The Radical Gospel of Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Jr. is ubiquitous. A federal holiday, a monument and a plethora of schools and streets bearing his name have cemented his presence on the cultural landscape of the United States. Liberals and conservatives alike appropriate King’s language to adorn their political wardrobes and buttress their ideological constructions.

While the popular rendering of King is one of a civil rights leader who now enjoys widespread acceptability in American public discourse, his radical politics and his rough-edged critique of U.S. imperial adventures have been smoothed over. The real King was committed to a democratic socialist vision that germinated from his black church roots. Specifically, there are three pillars of the radical gospel of Martin Luther King Jr. that we should not allow holiday remembrances to whitewash: democratic socialism, transnational anti-imperialism and black prophetic Christianity.

Democratic socialism

King’s anti-capitalist feelings began when, as a child, he saw the bread lines during the Great Depression and asked his parents about the poor and hungry. “I can see the effects of this early childhood experience on my present anti-capitalistic feelings,” he recalled in paper during his divinity-student days in 1950. According to Coretta Scott King, the man she would go on to marry was the first Negro she had met who said he was a democratic socialist. In a July 1952 love letter, the smitten King lay bare his socialist heart. Of capitalism, he said that he “failed to see its relative merits” and believed that it had “outlived its usefulness.” He made a striking confession: “I am more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.” For King, capitalism was “a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” Though he noted that was bitterly “opposed to the metaphysical structure of communism as well as Marxism,” he learned from reading Karl Marx “that religion can so easily become a tool of the middle class to keep the proletariat oppressed. Too often the church talked about a future good ‘over yonder’ totally forgetting the present evil over here.” In his love letter, King said he would “welcome the day” there would be “the nationalization of industry” — a socialist measure. As his profile rose, King was not as forthcoming in his socialist leanings in many of his public lectures.

Having attended the 1960 inauguration of socialist President Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, King continued to be a keen observer of revolutionary movements around the globe. Noted anti-imperialist Marxist C.L.R. James recalled that King made it clear during their 1964 meeting in London that he agreed with James’ Marxist analysis. King, according to James, accepted Marx’s critique of capitalism but would not state this publicly because of the anti-communist hysteria in the United States. Michael Harrington, author of the agenda of the Poor People’s Campaign — the 1968 effort by King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to demonstrate for economic justice — and eventual founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, believed that King was careful in his public pronouncements on socialism because it could alienate liberals and perhaps confuse his followers.

Nevertheless, in a 1966 planning meeting he understood that the Poor People’s Campaign took on a more radical critique of capitalism and reaffirmed his commitment to democratic socialist eschatology: “Now this means that we are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying something is wrong … with capitalism … There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.” Publicly, King couched his democratic socialism in the language of economic equality and his association with the left wing of the Untied States labor movement.

This key feature of the gospel is evidenced in King relationship with the labor movement. King continuously connects his calling as a minister and the gospel of economic justice. King spent time on picket lines, and his speeches to unions proved a fertile ground for leftist theology.

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