The Cloward-Piven Strategy to implement socialist revolution

Cloward-Piven.com ^ | Tue Sep 27, 2005 | discoverthenetwork.com

[ebiskit]

• Strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls."  Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act. This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 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."These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," writes Sol Stern in the City Journal.  "From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent 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."As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" -- the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.

Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a 1997 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."

Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "voting rights movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like ACORN, the organization that spear-headed this campaign, the new "voting rights" movement was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Its flagship organizations were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

All three of these organizations -- ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE -- set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. The Motor-Voter bill is largely responsible for swamping the voter rolls with "dead  wood" -- invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people -- thus opening the door to the unprecedented  levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections.

The new "voting rights" coalition combines mass voter registration drives -- typically featuring high levels of fraud -- with systematic intimidation of election officials in the form of frivolous lawsuits, unfounded charges of "racism" and "disenfranchisement," and "direct action" (street protests, violent or otherwise). Just as they swamped America's welfare offices in the 1960s, Cloward-Piven devotees now seek to overwhelm the nation's understaffed and poorly policed electoral system. Their tactics set the stage for the Florida recount crisis of 2000, and have introduced a level of fear, tension and foreboding to U.S. elections heretofore encountered mainly in Third World countries. 

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his "Shadow Party," through whose support the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns.

[St. Louis Conservative]

Well, the Cloward-Piven strategy seeks to destroy the welfare system, so the underclass will become desperate and revolutionary. Obama’s porkulus seeks to expand the welfare system. So at least on that fundamental point, the Cloward-Piven & the stimulus do not jive.

[iacovatx]

I am very impressed with the progress in awareness and understanding that has appeared in posts on FR in the past few months. Postings have gone from the “Gee, the leftists sure are stupid to think X,” to an illumination and examination of the theories, tactics, literature and history of the left. The next step is to identify a plan for Americans (i.e., “conservatives”) to reverse the left’s overthrow of our honorable government.

Here are a couple of additional questions for discussion. How do Americans improve the education of the majority of young people so they learn the truth about the nature and opportunities of American freedom and responsibility? How do Americans develop an effective information source that reaches the majority of people with truthful non-socialist information?

By the way, a lesson can be learned from the socialist radicals about advancing a societal goal. The battlefield is economic—wins and losses will be determined from balance sheets. Imagine if the socialists were faced with the possibility their debt holders would demand payment or take control from them. That would reign them in quickly. Allies can be found in those who have their grip on the left’s funding. The battlefield is economic.

[Paytriot]

I like that analogy. It puts our situation into a more noble perspective. “Merlin” is one of my all time favorite movies (the one with Sam Neill and Isabella Rossellini). The actor who plays Mordred does a FANTASTIC job.

[Yooper4Life]

“...The fight has to start with shining a light on the enemies of liberty. For too long they have been able to operate in the shadows, and hide their intentions by wrapping them in more acceptable terms. An important aspect of shining that light is to educate the public about the tactics used by those who want to push socialism on us and collapse our current system. The tactics proposed by Alinsky, for example, should be so well known that they cannot be carried out without recognition...”
****

True and nice post. The question is how do we do it? What I see is that the “soapbox” rarely works for “our side”, probably because Lefty has successful at lying, cheating, degrading natural truths and morals,and brainwashing the majority of people on a number of issues and in number of ways. In addition, Lefty is very good at labeling such talk as “kooky” and “conspiracy” and attacking Truth with more of their lies.

Our mindset is different than theirs - we use Truth, while they lie without remorse. They also created the widespread moral relativism which allows them to further their agenda without remorse and without recourse.

While I agree that reeducation is required, I just don’t know how to do that other than consistent grass roots efforts on our part - subtle comments, emails, and discussions with family and friends, while at the same standing up to Leftys using truth and tact - just be prepared because many of them border on lunacy.

Of course, we also need the right political candidates at the right time - McCain could have blown the doors off of Obama and didn’t even try.

[antisocial]

“So at least on that fundamental point, the Cloward-Piven & the stimulus do not jive.”

If they overload the system then they have to expand it, thus more financial crisis.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

They're calling down the thunder.

[April Lexington]

Ok, let me make sure I understand this theory...

You overload the sate bureaucracy until it breaks and then you replace it with.... A STATE Bureaucracy??? This doesn't make sense!

You can see the influence of cold war Soviet infiltration. This was designed to destroy the economic and political might of the USA so that the Soviet Union could continue its globalist empire building. They used these "intellectuals" to advocate the destruction of US infrastructure and these "intellectuals" used the least integrated and least intelligent people in our society as pawns.

It was NEVER about helping the poor. Living conditions for most American blacks has stayed about the same since the 1960s. A few affirmative action elite have risen from the ghetto (one even made it to the White House). But, the vast majority of them are still poor, uneducated, disenfranchised and seriously exploited.

These leftist terrorists should be rooted out and hung.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

About a two years ago I had to go to the SS office in Dallas to replace a lost SS card. I went on three separate occasions and each time the waiting room was full and there was a long line outside waiting their turn. These were not old people but instead were young minorities, each accompanied by someone with a briefcase or hand full of folders, seeking some disability claim I suppose.

I gave up on the Dallas office and went to several smaller towns because I had been told that I could get right in and out at those places. Same story at every one of the.

They are obviously trying to crash the SS system even sooner than it will fall on its own.

[Danae]

It’s 100% correct, this is the strategy they have used against us since 1977 and the CRA, they have been setting up the Poor People they “Claim” to be helping to have their lives destroyed, and made even poorer. People that has used this do not deserve the title of Human, and they are in dire need of a permanent dirt nap.

[sleepwalker]

It is very basic.

As the song goes “Teach you children well,Salute whatever flag they offer. I am with the high command”. etc. etc.

It is our responsibility to teach our children what is right. You have to teacher proof them. I am proud to say that I have four children who were teacher proof. They understand the BS put out by the MSM.

[ebiskit]

“So at least on that fundamental point, the Cloward-Piven & the stimulus do not jive.”

The over-arching purpose is to grow the entitlement class so vast that capitalism buckles from the stress.

A new system of wealth redistribution will be demanded due to rampant dissatisfaction and the apparent failure of the present socio-economic structure.

There is never any real intent to ‘satisfy’ the underclass.

Porkulus is expressly designed to grow the disaffected prole’s numbers.

Porkulus is meant to vastly outstrip capitalism’s ability to satisfy the proletariat demand.

Porkulus will become the ‘base-line’ for future budgets.

When has there ever been any ‘real’ cuts in government expenditures?

C-P & Porkulus do jive with dire national consequences being the desired end result.

Each subsequent event of this ‘crisis’ is designed to cruelly feed upon the preceding events, thereby creating a critical mass where the state has the only means, albeit illusory, to resolve such apocalyptic occurrences.

Listen closely to the words of O and take him quite literally.

I do.

Lately, O and his minions have been vociferously expressing such a ‘deification of state.’

The ends are to create a tipping-point in the national atmosphere where the grossly uninformed will gladly surrender Constitutional principle for a simple bowl of gruel from a perceived national savior.

IOW, Embrace the ‘Socialist’ Suck.

thaDeetz

[April Lexington]

When the Soviet Union existed, these intellectuals and organizers were led by Soviet operations efforts to destabilize the US government. Peace rallys concerning Viet Nam, civil rights marches, social engineering, the drug culture (Timothy Leary),the sexual revolution, the beat and hippie movements and, yes, even popular music (ok, I''l say it...Rock & Roll)...all of these were encouraged by this group to destabilize Ward and June Cleaver. The goal was to destroy from within the strongest country on the planet so that other countries could continue their centuries long foreign and imperialist policies.

Then... the Soviet Union collapses and CAPITALISM flourishes in Russia and Europe and China and South America (to some extent). The Old Soviet apparatus was abandoned in the USA as the world began chasing capitalist wealth. Instead of dying off, the American Left has taken up the spiritual crusade and is now the strongest leftist movement in the world. The result if this national nightmare is that real Americans have forgotten and abandoned their history and Constitutional rights, drinking the Koolaide of the Left after 30-60 years of NEA social indoctrination.

Marx, Lenin and Stalin and Khrustiev are dead but the international philosophy is strong and now being led from the White House through Obama's puppet masters like Ayers and others.

[April Lexington]

If you go back to the oldies stations and listen to the lyrics of the songs from the 1960s you will begin to understand the orchestrated message of social revolt and cultural dismemberment. We were singing along to some mighty radical stuff!

[Eva]

The Suffragettes used all the same tactics in the early 20th century.

[Chances Are]

The way to handle this is simple:

Don't let them define the terms of the debate!

Problem solved!

CA....

[mdmathis6]

It was that model of Mordred(from Merlin) that I’ve envisioned as personifying what a twisted mass of evil the Democratic party has become. I even believe that if they found them-selves losing popular support, they would rather the country go down in flames with them!

(and as for you NSA snoopers who might be sniffing these postings; how do you like working for the Mordreds?)

[Master of Orion]

There’s also an excellent article link on that page.
Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

I’ve been writing CLOWARD-PIVEN on people’s notepads and cubicle boards all week.

[ebiskit]

“the Soviet Union collapses and . . . The Old Soviet apparatus was abandoned”

I don’t think the USSR/Russian core capitulated communist principle to the extent we here in the west believe.

It only ‘went dark.’

PM Putin as ‘former’ KGB and present Russian authoritarian activities buttress this theory.

They knew ‘hot-war’ would be disastrous on both fronts and had to develop a ‘new plan’ for conquest.

Rope-a-Dope works well, ask Ali.

We may have witnessed the biggest game of ‘possum’ ever.

Remember, the devil’s best trick has been to convince many that he does not exist.

thaDeetz

[Danae]

I also have to point out that the same thing was done with Sub Prime Mortgages, they SET UP POOR PEOPLE TO FAIL, thereby destroying both the housing and Banking industries.

I would LOVE to have those two burned at the stake of the Media, but of course, the Media is in on it too.

[April Lexington]

Could be. The Russian mob could care less about communism or capitalism. Its all about living well (or, gaudy, if you know what I mean). I do know that most of the US cells are still active and, after a brief sense of betrayal, have reorganized into social change groups and are actively promoting the social policies of the old system. The results are what we see today in global warming, social welfare, gay rights, yada, yada, yada. The abandoned are now working with international socialism to continue the goal of one world government under a socialist system with, guess who??? as leaders!