Cloward and Piven

Glenn Beck, on his TV show on Fox, has been nattering on about two Columbia professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.  I remember them from a textbook used in a course I took at a UMass Lowell Continuing Education history course, "US History Since 1960".  I was taking the course to learn about all those things I had missed while secluded away at the Air Force Academy and during 15 or so years overseas after that (in the days before satellite and cable).

As I recall, the book was about Blacks in the rural South and how the state and local governments and the land owners conspired to keep blacks dependent so that they were an available labor force, when needed.  Confirmed all I had believed about the Democratic Party controlled Old South of my youth.

The thrust of Mr Beck's presentation is that Cloward and Piven have proposed that the solution to the problems of the poor is to collapse the Government by creating ever increasing welfare requirements until it all grinds to a halt and we move off into Socialism.  Further, he asserts that this is the secret plan of some in the Democratic Party.

So, here comes a writer for The American Thinker, Hoss Varard, discussing this view of Piven and Cloward long-term thinking.

I am trying to track this down to its sources and have even gotten a book by Frances Fox Piven on my Kindle—Challenging Authority:  How Ordinary People Can Change America.  I am through Chapter 1 and so far it is like a Tea Party appeal with all the bad examples taken from Republicans.

Does anyone have any addition references they would recommend?

Regards  —  Cliff