Cloward–Piven strategyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, then both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work, in a 1966 article in The Nation entitled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty".[1] The two were critical of the public welfare system, and their strategy called for overloading that system to force a different set of policies to address poverty. They stated that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would strain local budgets, precipitating a crisis at the state and local levels that would be a wake-up call for the federal government, particularly the Democratic Party, thus forcing it to implement a national solution to poverty. Cloward and Piven wrote that “the ultimate objective of this strategy [would be] to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income...”[2] There would also be side consequences of this strategy, according to Cloward and Piven. These would include: easing the plight of the poor in the short-term (through their participation in the welfare system); shoring up support for the national Democratic Party then-splintered by pluralist interests (through its cultivation of poor and minority constituencies by implementing a national solution to poverty); relieving local governments of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare (through a national solution to poverty).
Contents [hide]
1 The strategy
1.1 Focus on Democrats
2 Reception and criticism
3 Recent conservative mentions and response
4 References
[edit] The strategyCloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of the United States Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They stated that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare “would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments” that would “deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.”[3] They wrote:
The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.[3]
Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews wrote that Cloward and Piven "proposed to create a crisis in the current welfare system – by exploiting the gap between welfare law and practice – that would ultimately bring about its collapse and replace it with a system of guaranteed annual income. They hoped to accomplish this end by informing the poor of their rights to welfare assistance, encouraging them to apply for benefits and, in effect, overloading an already overburdened bureaucracy."[4]
[edit] Focus on DemocratsThe authors pinned their hopes on creating disruption within the Democratic Party. "Conservative Republicans are always ready to declaim the evils of public welfare, and they would probably be the first to raise a hue and cry. But deeper and politically more telling conflicts would take place within the Democratic coalition," they wrote. "Whites – both working class ethnic groups and many in the middle class – would be aroused against the ghetto poor, while liberal groups, which until recently have been comforted by the notion that the poor are few... would probably support the movement. Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”[5]
[edit] Reception and criticismAccording to historian Robert E. Weir, the original goal of the strategy was to bring about a crisis in the welfare system that would require radical reforms. "Although the strategy helped to boost recipient numbers between 1966 and 1975, the revolution its proponents envisioned never transpired."[6]
Robert Albritton found that the data did not support the Cloward-Piven thesis, and offered an alternative explanation for the rise in welfare caseloads.[7]
Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, was quoted in 1982 as saying that the strategy could be effective because "Great Society programs 'had created a vast army of full-time liberal activists whose salaries are paid from the taxes of conservative working people."[8]
John McWhorter states that Cloward-Piven "created generations of black people for whom working for a living is an abstraction."[9]
[edit] Recent conservative mentions and responseConservative Fox News commentator Glenn Beck has referred to the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" on his broadcast since 2009. On February 18, 2010, he said, "you’ve got total destruction of wealth coming....It’s the final phase of the Cloward Piven strategy, which is collapse the system." [10]
Other commentators have blamed Cloward-Piven for the bankruptcy of New York City in 1975, [11], for an attack on the electoral vote system leading to the Florida recount crisis[12] and, like Glenn Beck, have suggested that President Obama's economic strategy was inspired by Cloward Piven.[13]
Liberal weekly The Nation, in which the original essay appeared in 1966, calls such assertions "a reactionary paranoid fantasy..." but says that "the left's gut reaction upon hearing of it--to laugh it off as a Scooby-Doo comic mystery--does nothing to blunt its appeal or limit its impact."[14] The Nation later noted that Beck blames the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" for "the financial crisis of 2008, healthcare reform, Obama's election and massive voter fraud" and has resulted in the posting of much violent and threatening rhetoric by users on Beck's website, including death threats against Frances Fox Piven.[15] For her part, Piven vigorously continues to defend the original idea, calling its conservative interpretation "lunatic".[16]
[edit] References1.^ Cloward, Richard; Piven, Frances (May 2, 1966). "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty". (Originally published in The Nation). http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/24-4.
2.^ Cloward, Richard; Piven, Frances (May 2, 1966). "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty". New York: The Nation. p. 512.
3.^ a b Cloward and Piven, p. 510
4.^ Reisch, Michael; Janice Andrews (2001). The Road Not Taken. Brunner Routledge. pp. 144–146. ISBN 1-58391-025-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=f0iC56biZOgC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=cloward+piven+crisis+strategy&source=web&ots=FS1gpmnk4K&sig=6u84VMirF97Qjb0x4lb6PYZNxgo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result.
5.^ Cloward and Piven, p. 516
6.^ Weir, Robert (2007). Class in America. Greenwood Press. pp. 616. ISBN 978-0-313-33719-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=YS69fMlIUX0C&pg=PA616&dq=%22cloward-piven+strategy%22&client=firefox-a.
7.^ Albritton, Robert publisher=American Political Science Review (December 1979). Social Amelioration through Mass Insurgency? A Reexamination of the Piven and Cloward Thesis. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1953984. Retrieved March 6, 2011.
8.^ Robert Pear (1984-04-15). "Drive to Sign Up Poor for Voting Meets Resistance". New York Times.
9.^ McWhorter, John, "John McWhorter: How Welfare Went Wrong", NPR, August 9, 2006.
10.^ Glenn Beck, "Study Says We're Toast", http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/36505/ Accessed February 1, 2011
11.^ Chandler, Richard, "The Cloward–Piven strategy", The Washington Times, October 15, 2008
12.^ Richard Poe "The Cloward Piven Strategy" 2005 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/theclowardpivenstrategypoe.html Accessed February 1, 2011
13.^ Kurt Nimmo "Obama, the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and the New World Order", March 10, 2009 http://www.infowars.com/obama-the-cloward-piven-strategy-and-the-new-world-order/ Accessed February 11, 2011
14.^ Richard Kim, "The Mad Tea Party", The Nation April 12, 2010 http://www.thenation.com/article/mad-tea-party Accessed February 1, 2011
15.^ "Glenn Beck Targets Frances Fox Piven" in February 7, 2011 issue of "the Nation" http://www.thenation.com/article/157900/glenn-beck-targets-frances-fox-piven Accessed February 1, 2011
16.^ Piven, F.F. (2011) Crazy Talk and American Politics: or, My Glenn Beck Story, The Chronicle of Higher Education (The Chronicle Review) 57(25), B4-B5.
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