The Higher Synthesis

On August 16, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. made a speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta and declared this famous quote:

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both."

    What is this higher synthesis of which he is speaking? 

Synthesis is defined as the "dialectic combination of thesis and antithesis into a higher stage of truth." (Merriam Webster)  I have pondered this for many years and have been trying to distill my thoughts down to a coherent understanding of his statement. We live in a deeply polarized, tribal, ideological cesspool of confusion and chaos in the United States of America and are unable to rise above our differences and accept the antithetical opinions or beliefs of our neighbors. Has it always been like this? I remember being a child and sitting and discussing different beliefs with my neighbors and friends and teachers without any resentment or disdain for them. Many of our citizens dehumanize each other in ways that I find unimaginable. There was a time in the not so far past that we still treated each other with respect and honor as fellow citizens despite our differences in opinions.  

    I recently read an article about the Rwandan genocide that took place between April and July of 1994. In the article, it claimed that the Belgian colonial government; which was a trustee of Rwanda; "exacerbated the tendency of the few to oppress the many" (https://www.history.com/topics/africa/rwandan-genocide) causing tension between the Hutu people (the majority) and the Tutsis (the minority). They propagated the idea that the Tutsi people were the oppressors of the Hutu people and that they should be treated as animals, vermin, thieves, and undesirables. The tensions continued to rise and the Hutu people came to power and began slaughtering the Tutsis by the hundreds of thousands. It was the result of classifying another group as sub-human; undeserving of life, and a disease that needed to be eradicated. The Hutus were able to commit a genocide because of this abominable conception. 

    This story began to remind me of the behavior that I have witnessed on both the far right and far left of our political spectrum in this country. I have heard comments from people, friends of the extreme left positions, that the conservatives were "deplorables" and "ignorant"  and "white trash".  On the other end of the spectrum, I have heard far right idealogues call liberals "filthy", "communists" and "baby-killers." This is not how Americans should speak to one another and if it continues on this path, terrible events that seem inconceivable may occur. Do I think a genocide could occur? Probably not. A civil war? possibly. It's happened before.  

    George A. Miller; a professor of Psychology at Princeton stated that "in order to understand what someone is telling you, it is necessary to assume the person is being truthful, then imagine what could be true about it." Now he never stated that you had to agree to the idea; he was simply saying to suspend your judgement about the other person so that one can attempt to understand the other person's view. It is possible to do a thought experiment with people and imagine how their viewpoint could be true without believing it to be true. Deeply emotional responses can hinder our minds from thinking logically and must be suspended in order to have a rational discussion. 

    Now let me digress back to Martin Luther King's quote; What are the truths of Communism to which he is referring? Now I don't mean the Communist examples of Russia, China, and Venezuela. What is Communism in its' purest form, really, divorced from the atrocious application of it? What were they attempting to accomplish in their treatise Das Kapital? My purest thoughts, without knowing them personally, were that they believed that the community of people in the society should all benefit from the society. They didn't believe that the few wealthiest people in the nation should influence the politics in accordance with their business agendas, hoarding the resources and wealth, living a life of ease and comfort (as we see in the American system) while the remainder of the society was merely viewed as a resource to increase the profits of the wealthy. They believed that perpetual suffering of the labor force could be alleviated by redistributing the wealth of industries to all of its citizens. The realistic application, as we have seen in the U.S.S.R., Venezuela, and China has yet to accomplish the goals that Karl Marx and Freidrick Engel expected it to achieve. In fact, much to the contrary. In part because this system attempts to subjugate an individual's right of  self preservation, self-determination, individual autonomy, and individual liberty. They believed that the government, and not the people, had the responsibility to enforce these values on their citizens instead of allowing the citizens to do it willingly. The community was more important than the individual and an individual was not allowed to deviate from the national will. The truths that I believe can be gleaned from this ideology are as follows: Taking care of the community, allowing working class people the opportunity to live a life with limited suffering, distribution of land and resources to the majority, and destroying the concentrated power of the wealthy over the political system and the poor. These are noble truths that should be pursued in any system and are within the realm of reality; but they can only be achieved by an individual and a nation that loves and cares for one another. It cannot be coerced or legislated by any government.  It must come from a higher morality of the heart.

    Capitalism on the other hand focuses almost exclusively on individual self-determination. The right to own as much property as you want, the right to accrue massive amounts of wealth, the right of individuals to be sovereign entities. All of these attributes are beneficial to the expansive growth of an individual but without a moral compass, and left un-checked, can dangerously lead to selfishness, greed, narcissism, and an overall negligence of those that are suffering in the community.  We all have met these types of people in our lives. It's all about them and what they want and nevermind that you are poor or disabled. It must be your fault that you are suffering, in their opinion. This is the result of excessive self-love and un-restrained ambition. For this reason, James Madison (one of the many writers of the Constitution) observed that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Capitalism cannot sustain itself when greed, selfishness and hedonism are practiced without remorse. The Capitalism of modern America has not held to the founding fathers' vision for our society. It has been hijacked by a small percentage of the wealthiest Americans that have aggregated enormous amounts of wealth beyond imagination; consuming the majority of our resources, buying our elections,  and enslaving the working class. One percent of our population controls fifteen times the amount of wealth as the bottom fifty percent of our nation. (Forbes,Oct.8, 2020) That is an undisputable, utterly nauseating fact.

    In conclusion, I have only briefly tried to convey the positive and negative attributes of both socio-economic theories in an accessible manner. Both systems, at their genesis were truly intended to bring about the best possible solution by government to ease the suffering of humanity and both have succeeded in many respects and failed miserably in others. One could argue that Capitalism is better or worse than Communism but if we can examine them honestly, we will see certain inalienable truths in both of them. If we could dissect the ideas of both systems, we can observe that we are individuals that must have individual freedoms and liberties, self-determination, and self-interest; but also that we are part of something greater; a community; and resources such as air, and water, and food belong to us all. We don't have to decide between our individuality and our community. Our identity as individuals does not have to be completely sacrificed by being a caring member of a community, nor does our association with the community have to crush our individuality. They are a counter-balance to one another. 

    I have witnessed this higher synthesis that Martin Luther King Jr. described. It's not just a dream. It's real. I have discovered it among the Amish, the Mennonites, Muslims and the Orthodox Jews. All are highly orthodox, religious, and prescribe to a higher law of spirituality and governance that is described in the sacred text of the Bible. It is the highest spiritual law that both Islam and Christianity and Judaism agree upon. "Love God with all of your heart and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. "This revolutionary idea is not so foreign to us, if we could only gaze introspectively. We are a unique individual brought into this world into the community of a family. As a member of the family community, we can pursue our own interests and we can demonstrate unique expression of ourselves. When situations arise that affect the entire family community, we must restrain our individual desires and give of ourselves out of love for the family. This is the higher synthesis.  

Yoel D. Avraham