In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky laid out a worldview that rests on envy between classes of people. He starts with defining three classes: the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores. In common language, these translate into the rich, the poor, and the middle-class. He is very clear in saying that his goal is to overturn the power of the Haves to the Have-Nots:

Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.
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Why?

(The Have-Nots) hate the establishment of the Haves with its arrogant opulence, its police, its courts, and its churches. Justice, morality, law, and order, are mere words when used by the Haves, which justify and secure their status quo.
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How the middle class relates to this–and what Obama learned below the fold.

Some might argue that Alinsky is simply observing the world. I guess I can’t say if his observation is true or if the Have-Nots have been agitated to that position (the role of a Community Organizer, according to Alinsky). But even if it is true that the lower class hates the upper class, he suggests that it is necessary to manipulate the middle class to fulfill the lower class’s (or rather Alinsky’s) goal of taking power from the upper class and giving it to the lower class.

When more than three-fourths of our people from both the point of view of economics and of their self-identification are middle class, it is obvious that their action or inaction will determine the direction of change. Large parts of the middle class, the “silent majority,” must be activated; action and articulation are one, as are silence and surrender.
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It isn’t because Alinsky has any particular fondness for the middle-class. He is working for the “Have-Nots” and using the “silent majority” in order to get to his ends.

The middle classes are numb, bewildered, scared into silence. They don’t know what, if anything, they can do. This is the job for today’s radical–to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight.
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So it is clear that organizing the Have-Nots is a big part of the job of the Community Organizer, but it is organizing the middle-class that will determine success. Does this relate to the campaign of President-elect Obama? I think so. In Indiana, Obama’s ads emphasized tax cuts for the middle class. In North Carolina, Obama said

“So let’s cut through the negative ads and the phony attacks,” Obama said. “Under John McCain, the middle class will watch wealth get favored over work, jobs gets shipped overseas and the cost of health care and college go through the roof.

In the primaries (specifically in Texas, Indiana and on his MLK, Jr. Day speech) Obama emphasized that CEOs “make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year” or variants on that theme. Class envy was central to Obama’s message–and in particular class envy between the working middle class and the rich.

But does that mean that Obama is looking to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-Nots? That is a bit difficult to ascertain. But we can learn a bit from Obama’s tax plan proposals. When Obama said that 90% (or 95%) of Americans (or Taxpayers) would get tax relief with his plan, it was obvious that this does not make sense as many tax filers do not pay taxes (e.g. a family of 4 making 42,000 per year do not pay taxes). But as many have pointed out, the way that Obama justified this statement is because many of his tax policies were directed to those who do not pay taxes! An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal lists many of the proposals that Obama made for “refundable” tax credits (meaning they can be paid even if the “taxpayer” does not owe taxes). He listed the Making Work Pay Tax Credit; American Opportunity Tax Credit; Mortgage Interest Tax Credit; Health Care Tax Credits; The Savers Credit would be made fully refundable; The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit would be made refundable and expanded; Obama even proposed to expand the number of people eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit.

So while “power” is difficult to tell, he certainly wants to move money from the Haves to the Have-Nots with the support of the middle-class. Obama learned this lesson well.