--- product_id: 1357407 title: "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals" price: "256 kr" currency: NOK in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.no/products/1357407-rules-for-radicals-a-practical-primer-for-realistic-radicals store_origin: NO region: Norway --- # Classic radical playbook Provocative political insights Strategic social change tactics Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals **Price:** 256 kr **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 📖 Ignite your impact with the ultimate radical roadmap! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals - **How much does it cost?** 256 kr with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.no](https://www.desertcart.no/products/1357407-rules-for-radicals-a-practical-primer-for-realistic-radicals) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Fuel Your Activism:** Equip yourself with practical tactics that have shaped decades of grassroots movements. - • **Timeless Strategy Manual:** Master the art of realistic radicalism with Alinsky’s enduring guide to social change. - • **Top-Ranked Political Read:** Join thousands of engaged readers—#5 in Political Advocacy and Elections categories. - • **Sharp, Unfiltered Analysis:** Gain insider perspectives on community organizing that challenge conventional politics. - • **Cult Classic with Credibility:** Endorsed by thought leaders and boasting 4,100+ reviews, this book is a must-have for change-makers. ## Overview Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky is a seminal 1971 guidebook for community organizers and activists, blending sharp political philosophy with practical tactics. This used copy in good condition offers millennial professionals a chance to understand the mechanics of social change from a top-ranked, highly reviewed classic that remains relevant in today’s political landscape. ## Description “This country's leading hell-raiser" ( The Nation ) shares his impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.” "A superlative organizer, strategist, and tactician who is also a social philosopher.” —Charles E. Silberman First published in 1971 and written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition. Review: Know Your Enemy - For over two decades I have watched in horror as our politicians (from both parties) passed laws and regulations that could clearly have no other consequence than the destruction of the USA. Confiscatory taxation, debilitating over-regulation, and job killing pseudo-free trade agreements killed our steel, lumber, oil, auto, textile, electronics and semiconductor industries. The jobs forced off shore historically were the manufacturing jobs average Americans held to raise their families. So why were the politicians resolved to turn our country into a third world banana republic? This question has gnawed at me for over 20 years! In Rules for Radicals, the iconic godfather of radical revolutionaries, Saul Alinsky, supplies the answer! While the chapters on tactics are eye-opening, humorous, and insightful, it is the first half of the book about the community organizers' motivations and temperament that are the most important and illuminating for me. According to Saul, a Radical Revolutionary goes by the handle of "community organizer (CO)." A community organizer is highly intelligent, has an absolutely unquenchable driving compulsion to CREATE, but unfortunately has no talent other than rhetorical skill and a superb natural ability to dupe, bamboozle, trick, and manipulate groups of poor people. Alinsky clearly outlines that: The only things COs can create are chaos, discord and mayhem. Since they are OBSESSED to create and since chaos, discord and mayhem are the only things they CAN create, chaos, discord and mayhem become their only function in life. Everything else shrinks to insignificance - including power, money, love, politics, everything. Furthermore, in their malignant creativity: 1) Politics is merely a rationalization for their destructive actions. Feigned compassion for the poor is merely an excuse for COs to create chaos, discord and mayhem. 2) Politics only matters in so far as class envy and class warfare are most easily generated by embracing a far left philosophy, but to the CO capitalism would be just as good an excuse if it could be used to motivate a target group. Alinsky actually ridicules communism in the book. 3) "The common good" ALWAYS supersedes "individual freedom and liberty." 4) The Ends can ALWAYS justify the Means. 5) Morality is a quaint myth. 6) Action without thought is FAR preferred to action after thought. 7) Environmentalism is the excuse/issue to use to rally the middle class to create new and expanded chaos and mayhem of over-regulation. 8) An unending series of bogus issues must be manufactured to supply continuous fuel for the CO's "creative" obsession. 9) One result of the CO successfully "dealing" with issues is that power changes hands. COs do not want the power, and are more than happy to let any old schlock politician have the power that the CO has made available. So the newly empowered politicians make destructive laws to placate the organized group howling about an issue that the community organizer could not have cared less about but was only used an a means of rallying his army. So that's why we've been suffering through two decades of destructive irrational laws and regulations being passed by schmuck politicians. I don't like the answer to my question. At least now I know what has been happening, so I can start to take counter-revolutionary action. Thanks for the education, Saul! And who else would dedicate his book to the first community organizer, Lucifer?! I HIGHLY recommend EVERYONE read this book. Review: A book everyone concerned about current policy direction in the US must read! - Saul Alinsky wrote in 1971 the premiere manual on how to get your voice heard and impact social change. Not only do I recommend the book, I strongly encourage anyone who is concerned about the path of our country to read, dissect, analyze, and apply the suggestions in this classic book. I am so convinced that the book is good, I am giving my own name, not hiding behind a psuedonym or pen name. ## Features - Used Book in Good Condition ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #20,336 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #5 in Elections #5 in Political Advocacy Books #11 in Radical Political Thought | | Customer Reviews | 4.1 out of 5 stars 4,103 Reviews | ## Images ![Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51CGzGbbZfL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Know Your Enemy *by J***E on December 12, 2010* For over two decades I have watched in horror as our politicians (from both parties) passed laws and regulations that could clearly have no other consequence than the destruction of the USA. Confiscatory taxation, debilitating over-regulation, and job killing pseudo-free trade agreements killed our steel, lumber, oil, auto, textile, electronics and semiconductor industries. The jobs forced off shore historically were the manufacturing jobs average Americans held to raise their families. So why were the politicians resolved to turn our country into a third world banana republic? This question has gnawed at me for over 20 years! In Rules for Radicals, the iconic godfather of radical revolutionaries, Saul Alinsky, supplies the answer! While the chapters on tactics are eye-opening, humorous, and insightful, it is the first half of the book about the community organizers' motivations and temperament that are the most important and illuminating for me. According to Saul, a Radical Revolutionary goes by the handle of "community organizer (CO)." A community organizer is highly intelligent, has an absolutely unquenchable driving compulsion to CREATE, but unfortunately has no talent other than rhetorical skill and a superb natural ability to dupe, bamboozle, trick, and manipulate groups of poor people. Alinsky clearly outlines that: The only things COs can create are chaos, discord and mayhem. Since they are OBSESSED to create and since chaos, discord and mayhem are the only things they CAN create, chaos, discord and mayhem become their only function in life. Everything else shrinks to insignificance - including power, money, love, politics, everything. Furthermore, in their malignant creativity: 1) Politics is merely a rationalization for their destructive actions. Feigned compassion for the poor is merely an excuse for COs to create chaos, discord and mayhem. 2) Politics only matters in so far as class envy and class warfare are most easily generated by embracing a far left philosophy, but to the CO capitalism would be just as good an excuse if it could be used to motivate a target group. Alinsky actually ridicules communism in the book. 3) "The common good" ALWAYS supersedes "individual freedom and liberty." 4) The Ends can ALWAYS justify the Means. 5) Morality is a quaint myth. 6) Action without thought is FAR preferred to action after thought. 7) Environmentalism is the excuse/issue to use to rally the middle class to create new and expanded chaos and mayhem of over-regulation. 8) An unending series of bogus issues must be manufactured to supply continuous fuel for the CO's "creative" obsession. 9) One result of the CO successfully "dealing" with issues is that power changes hands. COs do not want the power, and are more than happy to let any old schlock politician have the power that the CO has made available. So the newly empowered politicians make destructive laws to placate the organized group howling about an issue that the community organizer could not have cared less about but was only used an a means of rallying his army. So that's why we've been suffering through two decades of destructive irrational laws and regulations being passed by schmuck politicians. I don't like the answer to my question. At least now I know what has been happening, so I can start to take counter-revolutionary action. Thanks for the education, Saul! And who else would dedicate his book to the first community organizer, Lucifer?! I HIGHLY recommend EVERYONE read this book. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A book everyone concerned about current policy direction in the US must read! *by D***R on August 23, 2026* Saul Alinsky wrote in 1971 the premiere manual on how to get your voice heard and impact social change. Not only do I recommend the book, I strongly encourage anyone who is concerned about the path of our country to read, dissect, analyze, and apply the suggestions in this classic book. I am so convinced that the book is good, I am giving my own name, not hiding behind a psuedonym or pen name. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Contemporaries Seem to Be Lacking the Gear for this Kind of Activism *by Z***N on December 25, 2018* Saul Alinsky developed quite the reputation for himself in the 50s and 60s as a political organizer, at a time when American society was noticeably more cohesive, and where there was much better dependability of employment. His efforts were greatly focused on Civil Rights, the Anti-War movement, and unionization. In the fifty years since then, there have been entire generations of African-Americans who have left the previously segregated communities and have come to participate in a much more multi-racial middle class. Furthermore, the grand unifying movements of the 1960s have been replaced by a much more fragmented society where collective action seems to be increasingly difficult. Union membership, over the last 35 years, has declined from one in five in the workforce, to a little more than one in ten. With the precipitous decline in manufacturing work (following a similar trajectory, from about in one in five workers to a bit under one in ten), this suggests that much unionization remains present in the public sector, so that those workers enjoy both the amplified job security and benefits funding, along with the additional layer of advocacy afforded by the unions. While Alinsky was heavily involved with anti-war activism, that begs the question that military employment itself, which has traditionally been an avenue of employment stability out of the working class, has itself diminished over time. At the height of the Vietnam War, the total number of service members in Vietnam (about 550,000) was higher than the current number of service members on active duty with the Army alone. Throughout the private sector, jobs usually last under a decade and, while many still have well put together benefits packages, the defined benefit pension has all but completed disappeared. This has lead to an awkward situation where the public sector, funded obviously by tax levies on all workers regardless of sector, is actually preferable to the private sector for the average member of the workforce. Toward the beginning of the book. Alinsky puts forth that much of his experience was among the bottom 40% of income earners (who would earn 30-60K per year in current dollars), and while that remains a very adequate income for a household of one person in the overwhelming majority of markets, that also clearly indicates that marriage and family has diminished sharply among those below the upper middle class. Elizabeth Warren has an excellent video entitled 'The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class' where she runs the numbers for households of like composition in 1970 and 2005. The cost of housing alone has close to doubled, day care was not a thing in the early 70s, forty years ago completing a bachelors degree in almost any subject was a worthwhile project (where as now the cost has increased by 250%, again adjusting for inflation, and frequently graduates are encumbered by debt that averages over $30,000 for degrees in the social sciences and liberal arts that generally do not have a clearcut home in the real economy). Alinsky describes that 'the responsible organizer would have known that it is the establshment that has betrayed the flag, while the flag, itself, remains the glorious symbol of America's hopes and dreams.' While there are still many millions of Americans who remain quite patriotic, those hopes and dreams are increasingly out of reach in a much more fragmented work force and society. English language fluency itself, while still a reality for the overwhelming majority of Americans, is increasingly challenged by the larger and larger Mexican subculture that does not see itself as wholly American. Vast swaths of the southern border territory have become majority Spanish-speaking and ever as far north as Yakima, WA one can find large municipalities that are 30% hispanic. This is not that people of those backgrounds cannot be fully functioning members of American society, but that the sheer cultural force of these numbers is changing what it means to be American. Alinsky goes on to describe that 'any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.' This nation has travelled relatively deeply into this phase of cultural and linguistic separation that over the next two or three generations could imperil the sovereign integrity of the US. Furthermore, this citzenry has already travelelled beyond the 'security of familiar experience.' This is a time of low unemployment, and we are already witnessng increasing rates of mass casualty incidents, and the disruptive activities of the Black Likes Matter movement in recent years. BLM seems to have gone so far as to advocate for violence against police officers. While the DJIA is approaching 20% of its most recent highs, thus suggesting a bear market could be in the works, any related losses in the work force could easily be six or twelve months away. With the unemployment rate currently a bit below 4%, it is not pleasant to imagine how much social protest and mass casualty incidents will take place when the unemployment rate is just 6% (which would approximate the unemployment rate during the dot-com downturn, which was not even technically a recession). Fifty years ago, people generally were somewhat more disciplined, somewhat better integrated into actual, real-time communities, and employment was generally longer-lasting and provided better purchasing power. To quote Alinsky directly: 'citizen participation is the animating spirit and force in a society predicated on voluntarism.' In the last eighteen months, Bret Weinstein, by any stretch a liberal democrat with a deep commitment to the progressive left as he understood/understands it, was essentially driven from a tenured faculty position at Evergreen State College in Washington State. He had communicated some principled disagreements to a 'day of absence' where non-hispanic whites were actively encouraged to not be on campus for a day, via a distribution list to faculty and student leadership. For two or three days, the campus was taken over by student mobs, the senior-ranking administrator instructed the campus PD to disarm and stand down, and somewhat later Weinstein's wife was also pressured to leave. By any stretch, Weinstein was and remains an active citizen dedicated to 'the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.' This really does seem to be a time when the political left, with movements such as BLM mentioned above, and also Antifa, is becoming deeply undemocratic. While Alinsky clarified that 'it is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral,' these groups do not seem to have an end-state in mind. While I am not at all conflating the perspective of someone like Weinstein with the agenda of the Unite the Right Rally, it is perhaps ironic that the organizers of the UTR Rally were very careful to file all the correct paperwork, get the needed permissions, and even sought out the guidance of the ACLU, and then these law-abiding right-wing whites were subjected to the mob violence of the counter-protestors. Since when do civil libertarian left-wing jews and ACLU-consulting white ethnonationalists get subjected to the same type of harrassment from left-wing movements and mobs? Alinsky goes on to describe that 'the man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. 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.' Certainly, what happened at Evergreen State and at the Unite The Right Rally were bloody messes, and yet it seems that the antagonists were lacking in any strategic aim. There was no aim but to silence the opposition by any means necessary; of all things Bret Weinstein has become a regular with center-right commentators like Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogen, and David Rubin. Weinstein has started discussing the development of an 'intellectual dark web' of people who have become increasingly disenfranchised from the authoritarian left. Pertinent examples are given for the pragmatic tactics that are consistent with Alinksy's method, such as Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, refusal to emancipate slaves in states where he actually had control, incarceration of political opponents, and usage of military tribunals to make judicial decisions. Similarly, he gives the example that the Indian federal government criminalized the kind of passive resistance that Gandhi's movement had practiced shortly after Indian independence. With that said, none of that is with the political left devouring its own or with ardent right-wingers consulting with a flagship civil liberties organization. There is no apparent strategy here except to shut up the opposition. This book does not advocate simply for civil discourse: 'Power is the very essence, the very dyname of life. It is the power of the heart pumping blood, and sustaining life in the body. It is the power of actual citizen participation pulsing upward, providing a unified strength for a common purpose.' This type of unified action is less and less feasible in contemporary circumstances. Employment situations are too fragile, the wages earned are sorely needed to cover debt repayments and escalating housing expenses, the citizenry is increasingly diverse (unless the activist is a well-integrated, and *bilingual* schizoid, but then rally speeches will take all the longer), people are able to escape into their own on-line enclaves, the mass protest movements seem to be taken out of Idiocracy, and lacking the frustration tolerance to cope with anything Alinsky had been discussing. The characteristics of the talented organizer are given as: curiosity, irreverence, imagination, a sense of humor, a bit of a blurred vision for a better world, an organized personality, a well-integrated political schizoid, ego, a free and open mind (and political relativity), constantly creating the new out of the old, and communication. This last one is particularly important, and all the more challenging in contemporary America. There is simply far greater diversity than was the case a half century ago. The building of a broad-based political coalition is therefore more demanding, and arguably vast swaths of the American populace are too intimidated by the realities of their circumstances to organize for positive change (as discussed above, with the duplicity of employment, diminished purchasing power, increased escapism, and increasing linguistic diversity). Rapport with one's constituency is very important and also more difficult to achieve. Alinsky also argued for a sharply self-critical tendency, so as to build an increasingly effective movement. What such a movement would be right now is up in the air (perhaps broad-based advocacy for those in their mid-thirties through the mid-fifties to reshape the retirement and health care schemes, which are increasingly untenable, such as the replacement of defined benefit pensions with defined-contribution 401K and 403B plans; that still begs the question, though, of people willing to put their necks out when employment itself is that much more uncertain). The author of this book provides some important clarification: 'An issue then is something you can do something about, but as long as you feel powerless and unable to do anything about it, all you have is a bad scene.' Consistent with the discussion above, much of American society seems like a bad scene. Alinsky was advocating for a strategically minded, self-correcting movement for social change, and much of the attention span of the citizenry seems too collapsed for this. Along these lines, Alinsky describes that jail terms of activists that exceed sixty days have two risks: 1.the revolutionary is removed from action for so long that he loses touch; 2.if you are gone long enough everybody forgets. Perhaps this timeframe could be reduced to thirty days for the same guidance to apply, because with instant access to information people generally have less patience and a reduced time horizon for commitment to a social change movement. This is sad because with the increased damage to the middle class there is increased consolidation of financial assets with the 1% and vast portions of the workforce are clinging tenaciously to what work and resources they have in order to avoid hardship Moving on, the income ranges for different socio-economic tiers can be translated into current dollars: 40-75K for the lower middle class, 75-125K for the middle middle class, and 125K-200K for the upper middle class. A simple inflation adjustment does not include the other factors mentioned, such as housing cost, education cost, reduced retirement prospects, increased indebtedness from education and consumer credit purchases, and the curtailed length any individual job will last. To a fair extent, Alinsky seems to have been assuming an underlying stability to the American economy and society that permitted a lot of the activities in which her participated fifty years ago. That was not a time when white collar work could be outsourced to another continent, and the majority of people with jobs could assume coverage by pension programs. There is a certain courage his approach took, and that type of courage may well be lacking in this day and age. Alinsky gives a detailed description of the lower middle class that is worth repeating here (and remember this book was published in 1971): With a few exceptions, such as teachers, they have never gone beyond high school. They have been committed to the values of success, getting ahead, security, have their 'own' home, auto, color TV, and friends. Their lives have been 90 percent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people, who feel threatened from all sides: the nightmare of pending retirement and old age with a social security decimated by inflation; the shadow of unemployment from a slumping economy, with blacks, already fearsome because the culture conflict, threatening job competition; the high cost of long-term illness; and finally with mortgages outstanding, they dread the possibility of property devaluation from non-whites moving into their neighborhood. They are best by taxes on incomes, food, real estate, and automobiles, at all levels - city, state, and national. Seduced by their values into installment buying, they find themselves barely able to meet long-term payments, let alone the current cost of living. Victimized by TV commercials with their fraudulent claims for food and medical products, they watch the news between the commercial with Senate committee hearings showing that the purchase of these products is largely a waste of their hard-earned money. Repeated financial crises result from accidents that they thought they were insured against only to experience the fine-print evasions of one of our most shocking confidence rackets of today, the insurance racket. Their pleasures are simple: gardening a tiny back yard behind a small house, bungalow, or ticky-tacky, in a monotonous subdivision on the fringe of suburbs; going on a Sunday drive out to the country, having a once-a-week dinner out at some place like a Howard Johnson's. Many of the so-called hard hats, police, fire, sanitation workers, schoolteachers, and much of the civil service, mechanics, electricians, janitors, and semiskilled workers are in this class.' Please take into consideration that this profiles a lower middle class that was characterized by much greater stability than is generally the case today. The overwhelming majority of people got married relatively young and frequently stay married; divorce was relatively rare and an out-of-wedlock birth was similarly rare and met with considerable shame, both among blacks and whites. A single income earner could afford a consistent, albeit austere middle-class life. That is far from the case today. The majority of births in the black community are out of wedlock, the rate of illegitimacy among whites now exceeds that of blacks from fifty years ago, employers change every five or eight years, both blacks and whites are concerned about an increasing tendency away from an English-speaking worforce and society. These days fewer people get married, people generally get married later in life, the number of workers per social security recipient is collapsing (the Social Security Administration is forecasting that at some point in the 2030s or 2040s that less than 80% of expected benefits will be paid due to shortfalls from payroll taxes, and that has nothing to do with inflation). People are living longer and that exacerbates the cost of health coverage, more people are obese which comes with its own health risks. Long story short, this books seems like a curiosity from a previous era when people had a stronger sense of hope and when the United States was more resilient, socially, economically, and politically. While there were definite concerns back then, in some ways greater than today, the overall structural changes in the society and economy do not seem as amenable to this tenacious, thoughtful form of activism. America is much more diverse, the middle class is much more frail, people generally live more isolated lives, people cling desperately to the jobs that they have with diminished purchasing power and prospects for old age, people lead their lives with a shorter time horizon, and the broad unifying movements seem to be lacking. Of all possible situations, where the white ethnonationalists of the Unite the Right Rally were careful, law-abiding, and sought the guidance of the ACLU, and the thuggery of Antifa received broader support. As mentioned above, with unemployment at one of its lowest points in the last few years there is still an increasing tendency toward mass casualty incidents and feckless racial populism. As a nation, what are we going to be facing when the unemployment rate is 6%? ## Frequently Bought Together - Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals - Rules for Radicals Defeated: A Practical Guide for Defeating Obama/Alinsky Tactics - Reveille for Radicals --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.no/products/1357407-rules-for-radicals-a-practical-primer-for-realistic-radicals](https://www.desertcart.no/products/1357407-rules-for-radicals-a-practical-primer-for-realistic-radicals) --- *Product available on Desertcart Norway* *Store origin: NO* *Last updated: 2026-09-18*