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Review
“This country's leading hell-raiser...has set down some of the rules of the game. No one has had more experience or has been more successful at it than Alinsky.” —The Nation
“Alinsky's techniques and teachings influenced generations of community and labor organizers, including the church-based group hiring a young [Barack] Obama to work on Chicago's South Side in the 1980s.... Alinsky impressed a young [Hillary] Clinton, who was growing up in Park Ridge at the time Alinsky was the director of the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Alinsky is that rarity in American life, a superlative organizer, strategist, and tactician who is also a social philosopher.” —Charles E. Silberman
“He cannot be bought; he cannot be intimidated; and he breaks all the rules.” —The Economist (London)
“I consider him to be one of the few really great men of our century.” —Jacques Maritain
Product Description
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.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Organizer's Bible,
By
This review is from: Rules for Radicals (Paperback)
Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky's third book, though written with a 60s slang that now seems a bit dated, brilliantly sets out the basic concepts of organizing for power. Alinsky does this with engaging, often humorous, and too often self promoting anecdotes drawn from his many experiences as an organizer in American cities including Chicago, Illinois and Rochester, New York. In the process of explaining how an organizer thinks and acts, Alinsky also reveals many of the issues and problems that confronted America during this era -- and still confront us today. The books mission is to show the well-intentioned but often misguided activists of the 60s and 70s that the best chance of making a difference in our American society lies not in the anti-Establishment counter-culture Movement nor in the destructive and alienating protests embraced by many campus radicals of the day. Instead, Rules for Radicals presents a guidebook on how to practically go about confronting and changing powerful institutions and individuals with well organized action. Insofar as this book inspired and still inspires many earnest organizers to pursue their work, Alinsky's mission was successful. The longevity of the national organization that Alinsky founded, the Industrial Areas Foundation, and the dozens of urban organizations now affiliated with it is further testimony to the significance of this mission.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Timeless classic by Alinsky,
By A Customer
This review is from: Rules for Radicals (Paperback)
Saul Alinsky wrote this book before I was even born, but little did he know that we would still be reading his work thirty years later. When I was finished with the book, it was full of underlines and thoughts of wisdom about advocacy, organization and political reality. I will catalog this book in my library with the rest of my timeless treasures.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dated but valuable,
By A Customer
This review is from: Rules for Radicals (Paperback)
People--and their writings--are a product of their culture and their times. Alinsky's writings are no different. A number of previous reviewers called him Marxist. That's possible but his tactics were aimed at helping the people of his era--the '30s to the '60s--crack the Capitalist monopoly on this country. Reviewer John Devlin's ridiculous rant about Alinsky, using the words, "...wealthy, privileged, how a spoiled juvenile from a, (relatively), wealthy, privileged background would approach social change. Starting from the position of most adolescents, (the assumption of absolute moral and intellectual authority based upon little knowledge and no practical experience...perfectly reasonable to a rebellious adolescent dabbling at cultural revolution. After all, any real damage done will be to the working middle or lower class, and daddy will still be happy to bail you out if anything goes wrong" was a hoot. Substitute the words "George W. Bush" for "Saul Alinsky" and I couldn't agree more. One of the problems that 8th grade civics classes never seem to drill into people's heads is that there's a big difference between Capitalism and Democracy. Most Americans equate the two, much to the glee of the unfettered, NAFTA-styled global corporations whose only allegiance is to money and power. Financial systems and political systems are very different and that's one of the core beliefs Alinsky expounds upon. Too bad more people can't stop for a minute and think. Maybe they'd see Alinsky in a different light and bring power back to everyday people and their representatives--not cede it to the corporations and their paid lackeys in Congress.
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