Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote

“During the Christmas holidays of 1949 I decided to spend my spare time reading Karl Marx to try to understand the appeal of communism for many people. For the first time I carefully scrutinized Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto,” he wrote. “I also read some interpretative works on the thinking of Marx and Lenin. In reading such Communist writings I drew certain conclusions that have remained with me as convictions to this day.”

Then King listed the three reasons he could never accept Marxism.

“First, I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God,” he wrote.

Marx’s theory of “dialectical materialism” (and the conjoined theory of “historical materialism”) instead envisioned the human race as a one-dimensional economic creature.

“Second, I strongly disagreed with communism’s ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything – force, violence murder, lying – is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end,” he wrote.

The second point, closely related to the first, recognizes that anyone who rejects transcendence and revelation must, by extension, deny any universally binding morality. The world then becomes a patchwork of competing moralities, begging the strong to impose their will upon the weak. King consistently disowned those who spoke of prevailing in their political cause “by any means necessary.”

“Third, I opposed communism’s political totalitarianism. In communism, the individual ends up in subjection to the state. … And if man’s so-called rights and liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside,” King wrote. “His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted.”

“Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state,” King concluded."
Read More:
The 3 reasons Martin Luther King Jr. rejected Communism
https://acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2018/01/15/3-reasons-martin-luther-king-jr-rejected-communism
by Rev. Ben Johnson • January 15, 2018