Socialism, Cloward-Piven Style

by Brannon S. Howse

Months ahead of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and scores of other pundits, I was talking about and revealing the Cloward-Piven Strategy on my national radio program and on our website www.worldviewtimes.com? One of our columnists, James Simpson, wrote an article on the Cloward-Piven Strategy that we carried on our website. I also interviewed James on my national radio program, and much of the material presented in this book and on my radio and TV program and on our website will continue to be months and years ahead of most of the secular talk show hosts. That’s because many of them do not have the spiritual eyes and biblical discernment with which Christians are blessed as we study God’s Word and ask for wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

After studying the Marxist Saul Alinsky (read Grave Influence for an entire chapter on Alinksy), Professor Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven wrote an article in the May 2, 1966, far-left magazine, The Nation. This husband-and-wife pair of radical socialists from Columbia University developed the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which advocates implementing socialism by swamping the welfare system of states as well as the federal government with new recipients. 

Cloward and Piven also called for a protest movement, marches, and rallies to put extreme pressure on politicians to create new benefits. This strategy is also used to stop the elimination of government benefits as we saw in Madison, Wisconsin, in February 2011. If you remember, thousands of union thugs protested as newly elected Governor Scott Walker sought to cut a small portion of the government benefits received by Wisconsin teachers so he could reduce the size of government and the crippling tax burden on Wisconsin families and business.

Cloward and Piven’s strategy was to create a financial crisis, to bankrupt city and state governments—and eventually the federal government—through an ever-expanding welfare state. Once the financial crisis blooms, the collapse of state and federal budgets would spawn a socialist state and the nationalizing of failed financial institutions such as mortgage lenders. 

Among their many accomplishments, Cloward and Piven inspired an activist named George Wiley to found a liberal organization that set in motion a startling chain reaction. Wiley’s work influenced Wade Rathke who, along with Bill Ayers, was a member of the Radical Students for a Democratic Society. The SDS organization was the student off-shoot of John Dewey’s League for Industrial Democracy. Rathke started Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now to employ the Cloward-Piven strategy. He was so successful in Arkansas that the organization expanded and changed the “A” in its name from “Arkansas” to “Association,” and it became known as the Association of Community Organizers for Reform— the now infamous ACORN.

James Simpson, writing for worldviewtimes.com, notes:

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the government sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them.

The financial housing crisis that made headlines in 2007 was brought on through Saul Alinksy’s ideas, via the Cloward-Piven Strategy of implementing socialism through big government destruction of contract law and free market principles. This “economic sabotage” was originally attempted in New York City, and by 1975 the Big Apple was on the verge of financial melt-down. In 1960, New York had a manageable 150,000 welfare cases, but a decade later, the number had soared past the 1.5 million mark.

Barack Obama was a community organizer with Project Vote, an affiliate of the ACORN, before he entered public service, and his “organizing” was built on the model of Saul Alinsky. Obama’s activities come right from the Alinsky playbook. In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky describes his purpose:

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” This means revolution.  

An obvious plug for socialism, Alinksy says radicals “hope for a future…where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful.” In Rules for Radicals, Alinksy admits that his goal is to “present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution.” He also reflects on the book The Prince which he says “was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold onto power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.” According to Alinsky, an organizer “is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach—to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God.” Alinsky notes that out of the chaos the politician/community organizer can “play God.” 

Much of the unrest and chaos around the globe is related to central banks and globalists manipulating their nation’s money systems and deliberately creating inflation. Inflation means higher fuel costs, higher costs in fertilizer, higher costs in planting and harvesting a crop, and higher costs in driving that crop to market. Runaway inflation offers the real possibility of spawning more and more social unrest. And I believe this is all part of the ultimate plan. A crisis is needed to remold the world closer to the heart’s desire of the globalists. 

So, as the Fabian window shows, the globe is on fire. There’s a crisis or chaos taking place, and the Fabians are banging on the world with these hammers, remolding it on an anvil.

Copyright 2012 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.