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