Community Organizing for Democratic Renewal: The Significance of Jacques Maritain’s Support for Saul Alinsky and His Methods

Abstract

Jacques Maritain’s ideas about democratic renewal remain as important and inspirational as ever. A less well-known element of Maritain’s political thinking is his support for grassroots community organizing. This support, peppered throughout his writings, comes into stark relief when examining his longtime friendship and correspondence with Saul Alinsky, the dean of community organizing in the US. This article argues, first, that we must understand Maritain’s and Alinsky’s friendship to properly appreciate the legacy of Maritain’s political thought, and second, that understanding the complementarity of their approaches allows us to see that these two friends together present a powerful strategy for democratic renewal. After surveying the two’s friendship, the article presents two insights from their work about community organizing as the pursuit of democratic justice and addresses an objection about Alinsky’s methods. The article concludes with a case study of an interfaith community organization to show how it practices Alinsky’s methods and embodies the political and ethical values that Alinsky and Maritain supported in common.