Marxists Behaving Badly: Anti-Stalinism on the “Left”

Note: The initial draft of this essay was completed on International Women’s Day, when we celebrate the struggles of working-class women. Founded in 1910, it was long a holiday only in the Soviet Union and, after World War 2, in the pro-Soviet socialist countries. It was primarily a communist holiday until the 1960s. It stands as a reminder to us both of the struggles of working women worldwide, and of the
achievements of the communist movement.

In 1843, in a letter to Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx wrote these words:

Marxists are supposed to be materialists. Dialectical materialism is a science. But few Marxists act like materialists. Most Marxists “believe” – believe Khrushchev, believe Gorbachev, believe Trotsky, and believe the Western anti-communist academics who write about Soviet history.

Objectivity
The only way to arrive at the truth in any investigation is to proceed with objectivity. A scientist tries to be objective – meaning, to question her own biases, and not permit those biases –which everyone possesses – to predetermine the results of her analysis.

Therefore we have to recognize our own preconceived ideas and prejudices, and then take definite steps to doubt them, to question them, lest they fatally bias our investigation. We have to work out a method of looking with particular skepticism upon evidence that tends to support our own prejudices and preconceived ideas. We also need to give especially generous consideration to any evidence that tends to contradict our own prejudices and preconceived ideas.

If we fail to do this, we will do the opposite. Inevitably, we will give an especially generous reading to evidence that tends to support our preconceived ideas, and be quick to reject any evidence that tends to disprove our preconceived ideas.

From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice – such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality.