Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America

by Frances Fox Piven

Challenging Authority argues that ordinary people exercise extraordinary political courage and power in American politics when, frustrated by politics as usual, they rise up in anger and hope and defy the authorities and the status quo rules that ordinarily govern their daily lives. By doing so, they disrupt the workings of important institutions and become a force in American politics. Drawing on critical episodes in American history, Frances Fox Piven shows that it is precisely at those seismic moments when people act outside of self-restricting political norms that they become empowered to their full democratic potential.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Activism, Social Movements, American

200 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 2006

About the author

Frances Fox Piven is an American professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982. Piven is known equally for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism.

Reviews

[Thomas Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, Frances Fox Piven (1932- ), 2006, 193 pages, Library-of-Congress HN59.2 P557 2006 Memorial Library, ISBN 9780742515352

Collective defiance and disruption have always been essential to the preservation of democracy. p. 146. Ordinary people exercise power in American politics mainly at those extraordinary moments when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules that ordinarily govern their daily lives, and, by doing so, disrupt the workings of the institutions in which they are enmeshed. The drama of such events, combined with the disorder that results, propels new issues to the center of political debate. p. 1. It is at the moments when people act outside of electoral norms that electoral-representative procedures are more likely to realize their democratic potential. p. 2.

People endure hardship more often than they protest it. Injustice is not even injustice when it is perceived as inevitable. The cultural strategies of the right are designed to encourage Americans to accept contemporary U.S. policies by imbuing them with the aura of inevitability. p. 139.

Business and its right-wing allies have near-total domination of U.S. politics. pp. 6-7, 9-19, 21, 28, 62, 139.

Crucial parts of government--those that perform functions essential to a commercial economy and to propertied elites--are walled off from exposure to the electorate. A powerful appointed judiciary has undercut decisions of elected representatives. Our central bank is shielded from electoral influence. So is the bureaucracy, at all levels of government. Officeholders insulated from voters have authority over currency, taxation and spending, the maintenance of a navy and standing army that would protect overseas commerce and large landholdings in the west. pp. 3, 112-113.

THE TIMES-IN-BETWEEN

Between moments of crisis, the power of wealth erodes the gains people achieved. p. 18.

The national government financed the transportation systems that gave robber barons immense wealth and power. The Supreme Court forbade the states to regulate the railroads. It interpreted labor rights in the "master-servant" tradition of English common law, and declared unions to be conspiracies in violation of antitrust law, while shielding corporations from state regulation, declaring corporations persons with 14th-amendment protection. p. 113.

White Southerners moved quickly after Reconstruction to reassert control over the black labor force. pp. 116-118.

Labor-union membership reached its peak of 35% of the labor force in 1945. Average real wages peaked in 1972. pp. 120, 124.

Business successfully worked to roll back labor's gains of the New Deal and the Great Society in four ways:

1. The message machine: Right-wing foundations, think tanks (Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Hoover Institution, others) propagandized:
(a) shift taxation from capital to wages, from business and the affluent to working people;
(b) cut back social programs to drive more people into the labor force and the scramble for work, keep them anxious and vulnerable about their jobs and their wages;
(c) reduce worker power by weakening unions;
(d) dismantle environmental and workplace regulations;
(e) change tort law to limit liability suits against corporations;
(f) school vouchers to weaken public schools and the Democratic-leaning teachers' union;
(g) build up the military and defense industry;
(h) toughen law enforcement and build more prisons;
(i) privatize Social Security.
The think tanks hired the intellectuals who made the arguments, and spread those arguments widely, on talk shows, op-ed columns, and so on. They launched new periodicals and academic societies and funded right-wing outposts in universities, particularly in law and economics. They sponsored books by right-wing intellectuals and paid generously to publicize them, including /Freedom to Choose/ by Milton Friedman, /Losing Ground/ by Charles Murray, and /The Tragedy of Compassion/ by Marvin Olasky.
The message machine grew to include Rush Limbaugh, Radio America, Fox News, and the takeover of the editorial board of /The Wall Street Journal/. All these intimidated mainstream journalists by accusing them of being "liberal" or unpatriotic. The mainstream media came into line with the right wing.
At the same time, media companies merged into a few giants, all with the everything-for-the-corporate-owners mindset.
As of 2005, Republicans succeeded in appointing a former cochair of the Republican National Committee as president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. pp. 130-132.

2. Massive lobbying: lobbyists writing and pushing legislation; lobbyists and industry insiders going in and out of government positions as if through a "revolving door," and "astroturf" business-funded-and-organized groups purporting to be "grass roots." p. 132.

3. Cultivate the populist right, rooted in fundamentalist churches. Antiabortion, anti-gay, gun nut, racist, sexist, xenophobic "conservatives." Business sold fundamentalist Christians on laissez-faire unregulated business, no government interference. No welfare (for the poor. /Those/ people.) pp. 132-134.

4. Pushed the Republican Party to the far right; pulled the Democratic Party almost as far.

Drastically cut taxes on the rich; curtail programs for the rest. Cut retirement benefits. Break labor unions. Cut funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Force people to scramble for work at any wage. Keep borders porous but keep immigrants unauthorized: make Americans compete with laborers with no rights. Drive people to bankruptcy; end bankruptcy protection for ordinary people; let financial institutions prey on desperate borrowers. pp. 134-137.

Social Security is in the crosshairs. p. 137.

Environmental protections are being slashed. p. 137.

Concentrated wealth, and its power and arrogance, are growing. p. 138.

U.S. government spending is increasingly military. p. 138.

MOMENTS OF CRISIS

Without the support of the mob, the rabble, the American Revolutionary War could not have been won. p. 38.

ABOLITIONISTS

The problem of the South until its victory at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was that, recognizing the need for stronger Federal powers, it feared to create them until it was assured that the South would control their use. --Staughton Lynd p. 62. Counting each slave as three-fifths of a person gave slaveholders control of the House of Representatives, of local and state governments, and through them of the Senate, the Electoral College, the presidency, and the courts. The agreement permitted slave importation to continue; prohibited state laws from "impairing the obligations of contract," understood to protect property in slaves; required fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners. p. 62. The 1793 advent of the cotton gin exploded production: 9,000 bales in 1791; over a million by 1833; nearly 5 million by 1860. Planter wealth in land and slaves increased commensurately. p. 63.

Before and after the brief period of Civil War and Reconstruction, the U.S. was governed by coalitions comprising both Southerners and Northerners, all of whom benefited from abusive extraction of agricultural labor.

It was abolitionists who broke, for a time, these coalitions. Abolitionists were Quakers, p. 67, and evangelical revivalists, p. 68. Southern abolitionists were silenced; Northern ones made noise. pp. 68-73. Compromise became impossible. p. 73. Abolitionists were an unelectably-small minority, but they broke the coalitions. pp. 74-77. Disunion and war followed. p. 78. With legal emancipation, abolitionists no longer were a disruptive force. p. 80.

FAILED PROTESTS, 1870-1930

Robber barons extracted wealth from farmers and laborers. Frequent financial panics brought hardship, unemployment, lowered wages. Strikes and protests were met with violence by company goons, police, militias, and federal troops. The working poor in this era failed to fracture the governing coalitions of the country, as the antebellum abolitionists (inadvertently) succeeded in doing. pp. 84-85. Also, all levels of government were owned by big business, p. 85 [which also controlled thousands of newspapers, see /Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913/, James Livingston, 1986 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ].

TWO BIG BANGS: NEW DEAL; GREAT SOCIETY

Almost all of the labor, civil rights, and social welfare legislation of consequence in the industrial era was enacted in just two six-year periods: 1933-1938 and 1963-1968. p. 85.

FDR's relief and work-relief programs reached 28 million people, 22.2% of the population. p. 86. Food stamps expanded from 49,000 participants in 1961 to 11 million in 1972. p. 86. By the mid-1970s, official poverty levels dropped to an all-time low, 11%. p. 87.

Why? Mass disruptive action. In the early years of the Great Depression, organized looting of food was a nation-wide phenomenon. Rent strikes spread; crowds formed to block evictions for nonpayment of rent. There were scores of large industrial strikes. 1.9 million workers struck in 1937. p. 88. Civil rights protests in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama were giving way to rioting by May, forcing local business leaders to call for a truce. pp. 89, 93.

PROGRESS?

It seems like a few steps forward in moments of crisis; almost as many steps back in between times.

Still, over all, there's progress. Keep your hat in the ring!


“I don’t think any large-scale progress has ever been made in the United States without the kind of trouble and disruption that a movement can cause by encouraging large numbers of people to refuse to cooperate. But movements need the protection of electoral allies – they need legislative chaperoning.

“I do think that the only way to live is to live in politics. To me, it’s an almost life-transforming experience – to be part of the local struggle. Even a dangerous struggle. You make friends that never go away. You see people in their nobility, and you find your own nobility as well. I would not trade my life for anything.” --Frances Piven: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...

Piven in /International Socialist Review/: https://isreview.org/person/frances-f...
Piven's articles in /The Nation/: https://www.thenation.com/authors/fra...
Piven's article in /The New Republic/ (1968): https://newrepublic.com/authors/franc...
Piven in /Mother Jones/: https://www.motherjones.com/author/fr...

Frances Fox Piven is a professor of political science and sociology at the graduate school of the City University of New York.
Her page at cuny.edu: https://politicalscience.commons.gc.c...
Her books: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
Her wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances...
Piven on imdb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1622032/

More books in Roman & Littlefield's "Polemics" series: https://rowman.com/Action/Search/_/po...

[James Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Review: Challenging Authority
by James Tracy‚ Apr. 18‚ 2007

Originally published in Beyond Chron (www.beyondchron.org)

“How Ordinary People Change America” by Frances Fox Piven

Too often, discussion about the viability of change sprouting from the electoral system is shrunk to fit bumperstickers. Even harder to find is nuanced analysis when the politics of protest—direct action, and mob action become the issue of the day. Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America by Francis Fox Piven offers readers a history lesson of the ways in which progressive change has in the past, actually happened—a complex dance between disruptive populist forces and the formal electoral system.

Piven is one of the Left’s preeminent Political Scientists. Others in academia have done their best to delete the role of protest in social change; she has made a career of writing the common person back into the history. Best known for the groundbreaking Poor People’s Movements: How they Succeed and Why the Fail she asserted over twenty years ago that reform moves best when the action remains direct. Challenging Authority expands on this theme.

The book asserts that disruptive politics have always forced electoral/representative; as well as regional coalitions splinter and realign, making reform possible. This is in stark contrast to the dominant model of party building—unite a large enough mass around a platform common enough to hold—a culprit commonly referred to as the Lowest Common Denominator. For Piven, it is dissensus, not the consensus that is the engine of progressive reform.

The mass direct action of the Civil Rights movement plied pro-segregation Dixiecrats to split from the Democratic Party making it possible for a portion of movement demands to be satisfied. Spot-on is the understanding that one day’s movement victory might become tommorow’s liability. Piven explains:

Moreover, the movement wins what it wins because it threatens to create and widen divisions in electoral coalitions, because it makes enemies and activates allies. The threat of dissensus has inevitable limits, however. On the one side, the mere fact of concessions, even limited concessions, tends to rob the movement of its erstwhile allies. After all, grievances have been answered, so what more do these people want?…The party may succeed in regrouping as a dominant party no longer vulnerable to the threat of dissensus, as the Republican Party did after the Civil War, and as the Democratic Party did after the 1930s. Or it may survive, albeit in a weakened state, as the Democratic Party did after the civil rights movement cost it the support of the South.

While dissensus has its limits, the consensus carries its’ own costs. It is hard to imagine a New Deal without the disruptive actions of the Unemployed Workers Movements willing to physically confront evictors and relief bureaucrats. Roosevelt, wouldn’t have likely come up with the idea on his own. Eminently pragmatic, he responded to a strong mass movement in cold, calculating terms and ended up backing the creation of a social safety net.



-for full review please see: http://jamesrtracy.wordpress.com

[Adam Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Piven explores the ways in which political shifts take place, and finds that dissent, withdraw from cultural expectations or cooperation, and civil disobedience are vital to the great political reforms in American history. These pressures exist through mass movements that exist outside of ordinary electoral processes, putting pressure on elected officials to reform various aspects of our economic and political life. She explores the Abolitionist movement, as well as the great social reforms of the 1930s and the 1960s and the Civil Rights movmeent, documenting how it is that protests, civil disobedience, and dissenting power pushes the powerful in better directions. She also documents how the inevitable dissipation of such mass movements leads push-back; the New Deal reforms of the 1930s pushed through by pressures from mass movements of ordinary people also galvanized powerful business leaders to work to undermine and dismantle those same reformist gains, which led to the resurgence of libertarian/capitalist power during the neo-liberal ascendancy of the Reagan administration and afterward, the full effects of which have not fully been seen. A captivating and compelling piece of scholarship that suggests real reform needs to balance electoral politics with mass action like protest, civil disobedience, and dissent.

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a lot more in depth than the title suggests, which is a good thing, but overall the book wasn't really what I was looking for. It's main topic is the interdependent power relationships that exist in society, and that because they are interdependent, those that most often are seen as being in low power positions, have additional power in their ability to disrupt the relationship. Gives historical and current case studies including the American Revolution, US Abolitionist and Civil Rights Movements, New Deal and Great Society programs. The author states that their goal is to provide evidence that these types of power disruptions are the main reason for societal progress. Some good evidence was provided, but it wasn't completely convincing. We clearly have more power if we organize and work together, I guess I was hoping this book was more a "how-to", rather than an overview of historical case studies.

[Harald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apart from the title, this book challenges prevailing institutional approaches to the analyses of American politics by emphasizing the role of popular disruptions, often unruly and violent, that have contributed to social and political change in America. While her starting point is the American Revolution, the most interesting chapters concern the popular movements that shaped the New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society and Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. The book provides a useful background for discussing the challenges facing the Obama presidency in carrying out far-reaching reforms.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book for introducing how social change occurs through a bottom-up process and how the interdependence of human beings allows those who seemingly have no power to cause change.

[Joee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this and understand the power of the little people if they're united.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was used in an upper division sociology class. It had a slow start and wasn’t nearly as interesting or motivating as I had expected. Later in the book the discussion of the progression of slavery and black Americans as well as the official policies about the ever changing legality of being labeled as white was very informative though.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost gave it 3 stars because it moves through 250 years of history and references which can be disorienting if you don’t already have a lot of context. But went with 4 stars based on the overall message and the strength of the ending.