A Modern Machiavelli 4

From Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion

“Whenever we think about social change,” Alinsky writes, “the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem.” In other words, like Trotsky, Alinsky’s radical is not going to worry about the legality or morality of his actions, only their practical effects. If they are seen to advance the cause they are justified. “[The radical] asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.” But how is one to judge whether they work except by the final result – the creation of a perfect future? Doesn’t such a course corrupt the cause and shape its outcome? In practice, Marxists killed 100 million people -- in peacetime -- justifying every step of their way by the nobility of the mission. Their victims were “enemies of the people” and therefore disposable. How to prevent such terrible outcomes except by observing a moral standard?
Alinsky answers the question about corrupt means this way: everybody does it. “To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process ... he who fears corruption fears life.” In this jaundiced view, there is no one who is not corrupt, who does not lie, cheat, steal, murder; it is all just business as usual. In which case there is no distinction to be made between tolerant democracies and totalitarian dictatorships. In pursuing a radical politics, Alinsky advises, “one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter.” But who determines what is good for mankind? In Alinsky’s universe there is only the revolutionary elite, and there is no higher court of appeal
The Russian novelist Dostoevsky famously wrote that, “If God does not exist then everything is permitted.” What he meant was that if human beings do not believe in a good that is outside themselves, they will act as gods and there will be nothing to restrain them. Alinsky is already there: “Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual’s personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal salvation has a peculiar conception of ‘personal salvation;’ he doesn’t care enough for people to be ‘corrupted’ for them.” In other words, the evil that radicals may do is already justified by the fact that they do it for the salvation of mankind -- as defined by them
Notice the scare quotes Alinsky puts around the verb “corrupted,” a sign that he does not actually believe in moral corruption, because he does not believe in morality itself. His morality begins and ends with the radical cause. The sadistic dictator, Fidel Castro, one of Alinsky’s radical heroes, summarized this principle in a famous formulation: “Within the revolution everything is possible; outside the revolution nothing is possible.” The revolution -- the radical cause -- is the way, the truth and the life