Why America Needs Socialism: The Argument from Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Other Great Thinkers PDF
Preview Why America Needs Socialism: The Argument from Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Other Great Thinkers
WHY AMERICA NEEDS SOCIALISM The Argument from Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Other Great Thinkers G.S. Griffin Copyright © 2019 by G.S. Griffin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to: Ig Publishing Box 2547 New York, NY 10163 www.igpub.com ISBN: 978-1-63246-102-5 (ebook) For Jeff, friend on the Right “I find I’m a good deal more of a socialist than I thought …” —Walt Whitman Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. 2, p. 4 CONTENTS Introduction PART ONE: CAPITALISM 1: Human Nature 2: Exploitation 3: The Profit Motive: and Present Economies 4: The Profit Motive: People and Planet 5: Poverty 6: Capitalist Politics 7: War PART TWO: SOCIALISM 8: Worker Ownership 9: Socialist Democracy 10: The Socialist Life 11: Revolution Notes INTRODUCTION CONSIDER THE WORDS THAT A SHORT African American minister with a black mustache penned while sitting in a Selma, Alabama, jail cell in 1965, having just been arrested during a voting rights demonstration: “If we are to achieve a real equality, the US will have to adopt a modified form of socialism.”1 The minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was not just a brilliant orator and champion of civil rights. He was also anti-war, anticapitalism, and pro- socialism. He saw capitalism as exploitive by nature, an economic structure that bred poverty, injustice, and death. Dr. King studied Karl Marx’s works, wrote of Marxism in essays like “How Should a Christian View Communism?” and “My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” and was inspired by socialists like Mahatma Gandhi and W.E.B. du Bois. When I discovered that Dr. King was a socialist, I wondered if it was possible to build a case for socialism in America today based on his writings and those of other famous radical historical figures. This book is the answer to that question. In these pages, you will find many well-known thinkers, writers, and artists, from around the world, who believed that socialism could help end poverty, exploitation, authoritarianism, war, and even some forms of bigotry (even if some of the individuals herein were quite bigoted and otherwise seriously flawed). I think it’s safe to say you’re in for a few surprises. In order to determine who to include, I had to first figure out who was known well enough to be featured. Would the average reader immediately recognize the names George Bernard Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Day, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Ella Baker, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, or Dalton Trumbo? It’s rather subjective. So, I focused on those whom most people would probably know, especially readers who were not already socialists.
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