Alinsky is a bogeyman in some quarters because he had the audacity to encourage the poor to dirty their hands in the process of accumulating power in the same way everybody expects politicians and business to. His sin was viewing the poor as capable of solving their own problems and challenging them to actually confront those in power who have influence over the issues they face (read a fine interview with the man here).Alinsky's maxim "No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation" wouldn't sound strange coming from some hard hitting executive like say, Jack Welch. But when Alinsky actually expected the poor residents of Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood to "compel negotiation" -- well, that's a different story.
His stated aim of "rubbing raw the sores of discontent" sounds like that great American taboo, "class warfare." We vote, we pray, we humbly accept charity, we may even complain, but we do not confront and we do not demand, especially in groups. It's unreasonable. It upsets our sense of order. It sounds like some commie shit.
In American politics these days, change is on the agenda. The question is who is capable of delivering the change Americans desire. The Hoole Intelligence Report contends that it ain't a new president and, with a little help from Hillary, Barack, and Saul, will explain why.
The Work of Other (Better) People
The other day, I was talking to a friend about philanthropy. His friends tell him that they admire the volunteer work that he does and the contributions he makes but that they themselves aren't the type of people who have the time or disposable income to do likewise. What they are saying is that he has reached that privileged station in life that affords him the wisdom and leisure to give back to the community, but they themselves, lacking his success, are excused from virtue.
They don't realize that he considers himself to be by far the greatest beneficiary of his "charity." He doesn't give because he's a Warren Buffet, he gets to be a little bit the Warren Buffet because he gives. Many people stand up this prerequisite of angelic purity to excuse themselves from stepping outside their immediate circle and contributing to the greater good in their community or the world.
In his book, "Rules for Radicals," Alinsky offers this striking observation about peoples' motivations -- "it is not man's 'better nature' but his self interest that demands that he be his brother's keeper." He continues:
To eat and sleep in safety man must do the right thing, if seemingly for the wrong reasons, and be in practice his brother's keeper... This is the low road to morality. There is no other.
Self Interest and Self Help -- Self, Self, Selfity, Self
Obama has made his hay so far as an agent of change and doubtless his experience as a community organizer will help him deliver on his promises. Naturally, as a man looking to be the big cheese, he's come to see Alinsky's ideas as too narrow a vessel for broad change. He said in an interview "Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest."
Alinsky would have pointed out that this is a false distinction arising from the shame associated with selfishness. In "Rules for Radicals," he writes in a chapter on the politics of language that "it appears shameful to admit that we operate on the basis of naked self-interest, so we desperately try to reconcile every shift of circumstances that is to our self-interest in terms of a broad moral justification or rationalization."
The problem with dreams and ideals and values that we feel don't advance our own interests is that we are unlikely to do much about them ourselves -- they tend to be the broad, fantastical things we feel are outside our sphere of influence which leads us to cede responsibility for them to God or to... a president!
Alinsky's Iron Rule of Organizing illustrates the difference between Obama’s presidential hopes and dreams and the necessity for grassroots political participation:
Never do for people what they can do for themselves.
The equation is simple -- if your values, hopes, and dreams, are important enough for you to personally do something about them, you will. If they are not, you won't.
In Alinsky's words, "Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises and who are not helpless, passive, puppet-like recipients of private or public services."
People who take on an issue themselves are likely to act with a vigor proportionate to the issue's effect on their lives. If you yourself identify an issue and define the action that will get the result you want, you have motivation to see it through and, for better or worse, own the results. This is what people mean when they talk about "sustainability."
For her part, Hillary Clinton has alternately hidden her connection to Alinsky, damned his work with faint praise, and dismissed his methods. In her 1993 book "Living History," she writes,"He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn't.”
In fact, Alinsky explicitly stated that people who want to affect change must work inside the system* -- the thing they really disagree on is the purpose of working inside the system. The Clintons have worked inside the system for a solid three decades building a sweeping national political juggernaut. Alinsky-style community organizing starts "inside the system" for the simple reason that, in order to bring about "concrete, specific, achievable" improvements in their lives, normal people need to depart from a familiar place.
Ultimately, it's the scale of Clinton's and Obama's ambition that led them away from Alinsky's principles of civic participation. Their hustle, however noble, is to make the case that giving them your vote is the best way to see your political hopes and dreams realized.
Shop N' Vote '08!
Confronted with the attacks of 9/11 and the specter of environmental disaster, there are just two forms of civic participation Americans have come together around -- shopping and voting. Shopping for that hybrid sedan, picking up those compact florescent bulbs, or in GW's less discriminate formulation, "your continued participation and confidence in the the American economy."
We attempt to buy our way out of an impending environmental disaster not because that is the correct response or the one that will succeed, but because it is the response that will cause no disruption in our politics, our economy, or our lifestyle. The fruit of our virtue is trifling.
* "There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families -- more than seventy million people -- whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971 dollars]. (Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals,"xix.")
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