Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky

Hello internet.

Saul Alinsky (1909-72) is reckoned to be the founder of modern community organising. As someone who dabbles in activism from time to time I figured it would be worth giving it a read, so that is exactly what I did. It was in North Room 2 of the university library, hidden in the scary-looking mechanical vaults which open up to let you in, and which it is impossible not to imagine closing while you are inside and crushing you. It had not been taken out since 1998, but was quite popular in the eighties. Interestingly, this corresponds almost perfectly to the time we had a Labour government.

His last book, Rules for Radicals (1971), is supposed to be for people without power what Machiavelli's The Prince is for people with power. I don't own The Prince anymore because I left it on a train, so I never finished it, but what I did read gave me a clear impression of what it was about: how to remain in power and use it effectively. Rules for Radicals is a book of advice on how to successfully organise communities for power. One of my main observations during the student protests last year was the lack of organisational coherence, as the campaign relied largely on the spontaneous activities of people who were sympathetic. There were no serious efforts to broaden support, and there was no coordination to maximise impact. There was no plan. That was my motivation for reading the book, and if you are interested in how to organise communities for power, broaden support and maximise impact, then there is probably something in this book you will find interesting.

It is a rambling, anecdote filled little book with no obvious structure (some chapters are composed entirely of meandering lists) which is nevertheless powerful just because it relates the valuable experience of somebody who has actually done it all, somebody who has successfully organised people who have no power to get what they need. One of the most valuable things about it is the sense it gives you that ordinary people can change things. They are going to need to work a hell of a lot harder than they are now though.

The most obvious comparison to Machiavelli comes in the chapter on means and ends, in which Alinsky dismisses the doctrine of non-violent resistance entirely. The question, he says, is not whether the ends justify the means, but whether these particular ends justify these particular means. Moralising is the luxury of those who have a choice: if your end is urgent enough, the means you will take are the means that will work. The best thing to say about non-violence is that in the modern day, with such asymmetry in coercive power between people and state, non-violence is going to be the only thing that works. This kind of assertive pragmatism can be hard to read sometimes but is hard to dismiss.

To me the most powerful part of the book was the prologue, where Alinsky taps into what drives people's passion for change. "Today's generation is desperately trying to make some sense out of their lives and out of the world... They have rejected... everything that meant success to their parents... They have seen the unbelievable idiocy of our political leadership". Though it was written 40 years ago the sentiments feel the same and in many ways it seems like the world has been in stasis all this time, with many of the same unresolved problems.

In some ways though everything is very different. Alinsky is very candid about race in a way which sounds coarse to a modern ear, though he was very much a progressive in his time. He never comes accross as misogynistic, but he constantly assumes anyone in a position of leadership, power or organisation will be a man. The book bears its age well: that doesn't mean it doesn't show it at all.

Throughout the whole book I got a strong impression that the "rules" were not meant to be taken literally. They were more to feed the imagination and encourage discipline and serious-mindedness than anything else. Michael Oakeshott makes the point well when he observes that any kind of theory or training manual is no substitute for experience and personal reflection, this when he is denouncing rationalism in politics at the expense of experience. One rule does seem fundamental however, and certainly merits some reflection. Community organisation, Alinsky claims, requires first community disorganisation. Galvanising issues are there to be harnessed, organisation for people who need it is a worthy end in itself.

Caleb

Men's Breakfast

Hello internet.

This is a song I wrote a while ago. It's called Men's Breakfast.

As I sat by the wall both my arms felt like lead,

And the feeling arising could be spirit or dread,

As the pastor called out for his first volunteer,

To break out of the cage and to conquer his fear,

And it just made me question if I was the one,

Who should turn from the shadows to bask in the sun,

But my petals were withered and crinkled and dark,

And try as I might I could not find the spark,

But I'm wondering now whether that's what it means,

To stay on the bank, not to jump in the stream,

Well whatever it was I could not but hold back,

Whether spiritual revel or panic attack.

As the zealot beside me would mutter and sway,

I couldn't find sense in the things that he'd say,

His prayers and his tongues found me equally deaf,

They echoed inside me and fleetingly left,

As inside I'm hollow with nowhere to store,

The memories of mutterings made to the Lord,

But the question I'm asking that keeps me awake,

Is who was the phony, who was the fake?

The zealot, the convert, who fervently cried,

Or the doubt-filled thinker who silent abides,

Though with visions and tongues I've never been blessed,

Maybe this Godly silence is all but a test.

Caleb

A Letter To My Future Child

Hello.

I've been doing a lot to try and make the world better for you. But it has not been enough. I am sorry that things are the way they are, and I am partly responsible. The planet, politics and society are in quite a poor state and I should have done more to make them better.

I will try never to call you boy or girl, or son or daughter, but I think you should know that other people will. I am very happy for you to choose what kind of person you want to be, and also what kind of people you want to fall in love with one day. I should just let you know, though, that if the world is anything like it was when I was growing up, it will be a lot easier for you if you be what people expect you to be. I want you to be whoever you want to be. If you let society force you into trying to be something which is not right for you, it will make you unhappy. It will be hard for you but you will need to stick up to them. Find friends who understand and face them together. Know that I will be the first of those friends.

I am so sorry that you are paying for all the bad decisions made by other people before you were even born. Please don't despair, but instead do what I tried to do which is to forgive the past generations and try to rise up to meet the challenges. There will be successes and there will be failures, try not to be disheartened for too long. The world needs you too much for you to give up. Do not think that I don't care anymore just because I am older now. I promised myself when I was younger I would always keep on caring, keep on trying. Please remind me whenever I seem to be breaking that promise. For this I really need you.

I have been looking forward to your existence for a long time. I am going to make mistakes, I am sorry for that as well. But let's make it an adventure together, okay?

I love you.

Caleb
(Dad)

Closet Tory

Hello internet.

Someone recently asked me if I was a closet Tory. I am not (obviously), and I would have no problem admitting it if I was a Tory, because most of them probably aren't so bad. People of every political hue have a motive to portray their opponents as stupid or incompetent or selfish or scheming, or even evil. I think that this is usually a mistake. When I have spoken to people from different parties they have tended to have good reasons for believing what they believe, and I usually find I can respect them.

It might not be so much my politics but the company I keep that leads to accusations of my being right wing. A lot of people involved in activism believe strongly in ideologies that mean quite a lot to them. I was in a pub a couple of weeks ago with someone from the Socialist Party, someone from the Socialist Workers' Party and an anarchist. It felt like the beginning of a joke.

Caleb

The Language of Ableism

Hello internet.

This is broadly speaking my reaction to this blog, though some of the thoughts written here have been going around for a while.

I will begin this entry with the admission that I am not completely comfortable with the terms mental illness or even disability because they seem to be making value judgements about people without any real basis. I don't like the idea that the language we use suggests that these features are a bad thing, or that deviation from what people think of as normal is a bad thing. I do understand that people might want to use a very weak sense of the word "bad" to mean a property that creates difficulties for people in the particular social context we are in, but this could be adequately replaced with the something to the effect of "difficulty-generating". From what I have thus far written you may have noticed that I feel quite hesitant and am trying very hard both to effectively put across my thoughts and to avoid using any language which could quite justifiably be taken as offensive by many people.

Here is the argument as I understand it. Some person in our society has a difficulty-generating mental or physical anomoly that significantly make their life worse (I am using the third person plural to try to avoid gender bias). This could be for one of two main reasons: firstly that people within society actively discriminate against people with anomolies like theirs; or secondly that society itself is constituted in such a way that people with anomolies like theirs are at a significant disadvantage. I am using a device I first came accross in the chapter on Feminism in Contemporary Political Philosophy by Will Kymlicka, but it originates elsewhere. The obvious injustice of either state of affairs is supposed to make us feel the need to correct this defect in our society, and suffice to say I find the case quite compelling.

After being part of (and presumably benefitting from) a system which is making some people's lives worse, to then act or speak in a way which is found hurtful by those same people is a terrible thing to do, and so I agree with Diane Shipley that we need to be careful with the language that we use. But as is probably made obvious by my fumbling for words, I don't really know what the correct language to use might be.

I think the explanation in my case might be broadly biographical. I have had almost no exposure to people with any of the kinds of difficulties I am talking about, except what have presumably been relatively mild cases. I am probably both a lot less sensitive to some people's needs than I ought to be, and a lot less informed than I ought to be about the various issues affecting significant numbers of people in our communities. I have no excuse for this, either. It seems to have just happened. This is something which I feel I need to remedy in the near future.

If I was a person like me, and I am, I would be quite careful with what I say and do so as to avoid being hurtful. Yes, it is difficult sometimes to know which words to use, but this is the future now: surely we can be creative.

Caleb

PS I will hopefully talk a bit later about public policy when there is great diversity of this sort for people.

When I was Pre-Post-Christian

Hello internet.

I don't think my parents did anything particularly wrong in giving me a Christian upbringing. They were just doing their best. They were relatively liberal, and when I "came out" as an unbeliever last year they were fine with it. At least that's what I think, we didn't really talk about it. I think they had seen it coming for a while.

My parents started having children young, they finished their seven year architecture degrees with four children. I don't think that was for weird Catholic style reasons but I know that university is where Christianity really happened to them and it seems to be a really big part of their relationship and the things they have chosen to do with their lives. When something like that gets so big it in many ways becomes your whole life, you can see how the religious concepts and spiritual relationships become tangible. Perhaps it is easier to be a believer if you build you whole life on it, so that doubt never really becomes an option. For people who really do religion it can become Too Big To Fail.

More or less everything they actually did, in terms of using their authority as parents, seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. In fact, it was much more the emotional side of our relationship not the use of authority that made me be a Christian. My parents and I loved each other, and I wanted to live in a way that made them happy, made them proud of me. For a while I wanted to be a missionary like them when I grew up. They lived in a meaningful way according to some amazing code I didn't quite understand but which seemed a kind of magic. So wanting to be like my parents not only made me a willing indoctrinatee but also meant that I kept giving the church second chances, and when I withdrew from Christian life for a long time it was associated with intense feeling of guilt or self-criticism.

There were a couple of early episodes where they might have been a bit illiberal. I remember once I was playing around on my bed when we were suppose to be praying together. My dad smacked me for it, but it wasn't so much the smack that hurt but the feeling that I had failed, that I had done something unforgivable. Also, when we were very young it was never an option whether or not we would go to Sunday school. This was probably as much for logistical reasons as anything I guess since there would have been nobody home to look after us, but it did mean that we were automatically culturally situated within the tradition of Christianity. I know the Bible stories and I even had some infantile interpretations of my own. I know the doctrines I was taught, and I know how some of the rituals go. Everyone knows the Lords Prayer but to me it really meant something. My parents were young though and didn't really know that well what they were doing, and besides everyone makes a couple of mistakes. I have since met Christian parents who are much worse.

As soon as I was old enough to think properly, say twelve or thirteen, my parents became much more relaxed about whether I went to church, on the surface at least. Most weeks I would stay at home and play computer games or spend time with friends instead. Though they never ordered me to do anything I could feel their disapproval whenever I said no. There was a regular ritual where on a Sunday morning Dad would ask me in a very very nice voice "Are you coming to church with us today?". And I would say no. And feel terrible.

I still self-defined as a Christian though and still kept to fairly strict Christian morals of the standard anglophone non-denominational kind. You see even though I questioned things and I thought about science and philosophy and everything, I was still very much a Christian in my habits and emotions. In addition to that, being a Christian made me feel like I was different to other people in a very psychologically powerful way. I already had a sense of differentness because I had spent a long time abroad, and this continued to be a powerful force on my personality until I noticed and took steps to intentionally correct for it. Being a Christian made me feel special, the morals I kept and others didn't let me feel like I was better than them. Now I realise that was complete rubbish, but the reason it was so convincing a thought at the time was because all around me I could see that the world really was messed up, and I thought I knew the way to fix it.

It was utter hypocrisy because some of the stuff I did do was obviously bad, and the stuff I was choosing not to do didn't really matter. I might go into a bit more depth on this another time but by the time I was 16 I regularly lied to my parents, I was arrogant, a bit of a bully, occasionally violent, cowardly, borderline homophobic, a truly terrible boyfriend: I was a pretty awful person. I was so fixated on my own specialness due to some inconsequential stuff I did or didn't do that I never really gave any serious thought about what it meant to be a good person. A system of rules loosely inspired by the Bible but largely fabricated by various religious reformers had ethically lobotomised me.

I think the main thing which differentiates being Post-Christian from never having been Christian at all is what I call spiritual withdrawal (there also exists a spiritual hangover). I still know the conceptual framework of Christianity, I could go right back into if I wanted to (apart from the obvious reasons why that would be a terrible idea). For a long time I was unable to "kick the habit" because whenever I strayed away I would get intense feelings of guilt. I gradually managed to wean myself off Christianity by dropping beliefs one by one in favour of the fairly standard Western liberal thought I now seem to have as a start point, though I took an interesting detour via Quakerism. It has been a long process but I have to say I feel better about myself and more able to find meaning and value in the world than I ever did when there was a divine answer to everything.

Caleb

The Race/Gender Analogy

Hello internet.

Biological sex is to gender as X is to race.

What is X? It is bound to be something to do with genotype (and usually skin colour, facial bone structure), but there seems to be no existing concept that can spell out exactly what X is. Presumably that is because there is no single thing. I will be using the catch-all symbol X to represent these features.

The race/gender analogy is supposed to draw out the arbitrariness of gender discrimination, or alternatively to bring to light the injustice of one gender having systematically worse life chances that another. We would not tolerate this kind of imbalance between races (or Xs), and would thus look for policy solutions for it, so to be consistent we should not tolerate this imbalance between genders (or biological sexes). This is the usual direction the analogy is applied, but I think it can constructively go both ways.

To anyone unfamiliar with the precise terminology, biological sex refers to whether someone is male or female (or both or neither). Gender is a social construct which typically maps men onto males and women onto females. The fact that it is a social construct makes it in some ways inherently oppressive: it is the set of expectations we have about people based unfoundedly on the bare scientific facts. Now I could argue about the exact extent of the differences between male and female humans (just as one could argue about the differences between Xs) but I think it is not constructive, relies on empirical not conceptual support, and would not substantively alter the way we think about these issues anyway.

When we hear feminists talk about smashing the gender binary, they are talking about decoupling sex and gender. It is not fair that society should form certain expectations of you and pressure you into certain roles and self-perceptions based on a fact about you which is entirely out of your control. If we are to have gender at all, we should not be limited to two, and people should feel free to have whatever gender they wish. The sex-gender parity has got to go.

Yet there is an asymmetry here. These arguments seem to apply just as strongly to race. However race is an important concept in the politics of identity, and what is more it is important to have information on the classifications captured by the term race so that we have the tools to identify problems in order to fix them. Yet we also have good reason to destroy the idea of race, or make it so that race, like gender, is a social label that we can choose for ourselves, a choice which society will respect.

There is a tension here between the dual needs to break down oppressive social constructs and the need to gather information about what society actually thinks, what distinctions it actually draws and what the consequences are of these distinctions. As such we cannot just "do away with race" for official purposes (such as in surveys and so on) while the concept stills runs rampant through peoples minds.

I suggest that a way to start on addressing this tension is by not asking people what race they are, but asking them what they think other people think their race is. This externalises the idea of race, leaving it somewhat more open to the individual to choose whether they are going to have a race or not, and hopefully most of us will choose not to. This was we can carry on gathering important information and at the same time reduce the oppressive power of the race construct.

This feels inconclusive, and I am sure there are many more considerations I have not thought of, but I think that firstly the race/gender analogy is a powerful tool for highlighting instances of oppression for women, and secondly that it gives us reason to believe that the world would be better if the idea of race either didn't exist or was remarkably different.

Caleb

My Hypothetical Bands

Hello internet.

I thought I would share with you the names of a couple of the aborted bands that I have planned to start up.

1) Clichés of the Alternative Left
Punk band, excellent name. Still might go ahead.

2) Internet Cover Band
Just me playing internet songs (Rick Astley, Charlie Sheen, Baby Monkey, Being a Dickhead's Cool, etc) at open mic nights etc.

3) Screaming JIMP
Me on bass, Ali on drums, John in a gimpsuit. It's probably not going to happen.

4) The Breeders
This one is a bit of a sad story: apparently the name was already taken.

5) York Protest Orchestra
Actually existed for a bit. I might revive this one at some point, it was a fun way of brightening up and demilitarising protests.

I haven't written a song in ages, so I don't know if music is even going to happen to me anymore.

Caleb

The Idea of a City

Hello internet.

They say it is the biggest migration in the history of the world. It's the city. Everyone is moving into the city, we are all going there looking for... something. It is not obvious what that something is, but that is testament to just how much muchness there is in the city.

Take me, for example. I am here to get an education. It's going pretty well I suppose, and I certainly couldn't do this in the countryside. People flock to the city not just to live though, they also rush in every day. Apparently, they do this to buy books. Look at those guys, they really want their books.

What I want to suggest is that what we put at the centre of our cities says something about what is at the centre of our lives. It will surprise no-one that a lot of our space and energy seems to be devoted to making and spending money. It strikes me that it does not need to be this way. Indeed it hasn't always been. In York the incredible Minster dominates the city centre. Now an impressive bauble bringing in the tourists like so many bees, it once was a place of power, politics (church politics) and reverence. The theatres, libraries and churches once meant something, once they were an honest expression of where we were as a society. I am not so sure about that anymore. It is not just about commodification and tourism. It is about looking for something which we really need to find, places where value is situated in our collective life.

The dominance of the city as shopping if anything captures the decline in collective life simpliciter. I don't know what we built these cities to do together, but it seems to have gone away. We fill in the gaps with busking, protests, and gathering with friends in public spaces, but these alone do not constitute healthy public life.

It so happens that York has one of the largest brownfield sites in Europe (according to some person I spoke to once) at the site variously called "the teardrop" or "York Central". It is right next to the train station, and presents an opportunity to create spaces which enrich our public life. At the moment it is probably earmarked for retail development. I find this distressing.

Being at university, I feel for the first time like I am really part of a community. I know quite a lot of people, I bump into people I know a lot, people spread gossip and share ideas and embark on projects together just for the sheer challenge, excitement and interest of it. There are informative public lectures and spaces where you can meet and talk incredibly freely. All this helps generate a sense of community which I find it harder to identify in the city proper. I think that the spaces and activities of the university contribute to the stimulating environment and sense of community, and there is something the city can learn from that.

The question of what we put at the heart of our cities is a question of what we value. I hope developers think about that before setting up a new Primark, before wasting another opportunity.

Caleb

Political Fantasy

Hello internet.

I have a confession, and though it makes me uncomfortable, I think it would be for the best if I came right out and admitted it. I suffer from political fantasies.

It has been happening for a while now, almost as long as I can remember. In my defence these episodes are usually brought about by what seems at the time a bright policy idea. Sometimes it is because of a flash of anger caused by the overwhelmingly apparent problems I see in the world to which there seem to be political solutions. I think I am not alone in this, that I am not the only person to have thought: if I only had the power...

My most recent fantasy involved me setting up a new political group or party called Youth Power. It sounds alarming and threatening to begin with, but I have always thought it is better to be upfront about these sorts of things.

The motivation for the party is as follows: young people currently have, and to some extent always have, had a very hard time getting by in life. There are many reasons for this, and though the root cause is somewhat hard to identify the problems manifested are all too visible. High house prices force young people to stay at home or at best remain in rented accomodation. Unemployment disproportionately afflicts young people. Students who are already sacrificing time that could be spent earning money in order to improve themselves for the good of the whole of society are forced into debt. Many face the humiliation of being told by the government their parents are too rich for them to qualify for financial support, effectively infantilising them as they must beg their parents for money, work at the cost of studying for their degree, or not eat.

Even worse, as Shiv Malik and Ed Howker point out in their book Jilted Generation, the proliferation of PFIs, unfunded pensions and high government debt mean that the excesses of today will be paid for by the taxpayers of the next generations. Intergenerational justice is a concept fast gaining credibility, and a group representing the interests of young people would help in encouraging policies less unfair for them.

Anyway that was the reason for that political fantasy. It is a filthy habit, but maybe if I can be honest to the internet I can be honest to myself. If I recognise there is a problem I might be able to rid myself of it.

Caleb

Crypto-Anarchism

Hello internet.

I was not really that into codes when I read The Code Book by Simon Singh. It was before one of my many failed attempts to get into Oxford, and I wanted some conceptually heavy trivia to impress with. Though that didn't work, it did give me a small taste for cryptography, which in turn led to an interest in hacker culture. I will readily admit I don't know the first thing about any kind of programming. I have a loose grasp of certain concepts, but I am very much a fascinated spectator in this particular social development.

Recently a lot of headlines have been made by groups like Anonymous and LulzSec, who have directly challenged the authority of the state by attacking its assets and undermining its activities. The online economy has taken a new turn with the growing popularity of Bitcoins which allow tax free incomes and the exchange of contraband. Governments seem incapable of effectively policing what happens online, and a large part of this is due to the protection anonymity provides people. Apart from the fascinating philosophical questions about identity we can pose with so much interaction taking place anonymously, to me the interesting thing about these trends is the immunity from state power available to people with sufficient know-how.

It always interests me when trends like this emerge.

Caleb

Fun for Cats and Dogs

Hello internet.

I saw a dog this morning, and I was once again struck by just how ridiculous they are. I grew up with dogs, and always found they are best for three things: wrestling, tricking and cuddling when you are sad. The dog ran in that inefficient bouncing doggish way, unlike the smooth lope of a wolf I have heard so much about in generic fantasy novels. It's ears flopped about comically, tongue flapping about. Everyone else has seen this too.

Stupid as they are, there is a certain innocent joy to a dog running around that warmed me somewhat. They seem to take pleasure in the simply fact of life with all its exuberance. Maybe we can learn something from dogs. Maybe I was just projecting, and its stupid self was not really feeling anything in the sense we feel at all.

It is always tempting to contrast cats and dogs, probably because they are so familiar to people in many societies. We all know about domesticated cats and dogs: no other animals have their presence in our popular consciousness. It is a cliché, but cats seem to take pleasure in the suffering of others. At least that's the impression I get from their arrogant little faces. Maybe that's why we like to see them brought down a peg or three by watching videos of them falling off things on Youtube (I just got the urge to search for such videos, I bet anyone reading just did as well).

I think I would rather have the fun dogs are having than that of cats. I would rather enjoy my own life than enjoy watching other people fail. Unless those other people are cats.

Caleb

Finding a voice

Hello internet.

Welcome to my new blog. I don't really know what to say by way of an introduction, by now you should know the deal with these things. I plan on talking about politics, philosophy, society and culture, while at the same time documenting the happenings in my life and anecdotes that spring to mind. Hopefully in the process I can do what we're all trying to do, which is to understand better where I am in life, and where I am going. I also hope that I can write regularly to get into a habit of writing, and by doing so crystallise what ideas I might have and find a voice of my own.

Caleb