As the great man's guest must produce his good stories or songs at the evening banquet, as the platform orator exhibits his telling facts at mid-day, so the journalist lies under the stern obligation of extemporizing his lucid views, leading ideas, and nutshell truths for the breakfast table.
Cardinal J. H. Newman, Preface to The Idea of a University, 1852

Monday, May 18, 2020

Saul Alinsky on radicals, contrasted with conservatives and liberals.

From Saul Alinsky “Reveille for Radicals” 2nd Edition, Vintage Books, New York 1969. pp 15-23. (First edition 1946)  Edited to remove of-the-time sexist and racially-offensive language.

What is the American Radical? Radicals are those unique people who actually believe what they say. They are those people to whom the common good is the greatest personal value. They are those people who genuinely and completely believe in mankind. Radicals so completely identified with mankind that they personally share the pain, the injustices, and the sufferings of all their fellows.

For Radicals the bell tolls unceasingly and everyone’s struggle is their fight.

Radicals are not fooled by shibboleths and façades. They face issues squarely and do not hide their cowardice behind the convenient cloak of rationalization. Radicals refuse to be diverted by superficial problems. They are completely concerned with fundamental causes rather than current manifestations. They concentrate their attack on the heart of the issue.

What do the radicals want? They want a world in which the worth of the individual is recognized. They want the creation of a kind of society where everyone’s potentialities could be realized; a world where people could live in dignity, security, happiness and peace—a world based on a morality of humanity.

To these ends radicals struggle to eradicate all those evils which anchor humanity in the mire of war, fears, misery, and demoralization. Radicals are concerned not only with the economic welfare of the bodies of people but also with the freedom of their minds. It is for this that they attack all those parts of any system that tends to make people robots. It is for this that they oppose all circumstances which destroy souls and make people fearful, petty, worried, dull sheep in human clothing. Radicals are dedicated to the destruction of the roots of all fears, frustrations, and insecurity, whether they be material or spiritual. Radicals want to see humanity truly free. Not just free economically and politically but also free socially. When radicals say complete freedom they means just that.

Radicals believe that all peoples should have a high standard of food, housing, and health. Radicals are impatient with talk of the “closing of frontiers” or the “end of the frontiers.” They think only in terms of human frontiers which are as limitless as the horizons. Radicals believe intensely in the possibilities of people and hope fervently for the future.

Radicals place human rights far above property rights. They are for universal, free public education and recognize this as fundamental to the democratic way of life. They will be for local control but will condemn local abuse of public education – whether it be discrimination or corruption – that denies equal education to anyone and will insist if necessary upon its correction by national laws and the use of government authority enforce those laws —but at the same time they will bitterly oppose complete Federal control of education. They will fight for individual rights and against centralized power. They will usually be found battling in defense of local rights against Federal usurpations of power, but they knows that ever since the Tories attacked the Continental Congress as an invasion of local rights, “local rights” – or, as the term has come to be known, “States’ rights” – have been the star-spangled Trojan horse of Tory reaction. It is for this reason that American radicals frequently shift their position on this issuer, in keeping with their fundamental beliefs in human rights.

Radical are deeply interested in social planning but just as deeply suspicious of and antagonistic to any idea of plans which work from the top down. Democracy to them is working from the bottom up.

Radicals are staunch defenders of minority rights but will combat any minority which tries to use the club of minority rights to bludgeon into unconsciousness the will of the majority.

In short, American radicals, by their individual actions, may appear to be the epitome of inconsistency, but when judged on the basis of his ideals, philosophy, and objectives, are a living definition of consistency.

Radicals believe completely in real equality of opportunity for all peoples regardless of race, color, or creed. They insist on full employment for economic security but are just as insistent that work should not only provide economic security but also be such as to satisfy the creative desires within us all. Radicals feel that the importance of a job is not only in its individual economic return but also in its general social significance. Radicals know that humans are not just economic animals. The complete person is one who is making a definite contribution to the general social welfare and who is a vital part of that community of interests, values, and purposes that makes life and people meaningful. Complete people need complete jobs – jobs for the heart as well as the hand – jobs where they can say to themselves, “What I do is important and has its place.”

American radicals will fight privilege and power whether it be inherited or acquired by any small group, whether it be political or financial or organized creed. They curse a caste system which they recognize despite all patriotic denials. They will fight conservatives whether they are business or labor leaders. They will fight any concentration of power hostile to a broad, popular democracy, whether they find it in financial circles or in politics.

Radicals recognize that constant dissension and conflict is and has been the fire under the boiler of democracy. They firmly believe in that brave saying of a brave people, "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!’ Radicals may resort to the sword but when they do they are not filled with hatred against those individuals whom they attack. They hate these individuals not as persons but as symbols representing ideas or interests which they believe to be inimical to the welfare of the people. That is the reason why radicals, although frequently embarking upon revolutions, have rarely resorted to personal terrorism.

To the general public Radicals may appear to be persons of violence. But if Radicals are stormy and fighting on the outside, they possess an inner dignity. It is that dignity that can come only from consistency of conscience and conduct. The first part of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi expresses to a large extent the radical’s hopes, aspirations, dreams, and philosophy:

Lord, make me. an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
But let no person or group who ruthlessly exploit their fellow men assume because of the nobility and spiritual quality of the radicals’ hopes that they will not stand up for the fulfillment of this prayer, for next to this prayer they carry within them the words of Jehovah :
When I whet my glittering sword, and my hand taketh hold on Judgment: I will render vengeance unto my enemies, and those that hate me will I requite.

I will make my arrows drunken with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; from the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the crushed head of the enemy.
There are many liberals who claim the same objectives in life which characterize the philosophy of the radical, but there are as many clear lines between radicals and liberals as there are between liberals and conservatives. There is a tremendous significance to that common saying that people radical at twenty-one, liberal at thirty-one, and conservative at forty. Youngsters of twenty-one still have certain burning ideals. They still have faith in life and hope in progress. They are still naive enough to take what they say literally. They are still young enough not to have acquired a vested material interest and the attendant suspicions of any social change which might jeopardize it. They still haven’t reached the point of believing that “all men are created equal” is nice in theory but taboo in practice. They have not become civilized to the point of assimilating all the prejudices and hate which permeate so large a portion of our lives. They still have some of the simplicity and decency of the child. They still like and actually expect to be liked in return. They still are not filled with the virus of driving personal ambition, with sophistication and its accompanying constellation of rationalizations, and with a cynicism which is a cover-up for the deep fear of the future. They brave young people whose life is not cluttered up with prejudices and fears. They are radicals. Radicals always remain young in spite of the passage of years. That is one of the differences between the radical and the liberal. There are others.

Liberals like people with their head, radicals like people with both their head and their hearts. Liberals talk passionately of the rights of minority groups; protest against the denial of political and voting rights, against segregation, against anti-Semitism, and against all other inhuman practices of humanity. However, when these same liberals emerge from their meetings, rallies, and passage of resolutions and find themselves seated next to a Black American in a public conveyance they instinctively shrink back slightly. They belong to professional organizations and social clubs whose membership is exclusive – exclusive of Jews, Blacks, and many other minorities. They tell you that they disapprove of the practice, but nevertheless continue their membership. Intellectually they subscribe to all of the principles of the American Revolution and the Constitution of the United States, but in their hearts they do not. They are a strange breed of hybrids who have radical minds and conservative hearts. They really like people only with their head. The radical genuinely likes people and feels the same warmth and friendship in his actual relationships with all people that he expresses with his tongue.

Liberals regard themselves as well informed and well balanced. They refer to radicals as “cranks.” They forget, however, that the definition of a crank is an object which makes revolutions.

Liberals in common with many conservatives lay claim to the precious quality of impartiality, of cold objectivity, and to a sense of mystical impartial justice which enables them to view both sides of an issue. Since there are always at least two sides to every question and all justice on one side involves a certain degree of injustice to the other side, liberals are hesitant to act. Their opinions are studded with “but on the other hand.” Caught on the horns of this dilemma they are paralyzed into immobility. They become utterly incapable of action. They discuss and discuss and end in disgust.

Liberals charge radicals with passionate partisanship. To this accusation the radical’s jaw tightens as he snaps, “Guilty! We are partisan for the people. Furthermore, we know that all people are partisan. The only non-partisan people are those who are dead. You too are partisan—if not for the people, then for whom?"

Liberals in their meetings utter bold words; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement “which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.” They endlessly pass resolutions and endlessly do nothing. They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still sit. Radicals do not sit frozen by cold objectivity. They see injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. They are people of decision and action. There is a saying that the difference between a liberal and a radical is that the liberal is one who walks out of the room when the argument turns into a fight.

Liberals have distorted egotistical concepts of their self-importance in the general social scheme. They deliberate as ponderously and as timelessly as though their decisions would cause the world to shake and tremble. Theirs is truly a perfect case of the mountain laboring and bringing forth a mouse—a small, white, pink-eyed mouse. The fact is that outside of their own intimate associates few know of or give a hang what these liberal groups decide. They truly fit the old description that “A liberal is one who puts their foot down firmly on thin air.”

The support given by liberals to some radical measures is to be understood in the explanation a wealthy French farmer gave when he voted for Socialism. “I vote for Socialism always and steadily,” he said, “because there isn’t going to be any Socialism.”

A complacent society tolerantly views the turbulent atmospheric noise of liberal minds with the old childhood slogan of “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Let the liberal turn to the course of action, the course of all radicals, and the amused look vanishes from the face of society as it snarls, “That’s radical!” Society has good reason to fear radicals. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from radicals. They hit, they hurt, they are dangerous. Conservative interests know that while liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of conservatives.

A fundamental difference between liberals and radicals is to be found in the issue of power. Liberals fear power or its application. They labor in confusion over the significance of power and fail to recognize that only through the achievement and constructive use of power can people better themselves. They talk glibly of a people lifting themselves by their own bootstraps but fail to realize that nothing can be lifted or moved except through power. This fear of popular use of power is reflected in what has become the motto of liberals, “We agree with your objectives but not with your tactics.” This has been the case throughout the history of America. Through every great crisis including the American Revolution there were thousands of well-meaning liberals who always cried out, “We agree with you that America should be free, but we disagree that it is necessary to have a bloody revolution.” “We agree that slavery should be eliminated but we disagree with the turmoil of civil war.” Every issue involving power and its use has always carried in its wake the Liberal backwash of agreeing with the objective ‘but disagreeing with the tactics.

Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action—by using power. Liberals may then timidly follow along or else, as in most cases, be swept forward along the course set by radicals, but all because of forces unloosed by radical action. They are forced to positive action only in spite of their desires.

There are other differences between liberals and radicals. Liberals protest; radicals rebel. Liberals become indignant; radicals become fighting mad and go into action. Liberals do not modify their personal life and what they give to a cause is a small part of their life; radicals give themselves to the cause. Liberals give and take oral arguments; radicals give and take the hard, dirty, bitter way of life. Liberals frequently achieve high places of respectability ranging from the Supreme Court to Congress; the names of radicals are rarely enscribed in marble but burn eternally in the hearts of man. Liberals have tender beliefs and are filled with repugnance at the grime, the sordidness, the pain, the persecution, and the heartbreak of battle; radicals have tough convictions which are calloused by the rough road of direct action. Liberals play the game of life with white and occasionally red chips; with the Radical it’s only blue chips, and all the chips are always down. Liberals dream dreams; radicals build the world of men’s dreams.

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