Of course it is. There have been and will doubtless continue to be many socialist political parties in the United States. You may notice that I hadn’t capitalized ‘socialist’ above, which was because I meant it in a broader sense. Tell me, did you happen to’ve followed that link? Dr. King wasn’t about to endorse any system which oppressed its people, just as he wouldn’t pick and choose which atrocities to accept as necessary consequences of his side in a war. It was a sign of his first rate mind that he would hold many contradictory ideas in mind at the same time.
Yes, he said “There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's children.” He also said “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems, it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against.”
It’s easy to mistakenly pigeonhole people into our private interpretations of ideology. The wrong-headed urge to identify King with my own world view makes me see his relentless concern for suffering people as a sign of his humanism. Ultimately, while there is a grain of truth in it, that’s a simplification that I would find convenient to make, like when anyone claims him for their particular ideals of politics, or religion, or world view. Like many key historical figures, he was more than we make of him now.
There is something much more basic than crass political labelling in ideas of King’s like this: “I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars every day to store surplus food. And I said to myself: ‘I know where we can store that food free of charge — in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God’s children in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night.’”
A political ideology is very different than a political party. Yes i read all your blue words and I'm familiar with wikipedia too, believe it or not. The article I snapped, imho, presents an interesting analysis (from Lee Sustar) of Dr. King's evolving political ideology and does not endorse any particular political party.
By the end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr was an avowed socialist.
The article’s good. This claim is unproven. I’m suggesting that it’s wrong, confuses what King believes is a means with an end in itself, and tries to appropriate King by sanding him into a grotesque caricature of a socialist hero, as if the complex truth of this historical figure can finally be ground down now to fit any pat, hackneyed worldview. Blame the editor who came up with the bogus subhead. Meant no disrespect.
King, in a speech that’s bang on point here, said: “I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who didn’t quite have his grammar and diction right, but who uttered words of great symbolic profundity: ‘Lord, we ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.’”
Of course it is. There have been and will doubtless continue to be many socialist political parties in the United States. You may notice that I hadn’t capitalized ‘socialist’ above, which was because I meant it in a broader sense. Tell me, did you happen to’ve followed that link? Dr. King wasn’t about to endorse any system which oppressed its people, just as he wouldn’t pick and choose which atrocities to accept as necessary consequences of his side in a war. It was a sign of his first rate mind that he would hold many contradictory ideas in mind at the same time.
Yes, he said “There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's children.” He also said “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems, it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against.”
It’s easy to mistakenly pigeonhole people into our private interpretations of ideology. The wrong-headed urge to identify King with my own world view makes me see his relentless concern for suffering people as a sign of his humanism. Ultimately, while there is a grain of truth in it, that’s a simplification that I would find convenient to make, like when anyone claims him for their particular ideals of politics, or religion, or world view. Like many key historical figures, he was more than we make of him now.
There is something much more basic than crass political labelling in ideas of King’s like this: “I started thinking about the fact that right here in our country we spend millions of dollars every day to store surplus food. And I said to myself: ‘I know where we can store that food free of charge — in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God’s children in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night.’”
A political ideology is very different than a political party. Yes i read all your blue words and I'm familiar with wikipedia too, believe it or not. The article I snapped, imho, presents an interesting analysis (from Lee Sustar) of Dr. King's evolving political ideology and does not endorse any particular political party.
The article’s good. This claim is unproven. I’m suggesting that it’s wrong, confuses what King believes is a means with an end in itself, and tries to appropriate King by sanding him into a grotesque caricature of a socialist hero, as if the complex truth of this historical figure can finally be ground down now to fit any pat, hackneyed worldview. Blame the editor who came up with the bogus subhead. Meant no disrespect.
Thank you for your comments. Debates such as ours are always useful. No disrespect from me either and I do not entirely disagree with you.
King, in a speech that’s bang on point here, said: “I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who didn’t quite have his grammar and diction right, but who uttered words of great symbolic profundity: ‘Lord, we ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.’”
Epic speech, required listening/reading for sure.