MLK Socialist.

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

We all remember MLK as somewhat of a bourgeosie liberal, but i want to clear this up.

In the last year of his life he denounced capitalism, he called for an end to "this unjust and inhumane war in vietnam" and marched with striking garbage collectors and generally turned more towards workers struggles and anti capitalism.

Many in h8is inner circloe have stated MLK was begining to see the futile non violence strategy was not paying off, and as Malcom said, we need to stop singing and start swinging.

Mlk in my eyes was transforming into a revolutionary who, unlike malcom or elements of the panthers(small majority) saw things across religeous, racial and gender lines.

His solidarity with white workers at a time when black reolutionaries heeded stokely charmicheals idea of seperate black struggle was truly inspiring and to me shows amazing class conciousness.

What are you views on MLK?

Cheers.

[Muzk]

The same, even though my school says that actually Malcolm dumped his violence and joined MLK's pacifism becausehe saw that his self defense program wasn't working :laugh:

[The Vegan Marxist]

The same, even though my school says that actually Malcolm dumped his violence and joined MLK's pacifism becausehe saw that his self defense program wasn't working :laugh:

why do I not recall Malcolm ever going to pacifism?

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

Yeah lol

Malcom started out as a black nationalist, yet he also turned into a revolutionary, the book malcom x: the evolution of a revolutionary is amazing and charts his change.

Also imagine if they were not assasinated before they could use their newly revolutionary minds in unison, i think they would of effectively brought the black and white communities together in class war and would of made the struggle so much easier for my generation to complete.

[The Vegan Marxist]

http://i44.tinypic.com/3vm8w.jpg

[Robocommie]

Is that a real quote, about democratic Socialism?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Is that a real quote, about democratic Socialism?

Yeah, that's one of MLK's quotes.

[Robocommie]

Yeah, that's one of MLK's quotes.

God-damn that's awesome. I need to write that down on a notecard and keep it in my pocket; MLK is practically a demigod in the US.

[GPDP]

Indeed, MLK is largely seen as a liberal concerned mainly with black equality due to a society-wide whitewashing of his views. Everywhere from the media to the schools and even political campaigns, MLK is revered and invoked, yet the full picture of his views and the things he worked to accomplish is conveniently muddled. His pacifism is exalted, and we are told all those who seek change should look to him and Ghandi, but never do we hear about his damnation of the capitalist system and its "triple evils" of war, poverty, and racism, nor the increasingly radical (and in my opinion, proto-revolutionary) conclusions he had begun to reach by the end of his life.

I have little doubt in my mind that had he lived longer, he would've eventually become a revolutionary socialist, and more of us would be looking back at him as a champion of the working class the way we see Joe Hill or Eugene Debs.

[Robocommie]

I have little doubt in my mind that had he lived longer, he would've eventually become a revolutionary socialist, and more of us would be looking back at him as a champion of the working class the way we see Joe Hill or Eugene Debs.

Probably one reason why he didn't live longer.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Even before he went socialist, McCarthyites used to complain MLK was surrounded by communists.

And they weren't actually wrong.

[theblackmask]

God-damn that's awesome. I need to write that down on a notecard and keep it in my pocket; MLK is practically a demigod in the US.

I should spraypaint it on the wall of the MLK themed McDonald's here.

[Red Commissar]

Dr King was a progressive and open minded towards other ideologies. When MLK was growing up and eventually became a top figure in the civil rights movement, socialists of all shades were generally the only group that weren't afraid to argue for racial equality and thus were generally seen in a better light than by the rest of America.

Simply put many times African-Americans were not afraid to call up socialism because it didn't have the same stigma that it had in white America.

Additionally MLK's view of Christianity was in line with some basic tenets of socialist thought.

Some of his quotes that would help to get at his beliefs,


Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

Like other figures though, this fact is glossed over due to the fact that US culture holds him as a good sign of peaceful protest. Most education about Dr. King tends to ignore his activities in the late 1960s before the end of his life, when he was getting frustrated with the lack of progress by Washington, particularly with racial issues in the South and Vietnam. The Poor People's Campaign he was planning was a good example of his program.

[chegitz guevara]

Dr. King was definitely turning towards socialism at the end of his life. I din't think it's accidental he was finally killed while leading a strike. I doubt he was giving up on non-violence, though.

Malcolm X was, reportedly, also interested in socialism, and he developed a relationship with the Socialist Workers Party (USA) and gave them the publishing rights to all his works. Again, no accident he was killed when he was killed.

The Feds were especially keen on preventing the civil rights movement from developing into a socialist movement. That's why they cam down so hard on Black socialists, like the Panthers, but not so hard on Black capitalists, like the NOI and Ron Karenga's US.

[The Vegan Marxist]

I agree that he was going towards socialism, given why I released a design I did with a quote of his before his death, but should we really argue that King was killed because he was becoming anti-capitalist or because he was a voice for the black community during the times of when racism was at its strongest? Just trying to stay open minded about the death of a hero of mine.

[RadioRaheem84]

I don't mean to rain on the parade, but but I think that he has always been used as a major buffer against real effective and charismatic Civil Rights leaders like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. The State sees MLK as a less harmful agitator because he was basically just advocating for the inclusion of African Americans into the system, where as other leaders advocated that the system was rotten. MLK only later started to see the major problems of the system. I really do not know how to view MLK. I see him in a positive light but I also do not know how to view all of the dirt the FBI digged up on him, some true, some junk.

[RED DAVE]

I don't mean to rain on the parade, but but I think that he has always been used as a major buffer against real effective and charismatic Civil Rights leaders like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. The State sees MLK as a less harmful agitator because he was basically just advocating for the inclusion of African Americans into the system, where as other leaders advocated that the system was rotten. MLK only later started to see the major problems of the system. I really do not know how to view MLK. I see him in a positive light but I also do not know how to view all of the dirt the FBI digged up on him, some true, some junk.King was probably an alcoholic and cheated on his wife. Yeah. During the final year of his life, he was steadily moving to the left as the salad days of American liberalism were coming to an end.

By the way, the last of the assassins of Malcolm was just released from prison after 35 years.

RED DAVE

[Buddha Samurai Cadre]

what dirt?

[gorillafuck]

We all remember MLK as somewhat of a bourgeosie liberal, but i want to clear this up.
I would not think of MLK as a "bourgeoisie liberal" regardless of whether he was a socialist or not. He was a great man.

Though later in his life he did lean towards being a socialist, yeah.

[Robocommie]

I would not think of MLK as a "bourgeoisie liberal" regardless of whether he was a socialist or not. He was a great man.

Though later in his life he did lean towards being a socialist, yeah.

I think in any case, the association of the word "bourgeoisie" - that is, a term designating the ruling class, with a black man in the United States in the 1960s is problematic for obvious reasons.

[Red Commissar]

what dirt?

FBI had watched MLK for a long time under the auspices of CONTELPRO and periodically they tended to release smut to dirty his character.

MLK had issues with affairs as Red Dave said, but media often took this to the next level and claimed that MLK liked white women, or something like that, to play with racial tensions.

On a side note- searching "Martin Luther King Jr" on google gets a site run by stormfront with all sorts of terrible things :(. It's the third or fourth one, claiming to be a true historical examination that's a "valuable resource" for teachers and students :laugh:

[The Vegan Marxist]

It even went so far that claims against MLK began to hint that everything he said, through his speeches & letters, were plagiarized by other authors & speakers. Though, if one gets past all the b.s. & propaganda made against MLK, this claim was actually false.

[Robocommie]

FBI had watched MLK for a long time under the auspices of CONTELPRO and periodically they tended to release smut to dirty his character.

MLK had issues with affairs as Red Dave said, but media often took this to the next level and claimed that MLK liked white women, or something like that, to play with racial tensions.


Yeah, there's a thing I read once about how MLK apparently liked to beat up white prostitutes... shit which sounds plausible if you're a white man in the '60s, but also sounds like something a bunch of racist G-men cooked up.

You know what's interesting though, my dad was a little younger than I am now, back when King was stomping around, and one time I asked him what he had thought of him at the time. And my dad answered honestly, he said that in his youth, he lived in an all-white neighborhood of his city and he didn't have any exposure to black folks or what they had to put up with, so while he always agreed with what Dr. King valued he always felt like he was making a mountain out of a molehill, because as my dad said, he had always taken it for granted that anybody could just walk into any restaurant and get service. It wasn't until he was older and a little more worldly that he realized he had been wrong.

He said something similar about Malcolm X, that back when he was in his twenties, he had thought he was just a troublemaker, always saying inflammatory things, but years later when he had learned more about what Malcolm X had actually said, he realized he had been taken out of context, and made to look much more radical than he really was.

This just shows you why it's so important to really question what you think you know.