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

[Austin, Andrew]

Wow, that's a terrible response, Louis.  And what an over-the-top
strawman: "support Kerry in order to wipe out feudalism or slavery."
John really nailed you.

-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:marxism-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 3:20 PM
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: RE: [Marxism] Stan Goff, Bill Fletcher and the 2-party system


>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

This is the standard argument I have heard from CPUSA members or those
who agree with them politically. John Lacny used this argument once
before. He is a lower-level trade union official in a union that has
traditionally had a strong CP representation. This is from one of his
posts to
alt.politics.socialism.trotsky:

 >>Call that what you want, but it isn't Marxism; while working-class
revolutionaries around the world at that time admired John Brown, they
also knew (as did Marx) that Lincoln was the political figure who
history chose at that time to actually get the job done, and that there
was a historical role for both. Your insistence that Marx never urged
support for a "bourgeois" candidate has at least settled the question of
which religion you most closely match in your cognitive
disposition: your posthumous transformation of Lincoln into a socialist
is worthy of the Mormons.<<

This was my response:

 >>Marx thought it was necessary to complete the bourgeois-democratic
revolution [I would now formulate this as bourgeois revolution after
reading Neil Davidson] in the USA. In Europe, where it had been largely
completed,  the need was to build socialist parties. That being said,
Marx's writings on the revolution in Germany, where he called for
permanent revolution, are far more negative about the prospects of
bourgeois parties fighting feudal reaction than his civil war writings
which were more journalistic than analytic in nature. Well, if you think
that we need to support Kerry in order to wipe out feudalism or slavery,
be my guest. I've heard battier ideas from other Stalinists in the name
of Marxism.<<