With another Martin Luther King Day come and gone, we were reminded that the views of King are regarded as the model for the “civil rights movement.”
Some of this is merited, of course. King stood up to governments
that used state force, via Jim Crow laws to mandate segregation and violate
property rights.
Unfortunately, not all of King’s views on property and economic
independence were equally enlightened.
For a start, King was no friend of markets. In 33 Question About American History You’re Not Supposed to
Ask, Tom Woods uncovered a speech King gave to his
staff revealing his disapproval:
You can’t talk about solving
the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars….
[W]e are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are
saying that something is wrong… with capitalism. There must be a better
distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic
socialism.
Best Price: $2.91Buy New $9.99(as of 07:05 EST - Details)
But
King wasn’t working alone in the civil rights movement. While far less remembered and honored today,
Malcolm X provided a far different and more radical view of how to achieve more
independence and prosperity for historically disadvantaged groups.
Choosing
Markets Over Forced Integration
Libertarian rapper Eric July produced
an excellent video explaining Malcolm X’s
philosophy when contrasted to MLK’s vision of forced integration. Malcolm X
recognized the power of capitalism, and saw it as a means of advancing the
community.
July highlights an interview with
Eleanor Fischer in which Malcolm X called forced integration hypocritical and
understood the flaws of its involuntary nature:
Well, any form of
integration, forced integration, any effort to force integration upon whites is
actually hypocritical. It is a form of hypocrisy involved. If a white man puts
his arm around me voluntarily, that’s brotherhood. But if you hold a gun on him
and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then
that’s not brotherhood, that’s hypocrisy. And what America is trying to do is
pass laws to force whites to pretend that they want Negroes into their schools
or in their places of employment. Well, this is hypocrisy, and this makes a
worse relationship between black and white, rather than if this could be
brought about on a voluntary basis.
He then expanded on the flaws of MLK’s forced integration
strategy when the topic of the Montgomery Bus Boycott came up:Best
Price: $31.38Buy New $20.67(as of 02:27 EDT - Details)
I don’t think having an
opportunity to ride either at the front or the back or the middle of someone
else’s bus does not dignify you. When you have your own bus, then you have
dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have own
your own country, you have dignity. When you have something of your own, you
have dignity.
But whenever you are begging
for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that
which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that’s not
dignity, that’s ignorance.
Malcolm X also critiqued the sit-in strategies civil rights
activists employed and insisted that blacks build their own economic
institutions instead:
Instead of the negro leaders
having the black man begging for a chance to dine in white restaurants, the
negro leaders should be showing the black man to do something to strengthen his
own economy, to give himself an independent economy, or to provide job
opportunities for himself. Not begging for a cup of coffee in a white man’s
restaurant.
Best Price: $56.59Buy New $28.50(as of 02:27 EDT - Details)
In sum, Malcolm X was not interested in
forced integration and focused his energies toward black economic
self-sufficiency. It did not matter to him if blacks had to live separately
from whites, as long as each community did not infringe on the rights of others.
He drew examples from the
Japanese and Chinese communities in the U.S. to drive this point home:
When you are equal with
another person, the problem of integration doesn’t even arise. It doesn’t come
up. The Chinese in this country aren’t asking for integration. The Japanese
aren’t asking for integration. The only minority in America that’s asking for
integration is the so-called Negro, primarily because he is inferior, not
inherently inferior, but he’s economically, socially, politically inferior. And
this exists because he has never tried to stand on his own two feet and do
something for himself. He has filled the role of a beggar.
For these reasons, among
others, Murray Rothbard praised Malcolm X describing him as a “great black leader” and acknowledged that
Malcolm X’s black nationalism was “a lot more libertarian than the compulsory
integration pushed by King, the NAACP, and white liberals.”
