BOOK REPORT: RULES FOR RADICALS, A PRACTICAL PRIMER FOR REALISTIC RADICALS by Saul Alinsky
If you want to know what is happening in America today, you need to read the playbook. It was discussed in the August 2019 Warning Bells article.
Saul David Alinsky was an activist and a political theorist. His biography is on Wikipedia under Saul Alinsky.
This book was published in 1971 by Saul Alinsky. He died in 1972 at the age of 63.
The theme of the book, Alinsky says, is this: “there are certain central concepts of action in human politics that operate regardless of the scene or the time.” Explaining these concepts is what the book is about.
As an overview, Alinsky says that communication must be accomplished by working within the system. “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.” Radicals must engage the system where it is, not from where they wish it was. It is a long game. He calls it “radical pragmatism.” “A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives—agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.” “Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move. From there it’s a short and natural step to political pollution, to Pentagon pollution.”
Mankind, Alinsky says, has three parts. There are the Haves, the Have-Nots, and Have-a-Little Want Mores. The Haves, wrapped up in protecting their possessions, ask “when do we sleep?” The Have-Nots cry “when do we eat.” The Have-a-Little Want Mores are split personalities seeking the safe way, little risk to what they have with some desire for change so they can get more. They are America’s middle class and out of them will come the leaders for change but also the Do-Nothings, Alinsky claims.
Morality is practical, he says. “The fact is that it is not man’s “better nature” but his self-interest that demands that he be his brother’s keeper. We now live in a world where no man can have a loaf of bread while his neighbor has none. If he does not share his bread, he dare not sleep, for his neighbor will kill him.”
As for the concept that the ends do not justify the means, Alinsky says “The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.” He states eleven rules of ethics summed up by the tenth which is “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” The real question is do the particular ends justify the particular means, in his view.
The goal is always to gain power. Power and organization are one and the same, he says. An organizer breeds conflict and provides organization as the solution to the conflict. Apathy is overcome by fanning conflict.
There are tactics to be used for how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves. “For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.” Alinsky provides rules for power tactics:
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 of the experience of the enemy.”
4. “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” You can kill them with this, Alinsky says, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule and it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage, Alinsky says.
6. “A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.”
7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time. You must constantly bring “new issues so that by the time the enthusiasm and the emotions for one issue have started to de-escalate, a new issue has come into the scene with a consequent revival.”
8. “Keep the pressure on.” Utilize different tactics and different actions and utilize all events of the period for the purpose of advancing the aims of the organization.
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 upon the opposition.” Alinsky say, it is unceasing pressure that produces results in the reactions from the opposition. This is essential for the success of the campaign. The action produces reaction which produces reaction, ad infinitum. Constant pressure will sustain this action/reaction chain.
11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” Think of Gandhi’s tactic of passive resistance resulting in the over reaction of violence against his followers by the British. Alinsky says “In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.”
12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Do not be trapped by the enemy in a sudden agreement with your demand, he says.
13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Tactics must have a target. In an urban society, shifting responsibility for conditions make a target illusive. A target is always trying to shift responsibility to escape being a target, he says. If responsibility is diffused, attack becomes impossible. “The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract…” A person representing the enemy organization must be presented as the face of the enemy, the organization itself is too abstract. The person selected as the face of the enemy must be presented as 100% evil. Focus on a person brings polarization. “The real action is in the enemy’s reaction.” And “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.” Finally, “Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action.”
The book goes into detail on how these tactics are used to unsettle the Haves such as flooding an establishment concert hall with persons who had been provided beans with the idea of farting all through the concert. Deliberately occupying bathrooms at airports so landing passengers had no way of going to the bathroom. Flooding department stores with thousands of fake customers who would order things to be delivered which will be refused when they arrived. Sending thousands of people into banks to open accounts with $5 deposits and then cancelling them a week later. And threatening such actions, because the threat is often worse than the action.
As success in organizing the Have-Nots is accomplished, Alinsky recommends noticing that the Haves, because of their propensity to get power and profit, must be in conflict with each other. They may unite when threatened by the Have-Nots to keep their property and power, but they must also fight each other for ever greater shares of riches and power. “…I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.” Alinsky states. Once the internal battle for power among the status quo is realized, tactics to exploit that can be formed. “For example, since the Haves publicly pose as the custodians of responsibility, morality, law, and justice (which are frequently strangers to each other), they can be constantly pushed to live up to their own book of morality and regulations. No organization, including organized religion, can live up to the letter of its own book. You can club them to death with their “book” of rules and regulations.”
Alinsky sees the next step is to radicalize the middle class. “The middle classes are numb, bewildered, scared into silence. 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.” “To a great extent the middle class of today feels more defeated and lost than do our poor.” They are ripe for organization.
Alinsky, Saul. Rules for Radicals (p. 152). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Copyright 1971. Available on Amazon.
