[Marxism] Stan Goff, Bill Fletcher and the 2-party system

[Austin, Andrew]

Recall the Address of the International Working Men's Association to
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, presented to
US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams on January 28, 1865.  Remember that?
Marx penned it himself in November 1864:

"We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large
majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of
your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death
to Slavery. 

"From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of
Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the
destiny of their class....

"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of
Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so
the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They
consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of
Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his
country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained
race and the reconstruction of a social world."

To quote one of my comrades here, "This is amazing. Read the above
again. Repeat it aloud--seriously! This is what he--a Marxist-- actually
wrote!"

Good god, what was Marx thinking supporting a bourgeois party?  And make
no mistake about it.  If Marx were an American citizen, he would have
voted for Lincoln.  Why?  Because Marx wasn't an ideoloque.  He looked
at the historical situation and made a strategic - and one might based
on what he said argue principled - choice to support Republicans.

Today the strategic choice is Democrats.

Andrew