He wasn’t a socialist (I think?) so he wasn’t a leftist. And he wasn’t a conservative obviously.
He was absolutely a socialist and that’s why he was killed.
He just seemed like a radical and well-intentioned liberal. “We’ll do peaceful marches to achieve equality.” I guess it worked so you can’t blame him.
Maybe advocating violence or calling for the downfall of the capitalist system wouldn’t have done anything.
I dunno.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People's_Campaign
That’s what he was assassinated for, adding economic dimensions to his liberation theory.
The Poor People’s Campaign was part of the second phase of the civil rights movement. King said, “We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the war and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty”.
King wanted to bring poor people to Washington, D.C., forcing politicians to see them and think about their needs: “We ought to come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Washington, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, ‘We are here; we are poor; we don’t have any money; you have made us this way … and we’ve come to stay until you do something about it.’”
:sicko-wistful:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/21/11-most-anti-capitalist-quotes-martin-luther-king-jr
That has a lot of his 1967 quotes. He isn’t a communist but he’s more on the demsoc side of the socdem-demsoc divide. I think his problem there is that he grew out of liberation theology and the black churches formed a big chunk of his base. They’re otherwise generally a conservative community outside of the narrow lines of the civil rights movement’s social liberation. The Black Panthers and similar groups had a monopoly on anything more radical than that and he was committed to non-violence. The Poor People’s Campaign strikes me as a more comprehensive Bernie Sanders platform: https://www.crmvet.org/docs/68ebr.htm
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, architects of the Poor People’s Campaign, have outlined 5 requirements of the bill of economic & social rights that will set poverty on the road to extinction:
- A meaningful job at a living wage for every employable citizen.
- A secure and adequate income for all who cannot find jobs or for whom employment is inappropriate.
- Access to land as a means to income and livelihood.
- Access to capital as a means of full participation in the economic life of America.
he was a socialist, just got white-washed
He was a fairly outspoken anti capitalist, made clear in many of his speeches and letters. He considered himself a Democratic Socialist, a term which was more radical then than it is today.
