Doctrine in Command of Analysis: a Reply to Roach and Roach

Abstract

Poor People's Movements looked for an answer to question of how poor can win anything in American politics examining four movements among twentieth century American poor: movements of industrial workers and of unemployed in great depression, and post-war black unrest which took form in southern civil rights movement and northern welfare rights movement. The answer which seemed to emerge from history of these movements is that poor win, if they win at all, disruptive political action: strikes, civil disobedience, riots, flooding welfare rolls, and sometimes armed violence (southern textile workers and Appalachian miners in Great Depression, for example). We were also struck, however, large limitations even on use of disruptive tactics. The location of some groups gave them substantial capacities for disruption; others had little. Industrial workers could cripple economy; unemployed could only demonstrate and riot; and black movement was left to fill jails of South and to create chaos in welfare waiting rooms. Opportunities for defiance are structured, we concluded (page 23), by features of institutional life .... Mass defiance is neither freely available, nor forms it takes freely determined. This conclusion led to another. It led us to raise a substantial question, as Michels had done, about efficacy of formally structured membership organizations of poor. The insurgent industrial workers of Great Depression made large gains; once organized in unions of CIO, subsequent gains were fewer, and even these were mainly won strikes. When civil rights movements turned from streets to mass-based electoral organization after Voting Rights Act of 1965, few gains followed. When unemployed of 1930s were swept into Worker's Alliance of America, and unemployed of 1960's into National Welfare Rights Organization, no amount of organizational lobbying with welfare administrators and elected leaders produced gains commensurate with those won disrupting welfare centers and flooding rolls. Bureaucratically-styled membership organizations pursuing conventional political strategies could be ignored; but an insurgent poor were sometimes not so easily ignored. These conclusions have drawn considerable fire, not least from left. Historically, E.J. Hobsbaum responded, the debate on organization [has not been about its efficacy, but about] its scale. The left stood for national unions against local or regional ones; for industrial against craft associations, for big