[Marxism] Is this election a great moral choosing of sides? Frankly, no.

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One thing clear: I am voting for Nader and Camejo.  I think we should be
aiming to do better in the future. I consider the Nader-Camejo campaign
the best way to advance the perspective of working-class political
action (including Black, Chicano, labor, et al) in this election. My aim
in politics is ultimately the creation of a revolutionary organization
that will do in this country what the July 26 Movement accomplished in
Cuba.  My example for what a labor party should be like and do in this
country is the  actions of the mass movement and Chavez government in
Venezuela.

The idea that a vote for either of the imperialist candidates is a vote
for war -- and I do mean EITHER -- is a complete misunderstanding of the
way bourgeois politics operates in this country  and of the basic
characteristics of imperialist democracy..It is electoralism, not class
struggle politics.  It is moralism, not Marxism.

I know for a fact that there are a significant layer of Bush voters who
could be won to vote against the war if they had a chance to do so (As
in Let the People Vote onWar).  Millions of voters for the two parties
are caught in the two-party trap set by imperialist democracy.  They are
not responsible for the war.  To say the opposite is both wrong
scientifically, and a bad way to approach building the antiwar movement
that will be urgently needed whoever wins.

About the trahison de clercs in this election, I don't buy it.  Louis
indicates that they are responsible because they know better.  I think
their actions prove quite satisfactorily that they do not know better.
If they once knew better in some cases, that is history.  Whether they
are engaged in a long-term shift to the right is very possible and in
some cases probable but not certain. Their vote in the election will not
be the moment that decisively demonstrates this.

People like Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky and so on do some very useful
work but I guess my core response when they fall for the Democrats is
not to feel betrayed.  It resembles more my favorite line from Peanuts.
Lucy: "That's all right, Chalie Brown, we never really had any faith in
you."

And frankly, I don't see Walter's posts as dishonest or pro-Kerry
subterfuge of any kind.  And that's my view regardless of how he votes
-- a  Great Moral Choice he may have evaded by fleeing the country.
(Oops, was that wisecrack "assisting the police"?)


Fred
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