excerpts from "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky - 1972, Vintage Books

Alinsky, Saul. 1972. Rules for Radicals. Vintage Books.

xvii - The young react to their chaotic world in different ways. Some panic and run ... Others went for pointless sore-loser confrontations so that they could fortify their rationalization and say, "Well, we tried and did our part" and then they copped out too. Others sick with guilt and not knowing where to turn or what to do when berserk. These were the Weathermen and their like: they took the grand cop-out, suicide.

xviii - First, there are no rules for revolution any more than there are rules for love or rules for happiness, but there are rules for radicals who want to change their world; there are certain central concepts of action in human politics that operate regardless of the scene or the time. To know these is basic to a pragmatic attack on the system. These rules make the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one who uses the tired old words and slogans, calls the police "pig" or "white fascist motherfucker" and has so stereotyped himself that others react by saying, "Oh, he's one of those," and then promptly turn off.... Even the most elementary grasp of the fundamental idea that one communicates within the experience of his audience -- and gives full respect to other's values -- would have ruled out attacks on the American flag.

xix - For the real radical, doing "his thing" is to do the social thing, for and with people ... If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair ... Lacking communication I am in reality silent; throughout history silence has been regarded as assent -- in this case assent to the system.As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be ... Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people.

10 - An organizer working in and for an open society ... does not have a fixed

11 - truth -- truth to him is relative and changing ... Does this mean that the organizer in a free society for a free society is rudderless? No, I believe that he has a far better sense of direction and compass than the closed-society organizer with his rigid political ideology.

18 - Mankind has been and is divided into three parts: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores ... Numerically the Haves have always been the fewest. The Haves want to keep things as they are and are opposed to change ... On the bottom are the world's Have-Nots. On the world scene they are by far the greatest in numbers.

19 - The Haves want to keep; the Have-Nots want to get. Thermopolitically they are a mass of cold ashes of resignation and fatalism, but inside there are glowing embers of hope which can be fanned by the building of means of obtaining power ... The cry of the Have-Nots has never been "give us your hearts," but always "get off our backs"; they ask not for love but for breathing space.Between the Haves and the Have-Nots are the Have-a-Little, Want Mores -- the middle class. Torn between upholding the status quo to protect what little they have, yet wanting change so they can get more, they become split personalities. They could be described as social, economic, and political schizoids. Generally, they seek the safe way, where they can profit by change yet not risk losing the little they have ... Thermopolitically they are tepid and rooted in inertia. Today in Western society and particularly the United States they comprise the majority of our population.

22 - At times we do fall back and become discouraged, but it is not that we are making no progress ... The pursuit of happiness is never-ending; happiness lies in the pursuit.

Confronted with the materialistic decadence of the status quo, one should not be surprised to find that all revolutionary movements are primarily generated from spiritual values and considerations of justice, equality, peace, and brotherhood. History is a relay of revolutions; the torch of idealism is carried by the revolutionary group until this group becomes the establishment, and then quietly the torch is put down to wait until a new revolutionary group picks it up for the next leg of the run. Thus the revolutionary cycle goes on.

23 - A major revolution to be won in the immediate future is the dissipation of man's illusion that his own welfare can be separate from that of all others. As long as man is shackled to this myth, so long will the human spirit languish ... I believe that man is about the learn that the most practical life is the moral life and that the moral life is the only road to survival.

59 - to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word ... If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise for 30 per cent, you're 30 per cent ahead.

A free and open socierty is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises -- which then become the start for the continuation of conflict, compromise, and on ad infinitum ... A society devoid of compromise is totalitarian. If I had to define a free and open society in one word, the word would be "compromise."81 - One can lack any of the qualities of an organizer -- with one exception -- and still be effective and successful. That exception is the art of commucation ... People only understand things in terms of their experience, which means you must get within their experience. Further, communcation is a two-way process. If you try to get your ideas across to others without paying attention to what they have to say to you, you can forget about the whole thing.91 - no organizer can tell a community, either, what to do.

127 to 136 - Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have ... Never go outside the experience of your people ... Whenever possible go outside of 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 drage ... Keep the pressure on ... The threat is usually more terrifying that the thing itself ... The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition ... If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside ... The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative ... Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it ... The real action is in the enemy's reaction ... They enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength ... Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action ...

149 - The Haves possess and in turn are possessed by power. Obsessed with the idea of losing power, their every move is dictated by the idea of keeping it ... not only do we have a whole class determined to keep its power and in constant conflict with the Have-Nots; at the same time, they are in conflict with themselves. Power is not static; it cannot be frozen and preserved like food; it must grow or die. Therefore, in order to keep power the status quo must get more. But from whom? There is just so much more than can be squeezed out of the Have-Nots -- so the Haves must take it from each other ... This power cannibalism of the Haves permits only 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.

152 - The basic tactic in warfare against the Haves is a mass poltical jujitsu; the Have-Nots do not rigidly oppose the Haves, but yield in such planned and skilled ways that the superior strength of the Haves becomes their own undoing. For example ... they can be constantly pushed to live up to their own book of morality and regulations.

165 - The greatest barrier to communication between myself and would-be organizers arises when I try to get across the concept that tactics are not the product of careful cold reason, that they do not follow a table of organization or plan of attack. Accident, unpredictable reactions to your own actions, necessity, and improvisation dictate the direction and nature of tactics. Then, analytical logic is required to appraise where you are, what you can do next, the risks and hopes that you can look forward to.

186 - The rough category 'middle class" can be broken down into three groups: lower middle class ... middle middle class ... and upper middle class ... In the lower middle class we encounter people who have struggled all their lives for what relatively little they have.

187 - They are a fearful people, who feel threatened from all sides ... They look at the unemployed poor as parasitical dependents, recipients of a vast variety of massive public programs all paid for by them "the public."

188 - 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 ... Now they are not only the most vociferous in their espousal of law and order but ripe victims for such as demagogic George Wallace, the John Birch Society, and the Red-menace perennials.

Insecure in this fact-changing world, they cling to illusory fixed points -- which are very real to them ... On the other side they see the middle middle class and the upper middle class assuming a liberal, democratic, holier-than-thou psition, and attacking the bigotry of the employed poor. They see that through all kinds of tax-evasion devices the middle middle and upper middle can elude their share of the tax burden -- so that most of it comes back (as they see it) upon themselves, the lower middle class.

189 - Many of the lower middle class are members of labor unions, churches, bowling clubs , fraternal, service, and nationality organizations. They are organizations and people that must be worked with as one would work with any other part of our population -- with respect, understanding, and sympathy.To reject them is to lose them by default ... Remember that even if you cannot win over the lower middle-class, at least parts of them must be persuaded to where there is at least communication, then to a series of partial agreements and a willingness to abstain from hard opposition as changes take place.