In “Reveille for Radicals” Alinsky has a chapter entitled “The Crisis”. He says in the Chinese language the word “crisis” is made up of two symbols, one for danger and the other for opportunity. I checked with my Chinese-major daughter and she says it is disaster and opportunity. Similar I suppose.
The important point that Alinsky makes is that radicals welcome crisis. When people are pushed by crisis they are more ready to make changes. In the radical’s worldview, change is good. As I mentioned the other day, radicals like Alinsky get a kind of high (well, he is dead so he doesn’t get high on anything anymore) from creating crisis and forcing change.
It would be impossible to bring about socialism or communism in a country whose people are basically content. So crisis provides opportunity.