Thread by @themarketswork

Antonio Gramsci:

“Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society”

Gramsci, a Marxist theorist, was also a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy.

Gramsci embraced gradualism – a policy of gradual change as a means to his end.

He recognized that this process must be lengthy, methodical and persistent – or as he put it “a long march through the institutions”.

A slow transformation from within.

Gramsci’s ideas came to the United States not through his own person, but through the Frankfurt School.

The Frankfurt School employed a technique invented by Max Horkheimer called Critical Theory – a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole.

The point of Critical Theory is to criticize every traditional social institution – and to specifically avoid offering any alternatives – as a means to breaking down Western Culture.

A better, alternative way is never to be offered – only criticism.

Theodor Adorno, a leader at Frankfurt School, co-wrote The Authoritarian Personality, arguing that epitome of psychological health was the “genuine liberal” - free of all groups, including family & institutions – anyone who defended traditional culture was inherently a Fascist.

The Authoritarian Personality was an attack on Western Values at its most basic core – the family.

Adorno's premise. The traditional family model – mixed with religion in a capitalist society – created an individual who was prone to racial prejudice and ultimately fascism.

The goal of the Frankfurt School was to move America gradually to the Left using the precepts of Gramsci’s Counter Hegemony and the practice of Critical Theory.

Changing the Culture of America through Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions”.

Saul Alinsky was an American democratic socialist. He is considered to be the founder of modern community organization.

In 1946, Alinsky wrote Reveille for Radicals, a text on community organizing.

In 1971, he wrote his most famous work, Rules for Radicals.

One of Alinsky’s stated goals was “radicalization of the middle class”.

To this end Alinsky suggested that “goals must be phrased in general terms like Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Of the Common Welfare, and Pursuit of Happiness.”

Alinsky also saw that organizers must cloak their causes in morality:

“Moral rationalization is indispensable to all kinds of action, whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means…"

Alinsky believed in change as a tool, but like Marx and his Dialectic Process, Alinsky also believed change was THE goal.

Alinsky:

“The end is what you want, the means is how you get it”

“In the beginning the organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems.”

In a 2008 Letter to the Boston Globe, David Alinsky – Saul’s son – noted the following:

“Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness…the method of my late father always works to get the message out."

Hillary Clinton has been referred to by David Brock as "Alinsky’s Daughter".

But I think the true heritage – the lineage of the Left – leads straight back to Antonio Gramsci.