Richard A. Cloward

Richard Cloward

Richard A. Cloward was a sociologist and socialist. He was the author with his wife Frances Fox Piven of the Cloward-Piven Strategy for revolutionary social change. The strategy was designed to so over-burden the state with obligations to welfare recipients that revolutionary crisis and change would become inevitable. Later he applied similar priciples to voter registration-working to increase the proportion of low income voters, in order to change social structures.

He was undoubtedly one of the most influential figures on the U.S. and international left in the 20th century.

The husband and wife team of Cloward and Piven were described as "Marxist critics" by Chicago Democratic Socialists of America activist Jim Williams.

Cloward died in his Manhattan home in August 2001 age 74.

He was survived by his wife Frances Fox Piven, a daughter, Leslie Diamond and his sons Kevin Cloward and Keith Cloward.

Early life/career

Cloward was born on Christmas Day, 1926, in Rochester, NY. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1949, before getting a master's in social work from the Columbia University School of Social Work in 1950 and a doctorate in sociology from Columbia in 1958.

He was an ensign in the U.S. Navy in 1944-46 and a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1951-1954. After serving as a group work supervisor in Pittsburgh and a social worker in an army prison in New Cumberland, PA, Cloward became an assistant professor at Columbia's School of Social Work in 1954. He also had visiting posts at the Hebrew University, the University of Amsterdam, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Arizona State University.

Early activism

Richard Cloward held a PhD in sociology and was a former student of Robert Merton.

He co-authored nine books, including "Delinquency and Opportunity" (1960), written with Lloyd Ohlin and focusing on problems related to gangs. This book received the Dennis Carroll Award and influenced the formation of Mobilization for Youth (MFY), which Cloward helped found in 1961. MFY became the programmatic model for the federal War on Poverty and pioneered community action programs and the anti-poverty legal services.

REP sponsor

In 1966 Philip Berrigan was a listed sponsor of the Ann Arbor Michigan, based Radical Education Project, which described itself as "an independent education. research and publication program, initiated by Students for a Democratic Society, devoted to the cause of democratic radicalism and aspiring to the creation of a new left in America.

Social change through welfare crisis

Cloward pioneered the deliberate attempt to of expand welfare rolls to push state services to the point of collapse. His first vehicle for such tactics was the National Welfare Rights Organization, an ancestor of today's ACORN and similar organizations.

In 1966, Richard helped found the National Welfare Rights Organization, the protest movement of poor women. Its goal of winning federalization of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) by building the local welfare rolls to create fiscal and political crisis very nearly succeeded. Instead, Congress granted fiscal relief to states and localities through a new federal relief program called Supplemental Security Income (SSI). SSI was one of the most important federal social policy innovations in the post-World War II period.

In 1971, Cloward, along with his wife and collaborator, Dr. Frances Fox Piven, co-authored "Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare".

"This is a landmark critique of government’s use of public welfare to suppress social disorder among the poor and to reinforce the low wage work market".

Among their other landmark works, Cloward and Piven wrote "The Politics of Turmoil" (1974), Poor People’s Movements" (1977), "The New Class War" (1982), "Why American’s Don’t Vote", (1988) and "The Breaking of the American Social Compact" (1997).

Social change through expanded voter rolls

In 1982, Cloward and Piven founded the Human SERVE (Human Service Employees Registration and Voter Education Campaign, which promoted the idea that people should be registered to vote when they apply for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment benefits and driver’s licenses.

A decade later, Human Serve’s program was incorporated in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Popularly known as the “motor voter” bill, it became law in 1993.

"This legislation represents an historic advance in the struggle to win full enfranchisement for low-income people and people of color".

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had stopped government from preventing people from registering to vote. The 1993 act went further by embodying the principle that government has an affirmative obligation to register the eligible electorate.

"Cultural Politics and Social Movements"

In 1995 Marcy Darnovsky, Barbara Epstein and Richard Flacks edited the book "Cultural Politics and Social Movements";

Bridging the worlds of activism and academia-social movement theory informed with the real experiences of activists-this volume of accessible essays brings together insights from European New Social Movement theorists, U.S. scholars of social movements, and activists involved in social movements from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Contributors included : Alice Echols, Barbara Epstein, Richard Cloward, Marcy Darnovsky, Jeffrey Escoffier, Ilene Rose Feinman, Richard Flacks, Cynthia Hamilton, Allen Hunter, L. A. Kauffman, Rebecca E. Klatch, Margit Mayer, Alberto Melucci, Bronislaw Misztal, Osha Neumann, Frances Fox Piven, Craig Reinarman, Roland Roth, Arlene Stein, Mindy Spatt, Andrew Szasz, Noel Sturgeon and Howard Winant.

Campaign for America's Future

In 1996 Richard Cloward, Columbia University was one of the original 130 foundersof Campaign for America's Future.

Socialist Memorial

On September 20, 2001 500 people gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City to celebrate Cloward’s Life and Work. Speakers included Frances Fox Piven, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Gus Newport-(all members of Democratic Socialists of America), activists Howard Zinn, June Jordan, Joel Rogers and Tim Sampson plus long time voter registration advocate, Demos president, Miles Rapoport.