http://www.birth-of-tv.org/birth/assetView.do?asset=BIRTHOFTELEV19001____111842296033

There is an interview on youtube from 1957.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=martin+luther+king+interview&search=Search

But would King have opposed communism, tout court? “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”?

I doubt that very much: “And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”

Taking Biblical quotes out of context does not a good argument make. The passage in Acts refers specifically to the organization of early Christian communities and is of a piece with the Gospel parables of the rich young man and the workers in the vineyard. Thus the passage in Acts is meant to confirm that the Christian communities were indeed following the lessons of Christ, similarly to the miraculous healing and other events related in the Book. But this is only for organizing the Christian community within itself, it does not address how the Christian community or individual Christians should handle property rights with respect to the outside world. On the other hand the parable of the talents and the aforementioned parable of the workers in the vineyard can be read as respectful of property rights and in fact a defense of the same. Even though he may have been an indifferent theologian, I suspect Dr. King would be quite aware of these two threads of argument running through the New Testament and thus cautious to endorse either laissez faire capitalism or communism.

I don’t think that’s possible, given the natural and willed limitations of the mass media and their audience. “I approve…” is a great deal simpler than “I approve of this, but not of that, because….”

Sure, and one can approve of Dr. King’s civil rights leadership without approving of all of his political and economic ideas. The same goes for Gandhi—great leader, great man, terrible economist. And Jefferson—great political thinker and polymath, but a slave-owner and terrible hypocrite. So it goes.

Social democracy, Vietcong sympathies and slavery all in one enumeration of sins – is social democracy really held in that low a regard in the US?

Saying, “I approve of Dr. King” is, in contemporary American politics, the equivalent of saying, “I approve of puppies.”

And that’s a good thing. Having a civil rights leader up there in the pantheon of civic saints can only be good for race relations. After all, within a decade and a half from a time when black people in the American southeast could be shot by white people with impunity, public displays of racism were already unacceptable. The rapid (if superficial) acceptance of equality for non-whites came about partially because of how quickly MLK joined the ranks of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington in the elementary school classroom.

And the idea that the early church was communistic isn’t exactly something cooked up in the 1980s to curry favor with the Sandinistas.