Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky: on Principles & Values

Means-versus-ends is meaningless; real arena is bloody

The ends is what you want, and means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of issue views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his resources and the possibility of his various choices of actions. He asks of ends only if they are achievable and worth the cost of means. To say that corrupt means corrupts the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.

The ethics of means and ends can be recognized by one of two verbal brands: "We agree with the ends but not the means," or "This is not the time." The means or ends moralists or non-doers always wind up on their ends without any means.

Compromise isn't surrender; it's the basis of free society

But to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation. It is making a deal, getting that final breather, usually the victory. If you start with nothing, demand 100%, then compromise for 30%, you're 30% ahead. A free and open society is an ongoing conflict, interrupted periodically by compromise- which then starts conflict, compromise, and infinitum. Control of power is based on compromise in our congress and among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. A society devoid of compromise is totalitarianism. If I had to define a free and open society, the word would be compromise.

Push organizations to live up to their own regulations

Rules of ethics: do what you can with what you have

1. One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue
2. The judgment of ethics depends upon the political position of those sitting in judgment
3. In war, the end justifies almost any means
4. Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred
5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa
6. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means
7. Success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics
8. The morality of a means depends on whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory
9. Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical
10. You do what you can with what you have, and clothe it in moral garments

Calls for utilitarian / situational ethics

Rules of tactics: do what you can with what you have

1. Power is not only wat you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people
3. Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the 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 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. Develop operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon 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.