Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
"Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing—but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates."
we are desperately concerned with the vast mass of our people who, thwarted through lack of interest or opportunity, or both, do not participate in the endless responsibilities of citizenship and are resigned to lives determined by others. To lose your "identity" as a citizen of democracy is but a step from losing your identity as a person. People react to this frustration by not acting at all.
Status quo does not allow ideas of revolution to grow because its a threat to the people in power.
Revolution by the Have-Nots also induces a paranoid fear; now, therefore, we find every corrupt and repressive government the world around saying to us, "Give us money and soldiers or there will be a revolution and the new leaders will be your enemies."
When it comes to "Do means justify the ends", there are 7-8 points to consider.
-one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.
-the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
-in war the end justifies almost any means.
-judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
-concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
-the less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
-the less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
-The eighth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
- any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
-you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.
-that goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace."
Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"
For entering political sphere, its important to use actual words and not euphemisms for words which might have negative connotations-
Power,
Self Interest- People usually operate in self-interest, but hide it under banners of morality, justice, righteousness etc. When a party is on our side, their values are moral, otherwise they are immoral Compromise,
Conflict- This word has gotten a bad rep because religion promotes conflict avoidance. The reason for this might be that religion was used by dictators to suppress dissent earlier.
An organizer can communicate only within the areas of experience of his audience; He learns the local legends, anecdotes, values, idioms. Using generic terms like white racist, fascist pig, pseudo-secular makes people resistant to listen to you because you seem like a conspiracy nut to them.
Try to speak their language but don't be fake or they'll disregard you.
An organizer needs the following qualities-
Curiosity.ends. He goes forth with the question as his mark, and suspects that there are no answers, only further questions. Questions to status quo can lead to rebellion
Irreverence.To the questioner nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead.
Imagination.Imagination is not only the fuel for the force that keeps organizers organizing, it is also the basis for effective tactics and action.
A sense of humor.Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.
A bit of a blurred vision of a better world.world. Much of an organizer's daily work is detail, repetitive and deadly in its monotony. In the totality of things he is engaged in one small bit.
An organized personality. The organizer must be well organized himself so he can be comfortable in a disorganized situation, rational in a sea of irrationalities.
A well-integrated political schizoid.The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 per cent on the side of the devil.
Ego.Ego is unreserved confidence in one's ability to do what he believes must be done.
A free and open mind, and political relativity.
A single issue organization can't last a long time. In a multi-issue organization, the agreement is that I can't get what I want myself, so I'll fight with you for your rights and you fight with me for my rights.
people react strictly on the basis of their own experience. Communication for persuasion, as in negotiation, is more than entering the area of another person's experience. It is getting a fix on his main value or goal and holding your course on that target.
It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.
The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a "dangerous enemy." The word "enemy" is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people, to identify him with the Have-Nots. If the establishment sees you and calls you a threat, you have proved your competence.
The organizer's job is to inseminate an invitation for himself, to agitate, introduce ideas, get people pregnant with hope and a desire for change and to identify you as the person most qualified for this purpose.
if people feel they don't have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it.
Disorganized community is an oxymoron. To organize a community, you have to first break down the existing order and then establish the new order. Rather than avoiding the issues, address issues head on. The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them.
so long as there is no opportunity or method to make changes, it is senseless to get people agitated or angry, leaving them no course of action except to blow their tops. No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation.
In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems. An issue is something you can do something about, but as long as you feel powerless and unable to do anything about it, all you have is a bad scene. The people resign themselves to a rationalization: it's that kind of world,a crumby world, we didn't ask to come into it but we are stuck with it and all we can do is hope that something happens somewhere, somehow, sometime.
Organizations are built on issues that are specific, immediate, and realizable.
First Rule of Power: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. It also means a collapse of communication, as we have noted. The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is mans most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing, and one's reaction becomes, "Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I'm all for the boycott, but after all there are other important things in life"—and there it goes. The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign. It should be remembered not only that the action is in the reaction but that action is itself the consequence of reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad infinitum. The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action. The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative. We have already seen the conversion of the negative into the positive, in Mahatma Gandhi's development of the tactic of passive resistance.
The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right—we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us." The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
we are desperately concerned with the vast mass of our people who, thwarted through lack of interest or opportunity, or both, do not participate in the endless responsibilities of citizenship and are resigned to lives determined by others. To lose your "identity" as a citizen of democracy is but a step from losing your identity as a person. People react to this frustration by not acting at all.
Status quo does not allow ideas of revolution to grow because its a threat to the people in power.
Revolution by the Have-Nots also induces a paranoid fear; now, therefore, we find every corrupt and repressive government the world around saying to us, "Give us money and soldiers or there will be a revolution and the new leaders will be your enemies."
When it comes to "Do means justify the ends", there are 7-8 points to consider.
-one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.
-the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
-in war the end justifies almost any means.
-judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
-concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
-the less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
-the less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
-The eighth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
- any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
-you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.
-that goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace."
Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"
For entering political sphere, its important to use actual words and not euphemisms for words which might have negative connotations-
Power,
Self Interest- People usually operate in self-interest, but hide it under banners of morality, justice, righteousness etc. When a party is on our side, their values are moral, otherwise they are immoral Compromise,
Conflict- This word has gotten a bad rep because religion promotes conflict avoidance. The reason for this might be that religion was used by dictators to suppress dissent earlier.
An organizer can communicate only within the areas of experience of his audience; He learns the local legends, anecdotes, values, idioms. Using generic terms like white racist, fascist pig, pseudo-secular makes people resistant to listen to you because you seem like a conspiracy nut to them.
Try to speak their language but don't be fake or they'll disregard you.
An organizer needs the following qualities-
Curiosity.ends. He goes forth with the question as his mark, and suspects that there are no answers, only further questions. Questions to status quo can lead to rebellion
Irreverence.To the questioner nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search for ideas no matter where they may lead.
Imagination.Imagination is not only the fuel for the force that keeps organizers organizing, it is also the basis for effective tactics and action.
A sense of humor.Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.
A bit of a blurred vision of a better world.world. Much of an organizer's daily work is detail, repetitive and deadly in its monotony. In the totality of things he is engaged in one small bit.
An organized personality. The organizer must be well organized himself so he can be comfortable in a disorganized situation, rational in a sea of irrationalities.
A well-integrated political schizoid.The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 per cent on the side of the devil.
Ego.Ego is unreserved confidence in one's ability to do what he believes must be done.
A free and open mind, and political relativity.
A single issue organization can't last a long time. In a multi-issue organization, the agreement is that I can't get what I want myself, so I'll fight with you for your rights and you fight with me for my rights.
people react strictly on the basis of their own experience. Communication for persuasion, as in negotiation, is more than entering the area of another person's experience. It is getting a fix on his main value or goal and holding your course on that target.
It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.
The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a "dangerous enemy." The word "enemy" is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people, to identify him with the Have-Nots. If the establishment sees you and calls you a threat, you have proved your competence.
The organizer's job is to inseminate an invitation for himself, to agitate, introduce ideas, get people pregnant with hope and a desire for change and to identify you as the person most qualified for this purpose.
if people feel they don't have the power to change a bad situation, then they do not think about it.
Disorganized community is an oxymoron. To organize a community, you have to first break down the existing order and then establish the new order. Rather than avoiding the issues, address issues head on. The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them.
so long as there is no opportunity or method to make changes, it is senseless to get people agitated or angry, leaving them no course of action except to blow their tops. No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation.
In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems. An issue is something you can do something about, but as long as you feel powerless and unable to do anything about it, all you have is a bad scene. The people resign themselves to a rationalization: it's that kind of world,a crumby world, we didn't ask to come into it but we are stuck with it and all we can do is hope that something happens somewhere, somehow, sometime.
Organizations are built on issues that are specific, immediate, and realizable.
First Rule of Power: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. It also means a collapse of communication, as we have noted. The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is mans most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic. The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing, and one's reaction becomes, "Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I'm all for the boycott, but after all there are other important things in life"—and there it goes. The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign. It should be remembered not only that the action is in the reaction but that action is itself the consequence of reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad infinitum. The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action. The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative. We have already seen the conversion of the negative into the positive, in Mahatma Gandhi's development of the tactic of passive resistance.
The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right—we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us." The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
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