[The Immortal Goon]

Comrade Potemkin I would like to figure out how you get that Lincoln was justified in being a tyrant? This defies Marxist study of the American Civil War. The CPSU studied the war itself and said the South was throwing off the shackles of its Northern Bourgeoise oppressors because the average Southerner was just a farmer and only a small miniority bourgeoise slave holders.

I REALLY disagree with this assessment. As does Marx, actually:

It is above all to be remembered that the war did not originate with the North, but with the South. The North finds itself on the defensive. For months it had quietly looked on while the secessionists appropriated the Union's forts, arsenals, shipyards, customs houses, pay offices, ships and supplies of arms, insulted its flag and took prisoner bodies of its troops. Finally the secessionists resolved to force the Union government out of its passive attitude by a blatant act of war, and solely for this reason proceeded to the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston. On April 11 (1861) their General Beauregard had learnt in a meeting with Major Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter, that the fort was only supplied with provisions for three days more and accordingly must be peacefully surrendered after this period. In order to forestall this peaceful surrender, the secessionists opened the bombardment early on the following morning (April 12), which brought about the fall of the fort in a few hours. News of this had hardly been telegraphed to Montgomery, the seat of the Secession Congress, when War Minister Walker publicly declared in the name of the new Confederacy: No man can say where the war opened today will end. At the same time he prophesied that before the first of May the flag of the Southern Confederacy will wave from the dome of the old Capitol in Washington and within a short time perhaps also from the Faneuil Hall in Boston. Only now ensued the proclamation in which Lincoln called for 75,000 men to defend the Union. The bombardment of Fort Sumter cut off the only possible constitutional way out, namely the convocation of a general convention of the American people, as Lincoln had proposed in his inaugural address. For Lincoln there now remained only the choice of fleeing from Washington, evacuating Maryland and Delaware and surrendering Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia, or of answering war with war.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... /index.htm

I more or less see it as the completion of the American revolution. The Jacobin tendancies of the Jeffersonians finally manifested themselves at a point where they could level against the southern arisotocracy and then completed their revolutionary task in a typicaly Jacobin fashion. Of course, this was more or less again impeded when the Radical Republicans lost power and revolutonary Jacobin reforms were killed before they could start.

Essentially, in the US there was a primitive form of dual power at work. Although, unlike the cited artical, this form of dual power was not between socialism and capitalism; it was slavery and industrial capitalism. The nature of the advance guard, however, was the same. The similarties between these two dual powers:

1. The progressive force of the dialectic on both sides is summed up: "What is the political nature of this government? It is a revolutionary dictatorship, i.e., a power directly based on revolutionary seizure."

2. The two powers must, necessarily collapse.

The Jacobin bourgouis ended up winning the war, though their rule ended and thier revolutionary reforms took a long time to come to fruition - though they necessarily had to eventually.

That's not to say I would support these same forces in today's material struggle of forces, but I certainly would have then...as Marx himself did.

-TIG

[Rajin Cajun]

The North was preparing an invasion forth for South Carolina long before any shots were fired. Most Southern states were actually for the preservation of the Union until Lincoln begain mustering forces to squash South Carolina for speaking its mind. Most states sat on the fence last minute like the Commonwealth of Virginia but they decided to secede when Lincoln said he would invade the South and even offered Lee the position to squash South Carolina and Lee refused.

The bourgeoise did not run the Southern Government this is simplising and believing US government propaganda and bourgeoise revisionism for if the South was run by the bourgeoise like you claim then they would have razed Washington D.C. after the Battle of First Mannassas because no Federal troops were in the way for the South to completely conquer the North and Raze D.C. Which no member of the bourgeoise would have passed up.

Jefferson Davis and his bourgeoise cronies were not even in control of the State the generals were and they didn't own slaves and being an officer in the US military during the time period was not a very good or secure job with the large cuts in military spending. Basically members of the Proletariat were in charge of the South and its defense while the North was drafting immigrants so the bourgeoise didn't have to get off their asses.

[Andres]

Now thats how necroposting is done!