Rules for Radicals
A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
by Saul Alinsky


(Click for Amazon book review)

OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW:

Alinsky's book is "Machiavelli for the people." Instead of being a guidebook for The Prince in power, as with Machiavelli. Alinsky's book is a guidebook for the powerless. Whereas for a prince, Machiavelli advocated that he should deceive the people he rules—say, as regards his religious piety--Alinsky advocates that the people under rule actively deceive the government and its enforcers, the police.

Specifically, Alinsky's book provides methods where the disenfranchised can use the loopholes and inconsistencies in the dominant power structure against, say, the police, and ultimately on a grander scale, resulting in actual outrage among the majority of the populace that will generate true change. True change for Alinsky means a redistribution of wealth.

Though Alinsky is a "power relativist" ethically (those in power decide matters of justice and economics) and a socialist politically, he does not claim that the ends justify the means. What he does argue for is that the powerless radicals should avoid getting arrested and use every legal means to engage protest situations or happenings. The hope is that these legal acts of rebellion will gain widespread media attention which will reveal the injustice of the operations of those in power.

Ultimately, Alinsky's book provides concrete methods to follow for legal rebellion and thus is not mere rhetoric.

-- William P. Cooke, for OnTheIssues.org, May 17, 2016

Also see:
• Reveille for Radicals (1946 & 1969)
• Rules for Conservatives A Response to Rules for Radicals, 2012

  OnTheIssues.org excerpts:  (click on issues for details)

  Abortion     Birth control and abortion are personal rights.

  Civil Rights     ˙Organize Indians regardless of tribe, with white allies.

  Corporations     Denounce exploiting employers; we're on the people's side.

  Crime     Jailing organizer leaders strengthens us with martyrdom.

  Education     Organize people so they have power to improve schools.

  Environment     To pressure polluters, pressure the banks that fund them.

  Government Reform     Organizers must achieve change; otherwise, who needs them?     Have's vs Have-Nots: they have money; we have lots of voters.     Any legal means of protest/rebellion is justified.

  Homeland Security     Corporations vie for Pentagon gold and then get bailed out.

  Jobs     1939: attacked in press for organizing Chicago stockyards.     Labor organizers provide opportunity for effective action.

  Principles & Values     Means-versus-ends is meaningless; real arena is bloody.     Compromise isn't surrender; it's the basis of free society.     Push organizations to live up to their own regulations.     Rules of ethics: do what you can with what you have.     Calls for utilitarian / situational ethics.     Rules of tactics: do what you can with what you have.

  War & Peace     Proxy votes to pressure corporations dealing with Pentagon.     Pentagon bewilders public about Vietnam and Cambodia.

  Welfare & Poverty     Wealth should be distributed more evenly.     Either share part of our material wealth, or lose all of it.

  
  

  Click for quotations from other sources by: Saul Alinsky

  The above quotations are from Rules for Radicals
  A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
  by Saul Alinsky.

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