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    Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
    Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
    Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
    Audiobook7 hours

    Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals

    Written by Saul D. Alinsky

    Narrated by Scott Lange

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    First published in 1971, Rules for Radicals is Saul Alinsky's impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.” Written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 11, 2015
    ISBN9781491593561
    Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
    Author

    Saul D. Alinsky

    Saul Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909 and educated first in the streets of that city and then in its university. Graduate work at the University of Chicago in criminology introduced him to the Capone gang, and later to Joliet State Prison, where he studied prison life. He founded what is known today as the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power. His work in organizing the poor to fight for their rights as citizens has been internationally recognized. In the late 1930s he organized the Back of the Yards area in Chicago (the neighborhood made famous in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). Subsequently, through the Industrial Areas Foundation which he began in 1940, Mr. Alinsky and his staff helped to organize communities not only in Chicago but throughout the country. He later turned his attentions to the middle class, creating a training institute for organizers. He died in 1972.

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    Reviews for Rules for Radicals

    3.5/5

    269 ratings27 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Interesting but deeply flawed read. Alinsky espouses high sounding morales yet attempts to achieve them with underhanded in its tactics. The whole work is paradoxically Machiavellian while set itself up as its opposite. Also don’t expect rock solid logic. He denounces dogma and then proceeds to list and expose his own dogmatic conclusions, followed by hand-waiving excuses about life is paradox and complexity to try to bridge the gap of his missing logic. He claims the books is not partisan, but the opening and closing reveal an unquestionably far left bias.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Alinsky is morally bankrupt and the ideas in this book cannot be enacted by the side of good. But it was interesting to hear him spell out what we all know they’ve been doing for the last 40-50 years.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Some strange parts, but overall a great book on both politics and organization - which according to the author are inseparable subjects.
    • 2/5
      Rules for Revolutionaries by Zach Exley and Becky Bond is better. I agree that the use of this book has and will backfire against the left. Jane McAlevey has other good work that is more focused on union organizing but still worth a read. This is an influential book that I do not regret reading, but most of the advice is plain awful.
    • 2/5
      I understand the general idea but I do feel as though you it is fairly dated with the current situation.
    • 5/5
      This is a good book for everyone to read who has a goal of understanding the state of the Democrat mindset or who wants to see how propaganda might be used to sway or push public action.
      Definitely worth reading and definitely worth applying to the need for change of society for good.
    • 3/5
      A little dated, some specifics wouldn't work now, or would backfire. Like Alinsky says, details adapt to changing times but the principles are the same.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating book for those who are looking to take a leadership role within an organization. A word to the wise, though: trying these tactics and loosing might be fun but can be dangerous. This book spells out sure-fired ways for upsetting the establishment -- which is the point -- but if you loose, the establishment (ie the people who currently have the power and influence) will hate you. But don't be shy. Make a good plan, find allies and fight them to the death! (political death, that is)...
    • 3/5
      This book was unsettling, but educational. Looking at how to institute real change, not just talk about it, needs a single-mindedness that may be beyond me. Glad I read it, though.
    • 1/5
      Don't get me wrong, this book is well•written. However, the content is one of tactics that ride on the thin line between legal & illegal, and it's definitely evil as opposed to good. This was Barry Hussein's "Community Organizing" job description/handbook. That said, I don't believe there are a lot of useful idiots who can comprehend this "primer," they are, however, capable of following the lead of someone who does comprehend and can put the tactics into play. I'm glad I finally finished it, now if only the nausea would subside. I'm quite happy with Conservative values and principles. I could never be a deceitful Progressive/Democrat/Socialist, I enjoy my freedoms and personal responsibilities WAY too much.

      4 people found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I read this book, because I had to try to understand how the Liberal mind works. Alinsky does a great job exposing it. Alinsky's philosophy is dirty, violent, extreme Left-wing. His goal was to destroy this Republic (the Founders did NOT want a democracy, by the way) by spreading anarchy. According to Alinsky, the ideal activist has no scruples: "He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody." Good old radicalism from the Left, in all its ugliness.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I read Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky back in the summer of 2015, but was not a regular on this thread yet. Alinsky points out that Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King were able to effectually use peaceful means of protest because the relatively free presses of the U.K. and the U.S., respectively, were covering the protests, and the citizens of a democracy were likely to be, and proved to b, sympathetic. Pictures of matriculating students in Mississippi being harassed by German Shepherds or being firehosed doesn't play well. The dictators are not sensitive to this kind of criticism, and eliminate the criticism with extreme prejudice.

      The book is cited now by conservatives as a road to dystopia. I think most of the "rules" could be used by more conservative elements as well. Further, in the context of the times, I remember it representing a "cooling" of the rhetoric and tactics from the often counterproductive actions of the radical part of the anti-Vietnam war and militant parts of the "civil rights" movement. The book was witty and had me laughing out loud a few times.
    • 1/5
      In a nutshell, Alinsky believes the end justifies the means. Not only that, but he believes one is acting irresponsibly if one does not use whatever means necessary to achieve what might be a greater good. Putting one's own squeamishness and ethical beliefs ahead of achieving that greater good is behaving selfishly.

      The problem is that this attitude just continues the vicious circle of American politics today, with each side escalating tactics in attempts to achieve their own ends, and then justifying deplorable behavior with post hoc reasoning.
    • 4/5
      Not quite the "evil blueprint for the totalitarian takeover of America" that many on the right say it is. It is full of logical steps of how to organize the have-nots against the haves. Noting for the haves to win, they must gain support of the have-some and the have-more middle class.
    • 2/5
      How did that revolution go Mr Alinsky? Not so well, eh? Turns out building stuff is actually more valued than shitting on it and screeching.

      A lot of self-aggrandisement and not that much advice beyond the often quoted rules, which I've read so many times quoted it convinced me to give the source a read.
    • 2/5
      I don't make a very good groupie, and I have an aversion to gurus and their charms. For the most part Alinsky's world has been over for almost a half century. An enduring lesson might be that if the "haves" cannot change their vision and values, the "have-nots" have the means to take what they need and want and they won't necessarily play nice. I suppose that is somewhat permanently true. I generally didn't like this book, but one can learn something depressing about human nature and community organizing from it. I found the last chapter, "The Way Ahead," to be the most interesting part of the book. His discussion of the existential realities of the layers of the middle class are still relevant, and probably presage our current era and the Donald Trump phenomenon.
    • 5/5
      Why didn't I learn about Alinsky back in school? I've been flirting with both the philosophical and practical significance of organizing and activism for sometime now. Alinksy makes the irrefutable argument as to its importance.A disclaimer: our author is clear that activists start by oversimplifying and polarizing a situation, then moving into nuance and compromise at the negotiation stage. And that is what he does with this book. It's monolithic, iconic, archetypal. And, if taken with a grain of salt, invaluable. As Saul might whisper to you in private, it's also not a totally accurate appraisal of reality, or even organizing. But I'm totally fine with that.The book gets rolling with raising priority number one: communication. How will you ever influence your community if you alienate them? The example he gives: you wouldn't come into a Jewish community eating a ham sandwich... And yet this is constantly what "radicals" do, and where they fail—begin by insulting those with whom they need to work with.To core narrative of this book is about power—about how the "have nots" can take power from the "haves" and distribute it more equitably. It's also pragmatic to the point of being atheistic. Maybe that's partially why Alinsky could both be a significant influence for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and why Clinton and Obama could become totally unmoored from their essential values.More on this thread of relativism—Alinsky argues that principles are worthless. Charles Eisenstein makes this point as well, but in a very different way. The common ground would be in what Carol Sanford refers to as "regeneration." Frameworks are useful when they help us custom-tailor solutions to the endless diversity of experience we encounter in life. Models and best practices hobble us when we use them "out of the box," without any attempt to regenerate them in each specific instance. I think there's a middle ground which bridges both values and flexibility.Almost fifty years on, the book could not be better suited to our time. His analysis of the political dynamics at the time strongly mirror what we see today—when the left fails to integrate working-class whites, they join the jingoistic right. You want to resist Trump? Pick up a copy of this book.I'm fascinated to learn who has picked up where Alinksy left off. Bill McKibben—obviously. I've heard the names of Jonathan Smucker and Jane McAlevey mentioned as well, although I haven't had the opportunity to explore their works thus far.
    • 3/5
      A little dated, some specifics wouldn't work now, or would backfire. Like Alinsky says, details adapt to changing times but the principles are the same.
    • 3/5
      Everybody talks bout Alinsky but how many have read him? He was an anti-Marxist community organizer who, judging by this book published in 1971, was bemused by the New Left radicals and yippies of the late 1960s who were making trouble instead of making change. Some of his rules: see the world and people as they are, not as you wish they would be. Don't demonize power or conflict. Don't force people you are organizing outside their experience. Don't call people "pigs" and "fascists."There is much sense to what he says, although the language is very dated and he seems completely ignorant of the women's movement exploding around him as he wrote. He argued that the "revolution" would come from organizing the white middle class, and obviously did not foresee the demographic changes that would make that theory a recipe for defeat (a lesson unlearned by certain contemporary "progressives," too, although a few of nastiest ones stole his idea for a fart-in as a political act).
    • 4/5
      Seminal community development text.Amazon: First published in 1971, Rules for Radicals is Saul Alinsky's impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.” Written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.
    • 3/5
      Another book I've been meaning to read for a long, long time. A good bit of it is dated but insightful about the times in which it was written. There's a lot of good practical advice still relevant for people looking to organize for political or social change.
    • 3/5
      An eye opener which every American should read. Before reading this I had little idea of what an "Organizer" was or what they did.
    • 4/5
      I read this book as I kept hearing about it being the "bible" for liberals. Sitting on the other end of the political spectrum, I felt like it was important for me to understand why those currently (and recently) in power do the things they do. It was a "know thine enemy" kinda thing.Quite frankly, Saul Alinsky was a pretty brilliant strategist. I find his divisiveness and outlook on life in general and on America specifically quite repugnant, but I can't disagree with much of his tactics and logic. It is terrifying, however, that Obama is a big believer in Alinsky's beliefs...something that can easily be seen in how he reacts to issue and runs his administration.The beauty of America is that Alinsky is free to write books that encourage people to essentially take what isn't theirs and find justifications for it.I found the second half of the book more interesting than the first as it offer more case studies and examples and wasn't quite so abstract. I'd encourage anyone to read it, but most especially those who are conservative so they can better understand what drives people like our Community Organizer in Chief and his ilk.
    • 4/5
      Interesting to say the least.I approached this book with a bit of trepidation wondering what in here was so amazing that people are clamoring to it. When you read this it is important to keep two things in mind. 1 - much of what is in here was extremely effective in the past. 2 - since many of these tactics are out of popular use today they can be used again and have the same impact.There is much to learn here on how to create and how to defend from radicals. Mr. Alinsky points out how to do much of this from the liberal side of the political spectrum but there is nothing that could not be adapted to any other political faction.
    • 3/5
      So this is the infamous Rules for Radicals. Believed by some on the far right as the Gospel according to St. Stalin of the Church of Satanic-Marxism-Leninism.

      To be fair, it does hold interesting discussions of community organization, communication, across class and racial bounds to demand reform. Something which will upset conservatives, naturally, as they prefer for things to stay the same, or changed more slowly. There is much valuable to be learned here, for both left and right.

      The big gripe is his discussion of ends and means, and his ultra-pragmatic view of them, and avocation of any tactic necessary. If one is in a position of lesser monetary power or political connections, you may well fight like this. It is perhaps the only way to win.

      Of course, any good little boy or girl who has read their Robert Caro (or god forbid, entered the system) knows that power and power struggles are everything in politics. Everybody uses these ugly tactics, from socialists to reactionaries. The moral element in politics is either a covering, a fools errand, or a reserved for visionaries and prophets, whether deranged or true. But even Christ said, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword". I accept it, but I do not pretend to love it.

      And what happens to the radical or the organizer once they gain power? Shall the revolutionary become the tyrant? Of course, power struggles are always an ugly thing. If I ever decide to go into politics for good, I will refer to this book almost biblically, and then delete this review.
    • 3/5
      A must read for anyone interested in politics. Mr. Alinsky elitism, narcissism and contempt of America and the "American Experiment" is evident through out his treatise. He explains in detail the methodology of the 'Progressive Movement' and it's ultimate goal of completely destroying the American middle class.In one chapter he councils students complaining about a colleges strict rules of conduct to march on the administration building and spit chewing gum on the sidewalks in order to intimidate the administration to relax the rules. Why not simply advise the students to transfer en-mass to a university of their liking, thus putting financial pressure on the administration? Mr. Alinsky prefers anarchy to rational behavior. Or, daddy wouldn't pay their tuition? Me thinks both!!
    • 4/5
      A highly effective set of guidelines, and a very funny book. Carnophile describes Alinsky as "cynical"; I think realistic would be a better term. However, he was misguided in thinking that his techniques, designed to level the playing field between the powerless and the powerful, could not be turned against the poor by the rich--as Dick Armey and the Teabag Brigades have very proudly done last summer. "Forget about countering arguments and just attack the person"--that describes the campaigns against "green job czar Van Jones," Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, and other targets of right-wing opinion makers who explicitly acknowledge their debt to Alinsky.