Some Thoughts on Why the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was Assassinated, when he was Assassinated

"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)

MLK Memorial. Staring across the Reflecting Pool at Jefferson. What a study in contradictions (Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Duane Lempke)   Details   Source   DMCA

Opening note: The word "assassinated" when correctly used refers to particular types of murders, that is ones carried out for political purposes. It is derived from an Arabic term.

In my view, there were three principal reasons why Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated (by whomever actually did the killing), at the time the deed was done.:

1.  He was beginning to be spoken of in the context of national electoral politics, e.g., the "King-Spock Ticket." (The "Spock referenced there was not the one from "Star Trek," but rather the famous pediatrician and popular writer who was becoming ever-more involved in national political issues on the progressive side, Dr. Benjamin Spock.) The 1967 "National Conference of New Politics" which took place in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, that year. It happened that I attended that Conference as the representative of the New York Medical Committee to End the War in Viet Nam. (And as it happened further, I became the Chair of the Resolutions Committee for the Conference an absolutely fascinating experience, which I will not re-visit here.) In that context, the Rev. King gave the Keynote Address at the Conference.

2. As noted in The Chicago Sun-Times in that speech he came out strongly against the War On Viet Nam (which he had only recently begun to do). Quoting from the Sun-Times:

"As he said: 'The promise of a Great Society has been shipwrecked off the coast of Asia on the dreadful pinnacle of Vietnam,' he told conference-goers. The war, he said, 'has torn up the Geneva agreement [which had supposedly ended the wars on Viet Nam in 1954], seriously impaired the United Nations, exacerbated the hatreds between continents and worse still between races: it has frustrated our development at home.'

" 'If the will of the people continues to be unheeded, all men of good will must create a situation in which the 1967-68 elections are made a referendum on the war," he said. 'The American people must have an opportunity to vote into oblivion those who cannot detach themselves from militarism.'

"King's speech touched on more than the Vietnam War. He called for a national employment agency, noting that capitalism 'was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor " both Black and white " both here and abroad.' "

"The activist referred to racism as 'that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization.' "

3. Dr. King was beginning to go beyond the realm of civil rights into the broader one of socio-economic rights. A primary example of this was the famous "Riverside Church Speech."

"Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York. 'The Capitalist System is a War System' "

"Marx and Engels declared in their famous 1848 manifesto that capitalism was a world system. Due to cutthroat competition every corporation, every bank, every small business would need to expand or it would be defeated in the marketplace by more successful competitors. Therefore, competition would lead to consolidation, a shift from many economic actors to declining numbers of them. This process of capital accumulation extended to the entire globe.

"Lenin argued that by the dawn of the twentieth century, competition had led to monopolies within countries. States driven by monopolies expanded all across the globe. Competing states often engaged in war. Their expansion also generated resistance, rebellion and revolution around the world. In sum, the capitalist system by its very nature was a war system.

"In addition, capitalist economies, particularly imperial powers such as the United States, required natural resources, cheap or slave labor, land, customers for products, and opportunities to invest accumulated profits in overseas corporations, and banks. In the post-World War II period, capitalist expansion even required the establishment of a global debt system that would increase the possibility of penetrating the economies of countries that incurred debts.

"The realities that Marx identified in the nineteenth century are relevant today in two ways. First, given technological advances, what economists call neoliberal globalization is the logical extension of his insight that capitalism needs to

"Establish connections everywhere.

"Second, given episodes of resistance to capitalist expansion, conflict and violence in the global system are likely to occur from time to time among capitalist states (each seeking to enhance their own monopolies), between capitalist states and emerging socialist states that reject the very premises of capitalist economics, and between capitalist states and marginalized people who rebel against capitalist/imperialist intrusion."

This speech, coming from a very prominent man, was VERY DANGEROUS for the interest of the U.S. capitalist ruling class.* Dr. King was venturing into the arena of (very correct) Marxist-Leninist analysis of the nature of the capitalist U.S., and the state apparatus constructed to support it, and keep it in place for the benefit of the capitalist ruling class. In doing so he brought a system of socio-economic-political analysis to a level of explanation/analysis that would be very easy for the layman to understand. Especially dangerous was the introduction of Marxist-Leninist thinking to an analysis/critique of the capitalist socio-economic structure of the nation. King was especially dangerous given the very wide appeal to both Blacks and progressive whites of a man who commanded a national audience whenever he spoke.

Conclusion

Advocating for (and achieving some progress in) Civil and Voting Rights were OK. President Lyndon Johnson, who shepherded the major legislation through the Congress was, of course, a Southerner himself. Many Republicans of the day supported the legislation. Nixon's "Southern Strategy," that is the introduction of National Racism as a central element of Republican Party policy, was still to come. Furthermore, the legislation and subsequent Federal government programs (e.g., Johnson's Great Society [which, as it happened got swallowed up by Viet Nam War spending]) did not threaten any central elements of capitalist ruling class power.

BUT when the Reverend King began to expand his focus, as outlined briefly above, then, as noted, he became highly dangerous to a variety of ruling class political and economic interests. At whatever level the decision was made: he and his voice had to be eliminated from the public/political stage.

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* Capitalist ruling class, brief definition: that combination of institutions, corporations, and individuals that controls, for the most part, the functions of production, distribution, finance, and exchange in an economy in which the bulk of the institutions that perform these functions are privately held. In one form or another, the ruling class then controls the engines of the State, which are primary in maintaining the class's overall control of the nation in which they all function.