Cloward and Piven Strategy

Here is Cloward and Piven Strategy

cloward and piven strategy pictures

The Cloward and Piven strategy was first put forward by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Andrew Cloward. The strategy in order to overload the economy with welfare claims, was based upon the concept of full utilization by all potential candidates of welfare which would lead to over-burdening of Government bureaucracy with finical claims resulting in to economic disaster. Consequently a macro-level redistribution of wealth and the federal intervention among all poor classes will become inevitable.

The strategy which confines the devise a plan to pave the way for socialism and wealth within few hands, was made to rein the nuisance of capitalism. The strategy was used to “strike while the iron is hot” and to exploit the opportunity when riots erupted in 1965 when a black drunk driver was physically beaten by the police. Cloward and Piven wrote an article “the weight of the poor: a strategy to end poverty”.

Then among activists, the strategy became very popular. The strategy, which might bring a radical change in the society was based upon the realization that capitalists are coaxing and intoxicating the poor by addressing their “very basic needs” only and hence extinguishing the revolutionary fire. The only way forward for poor people is when elite class and capitalism beneficiaries are frightened by the poor.

The strategy stressed upon the activists to crack the existing welfare system which only paralyses the poor and deprive them of their actual rights and to break the status-quo of a system which is deeply rooted in confining the wealth in few hands. Although the Cloward and Piven never remained obviously active in their strategy yet they went on helping gradual changes in the system which resulted in “voting rights” and “living wage” movements supported by George Soros and his party. The strategy is still alive by George Soros party’s support and ambitions.