Martin Luther King Was the Most Influential Democratic Socialist in American History
King is often remembered as a moderate figure. That's far from the reality.
For Martin Luther King Day this year, I’ve decided to collect and share some quotes from King’s final book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, which I just recently read for the first time. King wrote this book in 1967 and published it in 1968, the year of his death. By this time, he had alienated much of America with his increasingly radical stances on key issues facing the country, particularly the Vietnam War, which created an irreparable rift between him and President Lyndon Johnson.
Though King is pretty much universally hailed as a hero today, his radicalism back then had helped turn public opinion squarely against him. A Gallup poll conducted in 1966, a year after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, found that 63% of the country held unfavorable views of the civil rights icon. Even more disturbingly, as CNN has reported: “In the immediate aftermath of his death, many Americans had a negative view of King. Nearly a third (31%) said he brought his 1968 assassination upon himself. Less than a majority (43%) said they were sad (38%) or angry (5%).”
The stark contrast between King’s image now versus then is, of course, partly explained by the genuine progress American society has made on the issue of race. But another driver of this divergence is that King has been utterly whitewashed, so the version of him we are presented with today is a shell of the real King. In our collective memory, King is a symbol for progress that already happened. He reminds us not to return to the dark era of segregation. But he has no positive vision to offer for the future.
The decision to remember King in this way is an inherently political act. It allows politicians on both sides of the aisle to embrace King as if he is one of their own. And it allows us to wave away the complexities of the past and comfort ourselves with a nice Disney-ified account of history.
But King was not a Disney character. He was a real, flawed and heroic individual. A great champion of the liberal values of freedom, justice, and equality. And the most influential democratic socialist in American history. If we want to actually learn from the past rather than reduce it to irrelevance, we could start by remembering King as he really was.
Some of My Favorite Excerpts from Where Do We Go From Here?
“With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end. A new phase opened, but few observers realized it or were prepared for its implications. For the vast majority of white Americans, the past decade—the first phase—had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality. White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination.” (3)
“The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.” (12)
“Since before the Civil War, the alliance of Southern racism and northern reaction has been the major roadblock to all social advancement. The cohesive political structure of the South working through this alliance enabled a minority of the population to imprint its ideology on the nation’s laws. This explains why the United States is still far behind European nations in all forms of social legislation. England, France, Germany, Sweden, all distinctly less wealthy than us, provide more security relative for their people.” (14)
“In assessing the results of the Negro revolution so far, it can be concluded that Negroes have established a foothold, no more. We have written a Declaration of Independence, itself an accomplishment, but the effort to transform the words into a life experience still lies ahead.” (20)
“I refuse to determine what is right by taking a Gallup poll of the trends of the time. I imagine that there were leaders in Germany who sincerely opposed what Hitler was doing to the Jews. But they took their poll and discovered that anti-Semitism was the prevailing trend. In order to ‘be in step with the times,’ in order to ‘keep in touch,’ they yielded to one of the most ignominious evils that history has ever known. Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” (65)
“Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past.” (68)
“In human relations the truth is hard to come by, because most groups are deceived about themselves.” (71)
“All this tells us that the white backlash is nothing new. White America has been backlashing on the fundamental God-given and human rights of Negro Americans for more than three hundred years. With all of her dazzling achievements and stupendous material strides, America has maintained its strange ambivalence on the question of racial justice.” (87)
“A people who began a national life inspired by a vision of a society of brotherhood can redeem itself. But redemption can come only through a humble acknowledgement of guilt and an honest knowledge of self.” (88)
“The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.” (92)
“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.” (95)
“The white liberal must rid himself of the notion that there can be a tensionless transition from the old order of injustice to the new order of justice… It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension. He merely brings out the hidden tension that is already alive.” (95-6)
“Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness—justice.” (116)
“If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.
We must get rid of the false notion that there is some miraculous quality in the flow of time that inevitably heals all evils. There is only one thing certain about time, and that is that it waits for no one. If it is not used constructively, it passes you by.
In this generation the children of darkness are still shrewder than the children of light. They are always zealous and conscientious in using time for their evil purposes… But the forces of light cautiously wait, patiently pray and timidly act. So we end up with a double destruction: the destructive violence of the bad people and the destructive silence of the good people.” (136-37)
“The emergence of social initiatives by a revitalized labor movement would be taking place as Negroes are placing economic issues on the highest agenda. The coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed and welfare recipients may be the source of power that reshapes economic relationships and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform. The total elimination of poverty, now a practical possibility, the reality of equality in race relations and other profound structural changes in society may well begin here.” (150)
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective—the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” (171)
“We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution… Our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes.” (172)
“We must work indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress… Our moral and spiritual ‘lag’ must be redeemed. When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.” (183)
“Racism and its perennial ally—economic exploitation—provide the key to understanding most of the international complications of this generation.” (183)
“The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty… Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’” (188)
“Truth is to be found neither in traditional capitalism nor in classical Communism. Each represents a partial truth. Capitalism fails to see the truth in collectivism. Communism fails to see the truth in individualism. Capitalism fails to realize that life is social. Communism fails to realize that life is personal. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of Communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.” (197)
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.” (198)
“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late… We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.” (202)