Though the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” isn’t new to me, I followed Daggett’s link anyway. You never know when you’ll learn something new, which I did, or when you’ll see something old in a new way, which I also did.

Cloward and Piven came up with a theory that has only been tested halfway. Yes, their ideas about using “community organizers” and leftist media to grow the demands of the welfare state have succeeded in draining resources of cities and states to the point of bankruptcy. Some areas have fought the overgrowth back, but there will be a point of no return, should we prove unable to root out the abettors and stop them, and we could see them reach their goal of complete collapse.

The second part of this theory, however, has not yet been tested, and that second part is the whole point of the thing. They predict that overloading the system to the point of collapse will create a crisis that empowers the poor to have their demands met, through redistribution of wealth.

I’m not so sure that this second prediction will prove as accurate as the first. They seem to disregard some important variables, in a way that’s similar to Charles Manson’s theory.

Manson wanted to start a race war that would ultimately lead to personal power for himself. His theory rested on the shaky foundation of his own prejudices; first, that blacks would win a physical confrontation with whites, owing to his belief in their physical superiority to whites, and second, that victorious blacks, in the aftermath of the race war, would need to turn to a white man to lead them, due to his belief in their mental inferiority. Following this fuzzy equation on the board, he had one of those, “a miracle occurs” formulas, in which he – and he alone – of all white men, somehow manages to emerge unscathed from the carnage, at that magical moment when the triumphant blacks are realizing that they can’t survive without the help of a white man.

Manson is insane, no doubt, but Cloward and Piven make a curiously similar leap. Nowhere do they account for the actions and reactions of middle America while their little plan is unfolding. It seems just as likely to me that, should the ACORNS and World Workers Party types succeed in breaking our economy, that the middle to upper class taxpayers would be given exactly the shot of adrenaline they need to fight back. C&P envision small government officials, panicked, primed to allow unfettered government power to seize and redistribute the wealth of the populace. Really? Maybe, but it seems more likely to me that, faced with economic collapse and mobs of the poor threatening violence, the much more populous middle would grab their shotguns, pitchforks, shovels – whatever they have – and fight back hard.

These people are too in love with the French Revolution to see some basic differences. The French didn’t have a middle class to speak of, and the poor outnumbered the aristocracy by a large margin. The Russian revolution had a similar demographic. The closest thing to a middle class in either country consisted of farmers and merchants that worked long hours for the little extra that they had, and were too few and vulnerable against a lower class that was also used to hard labor, for basic subsistence.

Compare these groups with America’s poor and middle class. The working poor in this country are few, and they don’t ally themselves with the poor of the welfare state. Cloward and Piven rely on a romantic idea of a noble, poor but honest, working hard for every scrap, poverty class, that only exist in their imaginations. Their imaginary poor would fight hard for their “community organizer” leaders, with persistence, dedication, and courage. Huh? The first riot in which the welfare state poor attempt to loot the working poor and middle class will not necessarily end in the helpless and frightened middle class turning to their government, willing to fork over their cash to be redistributed to the aggressors. It might just end with the working poor and middle class taking out their pent-up frustration and anger on the welfare class, and the government that created them. I can’t really see the government created sheep going into battle with fortitude, determined to win what’s rightfully theirs. It seems more likely that, after looting some TVs and liquor stores, and stomping a few innocent people to death, they’ll need a few days off and some paid vacation time. The warrior class that the left is trying to create is unused to enduring hardship, or working at anything, which is a fairly fatal flaw in the whole plan.

I kind of like the idea that ACORN could be working towards their own destruction, even though I know the reality would be too ugly and brutal to take pleasure in. Still, at least we’d know that they, very deliberately, brought it on themselves, in an attempt to destroy the rest of us in an ugly and brutal way.

ral514 on July 20, 2009 at 2:08 PM