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Civil Rights Movement Marxism

Decent Essays

Throughout history, Civil Rights Movements have been written down for us to learn from. They have been there for us to read and for us to look at in horror that this was the way that the world managed to survive – thrive off of, for some groups of people. In contrast, we have never had anything like slavery, like Black men and women being unable to sit inside certain restaurants with us in our generation. We have only had these groups of history books and certain classes to teach us the way of the world and how it used to be. That was until Trayvon Martin’s shooter was acquitted and three organizers sparked the movement with a hash-tag trend on Twitter and other platforms of social media. What makes this different from previous cases …show more content…

More appropriately termed, the Proletariat vs. Bourgeoisie. Thruston Powers uses White vs. Black as a new version of the Proletariat vs. Bourgeoisie. In all manners of speaking, this is an accurate assessment of the movement at best. It uses the idea of Marxist theory and especially the notion of prioritizing class struggle. In fact, the platform for BLM takes a page straight from Karl Marx’s own Communist Manifesto. Powers compares the two side by side and there are similarities. The Communist Manifesto states: “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.” While BLM platform follows in suit: “A right to restored land, clean air, clean water and housing and an end to the exploitative privatization of natural resources — including land and water. We seek democratic control over how resources are preserved, used and distributed and do so while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous

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