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NEWS & LETTERS, APRIL 2003
From the Marxist-Humanist Archives
Murder and war in the uncivilized U.S.
by Raya Dunayevskaya EDITOR'S NOTE This month marks the 35th anniversary of the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while he was in Memphis, Tenn. to
support striking sanitation workers. To continue the struggle championed by
King, we reprint excerpts from the Lead-Editorial in the May 1968 N&L
entitled "These uncivilized United States: Murder of Rev. King, Vietnam
War." It is contained in THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION, 6805-6807. * * * May 1968 The long hot summer began in spring this year with so
fast-moving a scenario that neither the startling abdication of President Lyndon
Johnson nor his loaded "peace feelers," had time to sink in before the
shot that killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reverberated around the world. LBJ's
popularity which had risen late Sunday night with his announcement of
de-escalation of the Vietnam War, plummeted down with the news of King's
assassination on Thursday, April 4. No serious commentator abroad thought this was an act of
a single individual, insane or just filled with hatred. Every one took a second
look at this racist land where acts of conspiracy to commit murder "and get
away with it" are spawned out of an atmosphere emanating from a White House
conducting a barbaric war abroad, and a Congress which allows its
"illustrious members" to sound like rednecks bent on murder when the
"Negro Question" is the issue. Just the week before the assassination,
those legislative halls were resounding to demands "to stop King" from
leading a Poor People's March into Washington... THE AMERICAN REALITY The president was compelled to call off the meeting he had scheduled with his Pacific satellites. Though he ordered the flag flown at half mast and shed many a crocodile tear, one thing was clear: no overflow of staged tears by the administration could possibly whitewash the presidency and these uncivilized United States of America. The murder of Rev. King pushed even the Vietnam War off the front pages of the papers as Black revolts struck out in no less than 125 cities, most of them untouched in the previous hot summers. The very fabric of American civilization was unravelling
so that its racism stood stark naked for all the world to see. When "law
and order" was restored, nothing was in the same place, nor will it ever
be... Though all the "dignitaries" were duly
represented at King's funeral, the difference between the pomp and pageantry of
the funeral of the assassinated president five years ago and the present
mule-drawn carriage bearing the body of Dr. King was stark. This was due not only to the difference between a president and a "civilian." Nor was it just the difference between a rich man and a poor one; Rev. King wasn't all that poor. He had chosen the mule-drawn carriage as symbol for his Poor People's March on Washington not only to underline the difference between affluence and poverty in this richest of all lands, but mainly to stress the difference between the backwardness of the conditions of the Black farmer in this most technologically advanced land. The Negro has always been the touchstone of American civilization, exposing the hollowness of its democracy, the racism not only at home but also in its imperialist adventures. And the latest of a long list of martyrs in the battle for freedom was too much flesh of the flesh of the whole of American "civilization" to be capable of cover-up by all the flags flown at half mast. After the Black man had had his funeral, what then? The true measure of both the grief and determination to go on with the civil war for freedom was seen, in one form, in the mass outpouring of 150,000 who were in Atlanta, and, in another form, in the Black revolts in the cities... Rev. King was murdered because he came down to Memphis
to assist Black workers locked in class struggle with the white power
structure... VOICES FROM BELOW: 1956-66 In retrospect, the coincidence of Rev. King's beginnings
as a leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott with the totally new stage of Negro
revolt appears, not as accidental, but the right person at the right place at
the right time. That is to say, it bespeaks the objective significance of King's
role in that struggle, sparked by the refusal of a Negro seamstress, Rosa Parks,
to give up her seat in the bus to a white male. We didn't need the lapse of a decade before we sensed
the historic significance of "the forceful voice of the Alabama Negroes who
have taken matters of freedom into their own hands." At the very moment of
its happening we compared the significance of these actions against the white
power structure in Alabama to the Hungarian Revolution against Russian
Communism, stressing that "the greatest thing of all in the Montgomery,
Ala. spontaneous organization was its own working existence." But let us add here that it wasn't only that Rev. King
was there. It is that he knew how to listen to the voices from below and,
therefore, to represent them in a boycott that lasted 382 long days during which
it was in mass assembly some three times a week, daily organized its own
transport, moving from a struggle against segregated buses to a demand for
hiring Negro bus drivers--and won on both counts. If there were those who hadn't recognized this totally
new stage of Negro revolt in 1956, none failed to see, on the one hand, the
barbarism of Bull Connor's police dogs, water hoses, electric cattle prods, and,
on the other hand, the bravery, daring, and massive persistence of the Negroes
in Birmingham in 1963. Again King was there. This time he tried also to give
philosophic expression to the struggle against segregation. In his famous letter
from a Birmingham jail to the white clergymen who objected to "illegal
acts," Rev. King wrote: "We can never forget that everything that
Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian Freedom Fighters
did in Hungary was 'illegal'...To use the words of Martin Buber, the great
Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an 'I-it' relationship for the
'I-thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of
things." Both nationally and internationally, both in
relationship to the non-violent tactics here and the more violent phases of the
African revolutions, Dr. King had developed to the point where he let nothing
stand in the way of the struggle for freedom. Though the humanist philosophy he then unfolded was
quoted from Buber, and not Marx, he was not unaware that the African Revolutions
based themselves on the Humanism of Marx. ISOLATION It is true that, by 1965, Rev. King faltered seriously
as he was completely baffled by the newer stage of Negro revolt in Harlem
and Watts and all the other long, hot summers, marked by the shouts of
"Burn, baby, burn!" But the isolation from the Negro masses at that
moment was not due solely to his belief in nonviolence... For something a great deal more significant than
violence vs. non-violence was involved in the new Black mass revolt. New
perspectives were needed. A new comprehensive view; new allies among rank and
file labor and other white militants to help in the arduous task of tearing the
whole exploitative society up by its roots. New leaders did arise, but they traveled everywhere from
Cuba to Algiers. They were not where mass power lay--on the streets. They were
not working out a new relationship of theory to practice on the basis of it and
hence could not give expression to the new in the masses. 1967-68: THE VIETNAM WAR AND DEATH AT HOME The sickness unto death with the Vietnam War on the part
of the youth, both white and Black, at first got but little response from Rev.
King. However, there was no doubt that the dream he had of achieving equality
for Negroes had turned into a nightmare as he moved North and came up against
the mightier white power structure there in the person of Chicago city boss,
Mayor Richard J. Daley. At the same time, the white youth that had gone South to
help in the civil rights struggles had clearly, since 1965, shifted to creating
an anti-war movement to oppose the barbaric imperialist war... With $20 billion being poured annually into the Vietnam
War, the administration's "Great Society" was the forgotten Black waif
left both homeless and starving in the backwaters of the South as well as the
ghettoes of the North. Clearly, without a new unifying philosophy of liberation
that would relate itself to the new reality, it was impossible to move forward.
The new voices of revolt in the North as well as Virginia and Mississippi that
had not been heard in 1965 were finally heard to say "Hell no, we won't
go!" in 1967. UNITING MOVEMENTS Dr. King came out against the war and tried uniting the
two movements fighting the administration. At once, he became the target of the
most slanderous campaign which showed also its arrogance in telling him to keep
hands off other than "Negro problems." In this, the administration was
joined by the leaders of the NAACP and Urban League. Gone was any pretense to
Black unity. Gone was "approval" of King as a man of non-violence. The
deep-freeze against "the war on poverty" was no longer restricted to
Southern bourbons but was the dominating line of the presidency. It is this atmosphere of capitalistic monolithism that
Rev. King confronted as he planned what became his last and greatest battle: to
combine the poor--Black and white, Indian and Mexican American--in a massive
march on Washington that would not only coincide with the days of protest
against the Vietnam War, but also promised to continue till the whole white
power structure was disrupted; civil disobedience that would peacefully
revolutionize society by masses in motion. Thereby Dr. King courted death. It was not King who was the "obstacle" to
Black liberation. It was the capitalistic system. The "guerrillas" had
far less a revolutionary perspective with their smaller goals and elitist
concepts. Whether the march would have developed to keep things moving, to bring
"orderly" government to a halt, it is impossible now to say. What is
clear is that the threat of the march kept the administration on tenterhooks.
All sorts of "new politics," too, was brought in to bring pressure
upon King to direct the movement into electoral channels--and he seemed to begin
to think in these terms himself. BLACK AND WHITE But all was still in flux, masses were in motion if not
in the Movement; white labor was forced to help Black labor at least on specific
issues, and not only with finances but a promise to bring "thousands"
to Memphis! The atmosphere was charged further as it became clear that President
Johnson, while declaring for de-escalation, had in fact embarked on the greatest
escalation, although within a more "restricted" area. The civilians who died were not all in Vietnam. One was
gunned down in Memphis and 46 more were killed, 2,600 injured and 21,270
arrested in the week of Black revolt that followed King's assassination. It is true that all that Dr. King had achieved through the years was but prologue. But it is prologue to a drama of liberation that is unfolding daily. His greatness lay in recognizing the objective movement of history and aligning himself with it. Precisely because it was both objective and had masses in motion, it is sure to continue on a high historic level till society is reconstructed from the bottom up. |
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