Cloward-Piven Strategy

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-18-2008
Cloward-Piven Strategy
9
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 8:40am

Could this be what's happening today? Makes me wonder, how about you?

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 1989 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. <> continue at the link below<> http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-04-2003
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 9:09am
I never heard of Cloward-Pivan Strategy. " Orchestrated Crisis for political change" It's sounding eerily familiar. My husband and I were just talking about this possibility last night, but in reference to it being created to steer the election towards an Obama not to hasten the fall of capitalism. Scary!
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 9:38am

1. What "orchestrated crisis" are you talking about?


2. How is that "orchestrated crisis" that you have named in answer to "1" above going to force political change?


3. Who is behind this "orchestrated crisis?"


4. Who benefits from the "orchestrated crisis" that you have named above in "1"?


5. When did the people you have named in "3" begin to "orchestrate" this crisis?


6. What position did the people who you have named in "3" hold, such that they could "orchestrate" this crisis you have named in "1" above?


7. Why did the people you named in "3" above begin to "orchestrate" this "crisis" you have named "1" above?


8. What "rules" do you suggest that the people you have named in "3" above are forcing the "welfare state" to live by should not be enforced, to stop this political movement?


Please help me understand this particular idea and how it is being used to day.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-25-2006
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 9:56am

No, that's NOT what's happening today.

Ironically, it is the biggest capitalists among us, those on Wall Street and the Republicans in Washington, that orchestrated this crisis, and the ridiculous bailout legislation. The result is actually the REVERSE of socialism---the little guys are coming to the rescue of the financiers.

This country is totally messed up!

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http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/meet_the_new_health_.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTBYQlQ7yM

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-18-2008
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 10:00am
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 11:22am

Forgive me. I did not make my questions clear at the start of my post.


I would like YOU to post YOUR answers to my questions. To clarify, I am not asking for

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 11:34am

I think the author could benefit from a tinfoil hat.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-01-2004
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 1:23pm

Unfortunately, Alinsky's teachings have many adherents:

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-16-2008
Sat, 10-04-2008 - 3:10pm
Am I better of then when Obama began in politics? No I am not - but that is probably because we have had Bush for president for 8 years. Last time I checked Obama's time in the Illinois senate had VERY little impact on my tiny corner of Maryland. Seems we are too far away - gosh darn it - but if the good people of Illinois start to 'rear their heads' and fly into my airspace I'll let you know!
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-01-2008
Wed, 10-08-2008 - 12:22pm

I realize that this discussion is a few days old, but I implore everyone to research the Cloward-Piven Strategy.