Saul D. Alinsky's Rules of Power Tactics

• 1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
• 2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
• 3. Whenever possible, go outside the experience of your enemy.
• 4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
• 5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
• 6. A good tactic is one that your own people enjoy.
• 7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
• 8. Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions.
• 9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
• 10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.
• 11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.
• 12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
• 13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

The real action is the enemy’s reaction.

The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.

Tactics like organization, like life, require that you move with the action.