Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

The book’s purpose is to teach the Have-Nots how to take power for themselves and leverage it to their desired ends. Explicitly, the book is concerned with “how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people” (3). All major change has come about by this transfer of power in revolution, which will bring a change of ideas and truths. Dogma is an enemy of true freedom; it doesn’t allow the individual to shift and change with the times.

The Haves are currently in power and desire to maintain this. They want to keep the status quo and defend their possessions—both material and otherwise—from others. To bring about a revolution, one needs to understand their own ideology, that they must be “loose, resilient, fluid, and on the move” to adapt to a shifting and hostile world (11).

They must also be political realists, perceiving things the way they currently are, not as they desire them to be. The world is not, as Alinsky puts it, “a world of peace and beauty and dispassionate rationality” (14). Rather, it is a world that is red in tooth and claw. It is intimately interconnected: the revolutionary must see things as part of a web, not as segmented and isolated.

Among these interconnected realities are the three classes: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. The Haves are those in the upper class; they have wealth, money, and power. The Have-Nots are in the lower class; they scrape and struggle for even the little they manage to find. The Have-a-Little, Want Mores inhabit the middle class—the largest group—and desire to get ahead. This middle group is the fount from which flow the majority of world leaders and revolutionaries from the past: St. Paul, Martin Luther, Robespierre, and others.

The revolutionary needs to be an optimist; only optimism can withstand the struggle against the status quo. Without optimism, “there is no reason to carry on” (21), and there will be much carrying on since the journey is never-ending.

The question of whether the ends justify the means is irrelevant in practice. Rather, the question should be: “Does this particular end justify this particular means?” (24). Alinsky notes that when one is embroiled in the messiness of real life, there is not much room for theories and standards gleaned from theory, that life is complicated. The author is clear that indecision is by far the worst: “The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means” (26). Action is always preferred.

Alinsky outlines eleven rules for the ethics of means and ends. First, having skin in the game changes the moral calculus. Second, those in power are those who decide ethics; many situations are morally ambiguous, like the struggle between America and Britain during the Revolutionary War. Third, in war, almost any means can be justified. Fourth, anachronistic judgment is to be avoided—the action must be judged at the time it takes place, not in some future time where perspective has shifted or mores have changed.

Fifth, the concern for ethical action peaks when choices are many, not if there is only one path to take. Sixth, when an end is greatly desired, the ability to engage in ethical evaluation shrinks. Seventh, ethics are often determined by the success or failure of the endeavor; as they say, history is written by the victors. Eighth, the morality of any chosen means is also determined by whether or not victory or defeat is within one’s grasp; far fewer people would be bothered by the United States’ use of the atom bomb in World War II if we were on the verge of certain defeat.

Ninth, from the enemy’s perspective, any means that would ensure their defeat is unethical since it is to their disadvantage. Tenth: in the end action is rarely taken with a predetermined moral calculus, but rather to the best of one’s ability and only later clothed “with moral garments” (36). Eleventh and finally, one’s goals must be phrased in very general ways of speaking about happiness and community and equality, rather than specified down to the last detail—this way, the ends can be achieved in all manner of ways, rather than being pinned to one specific definition of success.

Words themselves are often corrupted. Take the word “politics”—on its own “politics” refers to the act and art of governing a city. In our common parlance, however, it has taken on negative connotations and associated with manipulation. Generally speaking, our understanding of language has more to do with our perception of a word rather than knowledge of any dictionary definition. Other words have been discolored as well, such as “self-interest, compromise, and conflict” (48).

We must retain the use of the word “power,” even if we are loathe to use it due to its negative connotation. If we avoid the word we become “averse to thinking in vigorous, simple, honest terms” (50). We should rehabilitate the word and acknowledge that the corruption associated with power is within ourselves, not with the concept or its possession. Power is essential to human life for “life without power is death” and “a world without power would be a ghostly wasteland” (53).