This short chapter explains my book’s title: Dr. King’s Authentic Radicalism using the flip-side of Max Weber’s theory that predicted the rise of Hitler in the previous post. You don’t need to be a freedom rider or go to jail, but you do need to be brave and think things through honestly — Dare to know.
Authentic Radicalism
“We can’t solve our problem,” said Dr. King, “until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.” Dr. King represents the responsible kind of radicalism that I claimed those like Wallace could be won over to.
Both Dr. King and the Black Panthers desired fundamental social change — radical social change. But their approaches couldn’t have been more different. King preached nonviolent direct action. The Panthers preached “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” As chapter 5 will show, King contributed to the Democrats’ 1964 landslide victory, while the Panthers contributed to the radical setback and anti-Democratic backlash that handed Nixon his 1972 landslide.
King followed Weber’s alternative to the ethics of conviction — he followed the ethics of responsibility. If a demand that voting rights be included in the Civil Rights Act would cause it to fail, King would take that consequence into account and compromise to get a better outcome. He would do this in spite of having a pure conviction that justice requires equal voting rights.
This shows that having strong convictions does not mean having an “ethics of conviction” in Weber’s sense. As long as you are taking responsibility for the consequences of your convictions, you are following his “ethics of responsibility.” This explains Weber’s final step in his discussion of ethics:
I find it immeasurably moving when a mature person who feels the responsibility he bears for the consequences of his own actions with his entire soul and who acts in harmony with an ethics of responsibility reaches the point where he says, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” That is authentically human.”
Here Weber combines three qualities that are required for an “authentically human” approach to politics. The first is political maturity, and the second, a deep feeling of responsibility for one’s actions. Political maturity comes first, because without it, feelings of responsibility will be misguided. Not developing a mature view of politics before launching radical demands is not taking true responsibility.
Third, Weber gives the example of Martin Luther’s 1521 “Here I stand” conviction to make it clear that having convictions is important and does not require an ethics of conviction. It’s only necessary to take responsibility for your conviction.
Martin Luther made a most radical change — he broke the stranglehold of the Catholic Church on European thought. Noting this, I have based my definition of authentic radicalism on Weber’s three requirements for an authentically human approach to politics.
Authentic Radicalism is Weber’s “ethics of responsibility,” applied by someone with a mature understanding of political complexity and a sound conviction that fundamental social change is necessary.
Performative radicalism can be defined as follows.
Performative Radicalism is immature or naive radicalism based on Weber’s “ethics of conviction” applied in a self-righteous manner.
To clarify the difference, it helps to look at a potentially confusing case. Henry Wallace, who was sincere about his conviction and tried hard to take responsibility for his actions, nonetheless failed the test for authentic radicalism — because his political thinking was immature. This will be shown in a coming chapter. For now, just consider this message to his Guru Roerich, whose expedition to Mongolia he funded:
I have been thinking of you holding the sacred, most precious casket. And I have thought of the New Country going forth to meet the seven stars under the sign of the three stars. … We await the Stone.
With these definitions in hand, we can analyze chapters 3 − 6, which describe the Democrats’ four most painful setbacks, since the party became identified with left politics over 90 years ago. Each one of these setbacks was apparently due to a backlash against performative radicalism. Naturally, the Republicans did not carefully target just the performative radicals; they targeted Democrats as a whole. That makes perfect sense politically, and we would do the same.
The obvious solution for Democrats is to vehemently reject such radicalism. In fact, this appears to be the only solution. Two forces create and protect performative radicals, and make implementing the Rejection Defense difficult. Chapters 1 and 2 look into these forces — deception and social pressure.
Here’s what happens to Wallace (and the Democrats) when he was not being authentic. It’s also the opening to the next installment.
The Second Red Scare is generally said to start in 1947; that’s when the Democrats woke up to the scare. Truman had been worried from the start of 1946 and invited Winston Churchill to give his “Iron Curtain” speech on March 6 in order to test his party’s readiness to admit the dangers of Stalinism. It did not go well. The Democrats, led by Henry Wallace, then Secretary of Commerce, and FDR’s third-term vice president, rallied around Stalin and rejected Churchill.