King also supported a guaranteed minimum income and an economic bill of rights. At the time of his death, he was organizing the Poor People’s Campaign, “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington until a poor people’s bill of rights was enacted. This was by far the most ambitious and wide-scale project he had worked on in his life up until that point. And of course, tragically, his life only led up until that point.

He didn’t “touch upon” poverty and economics, Ron. They were as central to his politics as racial equality. You’re right that he didn’t ask for “government handouts”. No, he called for a “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute power and wealth. He wouldn’t have approved of the welfare programs that would succeed him; not because it gave too much, but because it gave too little.

It seems that all the reasons why the CRM couldn’t possibly have been socialist in nature go around in a circle. The CRM wasn’t socialist because its supporters defended it from allegations of socialism, forgetting how grave that charge was back then - as evidenced by the fact that CRM’s detractors labelled it as such, which of course does not count as evidence that it WAS socialist, whereas its proponents’ of the same somehow does. The CRM wasn’t socialist because King only strongly denounced poverty and wealth disparity in his private life. (Never mind that King was only the public face of a movement whose body was made of far more radical elements.) No, in the years before his death, he made many fiery speeches about capitalism and imperialism that aren’t remembered today because of the whitewashing of the record, a distortion that even many free market right wingers accept to have occurred. The CRM wasn’t socialist because its focus was only on race and legal issues, since that was all that we got out of it and that’s all I learned about it. You figure this one out.

I’d agree with you for the most part, Robert, except I don’t know if the whitewashing occurred to protect the CRM (Freedom Movement, fine) or the current structure of wealth and power. It’s entirely possible it could have started out with the former, but I doubt how important such considerations are today, when being the friend of a friend’s cousin’s socialist wife no longer means you wake up in a windowless three by three cell in the middle of the night.

I’m still hesitant to label the FM socialist definitely; there was enough internal variation that the safest thing we can agree on was that it was race-based insurrection of the leftist persuasion. But the heart of its philosophy is certainly not amenable to that of a corporate capitalist system that has been okely-dokely reformed by some laws against overt - and dammit, I mean OVERT - racism.

“For example, the effect of any one person’s vote on the outcome of any given election is almost certain to be nil, so people, as individuals, pay no price for holding irrational political beliefs. The election’s going to turn out the same no matter how you vote, so you might as well vote in a way that makes you feel good. Conversely, there’s often a real cost to irrational behavior in the marketplace.”

This completely doesn’t jibe with the rest of right wing philosophy. By this reasoning, people will act most rationally where the danger of market discipline is most severe - which means those on the brink of starvation or unemployment, no? If not, please explain to me why having an underperforming portfolio or even the risk of having no pension fund is comparable to the risk having no job or a home that isn’t shared by rodent vectors of the bubonic plague. If so, then that means market rationality is most consistently exemplified by those getting the shaft end of the system… isn’t wealth the reward for market rationality? We should something in the way of a revolving door income mobility, sort of like the one that exists in north Europe, whose dogged toughness toward poor citizens is legend.

But of course, I’m sure there are mitigating factors out there somewhere. Any random assortment of crackpot social theories that always end up justifying the same class of fat old rich guys at the top.

I’d stand by the editing of his remarks. His work is heavily invested with references to God, God’s law, scripture, etc., but you see little of that in the sound bites, etc., every 1/15.

That’s an interesting set of quotes from MLK; it’s not surprising that in seeking equal rights for a downtrodden group he’d touch on the subject of economics and society. And as you noted, there’s a big difference between a few quotes from one man and a general theme of the movement.

His economics and science are a bit shaky there. “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds water?” Well, let’s see. First, the world is not 2/3 water, although 2/3 of it is covered with what is a relatively thin layer of water. Second, my guess is that about 95% or more of it is undrinkable, being ocean water or polluted naturally or unnaturally. Water has to be collected, purified, pumped, and distributed, and all the human labor and infrastructure dedicated to that has to be paid for. The amazing thing is that it costs so little; but then, the U.S. is blessed with adequate resources (not that we aren’t doing our damndest to screw them up), whereas other countries have limitations. Sure, the questions have to be asked. But there are very good answers for all of them.

Am I my brother’s keeper? I do think we all have a responsibility to each other. I hold that the level of responsibility is something that each individual has a right to determine for themselves, and that government should be the last resort, not the first, to fulfill that responsibility.

mattbastard, as far as his Doctorate in Theology goes, that was the result of his spirituality and his desire to explore it, not the source.

I would certainly agree that MLK’s image has been edited. For whose comfort I can only speculate. But I’d say that one group would be atheists and secularists. For example, when January 15th rolls around you’ll hear him referred to as “Dr. Martin Luther King”. But if you’re going to use his titles, he is properly referred to as “Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King”.

As far as I can tell, Ron, you’re criticizing a nonexistent problem. A lexis search of major newspapers shows that they’ve used the phrase “Dr. Martin Luther King” 102 times in the past month, versus 97 uses of the phrase “Rev. Martin Luther King” — a completely inconsequential difference.

I’m not expert enough on the freedom movement to be able to refute what you say about their priorities, but you’re not citing any historians or documentation either. Although MLK didn’t represent the whole of the movement, his writings make it clear that he considered being anti-poverty and anti-war essential parts of his activism, not irrelevant side issues.

It’s true that MLK wasn’t a communist, but as far as I can tell he did favor what I’d call a form of mixed-market socialism:

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here?” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds water?” These are words that must be said.

Now, don’t think you have me in a bind today. I’m not talking about communism. What I’m talking about is far beyond communism. My inspiration didn’t come from Karl Marx; my inspiration didn’t come from Engels; my inspiration didn’t come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn’t come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn’t follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called “dialectical materialism.” I have to reject that.

What I’m saying to you this morning is 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 questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

Ron continues:

…One of the main tenets of those working for racial equality and civil rights in the United states [is] they did NOT want governmental handouts; they weren’t looking for welfare or “reparations” or any other Socialist program.

Again, I don’t know how representative MLK’s views were of the movement as a whole (although given his leadership role in the SCLC, it seems clear that his views had a significant constituency), but what you say here certainly isn’t true of his views. He advocated a basic universal income, for example.

It’s always been my impression that the Welfare Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Civil Rights movement had a lot of overlap, and saw each other as complementary — or even as different parts of the same Movement — not adversarial. But I could be mistaken about that; I’m not a historian.

Also, ’socialism’ (a very broad ideology) is not necessarily atheistic in nature. For example, here in Canada, the CCF (precursor to our social democratic party, the NDP) was born out of the Social Gospel movement. A valiant attempt at vilifying the ignorant, atheist straw-commies, regardless.

I’m not going to say that there weren’t Socialists, etc., involved in the movement. There certainly were. I’m saying that they’re getting short shrift by the historians because their efforts and effects in piggybacking Socialism onto the Civil Rights movement just weren’t that important. It was never really the focus of the movement, so there’s no particular need to comment on it a lot.

In fact, one of the main tenets of those working for racial equality and civil rights in the United States all the way back to Frederick Douglass have held that they did NOT want governmental handouts; they weren’t looking for welfare or “reparations” or any other Socialist program. They were simply looking for equality of opportunity, and were quite willing to depend on their own resources. Never mind the fact that to have tried to change that and base the fight for Civil Rights on socialism would have been political and social poison. It simply was against the entire philosophy of the racial equality movement, which was to include blacks fully into American society, not to pervert it so as to make them a special case.

Well, equality for blacks in the South (and elsewhere, for that matter) was pretty damn radical, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that.

I would certainly agree that MLK’s image has been edited. For whose comfort I can only speculate. But I’d say that one group would be atheists and secularists. For example, when January 15th rolls around you’ll hear him referred to as “Dr. Martin Luther King”. But if you’re going to use his titles, he is properly referred to as “Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King”. Somehow that rarely makes it into print or electronic media. And whenever he’s quoted, you’ll find that generally all references to a deity are edited out, which if you read his writings or transcripts of his speech you’ll see is a lengthy task. His most important title was “Reverend”, not “Doctor” - he organized and led from his spiritual side, not his academic one. It was the black churches and the white ones that supported them that provided the base for his organization. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was to a bunch of Black pastors. His speeches are chock full of scriptural references and preaching, all used to justify his positions. Yet somehow he’s “Dr. Martin Luther King” and very, very few of the sound bites you hear ever show how deeply rooted in religion, and Christianity in particular, his philosophies, hopes, dreams and works were.

Socialists seem quick to claim him as one of their own. Let’s see them embrace the whole man, not just a thin edit of him.

Well, you are wrong. If you actually read polls from the time, people actually rejected the civil rights movement, making excuses such as “they are demanding too much” and “They are asking to change society to much quickly”. And certainly they saw civil rights leaders as marxists, commies etc….whatever they were or not

I’m not saying I find your explanation implausible—I’d be surprised if there weren’t considerable racist sentiment left among poor Southern whites—but how do you know that this is driven by anti-black sentiment rather than anti-tax sentiment?

In Mississippi, poor whites routinely vote down property tax levies to fund the (appalling) schools - because they don’t want blacks to have access to good schools. The fact that their own kids wind up in those schools (there are private schools, which pretty much all upper or middle class whites attend) either doesn’t register, or they’d rather spite the blacks. It’s incredibly stupid.

For example, the effect of any one person’s vote on the outcome of any given election is almost certain to be nil, so people, as individuals, pay no price for holding irrational political beliefs. The election’s going to turn out the same no matter how you vote, so you might as well vote in a way that makes you feel good. Conversely, there’s often a real cost to irrational behavior in the marketplace.

The reason that market processes produce better outcomes than political processes isn’t that people are always rational, or even that people always behave rationally in the marketplace (they don’t). It’s that people behave a hell of a lot more rationally in the marketplace than they do in the voting booth. (Well, that and a bunch of other stuff about incentives and prices and feedback mechanisms.)

You think that the media has emphasized the Communist backing of the CRM, and ignored the part about civil rights for black people? (That would be the opposite of my thesis.) Okay. I’m pretty sure that you don’t mean that, so I’m left wondering what you do mean.

Mainly I can’t figure out who you think the non-radical strain of the movement was.

Er…the people involved with it who weren’t (economic) radicals? There were a lot of ordinary people on the ground during those years. Not all of them were Marxists or socialists; some of them were just people who didn’t approve of white supremacy and/or segregation.

I’m also really unsure about what you mean by saying people gave the movement enough support to give it a chance. Are you talking here about people, or structures of power?

Both. The populace didn’t rise up and exterminate the marchers. The power structure (mostly) didn’t shut down free speech and go to martial law when there were disruptions. There were exceptions, tragedies, and crimes, but as a whole, the movement was allowed to organize, allowed to exist, allowed to march, allowed to make its case in the public eye. Yes, the government harassed the leadership, but not in a way that shut down the movement. MLK spent time in the Birmingham jail, he didn’t spend twenty years under house arrest with FBI men guarding the door.

This also has to be an extremely qualified argument: “coupled with that establishment’s eventual quasi-noble decision to yield and reform rather than clamp down.” It’s not clear whether you’re talking about national establishment, or l0cal establishment. Because I don’t think the national establishment did much reforming, and the local establishment definitely clamped down (up to and including murder).

As I thought I had made clear, I am here talking about the narrative, not about the actual historical events.

Barbara:
So however much I dislike LBJ on policy, substance, or style, I believe that the major civil rights accomplishments of the ’60s would not have occurred but for him.

They might have, but not nearly so soon or in nearly so comprehensive a way. LBJ was a bastard, but a bastard in the service of great causes.

It doesn’t matter what you think it’s about, in Mississippi, anything important is always about race.

Man, have you got that right. Purist market fundamentalists who think that all behavior is rationally self-interested behavior should visit Mississippi and watch white people voting themselves poor to spite blacks they’ve never met.

So the short answer is that it was a gradual decline that occurred among white people, first, in national elections — president, senator, house delegation — in that order. State houses are still surprisingly Democratic, but of course, the majority are very conservative, because elected local officials only have to contend with the local landscape. So the strength of local Democratic politicians in the South has almost no impact on the voting patterns of the majority of state residents in federal elections.

As for LBJ, he was a political tactician who more than likely would diss any group if he thought it would benefit more than it would cost his position. So I don’t make too much of any single incident. The larger picture is clear: he supported major Civil Rights legislation between 1964 and 1966, including Title VII and the VRA, and he did it knowing that it would realign voting patterns in the South for the foreseeable future in a way that would not be positive for his own political fortunes or those of his party. It’s hard for me to imagine any president since having walked with such certainty into the abyss. So however much I dislike LBJ on policy, substance, or style, I believe that the major civil rights accomplishments of the ’60s would not have occurred but for him.

And whatever Maia thinks about the relative merits of the parties, perhaps she should go to some of these Southern states and consult the local blacks about the relative differences. When viewed from their close-up perspective, the differences are apparently meaningful, because the voting patterns of white and black residents are almost mirror images of each other in national elections. As a fellow professional from Mississippi but educated elsewhere once told me in the context of a business transaction in Mississippi: It doesn’t matter what you think it’s about, in Mississippi, anything important is always about race.

But the reason I think you are lacking in information is that most of the time it wasn’t clear to me who you were talking about. Mainly I can’t figure out who you think the non-radical strain of the movement was. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that the redistribution of wealth was a particularly pivotal division within the movement, and support for the redistribution of wealth was certainly across groups.

I would argue that the primary division within the movement wasn’t based on economics but on modes of organising. The more top down methods of SCLC or the grass-roots style of SNCC (to greatly simplify things).

I’m also really unsure about what you mean by saying people gave the movement enough support to give it a chance. Are you talking here about people, or structures of power?

This also has to be an extremely qualified argument: “coupled with that establishment’s eventual quasi-noble decision to yield and reform rather than clamp down.” It’s not clear whether you’re talking about national establishment, or l0cal establishment. Because I don’t think the national establishment did much reforming, and the local establishment definitely clamped down (up to and including murder).

If you have specific groups or individuals, or power structures, to back up these statements, then I apologise for implying it was lack of information. But without those specifics your post read to me, as someone who was making a bunch of assumptions about the movement which didn’t match up with what happened.

If it helps I agree with this paragraph:

The radical strain of the movement, specifically, the socialist part, was and is roundly rejected by the American people. Oh, we threw some redistributionist bones to “the people” in the form of a welfare surge, but mainly to deny activists a talking point and to buy some peace. As Charles notes, progressives had to do battle just to get a hearing in the political system.

If you substitute ‘ruling class’ for ‘people’.

And that’s OK, on balance. The net effect of the CRM was the positive changes for blacks, and for race relations in general. (Scary to think about how bad it used to be, to reflect that today’s fairly awful status really is a big improvement.) So it doesn’t really matter all that much what they were really after; what they actually accomplished turned out for the good.

Maia, what data do you think I am missing in my analysis? I’m always willing to learn more, and perhaps you have a different perspective because of your geographical and social isolation from the events in question. But I studied the 60s movements fairly comprehensively as a young leftist, and still more as an old conservative.

Or, perhaps historians have got it right; the civil rights movement was in fact about getting rid of racism and getting blacks the right to equal opportunity in America. It’s not an attempt to ignore or eliminate the story of the radicals. It’s just a recognition that the attempt to push American society towards Socialism (which hardly deserves the label “progress”) was an attempt by a small minority of political radicals to piggyback their agenda on a movement whose participants in general rejected it as unrelated (since they wanted equal opportunity, not handouts) and undesirable. It just wasn’t a significant part of the movement.

I’d just like to point out that this is an example of progressives fighting to participate in the Democratic Party, a Democratic Party that was not welcoming to them, and that blocked them from participating. I don’t know my history nearly as well as I should, but isn’t it arguable that this attempt to participate in the Democratic Party had a substantial and progressive effect on the Democrats as a party? Certainly, the southern Democrats are no longer an all white party, and it was actions like this that changed the party.

It’s arguable, although the effect of the Mississippi summer project was largely that those who were most involved were disillusioned with the political system altogether. Fannie Lou Hamer was a delegate at the 1968 Democratic convention, but the movement had abandoned the Democratic party by that stage.

Nationally I think you’d be hard pressed to argue it made the Democratic party more progressive in the long term (Johnson may be a total shit, and have a whole chant dedicated to his awfulness, but his record is substantially more progressive than Clinton’s). Unfortunately I don’t know nearly as much about the local politics in the south now, as I do about the local politics in the south in the 1960s. So I can’t really comment on the effect of the Dixiecrats leaving.

Attempting to participate in and influence the Democratic Party was only a small part of the larger strategy of the Freedom Movement, but it was a part (as was founding new and largely symbolic political parties, and working entirely outside the political system- all three are important strategies, and a large movement can have individual groups that pursue each of those strategies).

In the early 1960s there were other attempts to realign the Democratic party. SDS’s Port Huron statement is most famous for its introduction: ” We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit…” But a lot of the rest of the piece is a lot more mundane, and included a plan to realign.

These attempts were, obviously, largely unsuccessful, but the work that was done as part of these attempts was really important, and obviously helped build the movement.

While I think organising to realigning the Democratic party is probably pretty futile (and a damn sight harder now than it was then - given the importance of money in the electoral system), some good would probably come out of an organised attempt to realign the Democratic party that was centred around getting the Democratic party elected.

Here’s the thing, the MFDP, didn’t campaign for Johnson come November. They continued to criticise the Democrats from the left, and didn’t have a problem with other people doing the same.

Robert I think your analysis is hampered by lack of information about the Freedom Movement.