A SHORT SYNOPSIS OF ALINSKY'S BOOKS

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This indicates several things.   First, Alinsky did not understand that corporations were not supposed to be monopolies.   They are supposed to be competitive with one another.   When there is a monopoly or near-monopoly it is there only because we are not enforcing our laws against monopolies.   Yet, throughout Alinsky's books he speaks only of monopolistic capitalism.   Second, Alinsky was a socialist regardless of what he called himself because ownership of production by the people is socialistic/communistic by definition.   A similar and more workable concept has been used by a number corporations which give special stock options to employees so that the employees become part owners of the corporation.   However, in these instances, there are still managers who are educated and cognizant of business methods and can better steer the corporation than the less able employees (who usually do not want to do so).   Furthermore, corporations are usually started by savvy entrepreneurs who would not have done so if they thought their efforts were to be hijacked by less-qualified others.

Alinsky goes on to say: Possessed of this sketch of a world to be, radicals find themselves adrift in the stormy sea of capitalism.   In this there are two main currents - one called organized industry and the other organized labor.   Radicals have been convinced that the current of organized industry leads directly to perdition, and they have little doubt but that the current of organized labor flows to the promised land.

Alinsky was an idealist - but not the usual kind of idealist.   He was a pragmatic idealist who was very intelligent but, like most of us, limited in knowledge in many areas.   He had studied Machiavelli and Marx, but he was not a Marxist.   Instead, his philosophy might be called advanced Marxism.   Along with his idealism, Alinsky had been exposed to conditions in Chicago slums for much of his life and he had friends who were Mafia leaders.   This gave him a strong touch of cynicism.   He was born in Chicago in 1909, and educated first in the streets of that city and then in its university.   Graduate work at the University of Chicago in criminology introduced him to the Capone gang, and later to the Joliet State Prison, where studied prison life.

Alinsky did many good things at the local level in Chicago, and at this level his general philosophy was good for America.   For instance, he organized the poor to fight slum lords and bullying corporations.   He founded Alinsky Ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power.   From all this, you will note that his outlook in life is vastly different from that of a western American or even that of a any American who was not raised in the streets of cities like Chicago in the Capone years.

David Horowitz had parents who were Communists and he grew up as Communist.   When he realized that he had been fooled, he changed sides and has become a strong advocate against Communism.   He had this to say about Alinsky.   "I understand better than most Alinsky's deep, deep hatred of America.   A hate that ran so deep that he wrote a blueprint for tearing our nation down.   And while I outgrew and repented my anti-Americanism and came to see how great and generous our country is, many agents of the radical left never grew up.   In fact, today many of them are leaders in Congress and in our White House, all embracing Alinsky's Rules for Radicals - the roadmap for turning our nation upside down."

Rules for Radicals was originally given the title Rules for Revolution which David Horowitz considers a more accurate title for its contents.   When Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals (first copyrighted in 1971 - one year before he died), he was careful to avoid any mention of concepts that could directly tie him to socialism or communism - although his methods were very similar in some ways to those of certain departments of the KGB.   At that time, he was still the pragmatic idealist and he still had concepts that were very definitely his own.

Alinsky divided society into four classes.   There were the Haves, the Have Nots, the Have a Little - Want Mores, and the Do Nothings.   The Haves were those who had much and who dominated society.   The Have Nots were those who were poor and lacking in nearly every way.   The Have a Little - Want Mores were the middle class.   The middle class were the ones who attempted to climb the social/economic ladder and some of them did great things.   However, once these great things were done, the children of the doers usually became those who talked a lot, but were actually the "good men who did nothing".   Thus we have the fourth class, the Do Nothings.

Alinsky believed that history was composed of cycles of alternating revolution and periods of complacency.   The revolutions could be peaceful or violent and could be revolutions against various things.   However, in each revolution there was friction and discomfort - even many deaths - and people should get used to this as a fact of life.   Alinsky looked down upon those who wanted violent revolution and he believed that violence could always be avoided with the correct strategy and tactics.   One of his key words was "compromise".

Alinsky believed that man's welfare is not separate from that of others.   Envy will make the Have Nots the enemies of the Haves and the Have Nots will eventually steal the wealth of the Haves by one means or another.   In effect, he said that the Haves must share the wealth or lose it.   He stated This is the low road to morality.   There is no other.   [As a pragmatic idealist, Alinsky believed that mankind was driven only by self-interest.]   Life is the story of means and ends, according to Alinsky.   His morality or lack thereof (he did not believe in real morality from people) is encapsulated in his view when contemplating means and ends: Does this particular end justify this particular means?   And in his statement The means-and-ends moralists or non-doers always wind up on their ends without any means.   Almost always there is a grain of truth in what Alinsky says - but he brings a cynical slant to it that is definitely a slant rather than a complete truth.

Alinsky stated that action must always be for the good of mankind even when it conflicts with one's own interests.   If this seems at odds with his view of human morality, then perhaps the following with explain this supposed paradox.   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...   The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action"; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind.   The choice must always be for the latter.   Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation.   He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be "corrupted" for them.

Alinsky understood little of American views of history even though he had a shallow understanding of the actions in history.   He states: The Declaration of Independence, as a declaration of war, had to be what it was, a 100 percent statement of the justice of the cause of the colonists and a 100 percent denunciation of the role of the British government as evil and unjust.   Our cause had to be all shining and justice, allied with the angels; theirs had to be all evil, tied to the Devil; in no war has the enemy or the cause ever been gray.   Therefore, from one point of view the omission was justified; from the other, it was deliberate deceit.   Actually, the Declaration was just that.   It was written to explain why we were breaking off from the British empire - not written to weigh the virtues of continuing upon a course in which we were the unrepresented pawns of King George.   Nor were all the grievances against the British Empire listed lest the document become too long.   This is typical of the slant that Alinsky's cynicism placed upon America and the nature of the propaganda that is featured today in most of our schools - where are our children are brainwashed to want change of a certain nature.

Alinsky had some rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends.   They will be given and explained briefly.

1.   One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.   Here Alinsky means that when the chips are down, a person will not care what means he uses to bail himself out, and that there are shades of gray as to the means considered, according to the degree of danger to the person's interests.

1A.   The parallel rule to number one: One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the scene of the conflict.   This is one of the arguments that peaceniks use about war - those who declare it are usually far from the conflict itself.   Of course, there are times when war is preferable now to having a greater conflict later or to becoming slaves of the aggressor.

2.   The judgement of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgement.   This rule seems to be self explanatory.   Alinsky stated that the Declaration of Independence to us is a glorious document and an affirmation of human rights - but to the British it was statement notorious for its deceit by omission.

3.   In war the end justifies almost any means.

4.   Judgement must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.   Alinsky uses the examples of our position on the freedom of the high seas at the time of the War of 1812, contrasted to our 1962 blockage of Cuba or our alliance the Soviet Union in WWII.

5.   Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.   When we have more choices, we can choose means that are more "ethical" than we otherwise could.

6.   The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluation of means.

7.   Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.   The judgement of history leans heavily upon the outcome of success or failure.   It spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero.   There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

8.   The morality of the means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.   Alinsky uses the dropping of the bomb on Japan as an example.   He felt that at the time the defeat of Japan was an absolute certainty which triggered a moral debate of the issue.   However, he mentions that the state of the world at that time was much different than it is today.

9.   Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.

10.   You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.

11.   Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", "Of the Common Welfare", "Pursuit of Happiness"," or "Bread and Peace".

There is another statement of Alinsky's that should be considered something of a rule: All effective actions require the passport of morality.   This is, according to Alinsky, most effective when we refer to higher laws from God.

Alinsky's idealism seeps out in the following paragraph that he wrote: The organizer, the revolutionist, the activist or call him what you will, who is committed to a free and open society is in that commitment anchored to a complex of high values,   These values include the basic morals of organized religions; their base is the preciousness of human life.   These values include freedom, equality, justice, peace, the right to dissent, the values that were the banners of hope and yearning to all revolutions of men...   They include the values in our own bill of rights...   Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the end justify the means?", but always has been "Does the particular end justify the particular means?"
 

Alinsky was aware that certain words have lost their true meaning because of their use in unpopular contexts.   He says of the word "power", the corruption of "power" is not in power but in ourselves...   Power is the very essence, the dynamo of life.   It is the power of the heart pumping...   Power is an essential life force always in operation, either changing the world or opposing change.   Power, or organized energy, may be a man-killing explosive or a life-saving drug.   The power of a gun may be used to enforce slavery, or to achieve freedom.
 

There are some words of Alinsky's that tell of his inner beliefs regarding self-interest.   With one breath we point out that we are utterly opposed to communism, but that we love the Russian people (loving people is in keeping with the tenets of our civilization).   What we hate is the atheism and the suppression of the individual that we attribute as characteristics substantiating the "immorality" of communism.   On this we base our powerful opposition.   We do not admit the actual fact: our own self-interest...

We repeatedly get caught in this conflict between our professed moral principles and the real reasons why we do things - to wit, our self-interest.   We are always able to mask those real reasons in words of beneficent goodness - freedom, justice, and so on.   Such tears as appear in the fabric of this moral masquerade sometimes embarrasses us.

It is interesting that communists do not seem to concern themselves with these moral justifications for their acts of self-interest.   In a way, this becomes embarrassing too; it makes us feel that they may be laughing at us as they struggle in the sea of world politics, stripped to their shorts, while we flop around fully dressed in our white tie and tails.

And yet with all this there is that wondrous quality of man that from time to time floods over the natural dams of survival and self-interest...
 

Alinsky says of his organizers: Organizers are not only essential to start and build an organization; they are also essential to keep it going.   Maintaining interest and activity, keeping the group's goals strong and flexible at once, is a different operation but still organization...   Alinsky has stated several times that once the organization's goals have been attained, the organizer must seek new goals to maintain interest - otherwise, there is complacency and the organization begins to fall apart.

...it becomes clear that the organizer begins to develop an abnormally large body of experience...   He learns the local legends, anecdotes, values, idioms.   He listens to small talk.   He refrains from rhetoric foreign to the local culture...   And yet the organizer must not try to fake it.   He must be himself...

The qualities of an organizer:
1.   Curiosity
2.   Irreverence
3.   Imagination
4.   A sense of humor
5.   A bit of a blurred vision of a better world
6.   An organized personality
7.   A well-integrated political schizoid - This one means that the organizer can further goals, policies, and supposed truths, while not believing in any of them.
8.   Ego
9.   A free and open mind, and political relativity - This one means that he becomes a flexible personality, knowing that nothing is certain - and able to come up with new ideas when faced with difficulties.

There is a difference, according to Alinsky, between a leader and an organizer.   The leader goes on to build power to fulfill his desires, to hold and wield power for purposes both social and personal.   He wants power for himself.   The organizer finds his goal in the creation of power for others to use   The organizer has achieved his purpose when the organization has developed to the point that it has leaders or other organizers within it who can carry on without the organizer.

According to Alinsky: With very rare exceptions, the right things are done for the wrong reasons.   It is futile to demand that men do the right thing for the right reason - this is a fight with windmill.   An organizer should know and accept that the right reason is only introduced as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved, although it may have been achieved for the wrong reason - therefore he should search for and use the wrong reasons to achieve the right goals.   He should be able, with skill and calculation, to use irrationality in his attempts to progress toward a rational world.

The organizer must communicate in a manner that is within the experience of the listener.   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.

Alinsky states: Love and faith are not common companions.   More commonly power and fear consort with faith.   The Have Nots have a limited faith in the worth of their own judgements.   They still look forward to the judgements of the Haves.   They respect the strength of the upper class and they believe that the Haves are more intelligent, more competent, and endowed with "something special".   Distance has a way of enhancing power, so that respect becomes tinged with reverence.   The Haves are the authorities and thus the beneficiaries of various myths and legends that always develop around power.   The Have Nots will believe them where they would be hesitant and uncertain about their own judgements.   Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey.   Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust.   It is a sad fact of life that power and fear ar the fountainheads of faith.

 
The first step in community organization is community disorganization.

All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.

The organization has to be used in every possible sense as an educational mechanism, but education is not propaganda.   Real education is the means by which the membership will begin to make sense out of their relationship as individuals to the organization and to the world they live in, so that they can make informed and intelligent judgements.   The stream of activities and programs of organizations provide a never-ending series of specific issues and situations that create a rich field for the learning process.

 
Fundamental 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 the experience of the enemy.

4.   Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.   Alinsky states: You can kill them with this, 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.

6.   A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

7.   A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

8.   Keep the pressure on.

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.

11.   If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.   This means that the opposition will eventually make a mistake that finishes them.

12.   The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative   You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right - we don't know what to do about this issue.   Now you tell us."

13.   Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.   This means that you do not attack a large organization per se'.   If you were to do so, you would get the bureaucratic run-around.   So you choose a target and stay on it just like the democrats did with President Bush.   Polarize means to demonize the target until its own organization is against it.   Bear in mind that the target need not be the actual one responsible for your problem.

      13a.   The real action is in the enemy's reaction.

      13b.   The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.

      13c.   Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with action.

It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it.   You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him.   This causes an irrational anger.

According to Alinsky, because a threat can be so potent if believed, it is best never to bluff.   Remember that the threat is often more effective than the tactic itself.   It is best to have at least two "stool pigeons" to leak the threat to the enemy.   This will make him believe the threat and he may not know when the deed itself might happen.

Alinsky believed that the middle class was the correct one to target in the United States.   This was where the power lay.   B.O. knew this and that is why he focused upon the middle class in his campaign.   [Our] activists and rebels on and off our college campuses - people who are committed to change - must make a complete turnabout.   With rare exceptions our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle class society.   All rebels must attack the power states their society.   Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and ways of life of the middle class.   They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt.   They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the big middle-class majority.   Therefore, it is useless self-indulgence for an activist to put his past behind him.   Instead, he should realize the priceless value of his middle-class experience.   His middle-class identity, his familiarity with values and problems, are invaluable for organization of his "own people"...

Alinsky goes on to tell how to his people can infiltrate and turn the campus rebels.   He tells them regarding their targets: With a few exceptions, such as teachers, they have never gone beyond high school.   They have been committed to the values of success, getting ahead, security, having their own home, auto, color TV, and friends.   Their lives have been unfulfilled dreams.   To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams.   They are a fearful people, who feel threatened from all sides: the nightmare of pending retirement and old age with Social Security decimated by inflation... [This goes on and on, leaving out the good things and showing only gloom.]

Seeking some meaning in life, they turn to an extreme chauvinism and become defenders of the "American" faith.   Now they even develop rationalizations for a life of futility and frustration...

Insecure in this fast-changing world, they cling to fixed illusory points [like religion and guns] - which are very real to them...

Tactics must begin with the experience of the middle class, accepting their aversion to rudeness, vulgarity, and conflict.   Start them off easy, don't scare them off.   The opposition's reactions will provide the "education" or radicalization of the middle class.   It does every time...   The chance for organization for action on pollution, inflation, Vietnam, violence, race, taxes, and other issues is all about us.   Tactics such as stock proxies and others are waiting to be hurled into the attack.

The revolution must manifest itself in the corporate sector by the corporations' realistic appraisal of conditions in the nation.   The corporations must forget their nonsense about "private sectors".   It is not just that government contracts and subsidies have long since blurred the line between public and private sectors, but that every American individual or corporation is public as well as private; public in that we are Americans and concerned about our national welfare...

The book ends with some very patriotic goals and ideals.   Most of what Alinsky is asking for seems to be good for America.   However, he is forcing his vision upon us with his organizers rather than educating us in a straightforward manner.   He feels that we are too backward mentally to understand where we are and he tells his people the worst possible scenarios for us so that they will manipulate us like cattle.   Furthermore, after looking at what he has to say, it would appear that his people, if undetected, could push us into anything.   Alinsky was largely responsible for us losing the war in Vietnam and allowing communism to come one step farther in Southeast Asia.   Now it appears than B.O. could help us lose the Middle East.   Those who manipulate others from behind the scenes are not to be trusted.   B.O. and others like him who have studied and used Alinsky's methods may well be using them against us - as has been evident with the extreme leftist Democrats.

Alinsky's ideas regarding the use of any means necessary to achieve an end can do nothing in our democratic republic but bring it down.   The use of ACORN to destroy our economic system and create voter fraud (this happened in many states other than the 15 that were reported); the use of intimidation to prevent anyone from challenging B.O.; the placing of agents in the bureaucracy of Ohio like Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state, who use their influence to aid in voter fraud; the placing of communist agents and owners in the media; the outright lies in debates that the communist owned media will not show the people; the blatant lies in campaign advertising repeated over and over again using money from the large campaign donations from socialist and communist billionaires, nations, and their front organizations; the unprincipled smearing of candidates of the opposition; and more - these things cannot be tolerated without the country becoming another communist dictatorship.

It seems that much of what Alinsky has said were read and taught by the KGB - and have been put to use against us.   More people need to see what we are up against now - if possible, they should read Alinsky's books themselves.   The one means of preventing unwanted manipulation of our lives is to expose the manipulator and his methods.   B.O. has manipulated his way into the Presidency by using Alinsky's methods.   Let us be sure that we learn how to prevent him from going farther.

See Psychopathic Personalities for more information.  

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