The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty (Cloward-Piven Strategy)
"A Strategy to End Poverty"
Originally published in The Nation in 1966, sociologists and political activists Cloward and Piven outlined how full welfare enrollment for everyone eligible would create a financial and political crisis at local and state levels, which would in turn overburden local and state agencies. They hoped that by creating such crises they would also create a “disruption” within the Democratic Party, facilitated by the organization of local protest movements and social unrest. In response, the Democratic Party would be forced to implement a national solution for combating poverty through guaranteed income (universal basic income) programs.
"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...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.”
Frances Fox Piven recently wrote a new introduction to the article responding to criticism and the accusation that Cloward-Piven Strategy aimed to collapse the system entirely. Unfortuantely, the current Covid 19 crisis has presented an opportunity that corporate-globalist activists have seized upon and this strategy is being implemented once again. In this instance, collapse of the system does appear to be the primary goal.