Welcome back, Angry Black Book Chatters!
I hope you enjoyed having last weekend off as much as I did. And a special shout-out to the members of #TFY who met up last Saturday night for churrascaria in Long Beach, where we completed our plans for world domination while eating endless supplies of grilled meats.
Full of meat, plans for world domination complete, #TFY basks in the afterglow. (From L to R) @dvnix, @angryblacklady, @tanjint, @trixied13and @thescottfinley
But the work waits, and it’s time to continue our radicalization with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. You know the drill: a chapter a week, I post a summary, you weigh in with comments about what you took away from the chapter, or how it applies to current events.
We started with the Prologue, then Chapter One: The Purpose and Chapter Two: Of Means and Ends. All caught up? Great. Radicals, activate!
Chapter Three: A Word About Words
THE PASSIONS OF MANKIND have boiled over into all areas of political life, including its vocabulary. The words most common in politics have become stained with human hurts, hopes, and frustrations. All of them are loaded with popular opprobrium, and their use results in a conditioned, negative, emotional response. Even the word politics itself, which Webster says is “the science and art of government,” is generally viewed in a context of corruption. Ironically, the dictionary synonyms are “discreet; provident, diplomatic, wise.”
The same discolorations attach to other words prevalent in the language of politics, words like power, self-interest, compromise, and conflict. They become twisted and warped, viewed as evil. Nowhere is the prevailing political illiteracy more clearly revealed than in these typical interpretations of words. This is why we pause here for a word about words.
In this chapter, Saul Alinsky takes a few moments to clean the detritus from some of the most important words for political organizers, so that we readers understand what he means, and does not mean, when he uses them.
POWER
Let us look at the word power. Power, meaning “ability, whether physical, mental, or moral, to act,” has become an evil word, with overtones and undertones that suggest the sinister, the unhealthy, the Machiavellian.
The ability to act. How simple, really. How profound. Why, that sounds like something that even I might have! And you! And you, and you! Power isn’t just some evil coercive force that governments use against defenseless victims — it’s what we all do every time we act.
Power must be understood for what it is, for the part it plays in every area of our life, if we are to understand it and thereby grasp the essentials of relationships and functions between groups and organizations, particularly in a pluralistic society. 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
In all the reasoning found in The Federalist Papers, no point is so central and agreed upon as “Rich and poor alike are prone to act upon impulse rather than pure reason and to narrow conceptions of self-interest…” To question the force of self-interest that pervades all areas of political life is to refuse to see man as he is, to see him only as we would like him to be.
Of all the questions an organizer must be prepared to answer when encouraging another person to get involved, to take up a cause, to make a phone call or knock on a door, there is really one question – “What’s in it for me?”
If your answer sounds something like, “What’s happening is wrong and immoral and needs to be stopped!” — you’re an activist, not an organizer.
COMPROMISE
I’m just going to give you Alinsky verbatim for this brief section.
Compromise is another word that carries shades of weakness, vacillation, betrayal of ideals, surrender of moral principles. In the old culture, when virginity was a virtue, one referred to a woman’s being “compromised.” The word is generally regarded as ethically unsavory and ugly.
But to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation. It is making the deal, getting that vital breather, usually the victory. If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise for 30 per cent, you’re 30 per cent ahead.
A free and open society is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises — which then become the start for the continuation of conflict, compromise, and on ad infinitum. Control of power is based on compromise in our Congress and among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
A society devoid of compromise is totalitarian. If I had to define a free and open society in one word, the word would be “compromise.”
EGO
Alinsky notes that we have muddled together the concepts of ego and egotism in our language. It requires self-confidence to act. One must believe that one has the capacity to make change before one can begin.
The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The leader is driven by the desire for power, while the organizer is driven by the desire to create. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach”to create, to be a “great creator,” to play God.
CONFLICT
We’re constantly taught that conflict is something to be avoided if at all possible, and when it erupts, it is a negative thing that must be “resolved”. Bullies know this and take advantage of it. If you speak up when a bully treads upon your toes, he pretends that it is you who has breached a social norm by complaining about it.
Alinsky points to the use of organized religion as a way to inculcate obedience to authority, and our mass culture’s obsession with selling us products to make sure that our bodily functions and odors don’t offend.
Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance.
Thus concludes Chapter Three: A Word About Words. Oh, and because you’ve been extra good book chatters, here’s a bonus shot of our own Imani ABL and @thescottfinley glamorizing The Abbey with their presence.
Imani ABL and @thescottfinley
DISCUSSION:
Alinsky notes, “Pascal, who was definitely not a cynic, observed that: ‘Justice without power is impotent; power without justice is tyranny.’” Libertarians criticize governments for their exercise of power by pointing to injustices that occur. But is their real agenda to deprive governments of any power at all?
Compromise. Obama. Organizer. Discuss.
Have you been made to be the bad guy because you’re not going with the program? Being disruptive? Sowing conflict? Then come sit next to me! Tell us about your experience raising hell.
I only have a very small contribution this week. I have been a member of the Unitarian Universalist church for lots of years. One of my first introductions was a group for women called “Cakes For The Queen of Heaven” I still have the book.
One of the first things we examined was “power” which most of us took to mean control over others until we learned that the word “power” actually came from the Latin word “poudre” (not sure if I got that right) which actually meant: “To be ABLE”
I never forgot that lesson. From that time on “power” for me meant being able to speak my truth, live my life & do my best to make that place wherever I stand better.
I have POWER because I am ready, willing and ABLE to always do my share.
Yes you do, and it looks stunning on you! Thanks for participating.
Compromise is a powerful tool. My ex-husband was a building contractor. He had to schedule all the subcontractors so they would be finished in time for inspections, etc. He always scheduled them a few days before he absolutely had to have them so if they came to him and said they were held up on another job, he could “do them a favor” and give them more time. Then when he needed a rush job they would always accommodate him because he had accommodated them. His jobs always got done on schedule.
P.S. Shout out to @aquagranny911 from a lifelong Unitarian.
Your ex’s example also brings up another point about compromise.
When you’re working within a closed system, the need to compromise nears infinity. I negotiated complex contracts on behalf of a Fortune 20 telecom company with vendors who were often themselves major customers.
Anyone who yells at the President because he doesn’t “play hardball” with a recalcitrant Senator on issue A is choosing to ignore the fact that Obama will need that Senator’s vote next month on issue B.
When did “compromise” become such a dirty word? Even children understand this. I’m a simple person with 12 grandchildren that I often baby sit (not all at once!) & I see the Kiddos negotiate among them so that things can be “fair”
Yes, you might say that they know I am watching. They know I will bring down Granny wrath if they get too evil on each other but I think that there is a certain level of innate fairness. Kiddos know that the game will stop being fun if everyone doesn’t get a turn.
More and more I think acceptance of compromise and acceptance of conflict are connected.
If one can’t or won’t accept the reality of conflict, then one also can’t or won’t accept the reality or need for compromise.
In Alinsky’s words, if one is willing to accept that the “harmony of dissonance” is constant and inevitable and unending, then it follows that a compromise where one receives 30% is a net gain.
Once you fully accept that there will always be conflict, that it isn’t terrifying or the end of the world, you can move to compromise.
More and more I think it isn’t fear of compromise that makes people take a hard line and see every 30% gain as a huge loss, but instead fear of conflict and an inability to admit that conflict is real, it’s strong, and it isn’t going away.
There is a quote from the filmmaker Errol Morris that popped into my head when I read this post. (I think it goes back to when he did “The Thin Blue Line,” about a man in Texas who had been framed and sent to death row for killing a policeman).
“When people become interested in meting out vengeance, they become less interested in adjudicating justice.”
And that to me seems increasingly true, no matter where one stands on the political spectrum. I lose patience with lefties who thought holding war-crimes trials for the Bush administration and perp-walking all the “banksters” should have been the top priorities for the Obama administration. Even if such things had been possible (no president has ever prosecuted a past administration for what they’ve done in the name of national security, and the process of untangling what was CRIMINAL vs. what was IMMORAL action by bankers after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, et all remains complicated) — how would that have helped save anyone’s job or provided healthcare?
And of course, those who pushed the weak-tea “public option” couldn’t really tell me exactly what it covered, but they insisted on its “symbolic” importance as a shiv in the ribs to the Big Bad Insurance Companies. They LOVED when John Edwards talked about how he would bodily toss insurance execs from healthcare-reform meetings. (As if, in reality, one can “reform” a multi-billion-dollar industry overnight without any input from the people who run it — and as if plenty of regular working folks don’t get their paychecks as customer service reps, etc. at the Blues and the Aetnas of the world.)
Nope — their biggest priority was that the president act as the Great Avenger and win them those feel-good RIGHTEOUSGASMS OF JUSTICE!!! they had been denied for so long.
And the most maddening part is that ANYONE who read Obama’s books or listened to his speeches and still thought they were getting a big liberal avenger, rather than someone who wanted to reform from within and move forward policy that would, by and large, benefit most Americans? That person is kind of an idiot. Or at least being deliberately blind.
Always, I find myself wondering how these “NO COMPROMISE! NO SURRENDER!” people manage to get through their own workdays and personal relationships. I can only assume that many of them live off the largesse of others (trustafarians, et al) or that they bounce from job to job and relationship to relationship, always screaming that they have been grievously WRONGED!
Our pal Smartypants has done a great deal of writing about the concept of restorative justice as the alternative to retributive justice.
The mortgage settlement is a great example of an outcome that is meant to be more restorative than retributive. Which is emotionally unsatisfying for the “jail the banksters” crowd, but immensely relieving for, you know, the actual homeowners who have been harmed.