Naturally, it's not surprising that his rules could be seen as controversial. I enjoy their use as a springboard for discussion. Here they are, followed by my thoughts on each one.
1. One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with the degree of one's personal interest in the issue. When we are not directly concerned, our morality overflows. As La Rochefoucauld put it, "We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others." A Parallel rule is that one's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the scene of the conflict.
This is certainly true in many instances. Let's look at the ethics of killing animals for meat and the hypocrisy of meat-eaters who condemn hunting. When we are not directly faced with the truth that meat = killing, as in... when we go to the grocery store and find neatly wrapped packages of body parts so completely divorced from the appearance of the being they used to belong to... we are much less concerned with the morality of killing the animal. When we hear of dogs being killed for meat in China, because we know and love dogs much more than we know and love pigs (which are just as intelligent), we feel naturally enraged at the immorality of it. The same goes for horse slaughter. When we hear of people going hunting for food, or hear of people butchering their own animals that they raised from infancy, we feel a natural shudder of revulsion for the violence involved. But this same shudder rarely affects us when we are buying meat at the grocery store and, in effect, funding the slaughter and in many cases life-long mistreatment of animals. Similarly, I have actually seen ads where companies try to convince us that the animals involved in producing our food were happy to do it, and gave themselves willingly to us. Some of us find the "necessity" of meat-eating in our lives to be sad, but not too much for US to bear... we can bear with a little suffering and death in the animals we eat. We have strength enough for that.
I had to make a choice at one point that I would no longer pay tithing to the LDS church. This is because I had no way of knowing whether my contribution was funding huge ranches and hunting places (there's probably a technical term for that but I can't remember) that the church uses to produce more revenue and/or to add meat to the church welfare programs. For a long time I thought maybe the end (funding good programs in the church, getting food to hungry people) justified the means (exploiting animals), even though the means were against my morals. But then I decided that I'd rather put my money to a cause where both means and ends aligned with my morality. I still occasionally contribute places that use meat to feed people. But there are ways to help people without exploiting animals and I will choose those whenever I can.
I also find this question of distance applicable to enforcing our morality upon others who do not believe as we do. One example is the LDS church's stance on same-sex marriage. A law prohibiting our gay neighbors, children, or friends from marrying those they love is a hardship we simply have to bear. In regard to the command for active queer LDS people to remain celibate... I often hear the phrase, "we all have challenges and struggles in this life. This is no different from the person who never finds their eternal companion in mortality, or who for whatever reason cannot have children". With these words we distance ourselves from the suffering of those whose experience we do not want to face. In fighting marriage equality we try to claim a word as our own, reassuring those who oppose us that they are still our equals, they must simply be content with a civil union or domestic partnership. But if our own marriages are prohibited or threatened, regardless of whether we have the option of a domestic partnership, heaven help whatever force is trying to pull such a stunt!
2. The judgment of the ethics of means depends on the political position of those in judgment. To us, the Declaration of Independence is a glorious document and an affirmation of human rights. To the British, it was a treasonous statement, notorious for its deceit by omission.
I don't actually know much about the whole Declaration of Independence thing, but let's just take this idea and run with it anyway. Going back to the marriage thing, this makes a lot of sense. Those who are forbidding marriage equality believe they are defending something holy from corruption, that they are participating in the prohibition of immoral actions. In this sense they believe that what they are doing is ethical, despite what attitudes of prejudice and bigotry, what suffering and feelings of isolation may result indirectly from their actions. But is it fair to say they are acting from a belief that the ends justify the means? If they are not doing anything which they believe to be cruel, but people are hurt by it anyway, what then? I can tell you that simply living in an environment where the assumption is that you are wrong for wanting to be with the person you love... it is soul-crushing. Everyone around you can have the very best of intentions and try to treat you with warmth and respect, but it often falls flat or feels hollow when you know that your desire to spend your life with another person is seen as an immoral thing which must not be acted upon. When you know that they would fight your decision to be with that person, all while saying it's nothing personal and that they support you as a person. It gets pretty complicated at this point. I'll leave the question open, because I have no definitive answer.
Going back to animal exploitation, many people believe that animals were made to be used by us, and even that it is against God's law to be vegan. I won't get into the nitty gritty scriptural war of why I disagree. But it is simple to see how in religious systems, God's decree becomes our political position to which the ethics of our means is relative. Take the story of Abraham and Isaac. Infant sacrifice (and killing your child in general) is unethical, right? But when God says to do it, you do it anyway, because becoming an obedient God-worshiper is an end which justifies any means. People could say the same about terrible acts done in the name of one's country. The end of becoming a good citizen or soldier or defending your country justifies nearly any means. You are only obeying orders, and that makes you free of guilt, apparently. Which brings us to the next rule.
3. In war, the end justifies almost any means. Agreements on the treatment of prisoners or the use of nuclear weapons are observed only because the enemy may retaliate.
This seems to be the general consensus among people, even those who might deny it at first hearing it. My belief? In war, all are guilty, but many are also victims. Everyone always has the choice whether to participate in killing or not. Violence always makes victims of its perpetrators as well. Any time you are violent toward another, you harm your own spirit. This is why PTSD exists, not just because of violence received from the enemy troops, but because of violence done by the one traumatized. Being forced to do violence, to detach ourselves from the source of our own kindness and empathy toward other beings, is severely traumatizing to the pure spirit within each of us.
This is why I am against war. It is a vile machine in which unethical behavior is praised and normalized. It is a glorification of dastardly means in service to often unworthy ends. Even if the ends are good, there are so many unforeseen consequences due to the unethical means involved in achieving them. In the long run, the end of "peace" is never attainable through violence. Violence only grants us a temporary reprieve from our own madness. Violence is the symptom of illness in society. We can stamp out the symptom, but the illness will remain unless we find a more wholesome approach.
4. Ethical judgments may be made only in the context of the time in which the action occurred.
This one was especially thought-provoking. Is there a difference between something being truly ethical, and it being ethical for the time in which it took place? Can something be unethical in one time period and ethical in another, if morality is absolute? I've often heard that you are only responsible to follow the rules you are given, and you cannot be held responsible by God for sinning ignorantly. Like a toddler who takes a candy off the shelf in the grocery store. They don't know what stealing is. Does that mean their behavior is ethical or unethical? The action of stealing is unethical, but we can't honestly say the child is a terrible thief if they didn't know any better.
I think of this in terms of attitudes which have changed over time. At one point black people were considered sub-human, and it was considered the proper order of things for them to be owned and used and "cared for" by people, much as it is considered right to raise animals for exploitation. For someone who truly believed this cultural model of racial hierarchy, is slavery unethical? Slavery is always unethical. But perhaps that person is still guiltless, like the toddler who took the candy. They don't know any better.
Similarly, those who believed women were made for man... those who believed women and children belong to men as possessions. That was the cultural model of the time and it went mostly unquestioned. Was it unethical for a man to rape his wife, even in a time where everyone generally accepted that a wife's body belongs to her husband wholly? Rape is always unethical. But is that man's behavior unethical, because he didn't know any better?
Is meat eating ethical for those who were raised believing that animals are made for humans? Is it excusable?
5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available, and vice versa
It's true that the fewer options a person has, the more readily we excuse their actions. If someone's family was starving, we might take pity on them for stealing bread. If a wife is being constantly abused or threatened, and can see no other way to escape her predicament short of suicide, we might excuse her for killing her husband in self-defense. What does this say about our ideas of absolute morality? Are all of these actions still just as wrong as they would be in a situation where there were many other options? Certainly, a person has much less excuse for unethical behavior if they had many other much more ethical courses of action to choose. This is a primary argument of the vegan community these days--we in America especially have so many alternatives to eating meat, so there is no excuse for eating meat. But does that make animal exploitation more ethical in other parts of the world? I am more likely to accept someone's decision to eat meat if they were literally going to starve otherwise. But in the long run, eating less meat is the more sustainable and bountiful path for this planet. More food can be grown and distributed the fewer animals we raise for food... so the end of preventing starvation is actually crippled in the long run by relying on meat.to feed people. Wherever possible the better means must be chosen in order to reduce circumstances in which there are fewer means to choose from. The more right means we choose, the closer we will get to the best ends.
6. The less important the end, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means
In other words, the more you want or need something, the more you are able to rationalize doing questionable things in order to get it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. If you are in a desperate situation, say, watching someone get murdered in front of you, and there is a gun in your hand, how long do you have to argue with yourself about the best course of action? I think that's what this "rule" is trying to describe. The importance of saving a life is what makes it difficult to keep our heads. If the test we're taking in school isn't that important to the grade, there will be very little temptation to cheat on it.
As I said, usually if we make good decisions we are less likely to find ourselves in these desperate circumstances. But sometimes we do anyway, because life is just like that. I think that it's still unethical to kill when we have any other option. But I am more likely to pity or even excuse the person who kills because they felt they had little choice, whether or not that was actually true. The important thing is to be very aware of our options and try to always move toward a situation where there are better ones.
7. Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics
My first thought when I saw this rule was "how are we defining success or failure?" There is of course the old adage that history is written by the victors. But I suppose it depends on whether the person in question succeeded or failed at something perceived as a good cause. Take a war where some power goes in to try and liberate the people from their oppressive government. If they succeed, and the people are happy, was the war justified? If they fail, and end up making things worse than before, was the war still justified? What were the motivations of the war? Does that matter? I think it does. Also whether or not we were asked or our intervention was welcomed, and how much we respected those we were trying to save. Similarly, the boarding school movement with the American Indians. If the boarding schools had succeeded in completely eliminating Indian culture and turned every student into a successful white person, would they have been justified in taking children away from their parents and effectively committing cultural genocide? If everyone involved was happy and successful (whatever that means) by the end? Is it still justified, despite the end being based on unethical racism? Similarly, when some gay people were institutionalized in the past or subject to electroshock therapy in order to turn them straight and make them "normal", this was done in the name of compassion, to help these poor "ill" individuals become whole and normal. Was it ethical? Would it have been ethical if it worked 100% of the time? It becomes much harder to point out unethical behavior which seems to be effective in bringing about a desired end.
8. The morality of a means depends on whether one is losing or winning. Consider the United States' attitude about the morality of bombing Hiroshima.
I've already said a lot about this so I think I will just leave this question as is.
9. Any means that is effective is automatically judged by the opposition as unethical.
This seems contradictory to #7. But I can see how it might be applied to those who are being undermined in their own unethical behavior. So for example, factory farms who are caught in their abuses by undercover investigators (and especially if they are prosecuted or shut down because of the evidence collected) are quick to label these investigators as terrorists and try to enact legislation to prevent the investigator's "unethical" behavior of sneaking in to take these videos. I can't think of a situation where an ethical party judged an effective opposing party as unethical simply because they succeeded, where they would not judge it unethical if it failed.
10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments. For example, history and religious and moral opinion, have so enshrined Gandhi that it borders on the blasphemous to question whether his means of passive resistance was not simply the only intelligent, realistic, expedient program at his disposal. All effective actions require the passport of morality.
I think Alinsky is missing an important point here, which is that if Gandhi had the option to bomb the British embassy and was guaranteed this would succeed in liberating his people, that option would not be better or as ethical as his actual nonviolent approach. I think the truly ethical solution is always more intelligent and effective in the long run. He had no guarantee that his approach would work apart from his own faith in the ultimate, eventual triumph of good over evil. He simply did what he thought was both moral AND effective. If it had not succeeded, it still would have been moral. If bombing did not succeed, it would have definitely been declared immoral, at least by some. As it is, part of the reason Gandhi's approach was so effective was because even the opposition had a hard time convincing people that it was immoral, even if it was insubordination. People back in Britain, even those who were impacted negatively by India's growing independence, recognized that the morality of standing up nonviolently to oppression and not cooperating with colonialism was far more important than being submissive to arbitrary human laws. Gandhi took the most ethical means available to him and made it work for the most ethical end. That is much superior to taking an unethical means to fight for even an ethical end. Some people might have excused him if he had used violence against the British. But he would not have the same recognition as a deeply moral individual that he does today.
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