Description
Discussion note instruction What core argument is the author/speaker/creator making? Answer with your own words Pull out a quote or two that capture the core argument What are the main points or subtopics the author/speaker/creator? Name the main points or subtopics in your own words Pull out a quote for each point or subtopic What emerged for you? (You do not need to answer all of these. Focus on a minimum of 2. Use your own words first, then pull out a quote for each point) What struck you? (A word, a phrase, an image, a sound, etc.) What questions came up for you? What feelings did you have? (Share the word, phrase, image, sound, etc. that prompted that feeling) What do you want to learn more about having read/watched/listened to this material? How does the material align with your experience of the world? How does it challenge you to think differently?
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Excerpts From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Address to the 11th Annual Gathering of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must
stand up amid a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense
of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black. (All right) The job of arousing
manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is
not easy.
Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. (Yes) In
Roget’s Thesaurus there are some 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are
offensive, such words as blot, soot, grim, devil, and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms
for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity,
and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. (Yes) The most degenerate member of a
family is the “black sheep.” (Yes) Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language
should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Negro child sixty ways
to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134
ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority. [applause] The
tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and strip him of his personhood is
as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning’s newspaper. (Yes)
To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own
Olympian manhood. (Yes) Any movement for the Negro’s freedom that overlooks this
necessity is only waiting to be buried. (Yes) As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can
never be free. (Yes) Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful
weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation,
no Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be
free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink
of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. And with a spirit straining toward
true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to
himself and to the world, “I am somebody. (Oh yeah) I am a person. I am a man with dignity
and honor. (Go ahead) I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that
history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents (That’s right), and now I’m not
ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave.” (Yes sir)
Yes [applause], yes, we must stand up and say, “I’m black (Yes sir), but I’m black and
beautiful.” (Yes) This [applause], this self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made
compelling (All right) by the white man’s crimes against him. (Yes)
Now another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in to economic and
political power. Now no one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate
power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From
the old plantations of the South to the newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined
to a life of voicelessness (That’s true) and powerlessness. (So true) Stripped of the right to
make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and
sometimes whimsical decisions of the white power structure. The plantation and the ghetto
were created by those who had power, both to confine those who had no power and to
perpetuate their powerlessness. Now the problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a
problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the
forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now, power properly unders tood
is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social,
political, and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the
ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General
Motors, say, ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.” [applause]
Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so
often we have problems with power. But there is nothing wrong with power if power is used
correctly.
You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great
problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as
opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power
with a denial of love. It was this misinterpretation that caused the philosopher Nietzsche, who
was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this sam e
misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche’s philosophy of the
will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love.
Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is
reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. (Yes) Power at its
best [applause], power at its best is love (Yes) implementing the demands of justice, and justice
at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Speak) And this is what we
must see as we move on.
Now what has happened is that we’ve had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has
led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of
power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.
It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and
conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of
immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times. (Yes)
Now we must develop progress, or rather, a program—and I can’t stay on this long—that will
drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in the century this proposal would
have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility.
At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’s abilities and
talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of
industrious habits and moral fiber. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human
motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that
dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination
thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their
will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as
inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy
develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or
we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once
they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is
not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those
for whom traditional jobs are not available. In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of
affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:
The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends
knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to
secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the, that of a
taskmaster or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work
that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.
Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of
housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be
affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor, transformed into purchasers, will do a great
deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a
greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their
struggle.
Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from
widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions
concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable
and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal
conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of
human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.
Now, our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income
could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation
can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty
billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children
on their own two feet right here on earth. [applause]
Now, let me rush on to say we must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence. And I want to
stress this. The futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been tragically etched in
all the recent Negro riots. Now, yesterday, I tried to analyze the riots and deal with the causes
for them. Today I want to give the other side. There is something painfully sad about a riot.
One sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and aimlessly against
impossible odds. (Yeah) And deep down within them, you perceive a desire for selfdestruction, a kind of suicidal longing. (Yes)
Occasionally, Negroes contend that the 1965 Watts riot and the other riots in various cities
represented effective civil rights action. But those who express this view always end up with
stumbling words when asked what concrete gains have been won as a result. At best, the riots
have produced a little additional anti-poverty money allotted by frightened government
officials and a few water sprinklers to cool the children of the ghettos. It is something like
improving the food in the prison while the people remain securely incarcerated behind bars.
(That’s right) Nowhere have the riots won any concrete improvement such as have the
organized protest demonstrations.
And when one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the
answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local
governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution
has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had
already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right mind
knows that this will not happen in the United States. In a violent racial situation, the power
structure has the local police, the state troopers, the National Guard, and finally, the army to
call on, all of which are predominantly white. (Yes) Furthermore, few, if any, violent
revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and support of
the non-resisting majority. Castro may have had only a few Cubans actually fighting with him
and up in the hills (Yes), but he would have never overthrown the Batista regime unless he had
had the sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people. It is perfectly clear that a violent
revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white
population and very little from the majority of the Negroes themselves.
This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a
time for action. (All right) What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will
bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has
only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with
solutions that don’t solve, answers that don’t answer, and explanations that don’t explain.
[applause]
And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. (Yes) And I am still convinced
[applause], and I’m still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in
his struggle for justice in this country.
And the other thing is, I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m
concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. (That’s right) And when one is
concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a
murderer, but you can’t murder murder. (Yes) Through violence you may murder a liar, but you
can’t establish truth. (That’s right) Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t
murder hate through violence. (All right, That’s right) Darkness cannot put out darkness; only
light can do that. [applause]
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the
only answer to mankind’s problems. (Yes) And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I
know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. (No) And I’m not talking about
emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. (Yes) For I
have seen too much hate. (Yes) I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South.
(Yeah) I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens
Councilors in the South to want to hate, myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does
something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a
burden to bear. (Yes, That’s right) I have decided to love. [applause] If you are seeking the
highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t
moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. (Yes) He who hates does
not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate
reality.
And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men
and angels (All right); you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not
love, it means nothing. (That’s right) Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have
the gift of scientific prediction (Yes sir) and understand the behavior of molecules (All right);
you may break into the storehouse of nature (Yes sir) and bring forth many new insights; yes,
you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement (Yes sir) so that you have all
knowledge (Yes sir, Yes); and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the
boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely
nothing. (Yes) You may even give your goods to feed the poor (Yes sir); you may bestow great
gifts to charity (Speak); and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your
charity means nothing. (Yes sir) You may even give your body to be burned and die the death
of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and
thousands may praise you as one of history’s greatest heroes; but if you have not love (Yes, All
right), your blood was spilt in vain. What I’m trying to get you to see this morning is that a
man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His
generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. (Speak) So without love,
benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.
I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from
here?” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the
question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) There are forty million poor
people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in
America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the
economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you
begin to question the capitalistic economy. (Yes) And I’m simply saying that more and more,
we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the
discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an
edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right) It means that questions must be
raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, “Who
owns the oil?” (Yes) You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” (Yes) You begin
to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds
water?” (All right) These are words that must be said. (All right)
Now, don’t think you have me in a bind today. I’m not talking about communism. What I’m
talking about is far beyond communism. (Yeah) My inspiration didn’t come from Karl Marx
(Speak); my inspiration didn’t come from Engels; my inspiration didn’t come from Trotsky; my
inspiration didn’t come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long
time ago (Well), and I saw that maybe Marx didn’t follow Hegel enough. (All right) He took his
dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German
philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that
he called “dialectical materialism.” (Speak) I have to reject that.
What I’m saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. (Yes)
Capitalism forgets that life is social. (Yes, Go ahead) And the kingdom of brotherhood is found
neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.
(Speak) [applause] It is found in a higher synthesis (Come on) that combines the truths of both.
(Yes) Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that
the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all
tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated.
And if you will let me be a preacher just a little bit. (Speak) One day [applause], one night, a
juror came to Jesus (Yes sir) and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. (Yeah) Jesus
didn’t get bogged down on the kind of isolated approach of what you shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t
say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” (Oh yeah) He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you
must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are
doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that
excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic
(Yes): that if a man will lie, he will steal. (Yes) And if a man will steal, he will kill. (Yes) So
instead of just getting bogged down on one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus,
you must be born again.” [applause]
In other words, “Your whole structure (Yes) must be changed.” [applause] A nation that will
keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. (Speak) And
therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. (Yes) And a nation
that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it
will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.
(Yes) [applause]
What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be
born again!” [applause] (Oh yes)
And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task, and let us go out with a divine
dissatisfaction. (Yes)
Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an
anemia of deeds. (All right)
Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and
comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the
forces of justice. (Yes sir)
Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the
metropolis of daily security.
Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history (Yes), and every
family will live in a decent, sanitary home.
Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed
into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.
Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to
participate in the beauty of diversity.
Let us be dissatisfied (All right) until men and women, however black they may be, will be
judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin.
(Yeah) Let us be dissatisfied. [applause]
Let us be dissatisfied (Well) until every state capitol (Yes) will be housed by a governor who
will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God.
Let us be dissatisfied [applause] until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream. (Yes)
Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together
(Yes), and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.
Let us be dissatisfied (Yes), and men will recognize that out of one blood (Yes) God made all
men to dwell upon the face of the earth. (Speak sir)
Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, “White Power!” when nobody will
shout, “Black Power!” but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.
[applause]
And I must confess, my friends (Yes sir), that the road ahead will not always be smooth. (Yes)
There will still be rocky places of frustration (Yes) and meandering points of bewilderment.
There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. (Yes) And there will be those moments when
the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. (Well) Our dreams will
sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. (Yes) We may again, with teardrenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life
will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. (Well) But difficult and painful
as it is (Well), we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. (Well)
And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation from the words so nobly left
by that great black bard, who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon
Johnson (Yes):
Stony the road we trod (Yes),
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died. (Yes)
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way
That with tears has been watered. (Well)
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last (Yes)
Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.
Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. (Well) It will give us the courage to face the
uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward
stride toward the city of freedom. (Yes) When our days become dreary with low-hovering
clouds of despair (Well), and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights (Well),
let us remember (Yes) that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the
gigantic mountains of evil (Well), a power that is able to make a way out of no way (Yes) and
transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. (Speak)
Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Let us
realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.” Let us go
out realizing that the Bible is right: “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. (Oh yeah)
Whatsoever a man soweth (Yes), that (Yes) shall he also reap.” This is our hope for the future,
and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow, with a cosmic past
tense, “We have overcome! (Yes) We have overcome! Deep in my heart, I did believe (Yes) we
would overcome.” [applause]
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Metropolitan State University Library, on 08 Jan 2021 at 19:46:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055416000459
American Political Science Review
Vol. 110, No. 4
November 2016
c American Political Science Association 2016
doi:10.1017/S0003055416000459
The Poor Man’s Machiavelli: Saul Alinsky and the Morality of Power
VIJAY PHULWANI
Cornell University
T
his article presents Saul Alinsky’s theory of community organizing as a democratic alternative
to political realism’s fixation on the coercive authority of the state and the ethical problems of
statesmanship. Alinsky shows how the organizer can be used as a paradigmatic political actor in
developing an approach to political ethics that treats power and self-interest as ethical concepts on which
to construct a radical vision of democratic politics. His “morality of power” consists of learning how to
use relational power and thick self-interest to develop democratic forms of deliberation and action. In
contrast to the aim of the statesman, the organizer’s goal is not simply to acquire power and learn how
to wield it: An organizer helps the powerless learn how to use and think about power for themselves.
Organizing is realist, pedagogical, and democratic, and Alinsky’s ability to hold these ideas together
makes him an important theorist of democratic agency in undemocratic times.
“To understand the behavior of people as they are in the
real world precludes either disillusionment or cynicism.
You learn to be realistic in your expectations. You go on
using the probables in the eternal struggle to achieve the
improbable.”
(Saul Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals ([1946] 1989, xii)
y the time of his death in 1972, Saul Alinsky was
the most celebrated and the most reviled community organizer in the United States. He was
also a famous raconteur, giving speeches and telling
stories about his work to audiences across the country.
One of his stories concerned a group of young seminarians who visited him for advice. “We’re going to be
ordained,” the students told him, “and then we’ll be assigned to different parishes, as assistants to—frankly—
stuffy, reactionary old pastors. They will disapprove of a
lot of what you and we believe in, and we will be put into
a killing routine.” Hence their question, “How do we
keep our faith in true Christian values, everything we
hope to do to change the system?” Alinsky responded
that they had a choice between being priests or bishops.
A bishop “bootlicks and politics his way up justifying
it with the rationale, ‘After I get to be a bishop I’ll use
my office for Christian reformation.’” He continued,
“Unfortunately, one changes in many ways on the road
to a bishopric, and then one says, ‘I’ll wait until I am a
cardinal and then I can be more effective.’” The choice
they faced was simple: “When you go out that door,
just make your own personal decision about whether
you want to be a bishop or a priest, and everything else
will follow from there” (Rules, 13).
Alinsky’s story presents us with two distinct
paradigms of political agency. A bishop is a leader who
seeks to acquire power by rising through an existing
institution into an official position that carries the authority to command others. The students who visited
B
Vijay Phulwani, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government Cornell University ([email protected])
I would like to thank Sam Bagg, Michaela Brangan, Stefan Dolgert, Kevin Duong, Nora Hanagan, Jason Frank, Jill Frank, Alex
Livingston, Aziz Rana, and Ed Quish for the comments on earlier
drafts, Cornell University’s American Studies Program for financial
support, and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the
University of Texas for allowing me access to Alinsky’s papers. I
would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of
American Political Science Review for invaluable comments.
Alinsky might well have thought that the best way to
change the system was through acquiring a position
of power and influence, but his story was designed to
make them suspicious of the idea that change comes
from above. Instead, by asking them to imagine what
they could accomplish by remaining priests, he introduced his visitors to a different kind of agent, one who
creates power from the bottom, rather than trying to
capture it at the top.
The contrast between the bishop and the priest finds
its political analog in the difference between the statesmen, who has long been of interest to political theorists,
and the organizer, who has received far less attention.
For instance, the figure of the organizer has been conspicuously absent in the recent turn toward political
realism inaugurated by Bernard Williams and championed by Raymond Geuss, which remains bewitched
by the figure of the Weberian statesman (Geuss 2008;
Williams 2005). The irony here is that Alinsky, unlike
most of realism’s self-proclaimed ancestors, actually
identified himself as a realist (McQueen n.d.). Uncovering why Alinsky thought the organizer was the
quintessential realist political actor can help contemporary realists move beyond their fixation on statesmanship toward a broader understanding of the range
of political purposes that invocations of realism have
served in the past. Alinsky’s realism, in particular, is
worth exploring for the wide influence he had on politics in the United States and in fields such as civic
studies, contentious politics, social movements, democratic theory, and, of course, community organizing
(e.g., Bretherton 2014; Boyte et al. 2014; Coles 2006;
Polletta 2002; Stout 2010; Tarrow 1998).1 His work can
help us understand how realism might relate to these
other fields, a question that is increasingly important as
realism moves beyond its origins as a meta-theoretical
critique of normative theory to embrace a wider range
of first-order political and theoretical concerns.
Alinsky’s guiding question—how power can be acquired and exercised by as many people as possible,
1 Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis about Alinsky, who supposedly liked her enough to offer her a spot in his first training institute
(she declined in order to attend Yale Law School). President Obama
never knew Alinsky, but he was trained as a community organizer in
the Alinsky tradition and wrote about his experience in his autobiography (Obama [1995] 2004).
863
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Metropolitan State University Library, on 08 Jan 2021 at 19:46:33, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055416000459
The Poor Man’s Machiavelli
starting from conditions of widespread inequality and
popular disempowerment—concerns the possibility of
affirming both a realist approach to political theory
and a radical commitment to democratic politics (see
Finlayson 2015 on conservative and radical strands in
realist thinking). Like many realists, he sought to answer this question by depicting the dynamics of political action as a continuous back-and-forth between the
necessary creation of conflict and the eventuality of
compromise. However, Alinsky went beyond most of
today’s realists by embedding this process in the larger
process of democratic empowerment through organizing. He saw organizing as a form of political education
that involves learning to use both conflict and compromise to build power and advance the people’s goals. An
organizer is an agent of the democratization of power
who engages in “strategically hopeful action” to bring
out the “potentially positive sum” nature of political
power (Read and Shapiro 2014, 40–41). But Alinsky’s
most important contribution, from a realist point of
view, is his articulation of a distinctive approach to political ethics—an ethical orienta
