Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama and OFA, via Ralph Benko

Micah L. Sifry | January 5, 2010 - 2:22pm | 2 comments | Email This!

My friend Ralph Benko, author of The Webster's Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World, emailed me a very interesting response to my back and forth with Mark Tapscott. With his permission I'm sharing it here. It's Ralph's interpretation of how Saul Alinsky, the veteran community organizer, might analyze Obama today. The page references are all from Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals, (Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc./New York, October 1989 printing). Ralph writes:

Obama has chosen the path of the Leader, rather than the path of the organizer.

Alinsky (pp. 79-80):

Finally, the organizer is constantly creating the new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; that every time man has had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged. Curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, a free and open mind, an acceptance of the relativity of values and of the uncertainty of life, all inevitably fuse into the kind of person whose greatest joy is creation. He conceives of creation as the very essence of the meaning of life....

This is the basic difference between the leader and the organizer. The leader goes on to build power to fulfill his desires, to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal. He wants power himself. The organizer finds his goal in creation of power for others to use.

Obama has chosen the path of the leader, not the organizer. His goal, as evidenced by his subordination of OFA, is "to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal." For those of us (among whom I would include both Sifry and Tapscott) who are, at heart, organizers, this is poignant, a falling short of the highest good.

And what highest good is that? Alinsky, again (p. 122):

We learn, when we respect the dignity of the people, that they cannot be denied the elementary right to participate fully in the solutions to their own problems. Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises and who are not helpless, passive, puppet-like recipients of private or public services. To give people help, while denying them a significant part in the action, contributes nothing to the development of the individual. In the deepest sense it is not giving but taking -- taking their dignity. Denial of the opportunity to participate is the denial of human dignity and democracy. It will not work.

Alinsky's analysis (with which I fully agree) would appear to attribute the shortfall here to a deficiency of "ego" (meaning, for Alinsky, confidence) and an "infection of egotism," on Obama's part.

(p. 61:) The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The leader is driven by the desire for power, while the organizer is driven by the desire to create. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can read--to create, to be a 'great creator,' to play God. An infection of egotism would make it impossible to respect the dignity of the individuals, to understand people, or to strive to develop the other elements that make up the ideal organizer. Egotism is mainly a defensive reaction of feelings of personal inadequacy--ego is a positive conviction and belief in one's ability, with no need for egotistical behavior. Ego moves on every level. How can an organizer respect the dignity of an individual if he does not respect his own dignity? How can he believe in people if he does not really believe in himself? How can he convince people that they have it within themselves, that they have the power to stand up to win, if he does not believe it of himself? Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego?

Micah, you write compellingly of movement, "It's called a movement. It started to happen in 2007-08, and it hasn't happened since."

It is understandable that the Obama of the campaign legitimately raised hopes that he embraced the role of organizer of a movement. He talked the talk, and inspiringly so. Obama showed, and even shows, glimmerings of this possibility.

The Obama Disconnect was extremely well calculated to call out to those glimmerings, and Micah has chosen to encourage Obama's best instincts rather than anathematize him for going over the the Dark Side of the Force.

The evidence (which Micah candidly adduced) is mounting that it is more likely that Obama has chosen to "build power to fulfill his desires, to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal" -- and that Mark's pessimism is grounded in evidence rather than Heritage conditioning. It is more likely than not that finding a national figure who "finds his goal in creation of power for others to use" still lies in the future.

Comments

Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama and OFA, via Ralph Benko

by davidfarrar on January 5, 2010 - 10:45pm


"Obama has chosen the path of the leader, not the organizer. His goal, as evidenced by his subordination of OFA, is "to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal." For those of us (among whom I would include both Sifry and Tapscott) who are, at heart, organizers, this is poignant, a falling short of the highest good."

Thank God. Can you imagine the power a 13-million member group would have had if they had been given their own voice, allowed to speak and to be accurately heard?

ex animo
davidfarrar

—

ex animo
davidfarrar
The People Decide

Why wasn't OfA empowered?

by wadehudson on January 6, 2010 - 12:04am

As one who was deeply involved in trying to help persuade the Obama campaign to build OfA into a real grassroots organization, and posted some of my suggestions here, I find one important point missing in Micah's analysis.

One reason Obama and his people did not empower OfA may have been that if they had, they would have undermined their ability to develop a productive, collaborative relationship with Congress. During the period after the election, before OfA took shape, many members of Congress spoke out publicly about their concern about what was going to happen with Obama's "army." No doubt, they expressed themselves even more clearly and strongly privately. A major reason for the demise of the War on Poverty is that City Halls objected to the federal government funding the development of neighborhood councils that could challenge their prerogatives. If Obama had directed his people to build a real grassroots organization, the objections from incumbents would have been many times more forceful and Obama may well have had even more trouble getting legislation enacted than he does now.

Of course, the opposite could have been the case. OfA could have grown into a force so powerful that it could have successfully pressured Congress to take strong actions. But my experience in San Francisco, where I persistently tried to persuade Obama campaign workers to lay the groundwork for an ongoing grassroots organization as a model for the rest of the country, is that only a small minority was interested in that project. If Obama had sanctioned such an effort and instructed his national leadership to implement it during and after the election, there would have been more interest. But it's hard to say how much.

The fact that Obama's grassroots did not undertake that effort on their own suggests that the necessary degree of interest and commitment was lacking. Too many people merely wanted to elect a good, intelligent man President and let him be their Savior. That is more of a problem for us than Obama is.

I suspect that Obama wanted to focus on being an effective President and concluded that empowering OfA would interfere with a good working relationship with Congress, which he wanted to develop. So I give him the benefit of the doubt. I was very disappointed one year ago. But now I think he may have made the right political calculation in order to achieve the incremental reforms that are possible at this time, given the lack of a unified progressive movement.

Given this perspective, Ralph Benko's comments are extremely unpersuasive and his mind-reading is typical of the leftist circular firing squad. To say that Obama "wants power himself" is not consistent with his consensus-building leadership style. Benko's whole dichotomy between organizers and leaders is shallow. And the assumption that one is superior to the other is arrogant.

Being a cheerleader or chief organizer for the Movement is not Obama’s role. His role is to win the next election and help Democrats maintain a majority in Congress so we can make what progress we can given current realities and hold off the Republicans, who would be far worse if they get power again.

To move Obama, grassroots progressives need to move the mainstream. If we do, Obama will probably listen and may well tell others in the Establishment, “I have no choice.” That's our role. Ad hominem attacks on Obama and dwelling on the past interferes with figuring out how to fulfill it.