Great Music and Speeches

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Various Social Commentaries from Savant: Interestingly enough, King was born the year of the crash which precipitated the Great Depression. So, he spent his early childhood years under the shadow of the economic blight. Though he lived in relative comfort, he remembered the breadlines. And he reflects that "I can see the effects of this early childhood experience on my ANTICAPITALIST FEELINGS."(AU TOBIOGRAPHY,p 2., my italics). I do wonder if he isn't reading his later sentiments into his childhood past. Or maybe that was the beginning of what would evoled into Kingian Christian socialism.

-Savant
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 There are Marxists who do not say "I am a Marxist", but whose Marxism is evident to anyone who reads them and is reasonably familiar with Marxian ways of thinking.Thus far, I've yet to come across any statement by Lukacs or Gramsci which says "I am a Marxist." Indeed, to avoid Fascist censorship Gramsci was very careful NOT to mention Marxism, and often simply spoke of "philosophy of praxis". But only someone utterly unfamiliar with Marxist thought could be taken in by the disguise. Dr. King, in private writings, interviews, letters often makes clear that he is socialistic in his thinking. What's interesting is in private discourse he often uses the word socialism for what in more public addresses he simply calls "more fully developed democracy." It is common knowledge that socialists of the 19th and 20th centuries often made the critique that "democracy " in capitalist societies wasn't genuine, or was very narrow. It didn't extend to economic life at all, and was often limited even politically for those social classes beneath the bourgeoisie. What these socialists--Marxis t and non-Marxist--held was that a fuller democracy, a more fully actualized democracy is possible and must be created; and this more fully developed democracy meant socialism. (Before the rise of totalitarian states calling themselves socialist, most socialists---and even their adversaries---assu med as a matter of course that socialism meant far more democracy (TOO MUCH for the right and liberals) than is possible under present capitalist conditions in England, France or the USA. King whose focus in philosophical study was (aside from Personalism) mainly SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY knew this. In fact, he opposes fully developed democracy in STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM and WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE to both Communism and capitalism. To be honest, and put my cards on the table, so do I. Only I am prepared to say PUBLICLY what King usually said privately, that we need a SOCIALIST democracy. That ordinary people need both political freedom and democracy governance of economy and their conditions of work, etc. King had to operate under the blight of McCarthyism. I don't.
-Savant
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 Unfortunately, there is mutual animosity between SOME Africans and SOME African Americans. That's obvious even in this thread. And the roots of this is IMPERIALISM, the racist and capitalistic imperialism of the west which has estranged Black people from themselves and each other. Black people here and elsewhere are often caught in a trick, fighting each other along the lines of division created by the common oppressor--each group of Blacks claiming the other is solely responsible, and neither seeing the ultimate roots of the trouble. I can only imagine that the Western imperialists and capitalist pirates and predators are laughing all the way to the bank. Black vs Black hatreds are politically convenient and sometimes downright PROFITABLE to the powers that be. Now if the vast majority Africans thought more like Cabral and Nkrumah? What if most African Americans thought more like Malcolm X, the Panthers or even Gil Scott with his song "Johannesburg "? The racists and exploiters would not be laughing all the way to the bank. And it that sort of revolutionary consciousness that I'm thinking of were to become rampant even within one thread in AA Forum I would not be surprised if the thread--maybe even the entire forum--were shut down. For this would indicate a remarkable awakening and a dangerous new solidarity. I wonder how many Black Americans or Africans have even seriously reflected on that possibility.


-Savant

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By the way, I have no illusions about uniting ALL Africans and ALL Black Americans in North America. In fact, I've no illusions about uniting all Black Americans with each other in North America, or uniting all Africans in Africa itself. Only a doufus thinks he can unite everyone. But you may be able to unite a critical mass strong enough to move forward and transform society. That is certainly worth the effort. 

-Savant

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 In STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM, STRENGHT TO LOVE & (to a lesser extent) WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, King objects philosophically to Marxist materialism from the perspective of his own Personalist and Hegelian idealism. So, part of the dispute is philosophical and metaphysical. But he objects MORALLY to the political repression of Marxist-Leninist regimes, regimes which carry out their struggle for a "classless " society in ways which simply reinstitute class oppression in a different form. In STRENGHT TO LOVE King admits that he finds moving the moral passion of Marx and Engels for social justice, and surmises that (atheistic or not) Marx's moral passion derives from the prophetic tradition of his Hebrew heritage. And while King rejects the violence carried out in the name of the classless society, he does not reject the ideal of a classless society. Indeed, King describes the classless society as a "noble end" (STRENGHT TO LOVE, p. 168)--even though Marxists Leninists seek it by ignoble means. But that classless society, free of economic and political oppression--free also of racism--is the ultimate aim of socialism or communism. (And we may recall that in HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, Orwell claims that for the average socialist worker in Spain during the 1930s, socialism meant a classless society---for King, a "noble end"). Indeed, isn't that also what Nkrumah wanted (at least initially)? isn't that what Fanon wanted? A liberated human being in a liberated society achieved by means of socialism and democracy? So, did King. So do I.

-Savant

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If you've not even HEARD of Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs, they you really need to improve your education. Lukacs most famous work is probably HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS--whi ch I read as a STUDENT. Antonio Gramsci is known for his PRISON NOTEBOOKS, one edition of which I also read while a student. Those two are perhaps the most famous Marxist philosophers of the 20th century! Not only philosophers, but historians, sociologists, political scientists and even many psychologists (like humanist Marxist Erich Fromm) would be deeply familiar with them. I've READ their works as well as scholarly studies of them. While I can claim to have read ALL of their voluminous works, I've read a considerable of it. Again, I don't recall reading any statement by either of them saying "I am a Marxist." But in ANY scholarly community of philosophers or social scientists you'd be thought a dunce if you didn't know that Gramsci and Lukacs were Marxists!

-Savant

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Of course, if you've read Nkrumah you know that he was a socialist of a decidedly Marxist as well as Pan-Africanist orientation. And if you're politically and historically informed, you're aware that socialism derives from Left traditions of politics and thought just as Fascism derives from Right wing traditions. Nkrumah, Cabral, Mondlane, Fanon and other were all socialists and explicitly anti-right wing, anti-capitalist. We ought to remember as well that after Stokely popularized "Black Power" in 1966, there soon developed some debate over what it actually meant. Some more conservative nationalists (coinciding with Richard Nixon) identified Black Power as 'black capitalism"--and eventually began saying everything was really about "green power". Some engage in mystical fabrications by identifying Black power with the obscurantist politics of cultural nationalism. For awhile Imamu Baraka and Ron karenga was running that line. Other interpreted Black Power in term of radical empowerment of the masses of our people, an empowerment that meant the revolutionary transcendence of imperialism, capitalism and racism. Stokely leaned in that direction. So, too, did the Black Panther party for awhile. And various other lesser known. A revolutionary analysis and interpretation of the Black Powr Movement can be found in Robert Allen's BLACK AWAKENING IN CAPITALIST AMERICA. An "insightful" but not revolutionary analysis is also offered by Black nationalist scholar Harold Cruse in THE CRISIS OF THE NEGRO INTELLECTAL. And Dr. King--since his legacy is supposed to be the THEME of this thread--works out his own coming to terms with Black Power in WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, CHAOS OR COMMUNITY. I think we can learn more of value from these brothers who were there than from ranting buffoons like Assdurratin.

-Savant
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One thing is interesting: On more than one occasion King clearly states his OPPOSITION to both capitalism and Communism ( least in Marxist Leninist version). He NEVER says he's against socialism, and he points to both Scandinavian and East Indian socialist tendencies with OBVIOUS approval. I mentioned to Ekdesiladki, and Indian lady who used to post here, about some of the leaders of agrarian reform movements in India whom King met there after the Montgomery campaign,. They were promoting agricultural cooperatives to redistribute wealth and empower the Indian poor. Ekdesi informed me that these leaders were Gandhian socialists who tried to continue the legacy of Gandhi (the spiritual aims of the movement) after the Mahatma's assassination. When she mentioned that they were Gandhian socialists---which didn't exactly take me by surprise since King was esteeming their promotion of Indian cooperatives---I simply said to Desi: "I should have known it! A Christian socialist admiring a Gandhian Hindu socialist." King is always on he side of the disinherited and the dispossessed.

-Savant