Here's my favorite critique of Alinskyism from the left as printed in Jacobin. Similar, but not identical to my critique, which follows. In all cases of variance, believe their facts and analysis more than my historical imagination and free thinking.
At one time, long ago, Alinskyian organizing was thought by the man himself to be the slow patient variety, working through the achievement of incremental victories to the ultimate construction of a permanent power organization. He especially eschewed Martin Luther King style mass movements which he viewed as tending to operate for a few months, achieve some fame and fewer victories and then vanish, leaving no base for continuing victories. (However, while against his written principles, he took the opportunity for a mass movement when it arose.)
Since then, however, it appears that even Alinsky organizations have followed a similar course to fading away, but over the course of a few years rather than a few months. Hybrid Alinsky-inspired service organizations like Acorn have had somewhat better success, but ultimately broken by malign outside forces. (Acorn was good and great, and should be rebuilt, and has been partly rebuilt through a number of successor organizations.)
I think Alinsky type organizations should have a permanent place in society exactly where Alinsky himself had the most success--as residential civil rights guardians. Having no ideology, they can work with all the residents in an area to overcome government failures which especially plague poor neighborhoods, now as in Alinsky's day.
Alinskyian tactics also may have their place in other kinds of organizations. Boycotts are a classic Alinskyian strategy, often the only way the powerless can confront those protected by power. UFW is or was an Alinskyian organization that succeeds through organizing consumer boycotts rather than worker actions (and the most long lasting, if not successful, of all of organizations founded by people trained by Alinsky himself, however it is now a shadow of its most-successful self and not generally significant to farmworkers anymore, primarily because it hardly involved the workers at all, it was run with outside "liberal" money from fundraising and sponsored boycotts).
However the general strategy Alinsky proposed is Direct Action. My nutshell version goes like this:
I believe Alinskyian tactics need to be applied very selectively. (So did Alinsky, though he might choose differently than me.) Disruption can cause more harm than good in some cases, by disrupting outside alliances.
Alinsky had no respect for any politician. Regardless of their proclaimed ideologies, he believed they would always simply follow the path of least resistance. Hence, they always need to be pressured, and with the greatest predjudice, until they follow the people's will.
Since those of us who are Communists or like Communists (Alinsky dismissed all ideologies especially "-isms") still work to a considerable degree through electoral politics, and our ultimate plan is success through political unity, Alinskyian approaches should be applied with utmost caution to left-leaning or even center-leaning candidates. The successful less-right candidates are "our" candidates and we should be somewhat nice to them. (Not without exception, of course. Sometimes they need a good push or even shove. But my point is merely that this is a tricky business that needs careful design.)
It's strange to think the Communists, who aim to completely replace capitalism--as well as the imperialism which sustains it, as having a less confrontational tendency than "non-ideological" Alinskyists. Mind you, both ideologies eschew violence, only endorsing non-violent direct action, if any at all.
But the Communist game is a still longer one (and yes, shared by those other -isms). It is the game of not just creating one organization, but creating an identity, which will persevere to create new organizations when the old ones fail, endlessly.
In the case of the Communist identity, is is the identity of the unifiers, who aim to shepherd all the factions and splits of the people's movements and tendencies into a single and ultimately unstoppable people's identity that includes nearly everyone, because THAT is what it's going to take to replace Capitalism. Whether the ultimate identity is called is of less importance than its breadth and inclusiveness. Examples of the ultimate identity that could unify nearly all Americans include "the 99%" and the "99.9%". Because a lot of Americans are students, dependents, and retirees, "the workers" has less resonance than it might (though, it's stil a pretty good universal identity for those who could ultimately support a replacement of capitalism with socialism). Our fellow left organizers are Comrades whether we agree with them or not. But never will the 99.9% all be left organizers, most will be the organized.
Communists may (like me) even self-discover this tendency as being the best, and then be shocked to find that's what the Communist Party (CPUSA) has been calling for all along. Reasonably good minds think alike.
Communists do not (generally) smear Democrats as being identical to Republicans. There are small differences (which may seem monumental to the brainwashed masses) which are nevertheless very important. So, Communists work for Democrats (and had been doing that even before the Communist Party stopped running it's own candidates in 1988). Communists themselves have just as much right (McCarthy and Cohn being long dead) to run as Democratic candidates as anyone else, they are generally willing to sign the Democratic Party's loyalty oaths, and stick to them as well as anyone, because they see and value the differences between Democrats and Republicans. One Communist won a city election (as a "Democrat") recently.
Communists do not view Communism as fringe, they view other parties who attack the establishment left indiscriminantly as fringe and hope to make peace with them somehow. This is often hard to imagine at a given time, but often unexpected events produce opportunities for greater unity, sometimes one step at a time.
Loyal Communists would even support Biden, if he were to win the Democratic Party nomination*, but it looks like even the most soothing words imaginable from Communists would not get many other leftists to support Biden. In the Primaries we officially support the leftmost candidates Sanders and Warren (most strongly prefer Sanders, including me), and hopefully Biden will not win the nomination--he is highly flawed. Gravel was the most Communist-preferred candidate of all. Self proclaimed anti-Imperialist Gabbard appears somewhat counterintuitively to be a Zionist and Hindu Nationalist, while communists oppose divisive nationalisms, so she wouldn't be our top pick--in addition to lower polls (but myself I love the fact that she talked to Assad, and I love many of the things she says). The remaining candidates are all unabashedly neocons and/or neoliberals, but still better than Trump.
(*Communists have been circulating Dump Trump signup cards, which pledge the signer to vote for the leading candidate opposing Trump in 2020 in the General Election. Yes, we are Serious, and committed to the long haul.)
The story that really angers me about Alinskyism is how his organization in Chicago devolved over many years, along with it's association with churches, to become for awhile primarily a crusader against porn bookshops. But it's only a small illustration of what happens when you have no actual ideology of what is important. The twist could get even worse than that...ultimately the Alinsky organization worked against integration.
At one time, long ago, Alinskyian organizing was thought by the man himself to be the slow patient variety, working through the achievement of incremental victories to the ultimate construction of a permanent power organization. He especially eschewed Martin Luther King style mass movements which he viewed as tending to operate for a few months, achieve some fame and fewer victories and then vanish, leaving no base for continuing victories. (However, while against his written principles, he took the opportunity for a mass movement when it arose.)
Since then, however, it appears that even Alinsky organizations have followed a similar course to fading away, but over the course of a few years rather than a few months. Hybrid Alinsky-inspired service organizations like Acorn have had somewhat better success, but ultimately broken by malign outside forces. (Acorn was good and great, and should be rebuilt, and has been partly rebuilt through a number of successor organizations.)
I think Alinsky type organizations should have a permanent place in society exactly where Alinsky himself had the most success--as residential civil rights guardians. Having no ideology, they can work with all the residents in an area to overcome government failures which especially plague poor neighborhoods, now as in Alinsky's day.
Alinskyian tactics also may have their place in other kinds of organizations. Boycotts are a classic Alinskyian strategy, often the only way the powerless can confront those protected by power. UFW is or was an Alinskyian organization that succeeds through organizing consumer boycotts rather than worker actions (and the most long lasting, if not successful, of all of organizations founded by people trained by Alinsky himself, however it is now a shadow of its most-successful self and not generally significant to farmworkers anymore, primarily because it hardly involved the workers at all, it was run with outside "liberal" money from fundraising and sponsored boycotts).
However the general strategy Alinsky proposed is Direct Action. My nutshell version goes like this:
- Identify a decision maker who could affect the desired change, and make them the singular "enemy"
- Attack the "enemy" relentlessly by any means available until they cave
I believe Alinskyian tactics need to be applied very selectively. (So did Alinsky, though he might choose differently than me.) Disruption can cause more harm than good in some cases, by disrupting outside alliances.
Alinsky had no respect for any politician. Regardless of their proclaimed ideologies, he believed they would always simply follow the path of least resistance. Hence, they always need to be pressured, and with the greatest predjudice, until they follow the people's will.
Since those of us who are Communists or like Communists (Alinsky dismissed all ideologies especially "-isms") still work to a considerable degree through electoral politics, and our ultimate plan is success through political unity, Alinskyian approaches should be applied with utmost caution to left-leaning or even center-leaning candidates. The successful less-right candidates are "our" candidates and we should be somewhat nice to them. (Not without exception, of course. Sometimes they need a good push or even shove. But my point is merely that this is a tricky business that needs careful design.)
It's strange to think the Communists, who aim to completely replace capitalism--as well as the imperialism which sustains it, as having a less confrontational tendency than "non-ideological" Alinskyists. Mind you, both ideologies eschew violence, only endorsing non-violent direct action, if any at all.
But the Communist game is a still longer one (and yes, shared by those other -isms). It is the game of not just creating one organization, but creating an identity, which will persevere to create new organizations when the old ones fail, endlessly.
In the case of the Communist identity, is is the identity of the unifiers, who aim to shepherd all the factions and splits of the people's movements and tendencies into a single and ultimately unstoppable people's identity that includes nearly everyone, because THAT is what it's going to take to replace Capitalism. Whether the ultimate identity is called is of less importance than its breadth and inclusiveness. Examples of the ultimate identity that could unify nearly all Americans include "the 99%" and the "99.9%". Because a lot of Americans are students, dependents, and retirees, "the workers" has less resonance than it might (though, it's stil a pretty good universal identity for those who could ultimately support a replacement of capitalism with socialism). Our fellow left organizers are Comrades whether we agree with them or not. But never will the 99.9% all be left organizers, most will be the organized.
Communists may (like me) even self-discover this tendency as being the best, and then be shocked to find that's what the Communist Party (CPUSA) has been calling for all along. Reasonably good minds think alike.
Communists do not (generally) smear Democrats as being identical to Republicans. There are small differences (which may seem monumental to the brainwashed masses) which are nevertheless very important. So, Communists work for Democrats (and had been doing that even before the Communist Party stopped running it's own candidates in 1988). Communists themselves have just as much right (McCarthy and Cohn being long dead) to run as Democratic candidates as anyone else, they are generally willing to sign the Democratic Party's loyalty oaths, and stick to them as well as anyone, because they see and value the differences between Democrats and Republicans. One Communist won a city election (as a "Democrat") recently.
Communists do not view Communism as fringe, they view other parties who attack the establishment left indiscriminantly as fringe and hope to make peace with them somehow. This is often hard to imagine at a given time, but often unexpected events produce opportunities for greater unity, sometimes one step at a time.
Loyal Communists would even support Biden, if he were to win the Democratic Party nomination*, but it looks like even the most soothing words imaginable from Communists would not get many other leftists to support Biden. In the Primaries we officially support the leftmost candidates Sanders and Warren (most strongly prefer Sanders, including me), and hopefully Biden will not win the nomination--he is highly flawed. Gravel was the most Communist-preferred candidate of all. Self proclaimed anti-Imperialist Gabbard appears somewhat counterintuitively to be a Zionist and Hindu Nationalist, while communists oppose divisive nationalisms, so she wouldn't be our top pick--in addition to lower polls (but myself I love the fact that she talked to Assad, and I love many of the things she says). The remaining candidates are all unabashedly neocons and/or neoliberals, but still better than Trump.
(*Communists have been circulating Dump Trump signup cards, which pledge the signer to vote for the leading candidate opposing Trump in 2020 in the General Election. Yes, we are Serious, and committed to the long haul.)
The story that really angers me about Alinskyism is how his organization in Chicago devolved over many years, along with it's association with churches, to become for awhile primarily a crusader against porn bookshops. But it's only a small illustration of what happens when you have no actual ideology of what is important. The twist could get even worse than that...ultimately the Alinsky organization worked against integration.
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