Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

Rules for Radicals

By Malachi Martin - 19

Collectivism in churches and Trading Truth for a "Social Gospel"

"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

9. Hall of Heroes

And then there was Friedrich Engels.... who was somewhat more humanistic and certainly more practical minded than Karl Marx, but not a whit less bitter or less bloody-minded. 195

Antonio Gramsci would rise ... to claim his own and special place as nothing less than a genious of Marxist pragmatism. ... The remaining place.... would be reserved for the first Soviet leader with he practical sense, the breath of mind and the political daring to listen at long last to Antonio Gramsci. ... Mikhail Gorbachev.196

In the geopolitical arena, it is not age or lineage, but institutional structure and historical opportunity, that are the operative factors... 197

Most modern leaders of nations, and most ordinary people in the West, do not realize that Mikhail Gorbachev is thoroughly   soaked in the Marxism of Lenin; or that Lenin was deeply, sincerely committed to his hatred of everything about capitalism or capitalists. 198

Understand the role of Antonio Gramsci in the geopolitical endgame of our age... If the West [fails do that]... they will also fail to understand Mikhail Gorbachev. ... Ant they will fail to see how Gorbachev configures the future of the Soviet Union and of our coming world. 200

10. Karl Marx

Marx was born into a Jewish family at Trier, Germany on May 5, 1818. He passed rapidly from the undigested Judaism of his Childhood into a short but perfervid period of Lutheranism... That moment gave ways to another intense period of his youth, .... At Berlin University, he indulged in a virulent form of ceremonial confessional Satanism. Dating from that period, his youthful poems in adoration of "Oulanem" -- a ritualistic name for Satan--contrasts eerily with his earlier poems in homage to Christ. But the chief outward effect of his early personal Satanist attachment was to be seen in his consistently and professionally anti-God and godless outlook. Marx remained violently opposed to faith and religion for the rest of his life....200

By the time he graduated from Jena, in 1841, Marx had settled upon the social condition of mankind throughout history as his field of special
interest. No philosopher himself, it was not surprising that he should have looked to the philosophy of another man to supply the superstructure of his own historical and social outlook. What was extraordinary was that Marx, dedicated heart and soul to atheism, should have derived that centerpiece of his thinking from Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who had flourished and passed from the scene before Marx was fourteen....

Hegel saw human history as a process through which all mankind has been advancing from the most primitive conditions of thought, culture
and belief right up to the emergence of Christianity as the fullest expression of human ideals. In essence, human progress was defined by Hegel as a process very much like a discussion between two men arguing about something in order to explain it. One man states his opinion or theory. His companion criticizes that theory, and proposes a different one. From their continuing ~ a friendly and constructive one—there emerges a third and new theory, which preserves what was true in the first two and which both men accept.

Hegel called the first theory a thesis. The second theory, he said, was an antithesis, because it opposed the first. The discussion itself he labeled a dialectic, from the Greek word for “conversation” or “arguing.” And the theory finally accepted out of this process he called a synthesis.

For Hegel, that dialectic exactly marked the manner of all human progress. There was one primitive stage of human history: a thesis. Another stage appeared in opposition: an antithesis. Out of the clash between the two—the dialectic -- came a third and victorious stage: the synthesis.
All human progress, said Hegel, from the most primitive condition up to the most refined, proceeded along the lines of this triple-stage dialectic
toward an ultimate goal.

Moreover, God himself had fixed that goal ahead of time; and so, too, had God laid out the plan of triple-stage steps by which to arrive at the goal. That ultimate goal was the transcendence by mankind of its own finite and created nature, and the attainment of absolute knowledge of the infinite: of God. 201

What Hegel had worked out, in other words, was a dialectic of spiritual transcendence -- an attempt to codify the system provided by God from
the beginning, by which man was to transcend the material limits of his nature. The entire dialectic process was part and parcel of the destiny
God had mandated for mankind to become greater than itself. Spirit inhabited matter, said Hegel, and drove mankind on through the successive triple-stage steps of history to that destiny. 201-202

By the time he appropriated Hegel’s idea of the dialectic and applied it to his own thinking about the social condition of mankind throughout
history, Marx was a thoroughly convinced atheist, fully persuaded there was no such thing as a soul and no such thing as spirit in man. Obviously,
then, there would have to be a few adjustments here and there, if Hegel’s theory was to be made suitable.

Yes, said Marx, there is a dialectic moving men through history. And, yes, that dialectic is a clash between thesis and antithesis. But while there
is a series of steps leading to a goal, there is nothing transcendent about any of it.

In fact, for Marx there was nothing transcendent about mankind itself. There was no spirit and no soul. There was just this highly developed
and totally material animal called man. And this animal was driven, as all matter was, not by transcendent spirit but by blind forces completely innate in matter. Powerful natural forces that mankind could not successfully resist. All was immanent to man. There was nothing in him that transcended his material condition....

The history of material mankind, said Marx, was a series of clashes, or dialectics, which all represented stages in what amounted to just one great clash—a kind of super-dialectic of human history that came to be called by the most famous of Marxist terms, the “class struggle.” That clash was and always had been between the blind, material, irresistible forces inner to the proletariat, and the opposing forces of whatever privileged classes there might happen to be at any given historical period. 202

Human history itself, therefore, was written within the framework of dialectical materialism. It was the story of that clash of clashes. 202

The first internationally resonant bellow of Marxism was heard in 1848, when, together with fellow socialist Friedrich Engels Marx published The Communist Manifesto.... Marx was feeding the fires of social upheaval with his prediction of the imminent fulfillment of mankind’s irresistible destiny: the proletarian revolution that would Sweep away the oppressive superstructure finally and for all time....

... when Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution two years later, in 1850, Marx regarded it as far more than theory. He seized uUpon it as his “scientific” proof that there was no kingdom of Heaven, only the kingdom of Matter. Darwin had vindicated Marx in his rejection of Hegel’s belief in the soul, in the spirit and in God as the Ultimate goal of human history.

So elated was Marx at the idea that man had actually evolved from stuff and matter that.... he wrote a self~congrafulatory letter, in which he hailed Darwin as the one who had accomplished for anthropology what Marx himself was accomplishing for sociology.203

1. The Purpose

In th

1

Notes on Saul Alinsky and Neo-Marxism:

     Alinsky's tactics were based, not on Stalin's revolutionary violence, but on the Neo-Marxist strategies of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process rather than a bloody revolution, Gramsci's transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes.

     Like Alinsky, Mikhail Gorbachev followed Gramsci, not Lenin. In fact, Gramsci aroused Stalins's wrath by suggesting that Lenin's revolutionary plan wouldn't work in the West. Instead the primary assault would be on Biblical absolutes and Christian values, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish. Malachi Martin gave us a progress report:

"By 1985, the influence of traditional Christian philosophy in the West was weak and negligible.... Gramsci's master strategy was now feasible. Humanly speaking, it was no longer too tall an order to strip large majorities of men and women in the West of those last vestiges that remained to them of Christianity's transcendent God."

2. Of Means and Ends [Forget moral or ethical considerations]

"The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue 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. ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody." p.24

"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves…. The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be." pp.25-26

Note: Apparently, Michelle Obama referred to these words during her Democratic National Convention speech:

"She said, 'Barack stood up that day,' talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, 'and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about 'The world as it is' and 'The world as it should be…' And, 'All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do – that we have an obligation to, fight for the world as it should be."

Do you wonder who -- or whose values -- should determine what "the world... should be?"

4. The Education of the Organizer

"To the organizer, imagination... is the dynamism that starts and sustains him in his whole life of action as an organizer. It ignites and feeds the force that drives him to organize for change....
      "The organizer knows that the real action is in the reaction of the opposition. To realistically appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the enemy, he must be able to identify with them, too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his actions....
     "The organizers searching with a free and open mind void of certainty, hating dogma, finds laughter not just a way to maintain his sanity but also a key to understanding life."pp.74-75

"...the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts -- on part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 percent difference." p.78

"...the organizer is constantly creating new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; that every time man as had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged." p.79

5. Communication [Notice the emphasis on conflict, dialogue, relationships, etc. Team "service" is essential to building strong relationships through "common involvements"]

"And so the guided questioning goes on without anyone losing face or being left out of the decision-making. Every weakness of every proposed tactic is probed by questions.... Is this manipulation? Certainly...." p.88

"One of the factors that changes what you can and can't communicate is relationships. There as sensitive areas that one does not touch until there is a strong personal relationship based on common involvements. Otherwise the other party turns off and literally does not hear....

     "Conversely, if you have a good relationship, he is very receptive.... For example, I have always believed that birth control and abortion are personal rights to be exercised by the individual. If, in my early days when I organized... neighborhood in Chicago, which was 95 per cent Roman Catholic, I had tried to communicate this, even through the experience of the residents, whose economic plight was aggravated by large families, that would have been the end of my relationship with the community. That instant I would have been stamped as an enemy of the church and all communication would have ceased.

     "Some years later, after establishing solid relationships, I was free to talk about anything.... By then the argument was no longer limited to such questions as, 'How much longer do you think the Catholic Church can hang on to this archaic notion and still survive?' ...the subject and nature of the discussion would have been unthinkable without that solid relationship." pp.93-94

6. In the Beginning: The Process of Power [Notice the compromise needed to build the power base. Yet, since pragmatism has eroded all values, it's simply a matter of ends justifying means. It's not unlike churches that attract members through the world's entertainment -- then continue to soften or hide Truth in order to keep them happy and lure more. ]

"From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams... only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues.... Until he has those means and power instruments, his 'tactics' are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor Unions, corner gangs, or as individuals."

     "Change comes from power, and power comes from organization." p.113

"The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new." p.116

"An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent... He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises....
     "The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an 'agitator' they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function—to agitate to the point of conflict." p.117

"Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum.... Process is really purpose." p.122

7. Tactics

"Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. ... Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves." p.126

Always remember the first rule of power tactics:

1. "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."

2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat.... [and] the collapse of communication.

3. "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than t he Christian church can live up to Christianity."

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."

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

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time...."

8. "Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose."

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. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign."

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.' ... When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments and carry out your attack.... One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angles are on one side and all the devils on the other." pp.127-134

Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Known as the 'father of modern American radicalism,' Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics that take the enormous, unfocused emotional energy of grassroots groups and transform it into effective anti-government and anti-corporate activism. ... Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work."

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