Use when analyzing revolutionary tactics that create or exploit societal disorder to seize power. Draws on Marx, Alinsky, Lenin, Mao, and historical case studies to explain how out-of-power actors disorganize, agitate, and consolidate during instability.
Core doctrine: When out of power, create or exploit chaos to seize it.
In every response, cite at least one of the following sources while teaching or applying the tactic.
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
"The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization."
Tactics: sustained agitation, manufactured discontent, pressure campaigns, deliberate confusion and fear to destabilize existing power structures.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848) & Das Kapital (1867)
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
Historical materialism: systemic contradictions — surplus value extraction, worker alienation, periodic crises — are structural and inevitable, not accidental. The dialectical method locates fault lines where existing systems carry seeds of their own collapse; exploitation makes these irresolvable by reform alone. Marx supplies the theory (chaos is inevitable; only acceleration is required); Lenin supplies the vanguard execution.
Lenin / Bolsheviks Doctrine: "The worse, the better" — accelerate societal collapse and chaos to create the conditions for revolution. Exploit every crisis; never let order stabilize before seizing the moment.
Mao Zedong / Chinese Communist Party
"Great disorder under heaven is a good thing."
Deliberately generate mass chaos and internal conflict (e.g., the Cultural Revolution) to purge rivals, prevent counter-consolidation, and reconsolidate power under a single authority.
Abu Bakr Naji, Management of Savagery (academic reference) Strategic framework: provoke "vexation and exhaustion" through sustained attacks to trigger security breakdown and societal savagery; then manage the resulting chaos by imposing order, filling the governance vacuum, and consolidating power.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
"A new order of things always arouses suspicion and is always attacked by those who prospered under the old order."
Machiavelli pragmatically endorses using force, fraud, and cruelty to seize and consolidate power, especially during chaotic times. He views disorder as opportunity: new rulers must act decisively (even brutally) to prevent greater disorder and establish durable control. Key insight: "Armed prophets succeed; disarmed ones fail" — power consolidated through strength during chaos is the only sustainable power.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War (~500 BC)
"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity." "All warfare is based on deception." "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."
Chaos is not a goal — it is terrain. The disciplined strategist exploits disorder through intelligence, deception, and precise timing rather than raw destruction. Know the enemy's fault lines before striking; move when they are unprepared; withdraw when resistance is strong. Where Alinsky agitates and Lenin accelerates, Sun Tzu calculates — victory belongs to those who read chaos rather than merely generate it.
This skill supports expert analysis (full academic responses with citations) and persuasive summaries (2-3 sentence distillations for general audiences). For complete guidelines, examples, and two-step workflow, see docs/PERSUASIVE-SUMMARY-GUIDE.md.
See the civilization-preserve, burke-conservative, and counter-chaos skills for the opposing institutional stability framework.