Rules for radicals
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals is the late work of community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, and his last book, published in 1971 shortly before his death. His goal for the Rules for Radicals was to create a guide for future community organizers to use in uniting low-income communities, or “Have-Nots”, in order to empower them to gain social, political, and economic equality by challenging the current agencies that promoted their inequality.[1] Within it, Alinsky compiled the lessons he had learned throughout his personal experiences of community organizing spanning from 1939-1971 and targeted these lessons at the current, new generation of radicals.[2] Divided into ten chapters, each chapter of Rules for Radicals provides a lesson on how a community organizer can accomplish the goal of successfully uniting people into an active organization with the power to effect change on a variety of issues.
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14recommend
57mentions
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2008–2026years
32% recommend67% neutral2% critical
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What Hacker News says
- You might enjoy reading Rules for Radicals if you haven't already. If your riot can provoke a worse response from the authority, it can help your cause. The reaction is the action.
It may be that this protest in Serbia got a bit rowdy and riotous (see "diversity of tactics") and now the headline is about the government's use of a disproportionate weapon against protestors, not about a riot.
- Rules for Radicals is one of my favorite books and I don't think this an accurate summary of what Alinsky says, at all. It's a short book, you can get it for free online, people should just read it.
- >"Everyone is stupid but me" doesn't do anyone any favors and doesn't fix any problem.
This, this, so much this.
No one has ever been persuaded by calling them idiots, bigots, or any other insult. In fact, it does the opposite and drives them further away from what you are trying to persuade them to do/
I recommend people read 'How to win friends and Influence people' and 'Rules for Radicals' if they wish to learn on how to better persuade people.
- As actual books, Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, which a BBS friend of mine gave me when he squatted for a few days in my parent's garage, and Eduardo Galleano's Memory of Fire trilogy, a narrative literary history of Latin America, which the Jesuits made me read. I'd still recommend both today. On the other hand, there's the BBS tfile "Anarchist's Cookbook" (there are dozens of different compilations) probably had a more profound influence on my career than anything else I've ever read, and is what shifted me out of computer games and into the work I do now, when I was in sophomore year of high school. I'm lucky I didn't blow a finger off, though.
- The gay retconning is strong here. Orwell has been accused elsewhere of being homophobic. Neither side has a convincing case.
Orwell was an cynical observer, not an organizer. Orwell on socialists, from "The Road to Wigand Pier":
"In addition to this there is the horrible–the really disquieting–prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ’Socialism’ and ’Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ’Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England."
That book is about why socialism in England never got much traction. Yes, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the UK had "lemon socialism" - the government ended up owning the steel, coal, and railroad industries, all of which were in trouble. That was not a people's movement.
For the organizer's point of view, see Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".[1] Alinsky is all about how to organize and win, working from the bottom. Alinsky was a labor organizer. His approach is independent of political position.
Orwell offers cautionary views, but he's too cynical to propose solutions.
[1] https://www.openculture.com/2017/02/13-rules-for-radicals.ht...
- "Rules for Radicals" by Saul D. Alinsky.
On how to organize revolutions and how to be careful about what you wish for.
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