I think given what Lincoln was faced with he made by far the most moral decisions, but even what he did was just a bandaid for real change that was made excruciatingly slowly from 1868 on.
>>2829449>Has America ever had a good presidentNot really.
Lincoln was okay but his biggest stain was his treatment of Native people, he ordered the hanging of 38 of them. But other than that he mostly made the right decisions.
FDR was also pretty based but his biggest blunder was the Japanese internment camps.
William Henry Harrison
>do nothing
>die
The GOAT
good for whom? good for the bourgeoisie? good for the proletariat? FDR was good at disarming the proletariat with social democracy. Lincoln was good at proletarianizing the ex-slaves.
Trump
Plenty? That's a stupid question.
George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Van Buren, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Ike, Kennedy (aborted), LBJ (it's compicated), Nixon (yes), HW Bush (yes).
Then there are the ones who were good guys but not cut out for it like Carter, Biden and Ulysses Grant that ended up disastrous.
The real LION 🦁 among all Americans was Alexander Hamilton however.
I'd sat Lincoln and FDR were the only ones who did more good than harm from a communist perspective.
Joe Biden
>>2829597george washington crushed shay's rebellion and the whiskey rebellion. the founders didn't even want suffrage for white males if they didn't own property.
>>2829602one could say FDR rescued capitalism from revolution
>>2829729Not really since the US wasn't really close to a revolution when he took office. What he did do though was recognize the Soviet Union, allow unprecedented breathing room for American communists, helped the USSR survive Nazi attack, try to build a US-Soviet alliance that would last after the war ended, and envisioned a second Bill of Rights for workers that went well beyond the bare minimum you would expect from somebody just trying to stabilize capitalism. If he had somehow lived I think he would've forced a new confrontation with American capital that could've led to a second business plot and even more radical transformation.
Donald trump
Donald trump
>>2829886>Not really since the US wasn't really close to a revolution when he took office. they were infinitely closer in the 20s and 30s then they are now
>>2829928That's a pretty low bar. But even then I'm not so convinced of that argument since CPUSA membership actually peaked after FDR not before. His relatively lenient treatment of the left clearly did a lot more for the American socialist movement than the New Deal did to harm it.
>>2829597>says bush was a good president. Clearly you’re not a genuine leftist
FDR was also pretty racist, color of law by Richard rothstein does a great job laying out all the ways he and Wilson excluded them from the rights of citizenship.
FDR and had he been healthier and dropped smoking he had Henry Wallace as his heir. His complete vision of the US would have been better for the world internationally and the Cold War would have been prevented
>>2829452>FDR was also pretty based“I am fighting Communism… I want to save our system, the capitalist system…"
-FDR in 1935
Based for the bourgeoisie maybe
>>2829449Poorly defined question. Good from what perspective? Me, for example, could argue that Andrew Jackson was the best USAmerican president - oversaw the building of railroads that served as a sceleton of the creation of the Union/North's industrial base, gave suffrage to all white men regagdless of property owned, removed the slaveowning cannibals Cherokee and gave their land to more historically progressive people - basically, created the great power that is USAmerica! But… Is the existence of USAmerica as the great power a good thing from the perspective of people who aren't USAmericans?
>>2830124god someone young and without the epstein baggage should just plagiarize everything correct chomsky ever said and discard everything incorrect. It sucks to not be able to send people videos like these anymore because they'll just go "but he was on the plane" and not respond to what he is actually saying.
Lincoln was by far one of the top presidents of the entire history of the USA. Even Marx wrote a letter to him on behalf of the first international. He defended America against reactionary middle classes and luddites. I sometimes see fucking idiots try to dismiss Lincoln by explaining that he was racist. They fail to understand that it doesn't matter, because his actions actually had a material impact on the world unlike the wholesome Quaker poetry that these people try to point to instead.
FDR is a test that susses out pro-capital progressives from socialists. Yes, he enacted a lot of helpful government programs that helped the destitute working class. However, these were enacted to END working class revolts. FDR even had labor organizers (class collaborationist) in his cabinet to strategically resolve growing militant labor action in a way that wouldn't embolden them, like the previous "iron stick" approach from Henry Ford. A few years before the New Deal there was martial law being declared to put down labor organizations. New Deal only sought to protect itself by giving out some concessions.
If you've read any theory at all, trade unions are recognized as an ultimately reactionary organization to mediate the conflicts between employer and employee. It's not a revolutionary vehicle so the "empowerment" of them by FDR was essentially just controlled opposition. This became clear in WWII where pretty much all of them declared the intention to "suspend" actually fighting for its members and instead focusing on the "war effort" and patriotism. The union reps then became just another cop, making sure labor was uninterrupted. This theory is part of literally any ideology be it Leninism or anarcho-syndicalism. The fact this basic statement is so controversial is proof of abysmal literacy and laziness from contemporary """socialists"""
Keynesian economics also failed. We can't just "return" to New Deal like progressives want.
>>2831596>Yes, he enacted a lot of helpful government programs that helped the destitute working class. However, these were enacted to END working class revolts. so? revolution only happens when reform is impossible, and even after revolution, the communist party institutes reforms anyway to transition out of the revolutionary society. leftcoms complain that doing reforms after the revolution is reformist, but it's literally the point. to end working class suffering and transition them back into a peaceful life.
i swear for some people revolution is the entire point. like if capitalism disappeared without revolution they would get very mad and complain that they didn't get catharsis. but that's exactly what china's doing. transitioning slowly out of capitalism through a governing communist party. you can claim they are revisionist and should have another civil war about it but most chinese do not want that. they approve of their government because it competently manages society. most people don't want civil war and revolution, they just resort to that when everything else fails. only a few weirdos get really mad when the working class gets help before the bloody civil war that kills millions happens. yes the ruling class can roll reforms back, but they don't have to. japan transitioned out of feudalism and into capitalism without a bourgeois revolution so i am not convinced of the formula that modes of production only change when revolutions happen. this will no doubt be called unmarxist but that's fine. i treat nothing as the final word on things except reality itself.
>>2831596>This became clear in WWII where pretty much all of them declared the intention to "suspend" actually fighting for its members and instead focusing on the "war effort" and patriotism.American communists supported the no-strike pledge and did so with the approval of the USSR. Do you really think there should have been strikes disrupting the war effort against the Nazis?
>>2830098HW Bush was the last American president to say no to Israel and to deport kahanists
>>2830135>the guy all african american voted for with great fervor and correctly saw as improving their lives was actually adolph hitler or watheverUltraleft revisionism.
I agree about Wallace though.
>>2831439He was a capitalist but he saved the world from Fascism and build an extremely centralized economy
>>2831478At least parenti was never on kulak island
>>2829454This. FDRs administration made the proletariats lives better for a short time to prevent revolution in the long run. Still right wing criticisms of FDR should be called out based on the fact that they are just based on straight up lies.
>>2832016
>America was never at war with the Nazis
I guess those 300k dead Americans just all had mysterious heart attacks.
>They were in an actual inter-imperialist struggle with Japan and only got involved in Europe at all to RESCUE the Nazis from facing justice from the USSR
They actually prioritized the Nazis over Japan. All the Allied powers agreed on a "Germany first" policy, and the European theatre consumed the majority of American resources. Roosevelt was also positively predisposed to the Soviet Union even before the war. He was the first president to recognize the Soviet government and personally got on well with Stalin. Prior to the US entry into the war they were already providing weapons to Britain, and lend lease to the USSR hastened Soviet victory and spared millions of Soviet lives. If they had wanted to rescue the Nazis then they would have simply stayed out of the war, or joined on their side. In fact, the statement that they joined the war to rescue the Nazis makes absolutely no sense because at the end of 1941 the Nazis appeared to be winning, and the Soviets were on the back foot.
>inb4 they only joined against Germany because the Germans declared war on them
That in itself should tell you a lot. Obviously the Germans didn't consider them to be their friends, and they declared war because the Americans were very obviously pro-British in their orientation and had been providing the Allies with war materials for years.
>>2832016
I wonder if Stalin said this to FDR when they were hanging out
>>2832150They were too busy laughing at Churchill together.
>>2832016
thermonvclear trvke
>>2831828Remember that the Meiji Restoration still had civil wars like the Boshin Wars in order for these hard hitting reforms to happen. It is just that it was quick civil wars and not aching years long ones. A similar situation in the states could've happened with the Business Coup but it was stopped before it could have happened. Who is to say if the next hypothetical FDR or Huey Long who try to do reforms actually have a business coup happen to them. It will cause a civil war so don't just assume such changes will not come with violence.
>>2829449What counts as good?
Did absolutely unironically nothing wrong? Did more good than he did bad under some vague moral standards? Was historically progressive?
>>2832429Britain was already well on its way to becoming a bourgeois state and was also less positively disposed towards slavery, so I would say not. The American War of Independence really was a nothingburger from a communist perspective. Porky on porky violence.
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