Was MLK really a communist?

[<(o_0)>]

Heard my sister mention that Martin Luther King Jr was a communist and I laughed but she swears he was...was he?

[76561199630340353]

İlk olarak Hobbit XIII tarafından gönderildi:

My previous answer was abrupt this may provide an answer to your sister :

King rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and communism; King had read Marx while at Morehouse but rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism". He stated that one focused too much on the individual while the other focused too much on the collective.

edited after reading the updated topic page and Azor answered after my previous post so read his post.

i think religion is often also kinda atheistic, i mean its not possible to verify a persons feeling imperically, same giving everyone a police badge and hoping all of the are good policemen.

[Pierce Dalton]

İlk olarak PC director tarafından gönderildi:

In this aspect, you need to understand the main thing that communism is evil.

Several countries suffered from communist experiments on them. These are hundreds of millions of dead people.

This is the main thing you need to know about communism.

Capitalism is no less evil tbh. Its ultimate goal is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

[Ni-Neith]

İlk olarak Out Of Bubblegum tarafından gönderildi:

So you know as much about types of economies as you do about universe heat death.
:(

Funny ;)

Have you ever seen a living communist?
And at one time I had to study the History of the CPSU and Marxist-Leninist philosophy at the university.
I have never seen such nonsense in official textbooks anywhere else. But these were state exams. And if you don’t pass them, then you can say goodbye to your studies. And you tell me that I don’t understand this.

[Ulfrinn]

İlk olarak Daenoxiis tarafından gönderildi:

I think actual and proper communism has never really happened. Save perhaps for indigenous peoples and their history. In modern civilization though, usually what happens is totalitarianism or a dictatorship, rather than communism.

When I think of communism I think more along the lines of a community actually proactively helping each other in life and stay alive. Not mathematical taxation and class/caste systems.

I remember watching an old interview with an Aboriginal Elder who was asked what life was like for their ancestral people before the introduction to currency and more modernized ways of approach. The old man said: "In the old days, we helped each other not for profit or personal gain, but rather because it was the right thing to do."

Real actual communism is when government owns the means of production and distribution, meaning they own the farms and the stores that sell the produce. And yes, it has happened, several times, and it has been as much of a disaster as any reasonable person would expect that much power and control being consolidated in the hands of that few of people would turn out. If you think the idea of a corporate monopoly is bad, communism is one great big monopoly that owns every business, every store, every farm, every factory in your country at the same time.

My life advice to you would be to take off those rose tinted glasses, place them on the floor, and stomp on them while you have the chance.

[Ni-Neith]

İlk olarak Pierce Dalton tarafından gönderildi:

Capitalism is no less evil tbh. Its ultimate goal is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Well, at least there is plenty in the stores and there is no hunger.

[Ulfrinn]

İlk olarak Pierce Dalton tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak PC director tarafından gönderildi:

In this aspect, you need to understand the main thing that communism is evil.

Several countries suffered from communist experiments on them. These are hundreds of millions of dead people.

This is the main thing you need to know about communism.

Capitalism is no less evil tbh. Its ultimate goal is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

As the guy above said. Under capitalism your store shelves are full, from competing companies trying to undercut each other for prices to sell to you. You have choices, you have plenty. Your life is better even at the lowest class in a capitalist country like the US, than any class outside of the government elite in a communist nation. Stop complaining about how much more someone else has than you, and realize how much more you have than your parents did, and how much more they had than their parents did.

[Magic A. I.]

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

Real actual communism is when government owns the means of production and distribution,

Umm. No. This is what happens when a government claims, that it is communist, but is in fact something entirely different. USSR, for example, had a communist party but never actually had communism. Star Trek TNG federation, on the other hand, is communist but most likely never had a communist party.

But since explaining that to people today is like explaining Jesus's teachings to christian church, I'll stop here.

[Birds]

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Pierce Dalton tarafından gönderildi:

Capitalism is no less evil tbh. Its ultimate goal is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

As the guy above said. Under capitalism your store shelves are full, from competing companies trying to undercut each other for prices to sell to you. You have choices, you have plenty. Your life is better even at the lowest class in a capitalist country like the US, than any class outside of the government elite in a communist nation. Stop complaining about how much more someone else has than you, and realize how much more you have than your parents did, and how much more they had than their parents did.

Russia hasn't put sawdust in its food or sold people rotten meat in over a hundred years.

the only time they came close was in the 70s, when they temporarily cut welfare to deflate the agricultural economy and attempt a trade economy with the west.

[Azor]

unfortunately I find that too many contemporary communists and fellow travellers either completely dismiss the USSR or uncritically support it. Neither approach is good, imo. The USSR was communist, whether you like it or not.

Advice for contemporary communists: don't try to rewrite history but learn from it. And read Cockshott. His "Towards a New Socialism" is a great starting point.

[Ulfrinn]

İlk olarak Magic A. I. tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

Real actual communism is when government owns the means of production and distribution,

Umm. No. This is what happens when a government claims, that it is communist, but is in fact something entirely different. USSR, for example, had a communist party but never actually had communism. Star Trek TNG federation, on the other hand, is communist but most likely never had a communist party.

But since explaining that to people today is like explaining Jesus's teachings to christian church, I'll stop here. :summercat2023:

Star Trek was fantasy. A guy wrote the script for that. That's the only way your idea of communism is going to be successful. And my definition of it is the textbook definition of it. Government owns everything whether you like it or not. There's no world where you're going to have "collective ownership" over everything and no power structure to collect and distribute it. That's why it's never worked, that's why it's never going to, and that's why millions of innocent people die from genocide or starvation whenever someone desperately tries to make it happen. Just stop already. The world doesn't need more collective BS.

[Daenoxiis]

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

My life advice to you would be to take off those rose tinted glasses, place them on the floor, and stomp on them while you have the chance.

You don't want that.
You do not want that, as much as you feel like you do.
Because the fact of the matter is that in a truly lawless society, murderers would reign supreme, and it does not take long to figure out as to why that is.
Basic math and logical deductive reasoning.
It takes 9 months to make a human life, and less than 24 hours to extinguish that exact same human life.
Both the elderly, children, and women would all be the first few to die.
So no, you don't want true lawlessness.
No militia formed as an antithesis to that would stand a chance, either.
Because in social conditioning that is truly lawless there is no incentive for them to do so.
People need to have hope, and people need that hope to have realistic and tangible merit to it.
Because without that realistic and tangible merit to hope, that's how you get this true lawlessness.

[Ni-Neith]

İlk olarak Birds tarafından gönderildi:

Russia hasn't put sawdust in its food or sold people rotten meat in over a hundred years.

the only time they came close was in the 70s, when they temporarily cut welfare to deflate the agricultural economy and attempt a trade economy with the west.

It's interesting they tell us fairy tales about communism...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933

I'm not even mentioning the Civil War with millions of dead.

[Talby]

İlk olarak Kiler_best1235_Denmark tarafından gönderildi:

Can anyone name 1 successfull communist country?.... I mean demorat state.

that fact will not be realized until they are literally in a "bernie bread line" with no money or food...

[Magic A. I.]

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

Star Trek was fantasy. A guy wrote the script for that. That's the only way your idea of communism is going to be successful.

Yes. Ever since Europeans moved to continental America, they slowly eradicated all communists who lived there. As long as people who would do the same still exist, there can be no communism outside of a fantasy.

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

And my definition of it is the textbook definition of it. Government owns everything whether you like it or not.

So which textbook did you pick for a definition that suits your agenda? Because, you know, there are a lot of branches of communism and there are even more revisions of 'the textbook'; somehow I doubt that you researched them all. Dismissed the majority as misinformation, maybe? After all, those pesky details and nuances are so inconvenient when all one wants to do is label something evil.

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

There's no world where you're going to have "collective ownership" over everything and no power structure to collect and distribute it. That's why it's never worked, that's why it's never going to [...].

As long as greed exists and is actively promoted, this is the truth. Alas, eradicating greed is a fool's errand. Humanity must arrive to it on its own.

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

Just stop already. The world doesn't need more collective BS.

Then you stop. And stop that guy next to you.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

İlk olarak Ulfrinn tarafından gönderildi:

As the guy above said. Under capitalism your store shelves are full, from competing companies trying to undercut each other for prices to sell to you. You have choices, you have plenty. Your life is better even at the lowest class in a capitalist country like the US, than any class outside of the government elite in a communist nation. Stop complaining about how much more someone else has than you, and realize how much more you have than your parents did, and how much more they had than their parents did.

Talk about seeing the world through rose colored glasses.
:(