Martin Luther King Jr. Day is tomorrow and it’s always interesting to do a little bit of a deeper dive into the man’s thoughts outside of the mainstream ones that you’ll be more prone to hearing on the holiday.
Not that MLK’s more mainstream thoughts on society, in general, are bad, nonviolence, and judging someone not on the color of someone’s skin but the “content of their character” are vital words to live by, especially today. However, Martin Luther King went much deeper into his ideology which in large part was ignored by mainstream society and/or mainstream curriculum within schools that wasn’t going to offer up any alternative, independent thinking among students.
Now we’re not going to do that deep dive into every single aspect of MLK’s ideology, however, we’d be amiss not to focus on King’s thoughts on capitalism.
When it comes to capitalism, there may not be a better quote from Martin Luther King where he establishes a foundation for himself. In a letter to Coretta Scott in 1952 when he was in his early 20s, King wrote that “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.”
Just over ten years later in a speech to the Negro American Labor Council, King said, “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”
Throughout the 60s, King gave several testimonials referring to his distaste for the capitalistic system and the imbalances of political and economic power. In a report to the SCLC Staff in 1967 King wrote, “We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.” MLK would follow this up in a speech to the SCLC staff that same year referring to the “evils of capitalism” being “as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”
King would continue to speak out against the injustices of capitalism until the day he was murdered in 1968. On March 18, two weeks before his assassination in a speech at Bishop Charles Mason Temple of the Church of God in Christ where he was showing support for the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, MLK mentioned that “if America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”
The hypocrisies of American society when it comes to Martin Luther King
Despite his disillusionment with capitalism and his proclamation of being more “socialistic in his economic theory” earlier in his life, King had a somewhat contentious relationship with the idea of communism. While preaching “Communism’s Challenge to Christianity” in 1952, MLK believed that communism’s presence demanded “sober discussion,” because “Communism is the only serious rival to Christianity”. There certainly could be more nuance to King’s feelings towards communism, especially given the time in the United States but this didn’t stop the U.S. Government from becoming suspicious of a minority growing critical of the American system of inequality as a whole.
Despite King’s consistent rejection of communism, in 1962 his associations with a few alleged Communists prompted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to launch an investigation into his alleged links with the Communist Party. In 1976 the U.S. Senate committee reviewing the FBI’s investigation of King noted: “We have seen no evidence establishing that either of those Advisers attempted to exploit the civil rights movement to carry out the plans of the Communist Party” (Senate Select Committee, Book III, 85). From wiretaps initiated in 1963, the FBI fed controversial information to the White House and offered it to “friendly” reporters in an effort to discredit King. In 1964 King told an audience in Jackson, Mississippi, he was “sick and tired of people saying this movement has been infiltrated by Communists … There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida” (Herbers, “Rights Workers”).
Stanford University
When it comes to this type of defamation, you can draw parallels to present-day society. Despite their love of sharing memes featuring quotes of MLK’s stance on non-violence, reactionaries would be the first to disparage King as a “radical leftist” or “Marxist BLM sympathizer” much like the white conservative was prone to doing in the 1960s when they accused him of being a communist. Because even today, the term “communism” as a pejorative always seems to be used to refer to any situation or idea that a reactionary either doesn’t understand, doesn’t like, or both.
In retrospect, conservatives have been very good at dominating political power in the United States, long before Martin Luther King and into the present day. Meanwhile, liberals have been the ones who have dominated the culture wars relegating much of that radical power to simple cultures like podcasts, t-shirts, and movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with radical political messaging (or agitprop) within those mediums, however, without praxis those same mediums are nothing but meaningless symbolism.
So how is this relatable to Martin Luther King?
I’m sure we can envision MLK living in 2023, having his message reduced to mere symbolism much like Democrats have attempted to suppress the BLM movement by politicians kneeling in kente cloth or painting “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in large yellow block letters on a street while simultaneously approving higher police and military budgets. This would especially be the case if King continued to speak out against income inequalities while pushing for democratic socialism.