"Cloward-Piven Strategy"

Columbia University
Richard A. Cloward 1926 – 2001
Frances Fox Piven 1932

The very beginning of the Communist Revolution in the United States was an attempt to remove the government in the typical manner of organizing, overwhelming, and violently overthrowing. With the history of mass murder and insidiousness of personality cults in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, the United States benefited from history. The Russian people, Chinese people, and Cuban people unfortunately didn’t have the same luxury.

The United States rejected the attempts by the radical youth groups of the “New Left” by exposing their intentions. This exposure however didn’t destroy the will of those connected to the movement or the propagation of propaganda. A new movement of Community Organizers led by people like Saul Alinsky fought for the rights of the impoverished and unfortunate by educating them on ways to transfer power from the Upper Class to the Lower Class. This movement provided the vehicle while a new strategy provided the new fuel.

With the “New Left” feeling that the momentum was dead in the Communist Revolution, they needed a new strategy. This strategy arose from Columbia University. Columbia University was a viral culture for the new Communist movement after years of influence from the likes of Franz Leopold Neumann, Karl August Wittfogel, Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno, Erich Seligmann Fromm, and Siegfried Kracauer who all resided there after migrating from the Marxist Frankfurt School.

This new strategy was developed by sociologist, political activist, and co-founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) Richard A.Cloward and Professor of Political Science and Sociology and member of the Democratic Socialists of America Frances Fox Piven. The strategy is known as the “Cloward and Piven Strategy”. In an article published on May 2, 1966 in the Left Wing magazine “The Nation”, Cloward and Piven ironed out their revolution. The revolution consisted of implementing a crisis strategy to overwhelm the entitlement system over a gradual extended time. Cloward and Piven believed that the ruling upper class (bourgeoisie) was using welfare to weaken the poor (proletariat) and the only way to fix this was to take the power away gradually. This Marxist argument was what propelled the strategy.

Cloward and Piven were right with the theory that welfare was enslaving the lower class proletariat. However instead of trying to inspire the lower class to participate in the capitalist system which would free them from these chains, Cloward and Piven proposed to deepen and expand the enslaving entitlements to plunge the United States into economic disarray overthrowing the current status quo. The true intention was not the freeing of these so called slaves of the system but to enslave more which would increase animosity and pay back the greedy upper class bourgeoisie. It was a true Marxist revolution intended to slowly overcome the system.

This strategy based on a slow patient creeping method, was now published and available to community organizers and politicians alike to form a team join in revolution to raise the red flag of Communism in America. From this strategy sprouted groups like Acorn and NWRO which encouraged the existing entitlement programs to the lower class and proposed new programs to politicians to expand their constituency. This created a whole new array of supposed compassionate “bleeding heart” politician which redefined the Democratic Party and eventually the Republican Party. This disillusioned compassion was in-fact punishing the lower class and those having to pay for the entitlements with high taxes.

So as the entitlement machine chugs along, more and more entitlement programs are sprouting. Not only is the radicals in government implementing entitlements for individuals, we are now seeing government implement programs as entitlements to huge corporations and financial institutions. Modern Progressive Democrats who previously represented the lower class are now backing legislation with a Statist agenda bailing out banks and manufacturing. These programs and policies are simply a way to implement the Communist planks required to raise the red flag.

As the economy becomes more sluggish, government radicals implement entitlement programs like the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977 with the intentions of helping the poor. Over time this program led to massive loan defaults as the program expanded. While banks tried to offset the risks in the investment arena, the market uncertainty eventually collapsed under the weight of excessive entitlements and risks. Instead of the government allowing the market to adjust naturally through the necessity of corrective recession, the government under George W Bush and Barack Obama bailed out banks and the auto industry. Now the welfare state was expanded from simply enslaving the lower class to now enslaving insolvent institutions with entitlements of their own.

The normal recessionary cycle that would normally weed out weak institutions and businesses was now a crisis that needed to be fixed with radical government officials eager to use the Cloward and Piven strategy to further damage a weakened capitalist system. So now that individuals know they don’t have to work in a productive and innovative way, simply eat from the government’s poisonous hand. Large banks realize now that if they take excessive risks they too will receive welfare. This anti-capitalist method of rewarding failure is simply a Marxist agenda to tear down the system with slow methodical revolutionary cancer. Soon the system will collapse and the crisis will grow with the dependence of all on the government. This dependence will lead to the forfeiting of rights and the elimination of classes as the Marxist wishes.