The Hard Left's Latest Ideas for Improving Society

Honored professor of sociology and political science Frances Fox Piven, co-author of the Cloward-Piven Strategy, has some timely advice for the unemployed in America. She wants to foster again what they call over at Protein Wisdom the "blind rage of Cloward-Piven":

they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant

You might think of it as encouraging a generalized, emotional sort of covetousness for revolutionary purposes. Ron Radosh:

What she is calling for is nothing less than the chaos and violence engulfing Europe.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy was one part of American history about which I knew very little until a couple of years ago, when people started pointing out that some of its ideas had contributed to the financial meltdown. ACORN's* agitation for home loans for high-risk borrowers helped to  crash the real estate market in the U.S., and very nearly the financial system of much of the West. Of course, they had big assists from brilliant Ivy League computer modelers on Wall Street and their friends in Government, with their slick computer models for the bundling of bad loans with good loans (and all the reckless behavior which accompanied the acceptance of those models).  Of course, you can't discount  government borrowing and fractional lending by banks. (Too bad American banks were not allowed, or even encouraged, to be as realistic as Canadian banks.) 

But the West's financial system is still limping along.  So far, the hoped-for (by Cloward-Piven types) Rise of the Proletariat Masses to build a glorious new world on the ashes after their planned collapse of the structure of Western civilization has failed to materialize. Even if they did succeed in bankrupting New York City back at the height of their influence. I remember news stories about the bankruptcy of New York City and its relationship to high welfare costs. I DON'T remember hearing that there was a deliberate movement to overload the welfare system. I wonder why the press suppressed this bit of information?

Wall Street and Government financial hotshots (in the recent financial crisis) and the Cloward-Piven bunch (in their dreams to change the world) exhibited a remarkable lack of forecasting abilities. This gives one slight pause about revolutionizing the entire world's economy based on Global Warming computer models and utopian plans for redistributing wealth. Apparently the recent Cancun Climate Conference was more about Climate Justice than about reducing greenhouse gasses.  Even though some UN bureaucrats seem to have some doubts about giving all that money to corrupt, brutal African dictators (or perhaps even to common uneducated Africans). And they may have a point, given the irresponsible reactions of Greeks to the money flowing to their government from other European counties. Although poor, Greece was not exactly a third-world country when the money started flowing in without much effort on the part of the populace.  And when the government ran out of money  --  REALLY ran out of money -- the reaction was rage.  Would not even more irresponsibility be expected if third-worlders were suddenly awash in money they didn't earn?

The trouble is that the Hard Left has always been better at taking over and/or destroying existing institutions than at building new ones.

Frances Fox Piven can look to recent models for her dream of an angry identity-formation from Americans who have been hurt financially by the economic crisis. Richard Fernandez (nom de blog: Wretchard) provides some additional education on the  rise of ANARCHY, once again, in Europe.

In fine anarchists are Red Guards of the European Left, a collection of dupes formed inside the vast and creaky infrastructure of Marxism to advance the interests of one faction against another faction. It is impossible to understand the politics of the Left without grasping that it is all about deniable intimidation. The real problem European anarchism solves is how to send bombs without seemingly sending them, or how to trash the Tory party headquarters in London without really doing it.

Just as Mao’s Red Guards were never about themselves, always about Mao, anarchists are about a larger political question: what is the correct political line? Once the Red Guards of China had resolved that in Mao’s favor they were allowed to rampage for a time to bring hatred down upon themselves and subsequently suppressed, hapless tools to the very end.

Read the whole thing. Wretchard was once part of a genuine rebellion himself (in the Philippines)  and he interacted with revolutionaries who had various ideological reasons for participating in the rebellion.  Some of these revolutionaries seemed more threatening to him than the corrupt, autocratic government against which he was rebelling.

Wretchard's commenters often have some interesting ideas, too.  If you make a comment which he thinks brings something important to the conversation, he may comment on it, as well.  Glenn Reynold notes a few clarifying comments from others on various types of anarchists - some more responsible than others.  A "true anarchy" doesn't sound at all appealing.

I wonder how many generations ahead Fox Pivens was thinking when she called for this angry, indignant reaction from the unemployed in America?  Has she ever considered Thomas Sowell's perpetual question to the utopian thinker, "And then what?"

BLAST FROM THE PAST (circa 1980), Thomas Sowell takes on Frances Fox Piven in the last part of this 6-minute video. He was really feisty back then. Sowell and Fox Piven don't seem to have persuaded each other much in the intervening years.

Additional reading: Life and Death in Shanghai is the story of a remarkable woman's experiences with the Red Guard and the Maoist government after being identified as an "enemy of the people".

Wretchard  comments on VDH's latest piece comparing the behavior of the Left in Greece and California. Can the Left be brought to understand to the reality of the dire situation they are in?

So Hanson says, why not let them have it but make it clear that the state will have to pay for it? Let them see for themselves where the path leads if they won’t listen to reason. . . . .

Maybe they won’t listen to experience either, just as certain types of people keep trying the same thing while hoping for different results. They will press on despite failure, despite debacles and just press the keys harder. But under no circumstances will “sorry, we won’t loan you anything at any interest rate, so please by all means riot all you wish” get anyone else off the hook. Because other people are permanently on the hook. The whole point of socialism is precisely that it’s built on somebody else’s money. If it were built with their money it would be capitalism.

WH Auden observed that “all sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.” If the Left the world over has reached the point where they have got to have their fix, then neither reason nor experience will be persuasive. . .

The Hard Left aside, even more moderate young Social Democrats of Europe are starting to wake up to the consequences of not asking Sowell's question, "And then what?"   in their social planning. As reported by the NEW YORK TIMES?  Similar education bubble coming to a state near you.  Demographic issues may be a little different.

Video showing the lighter side of Marxism in NYC linked at the bottom of this post.

* Does ACORN really have BILLIONAIRE supporters who need to be informed of their business plans like, maybe, George Soros? Seems odd for a group focused on financial equality.  But then, Soros has justified destroying currencies in his stated quest to create more equitable governments.

UPDATE:  An old Stalinist is also delighted by the world's financial difficulties.   Even Fox-Piven had evolved beyond loving Stalin, I believe.