Writing in The Nation magazine on May 2, 1966, sociologists Richard Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven published what was to become in later years one of the most famous and influential of leftist articles. Titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty,” the two socialist intellectuals developed a new so-called “crisis strategy” — that of trying to use the existing welfare system to create chaos that would weaken the corporate capitalist state and eventually foment revolution. “Discover the Networks” has a good summary of their thesis.
The two became the ideologists of a group formed to implement their strategy, called “The National Welfare Rights Organization,” or NWRO. As Stanley Kurtz explains in Radical-in-Chief: “the idea was to flood state and local welfare systems with more applicants than they could possibly afford to carry. Cloward and Piven believed that this ‘break the bank’ strategy would force President [Lyndon B.] Johnson and a liberal Democratic Congress to bail out overburdened state welfare systems with a federally guaranteed annual income.” This experience of activism by the poor would create a new anti-capitalist sentiment, and would stoke the poors’ “sense of entitlement and rage.” Later, the group’s mission would be carried on by ACORN, whose leaders endorsed and built upon Cloward and Piven’s strategy.
The idea was to consciously create a fiscal crisis of the state. ACORN’s chief strategist, Peter Dreier, explained this in an article, “The Case for Transitional Reform,” which appeared in the journal Social Policy in February 1979. Dreier called for injecting “unmanageable strains into the capitalist system, strains that precipitate an economic and/or political crisis,” producing a “revolution of rising entitlements” that “cannot be abandoned without undermining the legitimacy of the capitalist class.” Once a “fiscal crisis in the public sector” occurred, the movement could push for creation of “socialist norms” being advanced as the only possible solution.
A few decades have passed since this strategy was first announced. They had great hopes that when Bill Clinton became president, they could implement their strategy. But the Clinton administration — once seen potentially by the Left as a vehicle for fulfillment of its dreams — worked with Republicans in Clinton’s second term to pass meaningful and successful welfare reform. This was precisely the opposite of what the Left wanted and hoped for.
Now, as President Barack Obama is beginning the mid-point of his first and possibly only term in office, the Left is again trying to advance a new form of the old strategy. And the author of the new program is none other than Frances Fox Piven, the co-author with her late husband of the original 1966 article. Clearly, Piven looks back fondly with memories of what NWRO did in the 1970s. The New York Times reported on their tactics on September 22, 1970:
There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests — and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones.
My friend Sol Stern, now with City Journal and the Manhattan Institute, explained how successful they were:
The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley’s wildest dreams. From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city’s private economy.
Under the liberal administration of Mayor John Lindsay, welfare spending more than doubled, from $400 million to $1 billion a year. Money for the poor was now 28 per cent of the city’s budget, and New York almost collapsed as a result — precisely the hope of Cloward, Piven and George Wiley.
Now, as our national economy and many state and city budgets again are at the breaking point, Frances Fox Piven has issued a new call to repeat and build upon the ruinous strategies that she and her late husband advanced decades ago. And as in 1966, her vehicle is The Nation, the flagship magazine of the Left which today has a huge circulation and much greater influence than it had in the 1960s.
Writing in the current issue, Piven presents a clarion call for a new mass movement, one that the magazine publishes as an editorial statement representing its editors. (It is currently under the magazine’s firewall.) She begins by noting that nothing is taking place to deal with ending what she claims is an unemployment rate of 15 million people. To regain the 5 percent rate of 2007, she estimates there would have to be 300,000 jobs created each month for several years, something that is next to impossible.
No wonder the Left is in favor of gun confiscation.
“she estimates there would have to be 300,000 jobs created each month for several years, something that is next to impossible.”
nonsense. cut taxes, reduce gov’t regs, open drilling, et al and watch america take off.
You are so right. If Obama only gets one term and the Repubs keep the House and win the Senate I think by cutting corprate taxes from 35% to even 20% and let us drill for oil and gas the unemployment rate wll drop by a hugh margin. There will be a ripple effect thrugh out the econmy and after 6 months Obama and his policies will look like sh*t and within 2 yrs. he will be know as Jimmy Obama.
Lower corp. tax rates, Canada just went from 18% to 15%, ours is, I think 35%(or 38%).. She is a crack pot..
Want a white-hot economy?
Put the Cuda, or another solid conservative in the White House with a Tea Partyish GOP in charge of both houses of Congress.
They’ll cut spending, repeal Obamacare and replace it with real reform, reduce the marginal corporate tax rate down to 20% or less, cut cap-gains taxes another 5%, defund the Left of federal dollars or at least put discretionary non-defense spending way down or on a course to serious reductions, and tell businesses both large an and small that the federal reign of terror has ended.
Marxists like Piven still don’t get it that if you kill the chicken, you don’t get any more eggs.
“the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible.” She’s right about that one. With one exception: it’s the LEFT WING POLS that are the biggest hindrance to employment and left wing politics that destroy economies. Does this she-jackal really believe that the unemployed are going to protest for more of the same job killing policies??? Maybe she doesn’t understand that there is a big difference between the natural constituencies of endless welfare and those who have been laid off. For one thing, they worked which indicates they are made of far different stuff than the average welfare recipient. There is another huge difference between then and now: the internet. Which is probably why the fascist in the White House just stole it from the American people.
Absolutely right! In fact, the people who have been working their entire lives and have suddenly been laid off – especially those laid off in late middle age – are the very antithesis of the welfare lumpenproletariat that turns out to vote for Obama and his ilk.
This is my story, and the story of many others:
http://1389blog.com/2010/12/24/who-are-the-99ers/
Believe me, when we take to the streets in protest – and we do – we fly the Gadsden Tea Party flag!
Piven pines for violent left-wing mobs in this article, but in others denounces the (quite orderly and civil) Tea Party movement as an illegitimate collection of white nationalists.
In other words, violence in support of a radical left-wing agenda: good. Non-violence in support of a center-right agenda: bad.
But of course, in advocating just this sort of behavior, she de facto approves of it being used against her and her ilk.
Anger, anger, anger, anger. She uses the words multiple times. She is like the sorcerers apprentice, calling for targeted anger with no consideration of the apoplectic fury already held against her and her like by millions of normal and decent, and um…. growingly activist and dare I say, well-armed, Americans.
Sure you wanna play this game, baby? You have taught us all that disruption, disobedience, and direct-action are the way to go. How ’bout some of that “direct-action” headed right at your own hate-filled noggin’? Morally speaking, why the hell not? YOU sure have no argument against it. Frankly, the only thing keeping it from happening is that the right just doesn’t roll that way, nor does it want to. You would do well to keep it that way, toots.
I’m sure Piven et al consider Mario Savio, founder of the UC Berkley ‘Free Speech’ movement in 1964, somewhat of a hero. He said something interesting once –
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all”.
Piven et al in the end are pro-machine. That’s all they have to offer to make their fantasies work. You really wanna rile up a genuine “rage against the machine”?
Playin’ with fire, baby, playin’ with fire. And too damn stupidly intellectual, or intellectually stupid, to know it.
“Morally speaking, why the hell not? YOU sure have no argument against it. Frankly, the only thing keeping it from happening is that the right just doesn’t roll that way, nor does it want to. You would do well to keep it that way, toots.”
Exactly.
One thing that Piven needs to realize is that, if she does manage to push other people over the brink, having nothing left to lose, they’ll drag her over the brink too.
It’s likelier that Piven will end up pushing over the brink a deranged left-winger, who figures out at the last moment that Piven has helped to kill the goose that had been laying the golden eggs. People like Piven and the leftists are parasites that cannot survive without the mechanism of civilized society to feed off of. If they kill the host by overloading it, they are out of luck.
Excellent analogy – our capitalist-oriented society is the goose, the surpluses are the golden eggs, and looneys like Piven and Obama would prefer to have roast goose once instead of a lifetime of omelets.
Well stated. It is a double-edged sword they are trying to finesse.
Why do you think Bill Ayers left the classroom.. to hide from the angry informed..
Maybe I’m overlooking something here; if so, please let me know!
The Cloward-Piven strategy was to overwhelm the system with a massive amount of both protests (possibly violent) and also welfare recipients; this was supposed to cause a breakdown of both public discourse and also of public finance.
The idea was that the status quo in both politics and public programs would not be able to handle the new situation and would have to be replaced by something else.
According to Piven, the activism of the 1960s and 1970s was this strategy in action.
As I understand it, those are her claims — and I completely agree with them so far. Her mistake is believing that the response of the system would be to give in to the demands of the activists and welfare applicants, and replace capitalism with democratic socialism.
Instead, in the 1980s and 1990s the system — I hesitate to say “Silent Majority” — responded by voting for right-wing Republicans and moderate Democrats, and by pushing for welfare reform.
The reasons why her strategy failed are that the number of producers must be greater than the number of parasites (or else the entire society collapses into chaos) and also that the producers tend to vote and otherwise participate in politics more than the average parasite. (There are other reasons as well, such as the fact that free-market capitalism allows upward mobility for those who are willing to work, so a temporarily-unemployed producer is on the side of the producers, rather than the parasites.)
As a hard-core political activist I’d like to encourage Ms Piven to agitate as much as possible, because I look forward to the results of her tactics. Bring it on, baby! As Lenin said, “The worse, the better.”
As William F. Buckley, Jr., remarked, there may be a million violent rioters; there are a million and one lampposts.
Excellent reply, Andrew X, you hit that one just right.
It seems that someone took her words to heart in Tucson.
I think we once called this kind of deliberate subversion of the state treason. Now it’s labelled “activism”, “social justice”, and “hope and change”.
That is why the federal government won’t legalize the growing of industrial hemp (which contains far too little psychoactive substances to be used as a drug). It brings up too many unpleasant associations.
The ropes used by hangmen were traditionally made of hemp.
If there are any riots due to Piven’s article, she should be arrested for inciting riots…Does she honestly think that by “flooding the welfare system”, is going to help the jobless or people on welfare…Me thinks she needs to retire from any way shape or form of teaching…If Frances truly believes in what she spews ,hey,I’ll buy her a one way ticket to a wonderful resort in Siberia…!
Who are all these wackos and why are they wasting space on this earth?
Hi Cynthia..arrested by who? Obama? the justice dept, the very same people who said its perfectly ok for the NBP to intimidate voters?, the same people who are activly figuring out ways to get around the will of the people? We all need to face facts. we are waiting for a corrupt govt to police itself. its the govt as a whole. not just repubs or dems. the whole thing. for some reason we have convinced ourselves that we can be polite and ask nicely. we have convinced ourselves that we are mad as hell and wont take it any more, until they pass what we are fighting against then we move on. as sad as it is and people will hate me for this I do thin an open revolution and fighting WILL come. the question is will we fight for our way of life or will we be too concerned about being called racist and mean. personally i would rather have another civil war than let cloward, piven and whomever is next in the line o dictators come to power. no tolerance, no peace, no coexistance. us or them, freedom or enslavement life or death. but dont expect the govt to do anything that will help us.
Of course she has no interest in helping the jobless or the people on welfare. She wants to catch them in the trap of self destructive behavior that they blame on others. They will be in a death spiral, much like drunks drinking because they have troubles, caused by their drinking.
She, and the others pushing communism/socialism are not so stupid as to expect the economy to continue to support the jobless/ homeless/ welfare recipients. They have an idea (probably vague intentions, if they think of it) of doing what Pol Pot and Mao did, send everyone to the fields to either work or die. To make economic slaves of their very supporters.
For the damage to community, family and lives she has caused, it is like she showers in blood three times a day.
Progressivism is like Islam with the violence. Oh, wait a second…
The mask slips. She admitted what everyone on the left and the right both know, but the left won’t publicly admit: that the purpose of green energy is to destroy the economy.
Why aren’t all of the media outlets trumpeting Piven’s damning admission, so that we can back away from this fatal economic precipice before it’s too late?
Oh, wait…
It’s always Petrograd 1917 for these reds. They live in a world where they are always the vanguard waiting in the wings to lead the masses against the tiny capitalist class. They are like the Sunnis in Saddam’s Iraq who thought they were the majority when in reality they were 20% of the population. What will Pivens get if she is successful? It won’t be the socialist paradise of her dreams. If she is lucky she will get a Mussolini or if unlucky a Franco who will shoot all the reds for the good order of society. (A Hitler is an option of which she would ultimately approve.)
Communists think very highly of themselves. They are always the smartest people in a room full of dolts. They are dumb as a rock.
“Communists think very highly of themselves. They are always the smartest people in a room full of dolts.”
They are encouraged to lie to others in order to recruit them, but neve consider that the people who recruited them may have lied.
A domestic enemy, identified and exemplified by her words. I wonder if the gutless Piven shares Bill Ayers nation-building dream of eliminating 100 million or so of us regular Americans, because that’s what it would take to implement this horsecrap. It’s a sure thing most libs are pussies, but keep that ammo dry anyway. They are fanning the flames wherever they can, and desperate, misled sheeple can do much destruction.
Will no one rid us of this meddlesome commie?
This meddlesome commie still has the right of free speech. Glen Beck has the right way to deal with her. Publicise her calls for violence, and make sure the rest of america votes against any politico who defends her, or advocates any policies to appease her violent followers. If we resort to violence ourselves to deal with these creeps, we stoop to their level. If we counter her ravings with speech of our own, we expose and marginalize her.
Ted Rall in a dress.
Leftists and their lapdog media playing a game of…kvetch and fetch.
The leftists create a faux “rage”, erect a headbanger mosh pit, they throw a bone in the middle and wait to see if a fight erupts.
Their trained slobbering Journodingoes fetch the shards of bone left behind and bring it back, panting and wagging their little tails…hoping beyond hope that it will be thrown again, and it always is.
MSNBC plays a more active role, with Fetch Matthews and gang trying to stir the pot…or throw the bone…themselves AND fetch it.
The anarchists are impatient with the stealth socialists. This has always been the case. Watch to see if any of the good little lapdogs pick a side. Obama has made up with them and is scratching them behind the ears and they are licking his toes currently.
Might not always be the case. Obama has forgiven Michael Vick, but he may have to consider how the dogs might react, he has been playing his own game with them of kvetch and fetch, he better hope that muzzle that’s been on since he first began campaigning as a candidate doesn’t fall off.
Ted Rall? You mean the Leftist version of Ed Anger? He’s not a red, he’s a maroon.
For those who have longed to read the original article from the 1966 issue of The Nation but have never been able to find it, your wait is over:
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/weight-poor-strategy-end-poverty
There it is, in all its glory.
Read it and weep, my friends, the call to arms to end what The Founders began two centuries ago.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. “
Where does Piven think the money for a federally guaranteed minimum income is going to come from? Taxing the rich? Taxing the productive?
No, it’s not going to come from any place BECAUSE WE ARE OUT OF MONEY.
Socialists do not live in the real world. We should institutionalize them all for their (and our) safety.
I so agree. And where does she think “joblessness” comes from?? Thankfully, I think most Americans now realize that joblessness comes from government intervention in free markets.
Sometimes you have to destroy an economy in order to save it.
Cloward-Piven is an underwear Gnomes philosophy:
Phase 1) Forment violence
Phase 2) ????
Phase 3) Communism!
I agree with the comment from Fairbanks 99, when will someone or group put a stop to those who would destroy our way of life. If she wants violence, she should experience violence. That aimed at her and her kind.
They are playing a dangerous game if they think the result of collapsing civilization will be favorable to their hundred year socialist project. There are well armed patriots across the country who would welcome the chance to excise the Red cancer once and for all. Think nationally, act locally.
I think you’ve found your audience, Ron. Congrats!
Yea we will be subdued for a bit longer. If the next congress does not act to correct the ills and we find that we are still headed in the direction of the progressives it will be a very violent time.
If only her mobs could pause mid-stride, and realize that their energy might be better spent in trying to create a new business…
Think about Bernie Sanders and his exclamations about how the greedy “never have enough.” I’d love to ask his acolytes what they think of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson? After Branson’s first successful venture… what if he’d stopped? What if that had been “enough” for him? Close to 300,000 jobs directly linked to his “greed” (Sanders’ term.) Piven, Katrina vandenHeuvel, all these looters, need to understand that the means of production will never be in the hands of the workers, because if it could be, it already would be. The mobs wouldn’t be mobs, they’d be running an industry. But, they just don’t know how. They don’t have the will, forget capital.
I include myself with the workers: I’m dependent on the capitalists who have the brains and guts to take a risk and compete successfully, providing me with a means of supporting my eating habit. I wish I had those talents, I don’t. I used to hate the rich.But it dawned on me thanks to exposure to reality that an ethical code built on “They’ve got it, we need it, let’s take it,” is profoundly devoid of character.
The looters of the Left must ask what would happen if all of these job creators said, “hell with it. You want me to be the bad guy? Fine. Bye.”
Piven is tone-deaf (naturally.) The so-called mass movement of students in the UK against the unassailable economic logic of a massively increased student body requiring rather more endogenous funding sources than hitherto has been a miserable failure. The affluent, smugly self-entitled little ingrates venting their puerile spleens against authority in central London aroused nothing more than seething contempt among the rest of the populace, who resent the implication that they should be mulcted to subsidise the jeunesse dorée without any tangible return to themselves. We were treated to the sight of Charlie Gilmour, the son of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, hanging off a Union Flag from the Cenotaph in Whitehall. His father’s worth $75 million. In his defence, he claimed not to have known it was the Cenotaph, which admission merely compounds the egregiousness of his act (for US readers, this is like a Yale undergrad urinating on the Lincoln Memorial – a bad act in itself – and pleading in mitigation he thought it was just a big statue of some dude in a chair – which makes you wonder what comprises the soi-disant elite these days.)
As for the disgusting mob of barbarians in Greece, howling at the Germans’ smacking of their hands as they reached for the cookie jar for the umpteenth time: they have already extracted their blood price, having burnt to death an utterly blameless (and incidentally pregnant) bank clerk along with two of her colleagues. It will be interesting to see which fractures first: international European comity or the consensual hallucination that is the Euro.
The next time the “hippies” step out to demonstrate against “social injustice” will be the next time America has a civil war. The 60′s are over, and the dynamics involved in the 60′s are finished. Equal rights for all! We’re all equal! Now comes the hatchet, axe, and saw…
Let me translate the Frances Fox article: “Hey, let’s him and you fight!” Thank you for outing yourself, you bourgeois poseur-pigdog wallowing in your intellectual classist decadent lifestyle. Notice how they urge the workers to the barricades to suffer – perhaps even DIE. And when it is safe, the bourgie-dogs will emerge from hiding to assume a “vanguard” role in the revolution they allegedly “supported.” It is such a mistake to hope for revolution. “if you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind…”
I used to think that the Clowen-piven strategy was a joke, something conspiratorially minded conservatives told their children at night. Only recently did I discover it is real based on a real article. What is up with these people?
But who, she asks, “expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students?”
Umm, just about everybody who knows anything about nanny-statism.
I hear voices in my head… and they don’t like you, Frannie Baby.
Isn’t it just so convenient that her article came out after the Republicans won back the House of Representatives, made gains in the Senate and in state houses all over the country. The assault on Conservatives that everyone should have known was coming is beginning. We better hold firm.
The mobs in greece and britain were ginned up and paid for by well organized leftist grpups, and so yes, everyone expected them. Their surprise is long gone, and they must now act as if we know what they will do… Piven seems to think we are still clueless… She has no idea what the tea party means…
For a sociologist this woman has a pretty naive view of the cultural conditions that lead to protests like those in Greece. We are, more than any nation in Europe, a nation of independent, proud, and ambitious citizens. We HAVE HAD HUGE DEMONSTRATIONS in the last year- by Tea Partiers who want to trim the welfare state- who blame our entitlements for the negative effects on the private sector economy. The more I think about, this woman is embarrassingly out of touch- and she’s a sociologist?
We need Piven’s email address, so we can “collapse her system” with angry email, a far less violent response than the violent protests she advocates with her “manufactured crisis” idiot leftist ideals.
Fran’s rhetoric sounded good in the 60s–then we grew up.
Sedition straight up. She should be in jail.
Nanny State Fran, San Fran Nan–Season of the Witch.
Certainly Piven and her ilk are not caught up in all that bourgeois claptrap like the democratic process; I give her credit, if that’s the word, for not hiding the fact that she’s against it.
But her assumption is that if the system breaks down she and people like her will be the ones deciding what the next one will look like. If such a circumstance were to come about it’s likely that Piven would like what results a lot less than she likes the one we have now.
This interpretation is quite fair–Piven is opposed to democracy in its generally understood sense–and the fact that The Nation not only gives her space to make her point but probably agrees with her is noteworthy.
I remember reading that Savio quotation back when it was made and when I was in high school. It’s one of the reasons that I never went off the deep end politically. Even then, and I wasn’t the brightest or most aware high school kid imaginable, I realized that referring to the United States as if it were something like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany was simply unhinged.
She forgets one thing – back then the sympathetic Mainstream Media pretty much controlled the flow of information to the american public and they were very supportive of her antics.
Not anymore. The MSM is generally mistrusted and known to be biased.
As a conservative, one reason I look the other way on abortion is the fact that more non-productive women have abortions.
This time, however, ACORN is collapsing…
Isn’t it just being metastasized into a galaxy of misleadingly-named smaller organizations with the same mission? Didn’t Obama’s ‘stimulus’ bill provide a billion dollars to support such ‘community activist’ groups?
…and no George Wiley and NWRO even exists to implement her strategy.
Any number of experienced gang leaders can be hired from the well-resourced anti-WTO fascists.
Mike2 is correct and on target…”we better hold firm.” I pray the new Congress has a thick skin because the media will be going wild when they start reversing Obama damage. It will be like throwing holy water on demons. I can hear them squealing now.
Mike2 is right…we better hold firm. Just watch the media frenzy when the new Congress begins their efforts to reverse Obama damage. It will be like throwing holy water on demons…I can hear them squealing now.
You are exactly right Susan. The coming media assault against the Republicans in Congress will make what they did to Bush look tame.
14. brian
“Where does Piven think the money for a federally guaranteed minimum income is going to come from? Taxing the rich? Taxing the productive?
No, it’s not going to come from any place BECAUSE WE ARE OUT OF MONEY.”
Exactly. That’s the part of the Cloward-Piven strategy I’ve never understood. Bankrupt the state so the state will embrace socialism and pay much greater benefits? With what? You bankrupted it, remember?
It is hard to imagine how someone could be so ignorant of reality. If capitalism collapses, who will create anything? The Federal Government? There was a saying in the Soviet Union (or was it from our American unions) – they pretend to pay me and I pretend to work.
I wonder how this Frances makes a living? Obviously she doesn’t do any real work. she must truly sponge off the proletariat.
I hope that if anyone tries to perform any Greece-like demonstrations that the governor of that state calls out the national guard and authorizes them to check out live ammunition. That type of anarchism has to be “nipped in the bud” (Barney Fife) fast. Maybe those protesters could be housed in Gitmo until their trial (they could be tried for sedition maybe).
Its a high risk end-game to overthow society based on improved odds, not a definite plan. By creating a power vacuum while not gaurenteed the hope is that a leftist power grab will occur. As 2011 marches, its clear that conservaties will be positioned for this. Is it possible that the biggest effect of cloward piven is to root itself out of society? By unmasking the true intent of leftism will the right finally be able to implement its wishlist of items based on an elecorate that sees the devil in the left?
Cloward Piven could lead to a huge violent backlash against minorities in this country. fueled with hubris they run wild in the streets and finally the anger of white AMerica bottled for decades spills over – way over.
Or you can make unemployment benefits last forever and extend them to everyone, including Mexicans.
By Executive Order.
Be careful what you hope for, because the results may not be what you wanted.
Just like a Gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth, a manifesto is when a Progressive calls for revolution. The problem is that America is not an ideal location for Piven’s revolt. It is a center right country which is becoming more conservative in response to Obama’s Leftist actions. George Washington University’s Battleground Poll says that 60% of Americans are conservative or very conservative. This has always been so, but a political realignment is taking place forcing people out of traditional parties which no longer serve them.
Piven expects and does not have a mass movement. She is more likely to frighten the Conservatives into a reaction. The Conservatives are very busy, now, trying to survive the Recession which the Progressives of both parties caused. They are not and don’t want to be political.
If Piven gets her revolt, then a reaction will land on her activists with both feet. Liberals and Leftists comprise less that a quarter of the population and only a small portion of them will become activists. This is enough to cause great havoc, but is not enough to win. She needs the moderates and the independents to become active on her side and this may not happen. I’m guessing that they are turned off by politics; Obama used up all of their goodwill in 2008.
A Conservative congress is unlikely to believe that appeasement will bring peace. They know that it didn’t work for Chamberlain. An authoritarian reaction from Obama will not work either.
The revolution that Piven wants could be co-opted to turn America back into a constitutionally limited Republic. It depends on what the electorate wants — more government or less.
This woman is asking for Right Wing Death Squads.
Thank you Ron for reading this drivel so that we don’t have to. Piven’s glory days are a distant memory, the timing of her message, no longer relevant and losing traction by the day. The only group that has the energy and determination to affect change these days is the tea party and the winds of that change are headwinds for the socialists. They thought the stealth election of Barry Soetoro was their ticket to the ball but the American people woke up a bit earlier than they hoped. The time has come to undo the damage and use all respectable means to prevent more damage from occurring by a corrupt and treasonous administration.
The indies have discovered that socialists in liberals clothing can not be trusted. The biggest danger will be the lovable loser RINO’s cutting deals with them and letting them back in the game. It is time to assert conservative principals both as a demonstration of what works and to reinforce the distinction of trust versus stealth. Barry was refudiated and this lesson must still be administered.
If it was only Cloward-Piven we had to worry about.
Saul David Alinsky was an American community organizer and writer best known for his book, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing and his teachings have influenced several prominent national leaders including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Fred Ross. In fact, Fred Ross, who worked for Alinsky, was the principal mentor for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Hillary Clinton’s senior honors thesis on Saul Alinsky, written at Wellesley College, noted that Alinsky’s personal efforts were a large part of his method. As The Nation magazine puts it, “Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing. . In 1988 Mr. Obama wrote an article which later became the fourth chapter of a book, After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.
In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published in 1971 one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. In the first chapter, opening paragraph of the book Alinsky writes, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.” Here is Saul Alinsky’s dedication to his own book: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), 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. Yes, that’s right folks, Saul Alinsky dedicated “Rules for Radicals” to Satan. That is in fact the essence of what it means to be a radical — to be willing to destroy the values, structures and institutions that sustain the society we live in. Marx himself famously cited Alinsky’s first rebel (using another of his names, Mephistopheles): “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” “True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties. When asked about death, Alinsky replied “They’ll send me to hell — and I’ll organize it.”
She’s a little late. Obama’s already implementing it. They are the same people who used to run around screaming “Capitalist Pigs.”
Collectivism is embodied by the writings of marx..
Marx wanted to reinvigorate feudalism..
feudalism is a Christian construct of islamism..
How do I know?
Because I ‘know’ that Charles Martel learned about ‘collectivism’ from his contact with the muslims he beat back..
To me, the recent alliance between communist collectivism and islamic collectivism proves the ancient connection..
think about it..
Whaaaaa…..?
Feudalism was a defacto power structure left behind by the collapse of the Roman Empire. It’s not something that was deliberately “set up” by The Hammer or anyone else, least of all the Mohammadans.
Immediately after the defunding of the EPA and other ruinous bureaucracies, the House on UnAmerican Activities needs to be refunded. Why are these Communists allowed to spew their hateful rhetoric with impunity? Thank God her evil husband is dead. Why is Piven still roaming the streets of this country?
Thanks for this article. I think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton must subscribe to The Nation, considering they are still advocating for massive payments to blacks. Statistics of the ‘War on Poverty’ followed by radical activists including Pivens, the NAACP, Jackson and Sharpton, are easily found through a few minutes search on the internet. Their victims over the past 45 years are clearly those who listened to their hate-filled, wacko messages. The 1960′s poor who instead of hating, listened to ML King, Jr’s dream of one race living in harmony and respect for one another, long ago moved out of the ghetto into the middle and upper economic classes.
Fortunately, most Americans of all ethnicities have more brains and self-respect than to listen to such empty rhetoric from a by-gone hippie movement. The failures of Marx’s Utopias are common knowledge in this world of the internet.
The re-emergence of the anti-American leftists in government over the past few years has been a wake-up call to all of us; they need to be defeated through the electoral process, and through using the power of investigation BEFORE elections.
> “So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?”
Back in the 1960s, they were fighting to keep themselves from being drafted. They were strongly motivated by self-interest.
Today, with no draft and massive youth unemployment, they are living in their parents basement honing their Xbox and Wii skills, running through their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. Put their asses on the line? For what?
The older unemployed and young people with responsibilities are too busy trying to bring in enough money to pay the bills and keep their families off the street, and are too old and/or experienced to waste their time playing other people’s make-believe politics for free. Modern-day “angry crowds, demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs” are non-union day laborers bussed in by the unions to demonstrate in front of the MSM cameras. Sure, unions don’t take care of their unemployed. They won’t even pay them to picket anymore, because non-union protesters are cheaper. And they call the business-owners corrupt.
Have a care. There are enough change agents out there to start a few riots, just as they do at the WTO meetings. Obama would not hesitate to declare martial law on everybody – - for our safety, don’t you know. I was in the LA area for the riots there; it was not a pretty sight; it was later found to have been started by “organizers” at multiple sites who coordinated their efforts probably on a time schedule as cell phones weren’t really prevalent then. For sure LAPD’s communications weren’t coordinated.
Good God, why isn’t this nut under arrest for treason and inciting to violence?
Like all cowards on the left cloward piven etc are the ones motivated by power and greed. They happily make problems because our system, while not perfect is infinatly better than the socialist ones. this is why the left have to manufacture crisis. Do not be fooled these are evil evil people, soros,cloward, piven, marx, stalin, hitler, lennin all the same evil garbage. I know people will disagree with me on this, but they are. the same vile animal in different stages of growth.
These Lefty Liberals, Marxists & Fascists are Enemies of the Constitution, every one of them!!
I am just grateful the public employee unions aren’t infested with left wingers, socialists, and Progressives, who would promote this strategy merely to drag the gullible leftists along for the ride, even exploiting our children so they’ll never know better, http://www.nea.org/tools/17231.htm
Google Blog searching on Piven and I found this by a left wing site
http://thirdestatesundayreview.blogspot.com/2011/01/tv-she-wants-you-to-fight-her.html
which has a nice section calling her out at the end. They also call her out for going on TV and lying about the title of Radosh’s post here. That woman’s nuts.
This woman is prepared to incite mobs to kill innocents to advance HER agenda.
If her acolytes gain power, like other totalitarian thugocracies, they will use it as a gun against conservatives and other dissenters.
This is dangerous stuff but fortunately our Founders anticipated such as her and equipped us to resist creeping tyranny.
Ron Radosh is apparently, an imbecile. The idea that an OBSCURE academic article from 1966, written almost 45 years ago, to central to some plan to ‘bankrupt’ the US government is laughable, except for one thing:
A bunch of very stupid people believe this horse-crap. What is LACKING is this entire rightwing conspiracy brouhaha is EVIDENCE that ANYONE other than a few obscure academics and GLEN ‘fat-turd’ Beck ever took it very seriously as a real plan for action.
As far as I can tell, the entire evidence of history is NO. Clinton introduced welfare reform and there have been FEWER not more reipients of welfare since then.
What a bunch of dishonest rightwing BULLSH*T fear mongering!!!
And the article itself was undoubtedly misunderstood by the rightwing anyway, because these people have brains that are smaller than the brains one extracts from a tree rodent.
This entire article is little more than BULLSHIT mutterings from a bona fide imbecile.
What clowns like this Piven person don’t realize is that we have spent the last 40 years being able to look at what the radical left did in the 60′s and 70′s did to this country. The vast majority in this country judge them as immoral narcissists and want nothing to do with them or their agenda.
“This time, however, ACORN is collapsing, and no George Wiley and NWRO even exists to implement her strategy.”
No, the government is doing it!
I temp a lot and I just got a postcard from one employer urging me to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit–or a welfare grant, as we call it–because I earned so little there. IOW, employers are now REQUIRED to go out and drum up welfare clients.
What is it with the Left and Suicidal Tendencies?
Piven admits that organizing the 15 million unemployed into a writing, seething mob of violence is beyond her capacity. So if they can’t be organized, it’s just more fantasizing. If anything it’s the been the right-wing organizing in large numbers the last 2 years since Obama came to office.
I would like to suggest the following. If an individual, for example, Ms. Piven invents a plan the goal of which is to bankrupt local and state governments, and engages in many activities to carry it out, under what insane concept of freedom is she not prosecuted for sedition, either at a national or local level.
I am quite serious about this, and I want to very briefly discuss a reflexive and, I believe, spurious concept of freedom that now will not permit such prosecutions.
Let’s be clear. It is not any government’s business (Federal, State or Local) to tell publishers what to publish. It is not any government’s business to tell historians, for example, what history is. The freedom of publishers and historians is guaranteed by our bill of rights. Likewise it is not the business of any publication or any historian to tell the governments what sedition is.
Liberals tend to support a concept of freedom where the activities associated with the freedom trumps everything else if there can be even thought to be a conflict between the two. A more conservative concept of freedom, and one more aligned with a Conservative Constitutional Republic, would be that thought being one thing and action another, freedom of action does not necessarily have constitutional protection if those actions otherwise violate important laws in good standing.
A recent case involving the right of a group of religious observers to disrupt a family’s burial of their son was upheld on the grounds of freedom of speech. (I suspect it would not have been upheld on the right of religious practices). Given the venues of freedom of speech, it can’t be a serious freedom that the group had to speak at that point in time, at that location. Given my freedom of speech does not allow me to demand that you listen to me.
Yet the freedom of speech for this group was extended to cover their goal of disrupting the burial, of insisting that these specific mourners listen to them, because, the Court reasoned, a cemetery is a public place. In other words freedom of speech trumps all other laws in good standing.
Do we want all claims of freedom of speech to trump all other laws in good standing? In whose interest is it that Ms. Piven be free to advocate and create conditions to bankrupt local governments? Who will defend our laws in good standing?
Hmmm, reading all these comments, it looks like the true crazies are here, not with Piven and her ‘minions’ call for greater democratic control of big money…if the protesters are using the metaphor of revolution and sided with G. Beck, R. Limbaugh, G. Bush, K. Rove or other conservative elites tied to big corporate interests they are ‘patriots’ fighting against ‘big gov’t’ and for ‘democracy’, but if they are political science professors calling for checks and balances against rulings such as Citizens United (corprations have the same rights as individual citizens?, really c’mon people) then they are ‘radicals’ and ‘commies’. And, ‘communists’, really? I guess that is anybody who sits left of libertarianism in this crowd, yikes! You are the ones calling for bloodshed against a 70-something year old woman, that sounds like the more dangerous and anti-democratic crowd to me. But, you will all probably just go back into your self-centered asocial quasi-white power worlds filled with mccarthyesque hate radio broadcasts rather than reach out to fellow citizens to actually try and make this country a better place. Keep up the libertarianism, its exactly the type of thinking that keeps our economy in the sh***er and our political system stalled out in conflict. Divided we fall….