1. Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals (1971)
The McCarthy era decimated the ranks of American radicals, yet it did not stop the disillusionment that America’s young felt in the 1960s about politicians and institutions. When Saul Alinsky heard young people saying they wanted a better world, this pioneering community organiser felt like asking: exactly what kind of world, and how would you achieve it? He wrote Rules for Radicals for people who were committed to real change, not merely to talking about a world of peace and love.
“The significant changes in history have been made by revolutions,” Alinsky asserts, but in their haste for change, radicals rarely understand the mechanics of mass movements and revolutionary change. “There are certain central concepts of action in human politics that operate regardless of the scene or the time. To know these is basic to a pragmatic attack on the system.”
His rules included having a sense of humour and being willing to compromise and see things from the enemy’s point of view. The book is said to have inspired a young Barack Obama in his days as an organizer on Chicago’s South Side, and Hillary Clinton famously wrote her senior thesis on “the Alinsky model”. On becoming First Lady, she had Wellesley College change its regulations so the press couldn’t read it.
