Cloward–Piven Strategy

If it walks like a duck...

“What-ifs” should be a part of a normal risk range considered by vigilant citizens. We must understand that there is no absolutism to events or actions as often implied, particularly, in social media discourse but a direction set from the consequences of events and decisions.

The question to always ask in politics regarding decisions and actions is in what direction are they setting us? While there may be good benefits along the way, the overall direction could be the real intent and could be catastrophic. However, the good benefits should not be abandoned or sacrificed in the course correction as they are a strategic asset for positioning.

Simplified, society is broken into two groups: those who want a smaller government and those who want a bigger government. Naturally, those who want a bigger government will want to be in government and execute rules and laws to implement that in our lives. Nothing creates big government support like dependency and there are various strategies to generate that. Some of them have been outlined in the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy is a political strategy formulated by political activists and sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven in the 1966 article The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty. It outlines a militant approach to activism, activating political crises to get to income disruption and guaranteed annual income that they think will end poverty.

Economically illiterate, very ambitious, very delusional, and very very dangerous.

Its premise is that welfare benefits programs for the poor aren’t providing enough (I agree), the local level is failing the poor and so the federal (centralized) government needs to run it, not enough people are getting adequate benefits, and are disincentivized and that the right to income must be guaranteed without requiring recipients to divest themselves of their assets. I agree with the latter part and will add that we shouldn’t wait for people to be down on their knees before we try to help them get back up, as I talked about it before.

The “Weight” part of the The Weight of the Poor is very significant. It speaks to the inadequacy of the welfare system that would collapse if everyone entitled to it enrolled, exposing the magnitude of poverty in our society. They recommend mobilizing such enrollment and the derived collapse would allow for political change and lasting anti-poverty policies. The other aspect of “Weight” is the critical mass of activism/activists needed to collapse norms to influence change.

The Strategy doesn’t consider the pain and the length on the poorest people impacted or how many will join that ranking because of it. It doesn’t consider where that money will come from or the fact that the cost of welfare programs is being swallowed up by bloat and inefficiencies in the very governments that they want to come to rescue to begin with.

Politics largely being about opportunism and with such ambitious, opportunists we call politicians will soon enough pander to the movement and a political Party to be influenced and composed from the inside to enact the demands and make it their core.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy is much narrower than some people give it credit to and is derived from poor people’s movements, their uprising, and the response to them (also a title of their book which came later). The premises have much larger consequences than most people think.

Mobilizing to manufacture crises to conduct revolutionary change and societal transformation disrupts the order and the cooperation on which our society is built. This isn’t necessarily bad but can also be a tool for nefarious goals.

Mobilization or activism, which can be used interchangeably here, is built on top of one another. What we give attention to, what we allow, and what we provide space to brew and grow will dictate the next moves and direction in which our society can be impacted. It doesn’t have to generate big wins every time, small ones add up as well.

Activism doesn’t have to be an immediate volcanic uprising. This manufacturing can be slow and meticulous to create new norms and new rules. Slowly but surely it gains supporters without them being direct activists. Some may call these useful idiots. This is how propaganda works as well and is part of activism.

This form I would say is more dangerous as it is usually focuses on transitioning our society by targeting kids and indoctrinating them to new realities. As it has a long-term horizon it is longer than political tenures and so ignored as many politicians who just don’t have the guts to stop it, don’t recognize it and want to get re-elected. But the underlying infrastructure of people and activities mostly stays the same continuing the work regardless of the peacock at the top.

So far this has been activism and manufacturing crisis from the people’s side but what happens and what if there are people in the government doing it as well, with rules and laws?

There are rather predictable sequence of events to many policies. Mass immigration for example; we know the demand it creates for our services and infrastructure is unsustainable so why do it? We know the combination of printing money and generating unproductive economies isn’t sustainable so why do it? DEI?

It is hard to say if today’s events are consequences of massive incompetence by governments or actors executing Cloward-Piven Strategy like critical mass build-up to collapse aspects of our society. Seems to be both.

Part of the problem is that we lost long-term vision and outlook in the Western World. I would say it is more true for the Right of centre politics. The Left and activist-driven ideologies aren’t tackled at the ground level, smaller government doesn’t seem to happen no matter who is in charge, socioeconomic issues that generate support for the big government aren’t addressed, and our societies aren’t protected.

Manufacturing crisis - activism is an offensive strategy. Offence is needed to defeat it as well not just defence. It’s a question to who can organize better and for longer.

It’s a question for you: How do you want to mobilize? Will you mobilize? Will you hold your side accountable to action or lack of as well? Change will come with our participation or without it. Might as well have a hand in steering our destiny I say.