radicals, was to
“present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step
toward a science of revolution.” The Prince, he elaborated, “was written by
Macchiavelli for the Haves on how to hold onto power. Rules for Radicals is
written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
If radicals were to be in the vanguard of the movement to transfer power from
the Haves to the Have-Nots, Alinsky’s first order of business was to define
precisely what a radical was. He approached this task by first distinguishing
between liberals and radicals. Alinsky had no patience for those he called the
liberals of his day -- people who were content to talk about the changes they
wanted, but were unwilling to actively work for those changes. Rather, he
favored “radicals” who were prepared to take bold, decisive action designed to
transform society, even if that transformation could be achieved only slowly and
incrementally. Wrote Alinsky:
"Liberals fear power or its application...They talk glibly of people lifting
themselves by their own bootstraps but fail to realize that nothing can be
lifted except through power...Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action
-- by using power...Liberals protest; radicals rebel. Liberals become indignant;
radicals become fighting mad and go into action. Liberals do not modify their
personal lives[,] and what they give to a cause is a small part of their lives;
radicals give themselves to the cause. Liberals give and take oral arguments;
radicals give and take the hard, dirty, bitter way of life."
If the purpose of radicalism is to bring about social transmutation, the radical
must be prepared to make a persuasive case for why such change is urgently
necessary. Alinsky’s conviction that American society needed a dramatic overhaul
was founded on his belief that the status quo was intolerably miserable for most
people. For one thing, Alinsky saw the United States as a nation rife with
economic injustice. “The people of America live as they can,” he wrote. “Many of
them are pent up in one-room crumbling shacks and a few live in penthouses...The
Haves smell toilet water, the Have-Nots smell just plain toilet.” Lamenting the
“wide disparity of wealth, privilege, and opportunity” he saw in America,
Alinsky impugned the country’s “materialistic values and standards.” “We know
that man must cease worshipping the god of gold and the monster of materialism,”
he said.
Profound economic injustice was by no means America’s only shortcoming, as
Alinsky saw things. Lamenting the nation’s “rather confused and demoralized
ideology,” he further identified “unemployment,” “decay,” “disease,” “crime,”
“distrust,” “bigotry,” “disorganization,” and “demoralization” as inevitable
by-products of life in capitalist America. Such a state of affairs, he said,
made life for a majority of Americans nothing more than an exercise in drudgery.
“At the end of the week,” said Alinsky of the average American, “he comes out of
the hell of monotony with a paycheck and goes home to a second round of
monotony…. Monday morning he is back on the assembly line...That, on the whole,
is his life. A routine in which he rots. The dreariest, drabbest, grayest
outlook that one can have. Simply a future of utter despair.” “People hunger for
drama and adventure, for a breath of life in a dreary, drab existence,” he
expanded.
According to Alinsky, this unhappy existence exerted a profoundly negative
influence on the American character. Alinsky perceived most Americans as people
who were governed by their prejudices, and who thus felt great antipathy toward
a majority of their fellow countrymen -- particularly those of different racial,
ethnic, or religious backgrounds. “[M]ost people,” he said, “like just a few
people, and either do not actively care for or actively dislike most of the
‘other’ people.”
Having painted a verbal portrait of a thoroughly corrupt and melancholy American
society, Alinsky was now prepared to argue that wholesale change of great
magnitude was in order. What was needed, he said, was a revolution in whose
vanguard would be radicals committed to eliminating the “fundamental causes” of
the nation’s problems, and not content to merely deal with those problems’
“current manifestations” or “end products.” The goal of the radical, he
explained, must be to bring about “the destruction of the roots of all fears,
frustrations, and insecurity of man, whether they be material or spiritual”; to
purge the land of “the vast destructive forces which pervade the entire social
scene”; and to eliminate “those destructive forces from which issue wars,”
forces such as “economic injustice, insecurity, unequal opportunities,
prejudice, bigotry, imperialism,...and other nationalistic neuroses.”
The objective of ridding the nation of the aforementioned vices dovetailed
perfectly with Alinsky’s belief that all societal problems were interrelated.
According to Alinsky, if segments of the population were beset by crime,
unemployment, inadequate housing, malnourishment, disease, demoralization,
racism, discrimination, or religious intolerance, it was impossible to address,
to any great effect, any particular one of those concerns in isolation. They
“are simply parts of the whole picture,” he said. “They are not separate
problems.”
“[A]ll problems are related and they are all the progeny of certain fundamental
causes,” Alinsky elaborated. “Many apparently local problems are in reality
malignant microcosms of vast conflicts, pressures, stresses, and strains of the
entire social order.” Thus “ultimate success in conquering these evils can be
achieved only by victory over all evils.” In other words, what was needed was a
revolution, led by radicals, to literally turn society upside-down and
inside-out.
Alinsky then proceeded to lay out the method by which radicals could achieve
this goal by forming a host of “People’s Organizations” -- each with its own
distinct name and mission, and each of which “thinks and acts in terms of social
surgery and not cosmetic cover-ups.”
These People’s Organizations were to be composed largely of discontented
individuals who believed that society was replete with injustices that prevented
them from being able to live satisfying lives. Such organizations, Alinsky
advised, ought not be imported from the outside into a community, but rather
should be staffed by locals who, with some guidance from trained radical
organizers, could set their own agendas.
The installment of local leaders as the top-level officers of People’s
Organizations helped give the organizations credibility and authenticity in the
eyes of the community. This tactic closely paralleled the longtime Communist
Party strategy of creating front organizations that ostensibly were led by
non-communist fellow-travelers, but which were in fact controlled by Party
members behind the scenes. As J. Edgar Hoover explained in his 1958 book Masters
of Deceit: “To make a known Party member president of a front would immediately
label it as ‘communist.’ But if a sympathizer can be installed, especially a man
of prominence, such as an educator, minister, or scientist, the group can
operate as an ‘independent’ organization.”
Continue reading this profiler at
DiscoverTheNetworks.org
The Progressivism Series, published at DiscoverTheNetworks.org, is a precious
resource in understanding the threat of Progressivise Movement; the American
Fifth Column, to the uniquely American way of life. We at BasicsProject.org,
beseech you to educate yourself -- and those around you: family members,
collegues and friends -- to the truth about this disingenuous and dangerous
movement.
In this series you will find links to articles, essays, books and videos that
explore such topics as:
▪ The roots and early
crusades of progressivism, particularly its steady push for the expansion of
government's role in both public and private affairs;
▪ How progressivism's inherent drive toward political activism and regulation
found expression in the
advocacy of eugenics;
▪ How the religious Left, by way of the
Social Gospel Movement, helped to spread progressivism's influence;
▪ The progressive policies enacted by
President Woodrow Wilson's administration;
▪ Why progressives embraced the objectives of
Russia's Bolshevik revolution;
▪ Why progressives looked favorably on the policies and ideals of
Italian and German fascism in the 1920s and 1930s;
▪ How the Progressive Era set the stage for
FDR's New Deal in the 1930s; and
▪ Progressivism's
continuing agendas and its modern-day standard-bearers.
DiscoverTheNetworks.org: A Guide to the Political Left
is a publication affiliated with the
David Horowitz Freedom Center,
which is dedicated to the defense of free societies whose moral, cultural and
economic foundations are under attack by enemies both secular and religious, at
home and abroad. The David Horowitz Freedom Center combats the efforts of the
radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this
country as it attempts to defend itself in a time of terror. The leftist
offensive is most obvious on our nation’s campuses, where the Freedom Center
protects students from indoctrination and political harassment. Combining
forceful analysis and bold activism, the Freedom Center provides strong insight
into today’s most pressing issue on its family of websites and in the activist
campaigns it wages on campus, in the news media, and in national politics
throughout the year.
|
