What the heck is a Cloward and Piven and what does it have to do with the Far Left? Richard Cloward and his batshit crazy wife, Frances Piven were sociologists and Democrat Socialists that developed a political strategy in 1966, creatively referred to as the âCloward and Piven Strategyâ. In short, the Cloward and Piven Strategy calls for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with âa guaranteed annual income and thus an end to povertyâ. Does this sound a bit familiar in 2020?
Ironically, just one year earlier, Paul Harvey, a conservative broadcaster, aired some comments, a concept and now a reality really, titled âIf I were the Devilâ. If youâve never listened to this before, spend the 3 minutes and listen to it. Paul Harvey was many years ahead of his time, but I digress.
Now, back to these two idiots Cloward and Piven. Sadly, Cloward and Piven were visionaries and they knew exactly what it would take to turn America inside out. Thank God theyâre both dead but their legacy and âStrategyâ is alive and well, theyâd be so very proud.
I know, I know, Socialism, Communism/Marxism are bad enough, what could Cloward and Piven possibly add to the Far Left agenda? Both Socialism and Communism/Marxism are founded on (10) âplanksâ, basically a high level construct on how to achieve Socialism and Communism/Marxism. Think of Socialism and Communism/Marxism as the framework and the Cloward and Piven Strategy as well as Saul Alinskyâs Rules for Radicals as the mechanisms to make Socialism and Communism/Marxism a reality. Unfortunately, the media sources ânormal peopleâ rely on (Fox News, OAN, Newsmax TV, etc.) never discuss the Cloward and Piven Strategy. Perhaps they are worried it would further confuse people or perhaps itâs just easiest to refer to Socialism and Communism/Marxism, Iâm not really sure. However, from where I sit, I think itâs important for people to understand the different frameworks and mechanisms currently being used to destroy America.
The article below does a great job detailing what the Cloward and Piven Strategy is all about. Itâs a little long, but if youâre not familiar and are interested in understanding more about the Far Left and connecting the proverbial dots, then it will be time well spent.
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven â both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair â the âCloward-Piven Strategyâ 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 â which erupted after police used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving â Cloward and Piven published an article titled âThe Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Povertyâ 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 âcrisis strategyâ or âCloward-Piven Strategy,â 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 âthe rest of society is afraid of them,â 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 authors also asserted that: (a) the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the country; (b) poor people would rise in revolt; and (c) only then would âthe rest of societyâ accept their demands (sound familiar?).
The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inherent inadequacy of the welfare state. In this regard, Cloward-Pivenâs early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. âMake the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,â Alinsky wrote in his 1971 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 systemâs failure to âlive upâ to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist ârule bookâ with a socialist one.
Cloward and Piven noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare â about 8 million at that time â probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. Thus the authors proposed a âmassive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls,â calculating that the system would be bankrupted if even a fraction of potential welfare recipients were to demand their entitlements. The result, predicted Cloward and Piven, would be âa profound financial and political crisisâ that would unleash âpowerful forces ⊠for major economic reform at the national level.â
The Cloward-Piven article called for âcadres of aggressive organizersâ to use âdemonstrations to create a climate of militancy.â Then, the authors predicted, the following would happen:
- Politicians, intimidated by threats of black violence, would appeal to the federal government for help.
- Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of âa federal program of income redistributionâ in the form of a guaranteed living income for all â working and non-working people alike.
- Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it.
- With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… | FAR LEFT FACTS
