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Aug. 6, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
45:44
Rules for Radicals： An Analysis
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Rules for Radicals was a book written in 1971 by Saul Alinsky.
Much has been made of this book, and there seem to be a great number of misconceptions surrounding it, to the point where it's becoming some sort of forbidden literature.
I recently read this book and found it very informative and very interesting, and so I'd like to present my analysis of it to you.
So who was Saul Alinsky?
Alinsky was a Jewish American who was born in 1909 to Russian immigrant parents and died in 1972.
By profession he was a writer, activist and community organiser, meaning that he spent a great deal of his time helping people get what they want from power structures that had no interest in giving these things up.
Alinsky's primary skill was using the power of the people against the establishment.
Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals at the end of his life, a year before he died.
It draws upon his entire career as a wealth of direct experience.
Ideologically, he considered himself to be a small C communist, but never joined a political party and was never dogmatic in his beliefs.
Quote, I've never joined any organisation, not even the ones I've organised myself.
I prize my own independence too much, and philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism.
One of the most important things in life is what Judge Lerned Hand described as that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.
If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless, and intellectually constipated.
The greatest crimes in history have been perpetuated by such religious and political and racial fanatics from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to communist purges and Nazi genocide.
He also states on page 21 of Rules for Radicals, a word about my personal philosophy.
It is anchored in optimism.
It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore a will to fight for a better world.
Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on.
So what is the purpose of Rules for Radicals?
Alinsky recognised that radicals who want to change the system were largely incapable of changing the system, due to their exceedingly poor methods and tactics.
They understand that they are within a system that does not serve their needs, but are too headstrong and fiery to enact mass change.
Alinsky therefore states the purpose of Rules for Radicals directly.
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.
While Alinsky did write Rules for Radicals specifically to be a book to enable revolution against the establishment, it's important to stress that it is not an ideologically or politically partisan book, and that is why you should read it.
Alinsky's Rules and Ideas are principles and tactics that can be applied by any group of have-nots against the haves.
It was a product of its time, of course, and so the examples given in the book are usually liberal radicals against the conservative establishment.
But this is not the limit of what Alinsky is saying.
Often Alinsky makes a point of providing examples to demonstrate how and when political action should be taken.
He observes that inaction is always worse than action, even actions that appear to be folly at the time, because inaction directly serves the status quo.
What Alinsky also understood with crystal clarity is that power is absolute.
If you are not holding the power and acting in the exchange, you are the one being acted upon.
Alinsky's personal philosophy was something he called political realism, or the ideology of change.
As stated, Alinsky was not an ideologue.
He was very aware that his philosophy lived or died on its ability to accurately identify and understand real-world events objectively, beyond the boundaries of ideological dogmatism, and to understand and empathise with opposing positions in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
This is what he called the ideology of change.
Quote, An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma.
To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth.
Truth to him is relative and changing.
Everything to him is relative and changing.
He is a political relativist.
Does this mean that the organizer is in a free society for a free society is rudderless?
No, I believe he has a far better sense of direction and political compass than the closed society organizer with his rigid political ideology.
The basic requirement for the understanding of the politics of change is to recognize the world as it is.
We must work with it on its terms if we are to change it to the kind of world we would like it to be.
We must first see the world as all political realists have, in terms of what men do and not what they ought to do, as Machiavelli and others have put it.
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.
As a political relativist, he was specifying that all actions take place within their unique political contexts for their own unique political reasons, and things are defined as much by themselves as by the things they border.
Which is why we'll now discuss Alinsky's Trinity.
Alinsky separated the world into three classes.
He deliberately avoided naming them as the economic classes we're all familiar with, the rich, the middle class, and the poor, because they are not based purely on economics, although often these classes will directly align with these labels.
He calls these classes the haves, the have-nots, and the have-a-little want-mores.
These are self-explanatory.
The haves are the status quo, the powerful actors in society that wish for things to remain as they are.
The have-a-little want mores look to them for leadership and guidance, with envy, because ultimately they want to join the haves, and what's more, they think they have the means of achieving this goal.
The have-nots are the lowest class, who suffer most under the depredation of the haves.
They understand that they will never lose their status as have-nots by operating through the current system, which is why they are the biggest catalyst for revolution.
Alinsky assigns thermopolitical terms to these groups.
This categorization is used to demonstrate how hot each group is, or how likely political change is to come from each group.
The haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change.
Thermo-politically, they are cold and determined to freeze the status quo.
The have-a-little want mores generally seek this safe way, where they can profit by change and yet not risk losing the little they have.
Thermopolitically, they are tepid and rooted in inertia.
The have-nots are a mass of cold ashes of resignation and fatalism.
But inside, there are the glowing embers of hope, which can be fanned by the building of means of obtaining power.
Once the fever begins, the flame will follow.
They have nowhere to go but up.
Alinsky points out that while circumstances may ignite the fever, it is the organizer's job to fan the flames.
In pursuit of that, there is a very important question to consider.
Do the ends justify the means?
Alinsky redefines the question, do the ends justify the means, to be far more specific to the situation on the ground.
Quote, does the end justify the means is meaningless as it stands.
The real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, does this particular end justify this particular means.
As a personal note, broadly speaking, it's always been my belief that ends do not justify means, but this inclination comes from a point of dogmatic principle, as applied to the gravest circumstances, as you can see by the picture of the Enola Gay.
When dealing with situations proportionally less important, the question can be reframed as, do these particular ends justify these particular means, and it becomes far more pragmatic and applicable to the real world.
Quote, to say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.
The real arena is corrupt and bloody.
Life is a corrupting process, from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed.
He who fears corruption fears life.
Whether you agree with that or not, it's this justification that Alinsky uses to dismiss the armchair moralists who have never taken political action and therefore act as bystanders to critique the action of others.
This safe position is distinctly at odds with Alinsky's own experiences as a community organiser on the ground.
Put simply, Alinsky thinks that if you want to affect real change, you're going to have to get a little bit dirty in the process, because that's how life works.
More importantly, the armchair moralists who hold back action on the grounds of it being less than perfect are direct, if passive, allies of the haves in the struggle to freeze out the have-nots and any change they may have a legitimate claim to enact.
As a personal note, I say this as a person who recognises himself as an armchair moralist.
I think principles should be treated as immaculate, but understood that in reality they will be compromised to a certain degree, and realistically, one has to accept that.
Alinsky wrote several rules pertaining directly to the conduct and opinions of people in regards to whether an action is right or wrong.
These are as follows.
One's concerns with the ethics of means and ends vary inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.
Essentially, the more invested you are in your cause, the less concerned you will be with how ethical it is, and vice versa.
The judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
As in, people who agree with your goals politically are more likely to approve of your methods.
In war, the end justifies almost any means, or victory is more important than being ethical.
Judgments must be made in the context of the times in which the actions occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
This is important because context matters.
People's political decisions are always shaped by the context of the times that they are in.
Concern with ethics increases with the number of means, and vice versa.
This means that the more options you have, the more concerned you are with choosing the one that is ethical.
The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
Naturally, the less important the ends, the higher the ethical standards required in reaching them.
Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.
Things are often validated by the results, either rightly or wrongly.
The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
Because as with everything, context matters, and any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
Probably because your opposition has no direct way of counteracting your means, which is why they're being so effective.
You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments, much in the same way that great powers justify territorial expansion.
And finally, goals must be phrased in general terms, like liberty, equality, fraternity, of the common welfare, pursuit of happiness, or bread and peace.
Choosing a good slogan is important for any movement, to draw people to the cause and to maintain the tone and tenor and general direction with which the movement is heading.
And like all slogans, they need to be punchy, catchy, and memorable.
So in addition to these rules, several important points are raised in this chapter.
First, all mass political action must be boiled down to, we are right, they are wrong.
Because as Zelinsky puts it, all effective actions require the passport of morality.
Quote, The Declaration of Independence, as a declaration of war, had to be what it was, 100% statement of the justice of the cause of the colonists, and 100% denunciation of the role of the British government as evil and unjust.
Our cause had to be all shining justice, allied with the angels.
Theirs had to be all evil, tied to the devil.
In no war has the enemy or cause ever been grey.
Therefore, from one point of view, the omission was justified.
From the other, it was deliberate deceit.
Secondly, any effective action used by the have-nots to wrest control will subsequently be outlawed by the have-nots after their victory is secured, and this hypocrisy is to be expected.
Quote, Eight months after securing independence, the Indian National Congress outlawed passive resistance and made it a crime.
It was one thing for them to use the means of passive resistance against the previous haves, but now in power they were going to assure that this means would not be used against them.
Which brings us to the third point.
Everything is a matter of perspective.
Quote.
In his social contract, Rousseau noted the obvious, that law is a very good thing for men with property, and a very bad thing for men without property.
I find myself agreeing with Alinsky's more pragmatic perspective when dealing with real-world events.
So if the question ultimately boils down to, does this particular end justify this particular mean?
Then the next important thing to consider is the flexibility and detail of language.
Alinsky is critical of the reasons people consider the words power, self-interest, compromise, ego, and conflict as undesirable.
He examines the positive and negative connotations of the words, not for their own sake, but for the education of the reader, the potential organiser, he is advising with this book.
Alinsky argues that, despite the now distasteful connotations these words carry, the ideas they convey are essential for the organiser and must be understood in this context.
Quote, whenever the word power is mentioned, somebody sooner or later will refer to the classical statement of Lord Acton and cite it as follows, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
To which Alinsky observes, that 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 organisations, particularly in a pluralistic society.
To know power and to not fear it is essential to its constructive use and control.
When dealing with self-interest, he says, quote, self-interest, like power, wears the black shroud of negativism and suspicion.
To many, the synonym for self-interest is selfishness.
The word is associated with a repugnant conglomeration of vices, such as narrowness, self-seeking, and self-centeredness, everything that is opposite to the virtues of altruism and selflessness.
But as he then goes to point out, self-interest is simply a given.
From the great teachers of Judeo-Christian morality and the philosophers, to the economists and to the wise observers of the politics of man, there has always been universal agreement on the part that self-interest plays a prime moving force in man's behaviour.
The importance of self-interest has never been challenged.
It has been accepted as an inevitable fact of life.
This is a statement that's rather hard to refute.
On compromise, Alinsky's opinion is that 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 unsavoury and ugly.
Alinsky points out one of the major benefits of compromising.
To the organiser, 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%, then compromise for 30%, then you're 30% ahead.
When it comes to ego, Alinsky defines this essentially as faith in oneself.
Quote, Anyone who is working against the haves is always facing odds, and in many cases, heavy odds.
If he or she does not have complete self-confidence, or call it ego, that he can win, then the battle is lost before it is even begun.
Alinsky makes a point of distinguishing this from egotism, which in his opinion is practically the death of the organizer's career.
Ego, as we understand and use it here, cannot be vaguely confused with, nor is it remotely related to, egotism.
No would-be organizer afflicted with egotism can avoid hiding this from the people with whom he is working.
No contrived humility can conceal it.
And then to the final word that's been unfairly maligned, conflict.
Quote, Conflict is another bad word in the general opinion.
This is a consequence of two influences in our society.
One influence is organized religion.
The second influence is probably the most subversive and insidious one, and has permeated the American scene in the last generation.
That is, Madison Avenue public relations, middle-class moral hygiene, which has made conflict or controversy something negative and undesirable.
It's important to remember that this was written in the 70s in the United States, but Alinsky's opinion is that 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.
Everything that has come before has been building up to something that Alinsky terms the education of the organizer.
And what this really is, is how to deal with people.
Most of this chapter is born directly from Alinsky's personal experiences, and is primarily concerned with character and human nature.
In my own opinion, human nature has been a constant from the dawn of recorded history, and probably was so long before.
As Michelle de Montagna observes, the souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold.
The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour creates a war between princes.
In his quest to educate any potential organisers, Alinsky gives many charming anecdotes, the purpose of which are an attempt to teach people how to deal with others in a productive way.
One's own self-importance is secondary to the end result.
He's trying to teach the reader to be a people person, and to empathise with the position of others.
Indeed, most of Alinsky's advice can be seen as an attempt to get the would-be organizer to empathise with those he is organising.
Alinsky is ready to admit that he has had many failures in addition to his successes, and he draws upon those and the reasons why he failed with surprising frankness and honesty with himself and the reader.
The first point is that the organiser must ensure that his students fully understand his message and not simply parrot his talking points back at him.
Without an actual understanding of the principles being used, the organiser cannot be fluid and adaptable to circumstance.
They cannot pivot on a dime if the situation requires it.
They cannot innovate.
Quote: Listening to them was like listening to a tape playing back my presentation word for word.
Clearly, there was little understanding.
Clearly, they could not do more than elementary organization.
The problem with so many of them was and is their failure to understand that a statement of a specific situation is significant only in its relationship to and its illumination of a general concept.
Instead, they see the specific action as a terminal point.
They find it difficult to grasp that no situation ever repeats itself, that no tactic can be precisely the same.
Alinsky understood that an organizer was not working to his own schedule, he was working to the schedule of others, in terms of both events and understanding.
So the organizer had to be ready to move when necessary and recognize opportunities to put principles into action.
To be able to do this, Alinsky knew the organiser must be as well informed as possible, and the best way to be as well informed as possible with the group you were organising is through patience.
Quote: All of us have faults.
I know that in a community working as an organiser, I have unlimited patience in talking to and listening to the local residents.
Any organiser must have this patience.
An important point is the attitude and approach of the organiser when attempting to integrate themselves into the community that they are attempting to organize.
There are some straightforward rules to follow, which I shall distill into bullet points here.
1. Be honest and be yourself.
It's okay to be different from the community that you're organizing if you are working in good faith and attempting to understand and empathise with their concerns instead of your own.
Quote: They served me a special Mexican dinner.
When we were halfway through, I put down my knife and fork, saying, My god, do you eat this stuff because you like it, or because you have to?
I think it's as lousy as the Jewish kosher crap I had to eat as a kid.
There was a moment of shocked silence, then everybody roared.
It shows respect for people to be honest, as in the Mexican dinner episode.
They are being treated as people and not guinea pigs being techniqued.
Point two is be creative.
As Alinsky states, organisers must be creative, irreverent, imaginative, and humorous, with the organiser primarily keeping a sense of humour about themselves.
This allows them to find innovative solutions to problems that will inevitably yet unexpectedly crop up without them being major roadblocks to progress.
Quote: Humour is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to man are satire and ridicule.
A sense of humour is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious or political or economic prescription for salvation.
Point three is to understand what motivates the individuals in your community.
It's important never to lose sight of the fact that everyone participating in the movement that the organiser is aiding is an individual with their own reasons for joining it.
It's the reason that Alinsky states that an organiser must develop multiple issues.
The organizer recognises that each person or block has a hierarchy of values.
For instance, let us assume that we are in a ghetto community where everyone is for civil rights.
A black man there had bought a small house when the neighbourhood was first changing and he wound up paying a highly inflated price, more than four times the value of the property.
He is desperately trying to save his own small economic world.
Civil rights would get him to a meeting once a month.
Next door to him is a woman who is renting.
She's not concerned about urban renewal.
She has three small girls and her major worry is the drug pushers and pimps that would infest the neighbourhood.
She is for civil rights too, but she is more concerned about a community free of pimps and pushers and she wants better schools for her children.
Next door to her is a family on welfare.
Their number one priority is more money.
Across the street is a family that can be described as the working poor, struggling to get along on their drastically limited budget.
To them, consumer prices and local merchants gouging are the number one priorities.
In a multiple issue organisation, each person is saying to the other, I can't get what I want alone, and neither can you.
Let's make a deal.
I'll support you for what you want, and you support me for what I want.
Those deals become the program.
I look forward to discussing this point with people in the comments, and yes, I may well have to eat some of my own words.
Since I've started, I may as well finish creating that rod for my own back.
Alinsky's rationale for this is that single or dual organisations are condemned to being small organisations as simply not enough people will be motivated enough by the single issue the organisation is focused on.
An organisation needs action as an individual needs oxygen.
With only one or two issues, there will certainly be a lapse of action, and then comes death.
Multiple issues means constant action and life.
The fourth point is do not become an ideologue.
The organiser must remain somewhat aloof from the cause he is organising and never fully commit.
Alinsky describes this as being politically schizoid to avoid falling into the trap of becoming a true believer.
This is necessary for the organiser to remain honest with himself and with the movement he is organising.
The organiser must be able to split himself into two parts.
One part in the arena of action, where he polarises the issue to 100 to nothing and helps lead his forces into the conflict, while the other part knows when the time comes for negotiations that it is really only 10% difference, and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other.
Of course, you cannot deal with people if you are no good at communication.
Alinsky highlights the value of communication above all else for an organiser.
For without good communication, nothing will be done.
There is much of value in this chapter that can essentially be summed up in the axiom, people understand only in terms of their own experience.
Quote, you can't go outside of people's actual experience.
I've been asked, for example, why I never talk to a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister or a rabbi in terms of the Judeo-Christian ethic or the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount.
I never talk in those terms.
Instead, I approach them on the basis of their own self-interest, the welfare of the church, even its physical property.
Another valuable point made by Alinsky about how a community organiser should approach the community he is organising is by remembering that the organiser is not their boss.
He is their aide, and as such he cannot simply order them around.
Quote, people have to make their own decisions.
It isn't just that Moses couldn't tell God what God should do.
No organiser can tell a community either, what to do.
Much of the time though, the organiser will have a pretty good idea of what the community should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action.
Alinsky admits that this is manipulation, but recalls the justification of ends and means, that the immediate situation's end justifies this particular means.
Sometimes, things have to be steered in such a way, and any time an organiser goes out of the experience of the community he's organising, he loses them completely, and any attempt at action is a failure.
It's rather Machiavellian, but consciously so.
Quote: It should be obvious by now that communication occurs concretely, by means of one's specific experience.
General theories become meaningful only when one has absorbed and understood the specific constituents and then related them back to a general concept.
Unless this is done, the specifics become nothing more than a string of interesting anecdotes.
On the subject of speaking to people in the terms of their direct experiences, Alinsky builds on this by making this the starting point of any organisation.
Quote: One of the great problems in the beginning of an organization is, often, that the people do not know what they want.
The issue that is not clear to organizers, missionaries, educators, or any outsider is simply that if people feel they don't have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it.
Why start figuring out how you're going to spend a million dollars if you do not have a million dollars or are ever going to have a million dollars unless you want to engage in fantasy?
In Alinsky's opinion, people need guidance.
Even once organized, the question of what exactly is the best method of achieving power is extremely relevant, and it pays in advance to have at least some idea of what a new system should look like post-conquest.
But most importantly, if the organizer cannot communicate this in a manner that the people he is organising can easily understand, then no amount of logistics, strategy, or fine tactics will help.
It is Alinsky's power tactics for which Rules for Radicals is most famous.
They are as follows: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
Never go outside the experience of your people.
Wherever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.
Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
Keep the pressure on.
The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.
If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through to its counterside.
The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
And finally, pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarise it.
So beginning at the start, power is as much about perception as it is ability.
If your enemy thinks you have power that you do not have, not only can you take advantage of that, you can use their beliefs to help understand their worldview.
Contrast this with the worldview of your side, so you can ensure that you know the limits of the experience of your people and theirs.
To make the enemy live up to their own set of rules is to demand that they adhere to an unrealistic standard that they have theoretically pledged to adhere to.
This is of course impossible as nobody lives up to the letter of their own rules, merely the spirit.
When they fail this, turn to ridicule as there is rarely a good response to being mocked, and to get your opponent emotionally excited increases the chances that they will make a mistake.
It's also likely that ridicule will be a tactic that your people enjoy and rarely becomes a drag.
But you can't keep making the same joke over and over.
You have to constantly find new things to mock.
If you're lucky, your enemy will have many qualities that can be mocked.
But either way, don't give them time to regroup.
If they are on the defensive, keep going because, as Alinsky says, the threat is usually more terrifying, because power is often about perception.
Living with the terrifying event is often easy enough after the fact, but the fear and pressure will force your opponent's hand.
This should be the point of all tactical operations of the organisation, even if the action seems ineffective, as Gandhi showed when he pushed the negative of passive resistance hard enough to make the anti-British protesters the sympathetic side in the conflict.
Perception is important.
If people outside of the conflict see one side taking an absolute battering, they will feel sympathy for them, and that becomes a weapon against the status quo, because it shows that the current batch of haves can't be responsible with their own power.
And who can blame them after being provoked by an enemy they don't understand is constantly one step ahead of them and uses their own standards as a weapon and subjects them to ridicule when they fail and have fun doing it.
It's no wonder that they would lash out.
To discredit the status quo is exactly the point, which is precisely what this does.
So an alternative must be available to begin constructing a new power structure around, while the components of the old, as Alinsky so eloquently puts it, are picked, frozen, personalised and polarised.
Choose an issue on which your people can be 100% against, and nobody reasonable can be 100% for, and you cannot fail to discredit that person.
Dismantling the power structure begins by discrediting individuals.
However, these tactics are meaningless.
If you cannot be honest with yourself.
If you can't gauge outside perceptions of your actions, if you are not perceived to be in the right on an issue, you will fail and discredit yourself.
It is a very powerful, but also very risky, strategy.
Quote, I have emphasized and re-emphasized that tactics means you have to do what you can with what you've got, and that power in the main has always gravitated towards those who have money and those whom people follow.
The resources of the have-nots are, one, no money, and two, lots of people.
Alright, let's start there.
People can show their power by voting.
What else?
Well, people have physical bodies.
How can they use them?
Now a melange of ideas begin to appear.
I once suggested that we buy 100 seats for one of Rochester's symphony concerts.
We would select a concert in which the music was relatively quiet.
The hundred blacks who would be given the tickets would first be treated to a three-hour pre-concert dinner in the community, in which they would be fed nothing but baked beans, and lots of them.
Then the people would go to the symphony hall, with obvious consequences.
Let's examine this tactic in terms of the concepts mentioned above.
First, the disturbance would be utterly outside the experience of the establishment, which was expecting the usual stuff of mass meetings, street demonstrations, confrontations and parades.
Not in their wildest fears would they expect an attack on their prized cultural jewel, their famed symphony orchestra.
Second, the action would ridicule and make a farce of the law, for there is no law, and probably never will be, banning natural physical functions.
There will be nothing here that the police department or the ushers or any other servants of the establishment could do about it.
The law would be completely paralyzed.
People would recount what happened in the Symphony Hall, and the reaction of the listener would be to crack up in laughter.
It would make the Rochester Symphony and the establishment look utterly ridiculous.
There would be no way for the authorities to cope with any future attacks of a similar character.
What could they do?
To directly apply Alinsky's power tactics, any tactic proposed must be legal.
It must be unexpected and almost impossible for the establishment to deal with without becoming totalitarian, bigoted, or simply ridiculous, and preferably all three.
It must perturb the enemy, take them out of their comfort zone, and at the same time agitate them to a response, and when that response comes, it will be disproportionate and unreasonable, and that can be played to your advantage.
One of the most important things to remember about the establishment, the status quo, is that it is normally made up of many different competing groups, all of whom are happy to cannibalize power from each other.
And these entities, whether the lower orders can see it or not, are always fighting amongst themselves.
As already stated, the quickest way to make an issue an issue is to polarise it.
As he states about the Declaration of Independence, it has to be all or nothing, to separate the target from any other entities that could potentially provide support, to ensure that those entities don't want to be tarred with the same brush.
They will reflexively pull away from the situation, in the process removing their support for the target.
And this leads us to Alinsky's next major point: competition between the haves.
Quote: The haves possess, and are in turn possessed by, power.
Obsessed with the fear of losing power, their every move is dictated by the idea of keeping it.
The way of life of the haves is to keep what they have, and wherever possible, to shore up their defences.
Power is not static, it cannot be frozen and preserved like food.
It must grow or die.
But from whom?
There is only so much that can be squeezed from the have-nots, so the haves must take it from each other.
This power cannibalism of the haves only permits temporary truces, and only when equally confronted by a common enemy.
Even then, there are regular breaks in the ranks as individual units attempt to exploit the general threat for their own special benefit.
Here is the vulnerable underbelly of the status quo.
This is drawn from Alinsky's direct experiences of dealing with large, powerful entities like government agencies or corporations.
Quote: The internecine struggle among the haves for their individual self-interest is as short-sighted as the internecine struggle among the have-nots.
Once one understands this internal battle for power within the status quo, one can appraise effective tactics to exploit it.
Alinsky's advice is that whenever you can, locate partisan lines within your opposition and exploit them.
Play your enemies within the status quo against one another.
Do not let them respond with a unified front.
We've got to remember that Alinsky operated in a different era, so his chapter entitled Time in Jail would probably be transliterated for the modern digital era as banned from Twitter.
In Alinsky's opinion, activists spending time in jail is a tremendously generous contribution to the cause and the revolutionary from the establishment itself.
Quote, jailing the revolutionary leaders and their followers performs three vital functions for the cause of the have-nots.
1.
It is an act on the part of the status quo that in itself points up to the conflict between the haves and the have-nots.
2.
It strengthens immeasurably the position of the revolutionary leaders with their people, surrounding the jailed leadership with an aura of martyrdom.
3.
It deepens the identification of the leadership with their people, since the prevalent reaction among the have-nots is that their leadership cares so much for them and is so sincerely committed to the issue that it is willing to suffer imprisonment for the cause.
Jailing leaders or prominent figures turns them into martyrs for the cause, and also helps the activists themselves.
Alinsky states that it gives them time away from the immediacy of the fight to relax and reflect on what's happened, and why it's happened and what they could have done better.
In addition to strengthening the bond between the activist and the movement they are a part of, jailing political activists is usually viewed as a display of power, and usually unnecessary or disproportionate to any actual crimes committed.
The perception from the establishment is enhanced due to the conflict, but neutral outsiders see the haves acting against the have-nots in a particularly belligerent fashion, and, not fully aware of the context, so view the actions as excessive even if they are not.
It isn't all roses for the activist who has been jailed, or banned from Twitter, of course.
Increased support is a resource with diminishing returns, and given enough time, the activist will be forgotten about.
New issues occur and new leaders come to the forefront, so any activist in this position must attempt to remedy their situation without allowing too much time to elapse.
So, with all that being said, these are my conclusions from reading Rules for Radicals.
So, number one, know thyself.
The most important thing emphasized here is to understand what your resources are and how they can be used.
To do what you can with what you have, and to understand the limits of the experience of your people, as per the second rule, never go outside of that experience to ensure your people remain in their comfort zones and maintain their confidence.
2.
Know your enemy.
As Sun Tzu said, if you know yourself and your enemy, you will never lose in a hundred battles.
Alinsky was clearly a proponent of the axiom that knowledge is power, as all of his initiatives are based around knowing his foe, their desires, their fears, and their weaknesses.
As he said, always go outside the experience of your enemy, so they are operating on unfamiliar ground.
This, combined with keeping your people within the realm of their experience, gives the organiser a home field advantage before anything has even happened, and it also gives him the initiative.
3.
Perception is everything.
In reality, objective fact is not a useful thing to be hung up on when dealing with politics.
Perception is everything.
Alinsky emphasizes that the organiser must be aware of how the have-nots will be perceived not just by the haves, but also by the have-a-little want-mores, because these are the people whose opinion will matter to the haves.
If the have-a-little want-mores side with the have-nots, then the haves lose support of the moderate majority.
This puts them in a position where they have to choose to either surrender or to adopt the mantle of the dictator, and either one of these will eventually spell their end.
This is why power is not just what you have, but what the enemy perceives that you have, and encompasses the rule that the threat of the thing is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
If your opponents think that the have-a-little want-mores will side with the have-nots on an issue, they will retreat.
If they think the have-a-little want-mores will side on them with an issue, they will advance.
The organiser must ensure that the battle is for an issue that the have-a-little want-mores will choose to support for the cause of the have-nots instead of for the cause of the haves, preferably after the haves have committed root and branch to their course of action.
As Napoleon said, never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake.
Point 4.
Hoist them on their own petard.
Leading on from perception is the necessity to make the enemy live up to their own lofty ideals, because ultimately nobody really can live up to them in their entirety.
This is the quickest and best way to get the have-a-little want mores to side with the have-nots, because it's not something the haves can dispute except by being extremely humble, which they are likely not.
The second method is by what Alinsky calls political jiu-jitsu, using the opponent's great strength against themselves, by making them declare you a public enemy, and then provoking your opponent into flexing their metaphorical muscles against you as a tiny, insignificant individual.
Not only does it polarise the issue, but it also makes you look like the underdog that observers will sympathize with.
And not only that, but forcing action from the haves creates opportunities for them to make mistakes.
Torpor is the antithesis of Alinsky's philosophy, so anything that provokes the establishment to attack rather than defend is preferential, and anything that gets them to make a move is always better than letting them do nothing.
Point 5.
It's always fun to mock.
If your opposition is easy to mock, then mock away.
It's a very difficult thing to counteract and is synergistic with the principle that a good tactic is one that your people enjoy, but don't let it become stale.
Basically, have fun.
Enjoy yourselves at the expense of your enemy.
Point 6.
Polarization and isolation.
Part of the attack is making the issue imminent.
Be belligerent and concise.
Have a pithy but firm message, a slogan.
Make it so that by declaring the issue, people have no choice but to pick a side, and make sure the side they pick is yours.
Keep repeating the slogan, and it will stick.
Alinsky's rules for radicals are a very powerful set of tools with which the powerless can attack the powerful.
As stated at the beginning, they are not politically partisan, and to this end, any group that is not the status quo could use them to attack and disrupt the status quo.
What's more, nothing Alinsky advises is illegal, which makes his tactics all the more useful, especially as they translate very well to the modern digital age of social media, where comments become bodies and clicks become votes.
Alinsky never suggests threats or violence, it's never even hinted at.
He knows it's a foolish movement that resorts to these tactics, as they are immediately discredited and dismissed.
So any movement that wants to be successful must stick to tactics that aren't just legal, but always perceived to be legal.
And that is an important distinction.
As he said in the beginning, Rules for Radicals is the counterpoint to the Prince.
Anyone wishing to maintain the status quo should read Machiavelli.
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