Piven and Cloward are idiots. Not just in terms of their ideology, but also their methodology. Look, if you want to delegitimate the state by making unreasonable demands on it up until the point of failure, that makes god sense if you're a Lbertarian or a conservative. Let people run to the nanny state. Then when the milk dries up they feel betrayed, angry and dissillusioned. One can then make the pitch that that model failed, here's something else we should try. However, to do it as a socialist seems like madness. You need them to trust the state (with you in charge presumably). If however, they feel betrayed by that state and ridiculousy entitled, well the only way to gain legitimacy is to meet those demands. Problem is how? You may have gained power by increasing the number of producers over consumers to the point where the consumers are in the majority, but how do you make it last? The point is that I don't care what sort of system you have, capitalist or communist, there has to be more producers than consumers or it fails. If you've established the basis of governmental legitimacy as being able to produce free stuff, well the clock is ticking. Its all good till you max out the Visa, which we've pretty much done from 1980 to the present.
FQ13