The Work Begins
Hello, Angry Black Book Chatters! After last week’s stimulating conversation around the Prologue to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, it’s clear there’s a real hunger to dig into the text.
Without further ado, here’s an overview of the first chapter, The Purpose.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
Dogma and Ideology, Evolution and Revolution
The part of Rules for Radicals that the Alinsky-as-boogeyman contingent always ignores is his up-front rejection of dogmas. He does a brilliant job of articulating why communism has succeeded as an organizing principle while ultimately failing the people on whose behalf it claims to work. And particularly in the context of a relatively free and open democratic society, why there is simply no appetite for what most people think of when they think of “revolution”.
The significant changes in history have been made by revolutions. There are people who say that it is not revolution, but evolution, that brings about change — but evolution is simply the term used by nonparticipants to denote a particular sequence of revolutions as they synthesized into a specific major social change.
Thus we look back at our own American Revolution and celebrate their insurrection and waging of guerrilla warfare against an imperialist occupying army, even as we recoil in horror when comparable revolutions play out elsewhere in our time.
As The Beatles so succinctly summarized Alinsky’s outlook:
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
What Alinsky argues for instead is an ideology of Change, a pragmatic, reality-based principle of organizing people to achieve change firmly rooted in the world-historical moment in which they reside. Of this realistic radical organizer, he writes:
In the end he has one conviction, a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions. The alternative to this would be rule by the elite, either a dictatorship or some form of a political aristocracy.
Again, he reiterates the call in the Prologue to engage with the world as it is, and the rules by which it operates, in order to achieve revolutions that feel to the general public like natural evolutions.
Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.
The Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores
Instead of rigid dogmatic classes, Alinsky puts forth a vocabulary more in keeping with the experience of American life. He sees us as a nation of Haves, Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. Most Americans fall into the final category, aspire to join the first, and dread becoming one of the second so much that they strive to separate from the less-fortunate and find rationalizations for why “those people” are Have-Nots.
Those of us who wish to bring about change in the US need to find ways to sell its benefits to the vast middle, to persuade them that the change we seek is not revolutionary, but evolutionary — that it is simply a logical next step that builds on values we already share and principles around which we can all rally.
Alinsky makes the case that his vision for how to understand organizing for change works in all cultures at all times, and in 1971, he shared this tantalizing, but then almost unimaginable vision.
If it were possible for the Have-Nots of the world to recognize and accept the idea that revolution did not inevitably mean hate and war, cold or hot, from the United States, that alone would be a great revolution in world politics and the future of man. This is a major reason for my attempt to provide a revolutionary handbook not cast in a communist or capitalist mold, but as a manual for the Have-Nots of the world regardless of the color of their skins or their politics.
When you look at how US foreign policy has changed in the Obama Era, you realize how truly revolutionary it is. At the time Alinsky was writing and for decades thereafter, the US was busily propping up dictators and providing material aid and comfort to those who were brutally repressing their own people. But Obama’s first international speech as President was to a group of college students in Egypt, where he sent signals that the US would support democratic uprisings against coercive authority. And when they did rise up across the Arab world, the US stood with them to remarkable effect.
And while I am writing this post, the US is taking the lead at the UN against the regime in Syria, while the former Soviet Union and still-Communist China are defending it. I think Alinsky would approve.
There Is Only the Struggle
Alinsky has some bad news for anyone who thinks that there’s a finish line in the struggle for justice. This is a lesson that liberals never seem to learn. We think that getting a piece of legislation passed over the obstructionism of the Right, or a favorable Supreme Court ruling, means that the battle is over and we can move on to other priorities.
For every revolution there is a counter-revolution. The forces we defeat today do not go away; instead their resolve is strengthened to undo whatever it is that we have accomplished. Republicans understand this. For decades, they have organized against Roe v. Wade to great effect and have mounted challenges, nibbled around its edges, and pushed legislation designed to spur litigation that has the potential to overturn it.
The moment more-universal health care, a central plank of the Democratic platform for decades, was achieved via the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans declared themselves its sworn enemy, and have challenged it legislatively, by executive order of state governors, and in the courts.
This always seems to catch us by surprise, even though the reverse is equally true for us. It was the defeat of the Clintons’ campaign for healthcare reform that intensified our organizing and activism to bring it about this time. But anticipating the counter-revolution allows us to minimize its effectiveness, and reduce the degree to which we step back after each forward move.
The pursuit of happiness is neverending; happiness lies in the pursuit.
The Low Road to Morality
Alinsky ultimately argues in this chapter that appeals to “the better angels of our nature” will always fall short. Paradoxically, what is needed instead to precipitate real change is to help the Have-a-Little, Want Mores understand how it is in their own selfish interest to support increasing justice and and equality for the Have-Nots.
A major revolution to be won in the immediate future is the dissipation of man’s illusion that his own welfare can be separate from that of all others. As long as man is shackled to this myth, so long will the human spirit languish. Concern for our private, material well-being with disregard for the well-being of others is immoral according to the precepts of our Judaeo-Christian civilization, but worse, it is stupidity worthy of the lower animals. It is man’s foot still dragging in the primeval slime of his beginnings, in ignorance and mere animal cunning. But those who know the interdependence of man to be his major strength in the struggle out of the muck have not been wise in their exhortations and moral pronouncements that man is his brother’s keeper. On that score the record of the past centuries has been a disaster, for it was wrong to assume that man would pursue morality on a level higher than his day-to-day living demanded; it was a disservice to the future to separate morality from man’s daily desires and elevate it to a plane of altruism and self-sacrifice. 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. To eat and sleep in safety man must do the right thing, if for seemingly the wrong reasons, and be in practice his brother’s keeper.
I believe that man is about to learn that the most practical life is the moral life and that the moral life is the only road to survival. He is beginning to learn that he will either share part of his material wealth or lose all of it; that he will respect and learn to live with other political ideologies if he wants civilization to go on. This is the kind of argument that man’s actual experience equips him to understand and accept. This is the low road to morality. There is no other.
Discussion
In light of Alinsky’s perspective, how would you persuade a person with employer-provided health insurance to support the Affordable Care Act and the individual mandate?
What does being a Progressive mean to you? How can Organizers and Activists both call themselves Progressives and yet have such different ways of operating in the world?
Prior Posts
- Rules for Radicals, the Prologue — Angry Black Book Chat
- Who’s Afraid of Saul Alinsky? The Man, His Work, and His Influence
One of the things that struck me about this chapter is how the right has actually used these principles to move their agenda. Particularly in convincing the middle that it is in their best interests to keep the status quo, despite the fact that it truly does not benefit them.
This is, truly, the essence of the Tea Party movement. They stoked the “embers”, as Alinsky calls them, getting folks riled up about something they perceive to be an injustice. All the while, the powers that be are working to ensure that no change actually happens. Which works for the right.
Where I think the OWS folks have fallen short is that they have tried to stoke the flames, but haven’t presented the means to rise up out of the ashes. The embers sit, burn a bit, but no flames. then, they wrongly think that violence or vandalism is a proper expression. As Alinsky points out in the Chicago example, a good way to take advantage of the situation would have been to say “We don’t approve or condone the vulgarity. We are not leaving.” This lesson seems to have been lost on many of the OWS folks, who seem content to say “F You”.
When the Oakland contingent started trashing public buildings, it was over. No respect for our shared civic property means no respect for you.
What amazed me was the fact that those doing the trashing have no real concept that they are hurting their cause. They look at those who don’t condone the vandalism as lazy, scared, or part of the problem. They don’t get the idea that for a movement to develop power, it must have the support of those not just withing, but without. The average American, who generally is supportive of the “99%” concept will not be inclined to join ranks with those who have decided lawlessness and willful destruction are the means to an end. It is one thing to be civilly disobedient. It is quite another to be a vandal. The latter will receive no support.
I missed book club again.
I think if you talk to people you’ll find out that many people with employer-provided health insurance move in and out of that sphere.
In other words, they have periods where they’re covered and then periods where they’re not. This is true of me. I had insurance and then didn’t, and then purchased insurance and now have insurance only through my husband.
So I’ve been approaching the issue as one of security: the AC is a guarantee of coverage for everyone.
On the book, I loved where Alinsky wrote that you have to decide whether you want to be a Bishop or a priest, ie, do you want to move “up” in the world and accept the constraints that come with that ?
I just loved that question.
I think the priest/bishop analogy also is meant to make you think – Where can I do the most good? How can I do the most good? Once you achieve a level of “authority”, you have more power but more constraint. Can you achieve more? Maybe, maybe not.
The key is showing the person WITH healthcare how he benefits when others get it too.
You don’t talk to him about how healthcare is a human right and everyone is entitled to it. He hears instead that he’s going to be asked to share a scarce resource with a bunch of strangers who will be getting something for nothing.
You talk to him about how he already pays for healthcare for the uninsured. Those costs are passed on to his employer and him through higher insurance premiums, deductibles and copays. Tell him that he probably only pays about 20% of his insurance cost and his employer pays 80% of premiums which rise every year, money which could be going instead to giving him a wage increase.
Requiring everyone to carry health insurance prevents free riders from taking advantage of the system without paying their fair share of its cost. Address his self-interest in keeping the cost of his own health care under control by making others pay their share, and you turn the individual mandate back into the conservative idea it originally was.
Excellent points. It’s quiet tonight after all the action we had last week. I sent links out to this series everywhere I went this week. Maybe people are busy reading the book & will stop by later tomorrow.
I am really enjoying this and as I am reading I am coming to so much better understanding of just how our President functions. It has really begun to amuse me how deluded those people were back in 2008 who called PBO “only a community organizer.” I instinctively knew that being a “community organizer” was actually a very good thing but really have just begun to appreciate how powerful that actually is.
Thanks, I really appreciate your participation and support. The NV Caucus tonight and the Super Bowl tomorrow are getting more people’s attention, I’m sure.
Just a tiny bit of snark and then I am going to bed, maybe you should have mentioned the Catholic Church in your diary some way. I will check back here tomorrow. Buenas Noches!
Or Ron Paul.
There has always been this undercurrent of POTUS playing “eleventh-dimensional chess”. But I think, in a way, it is much simpler than that. It is simply understanding what it is that people want, delivering it to them, and letting them decide. For example, healthcare made sense, especially in retrospect. If he had waited to make that move until later in his term, it would have had no chance of passing. But more importantly, as people start to see the fruit of that effort, they will be much more hesitant to put someone is who has made it their mission to abolish those changes.
They see it as being in their benefit to have the policies continue – and the longer they are receiving those benefits, the more they will see that they will lose them if the folks on the right get their way.
I can’t think of another piece of legislation that could have had as significant an impact on the vast majority of Americans. He made the case that it was in their benefit, pushed to make it happen, and they are now more willing to support it.
Another fantastic entry Allan. My head is spinning with thoughts!
That section on “the low road to morality” is especially powerful to me. It helps me better understand why folks like Alinsky and Giordano talk about getting rid of the “do-gooders.”
Leo, I agree with you, but the priest/ Bishop thing also comes up in organizing, because you’re not really LEADING, ideally, you’re following.
The impulse is to control, I think, and it’s hard to resist :)
I also love how he talks about creating something rather than slicing off portions of an existing group or movement.
Unions call that “slice and dice” because the organizer isn’t creating anything: he or she is just taking a piece of what someone else created.
It’s destructive, slice and dice, not creative.
One point that is not often mentioned is adequate health care leads to a healthier work force with less down time. When people can afford to see to an illness or injury in the early stages, they are less likely to end up at ER or urgent care and be out for days.
The health insurance mandate gets some people crazy. I have reminded people that when car insurance wasn’t state mandated, lots of people drove without it which meant higher premiums for those who did have insurance and lots of misery for anyone who was in an accident with an uninsured person. When states mandated insurance the insurance pool increased and everyone’s rates went down.
I think both these ideas speak to people’s self interest. I think someone already mentioned that when the uninsured land in an ER we all pay in higher medical costs and through our taxes.
I don’t think it’s selfish that folks try to protect their own. It’s a natural instinct of self and family preservation. Hoarding, however, is a sickness & unfortunately we have way too many of those at the top of our food chain right now.
In think Allan’s point on this is very good. The issue with calling it a mandate is that it implies force, a lack of choice on the part of that individual. But people are more than willing to “force” someone else to do something if it is in their interest. If they see that everyone must pay into the pool because there are those that currently don’t, they begin to see it in the light of “fairness”. “If I have to pay, they should too!”
Is this the altruistic, selfless way we would like to see things happen? No. But as Alinsky pointed out in this chapter, that’s just a fantasy, perhaps a goal. But we must operate in a reality where there are far too many who cannot, either by choice or circumstance, see beyond their own needs/desires. Those people must be presented with alternate reasons why they would benefit.
I have already had the Affordable Care Act discussion with my mother. She was certain that her MediCare was going to be cut and her taxes would be raised to give “welfare people” free insurance. My nephew who lives with her was listening when I told her to stop watching faux news.
I found the Massachusetts health care site interesting. There’s not enough detail to get actual premium estimates, but the penalty for remaining uninsured is 1/2 of the cheapest HMO policy. I may visit the site again to get an idea of premium examples. http://www.massresources.org/health-reform.html#howmuchpenalty
Linda, the Repugnants have done their best to terrify Elders who often feel most vulnerable and many were very upset at not getting their cost of living adjustment last year. I’m glad you were able to give your Mother better info. Medicare has actually been improved and premiums have decreased for the Advantage Plan. Also, nearly every Elder I have talked to, including us, has reported that their out of pocket prescription costs have been reduced.
This is the kind of information that needs to get out. That the benefits have increased, not decreased, that costs have dropped, not risen. That it is for the good of all that these reforms have been put into place, and that repealing them will increase their costs and decrease their benefits. Another appeal to self-interest.
I wonder if there also isn’t a way to talk about ACA as a jobs bill — the more people are able to access basic healthcare outside of the ER, the more the healthcare sector of the economy will grow and add jobs — not just nurses and doctors but clerical and other support staff. I thought Deaniac at Peoples View had some analysis of this not long ago but I can’t find it. At any rate, the notion that the ACA is a “jobs killer” can be refuted at a number of levels.
Excellent point! Someone at TOD had a link and some info about jobs training programs for adjunct medical staff with a projection for the number of people needed to fill them. She’s been accepted into a program that will retrain her in computer skills for medical record keeping which will also involve job placement. This is part of ACA.
I will try to find her comment & the link if I can.
Wow! Two birds, one stone. The left is totally winning the image war, one day at a time. And creating jobs! Boom!
From the perspective offered in Chapter One, I would probably focus on the aspect of the “continuing struggle” with regard to the ACA. The preexisting conditions reform is a specific benefit I would point out, but there is more work to be done to improve on the ACA. Both Social Security and Medicare were far from “completed” in their first legislated forms and they need even further reform to this day. Quite often I hear “keep your hands off the Big Three” from a particular pundit who’s heart is bigger than his brain, Ed Schultz. That attitude plays right into the Republican narrative that our safety net is “as good as it gets”. It’s not. It needs to be visited again and again in order to preserve and expand upon the current benefits, improve the methods of funding and further refine the systems of implementation.
With regard to the specifics of employer-provided health care, the current trend is for employers to drop health care or pay a very minimal portion of the premiums. To be honest, I can’t understand how the Republicans get away with arguing that the employer-based system is at all desirable.
I’ll give you an example of why we need some form of mandated health care. My brother-in-law will turn 65 at the end of this year and his boss said that BIL will then be able to get Medicare so he wants him off the company group policy if he continues to work there. Problem is that would leave my Sis and niece who is still in college with no health insurance unless they could get affordable insurance elsewhere.
I told my BIL that I didn’t think his boss could do this and that he should definitely look into it. BIL wants to keep working until the niece graduates from college.
Allan, you really nailed your own question on how to explain the benefits of ACA to people who already own health insurance. I had a long talk on skype last night with a conservative friend of mine, and our own healthcare costs came up, leading us to have a really engaging discussion on the difference Obama HAS made with healthcare reform. After discussing the merits of the ACA (everyone buys in helping to share accountability, coverage for pre-existing conditions, etc.) he wasn’t against the existence of the bill itself, but the idea that it was “forced through” and that fines will be applied for noncompliance.
It was really nice to hear him agree with many of the policies in the bill itself, only disagreeing with aspects of implementation, and paying for it. Common ground has to start somewhere. I brought up Alinsky’s comment about the cycle of revolution and how it is a constant uphill battle as contrasting philosophies take and hold control in Washington. He conceded that conservatives were using a unrealistic image, internally and externally, and they were losing traction because of consistent politically foolish choices. As Alinsky would say, “political life must be taken as you find it” but the Republican establishment is living a lie. Democrats were able to make reform happen, and a continued effort must be made to refine and perfect the new system, rather than get rid of it.
We discussed current legislation threatening unions, and I brought up the fact that unions were the biggest contributors to Democratic campaigns, especially in the states. I believe it is a well concerted effort, by groups like ALEC and other think tanks, trying to disarm the Democratic party by making unions themselves illegal. He had never even heard that. I brought up gov. walker and his strategies, and how similar every state’s anti union effort was, yet their budgets and state demographics were completely different.
The public is realizing that rhetoric is a weakness, and helping others realize it too will cut through so much disinformation floating around. We should be advocating that planning and organization is the most effective way to bring about change, and the only way to make a real impact, as well as voting (or having a ton of money and donating to a campaign or pac).
The most compelling thing I have read from Alinsky are these quotes:
“revolution and communism have become one. These pages are committed to splitting this political atom, separating this exclusive identification of communism with revolution.”
“This grasp of the duality of all phenomena is vital in our understanding of politics. It frees one from the myth that one approach is positive and another negative.”
I really feel like these two quotes will always be with me. As a kid, revolution was still a very communist idea, and it has always troubled me, because communist revolutions are so violent, and ultimately on the wrong side of history. I feel like I can take ownership of the word, without a picture of mao or guevara on my wall, or devoting my life to anti consumer protest in the park.
It is refreshing to know that our president is a fan of Alinsky.
Excellent comment Brian and what you are doing in one to one conversations is very important. Your friend will remember what you said and he will share this information with others.
One thing I think that people forget is that communism or Marxism didn’t become such a terrible thing in the US until after WWII and the Cold War with Russia and China. Korea & the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950′s fueled the fires of fear. Most people got their information filtered through a lens of paranoia.
Here’s link to One of Deaniac’s diaries at TPV on benefits to Medicare from ACA you can share with folks who may not know.
.thepeoplesview.net/2011/06/health-reform-in-action-55-million-on.html
Dianiac has written some great diaries on ACA and is well worth checking his archives to get his well researched info.
Well, that didn’t work very well and it is Deaniac not “Dianiac” He has written some excellent diaries on ACA with lots of really practical info you can share with others.
Thank You!
Allan, adios mi hijo until next week! I did my best for you here but many may be still watching Super Bowl or posting on that “Catholic” thread or maybe “Ron Paul” thread. Haste la Vista, Baby!
Another pointless and dull post from a reflexive unthinking small mind. I’m not referring to Alinsky. I’m referring to you. The book is what? 40 years old? And losers are still trying to make it happen. Update the book, talk about new methods. You missed the 60s and now you’re missing the tens. Pathetic, small minds.