Ethics and Saul D. Alinsky

I have just finished reading “Rules for Radicals”, Saul D. Alinsky’s 1971 guide book for directing the efforts of the radicals of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Alinsky had forged a feared name for himself as an agitator and organizer during his long career. He had written a previous book, "Reveille for Radicals", (1946) that he found was being used as a tactical guide by radical “organizers”; but they were missing the point by looking for tactics there: thus a new book was needed.

Although Alinsky died in 1972, his organizational web of community organizers continues to influence the outcomes for many neighborhoods which are otherwise without a voice. Can this be a bad thing?

There is no doubt that there still exist large segments of the population that are poverty stricken, hopeless, and which regenerate themselves into yet more poverty and hopelessness, denied basic rights by congealed knots of power which maintain an onerous, repressive status quo. This is the entire world as Alinsky sees it. His purpose in life is to do something about it. This book outlines how this might be brought about. The question is whether the cure is real, and whether the cost is worth it.

Alinsky makes several points that tie into one common thread: by collectivizing the numerous repressed humans – the sole resource in areas of extreme poverty – a leverage can be brought to bear on the existing power base that can cause the base to work against itself, and in favor of the collective. This Alinsky calls “jujitsu” in reference to the art of helping a larger attacker throw himself with just a little leveraged help from the defender. The collective threatens the power base, the power base reacts (badly), and the collective wins more power and concessions.

The first page gives notice of what is to come:

“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”.

The stark philosophy - Alinsky claims no philosophy, merely tactics and action - quickly folds in on itself. While claiming the high road of pursuing the “democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, co-operation, equal and full-opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life”, Alinsky goes into a denial of ethics altogether:

“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.“

As for the ethics of means and ends:

“The man of action views the question of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of the ends and principles.” [emphasis added].

In his ten rules of the means and ends, is this statement – rule three:

“in war the end justifies almost any means”.

And rule 8:

“The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.”

And rule 10:

“You do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments”.

These are justified by a new virtue:

“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”.

As for tactics, anything goes. Of course some things – ridicule for example – work better than others, but on the whole, the course of action is opportunism coupled with constant pressure on the power base; using the reaction of the power base against itself. But any tactic is justified, since there is no fixed ethic, certainly no overarching moral component other than the success of the mission.

In these ways the similarity of Alinsky’s approach to secular humanism and the humanist experiments of the early 20th century is striking. While at several spots he urges the radical community organizers to desist from offensive behavior, he also calls for nothing to be out of bounds, there being no bounds to be outside of. By lionizing the “community” and demonizing the knots of power, Alinsky sets the stage for the idea that the overall populace is more important than any individual – while simultaneously denying that precept! It is an exercise in relative thought that produces the obvious paradox. But the paradox doesn’t matter, so long as the objective is still in sight. As he points out early on, it is more important to the radical to adequately rationalize motives after the fact than it is to devise rational motives up front.

The denial of rational motives, the prioritization of humanity over human, the use of any means that will produce, these are enough to discredit the methods of Alinsky. Barack Obama not only accepted these premises, but taught them during his two stints in Chicago’s ghettos (which are still there, unrecovered). These principles are in keeping with his mother’s secular humanism and his grandfather’s Marxism.

Why should we believe anything that an Alinsky disciple says? Where do we think that an Alinsky disciple will take us, once he has seized power? What shall we do to protect ourselves from him? Are principled actions as effective as unprincipled actions? We shall see.