Cloward and Piven plan is a political strategy defined by, two social scientists and policy makers at the Columbia University School of Social Work, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.
It was first published in 1966 in The Nation entitled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”. Afterwards the topics on Cloward and Piven system was covered by an American conservative television and radio host, Glenn Beck, on his FOX News show.
According to Cloward and Piven, many US citizens, who were qualified enough for wellbeing, were not getting the benefits. They also claimed that, a wellbeing conscription drive would lead the country towards a political crisis.
The approach, introduced in Cloward and Piven plan, tries to find to hurry the fall of capitalism by overfilling the government officialdom with a flood of impossible demands. Hence, it pushes the society into economic fall down and crisis.
The Cloward and Piven approach, called for entrapping the welfare rolls with new applicants, was projected as a plan to bust the welfare system and create a fundamental change.
The Cloward and Piven strategy was put to work in streets by the National Welfare Rights Organization, abbreviated as NWRO and founded by African-American militant George Alvin Wiley.
The author of Cloward and Piven plan, Richard A. Cloward, who was a professor of social work, died in year 2001. However, the co-author, Frances Fox Piven, who was a research associate at Columbia’s School of Social Work, is now performing her duties at the seat of a Distinguished Professorship of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York.
According to the authors of Cloward and Piven plan “The ultimate objective of this strategy is to annihilate poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income, will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income”.
Cloward and Piven
