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

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DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder • endless wars • ingrained racism & social injustice • worker exploitation • incurable via reforms

Grover Furr

We are grateful to Prof. Furr for having the political fortitude to take on this enormously divisive and important issue with the implacable intellectual honesty it requires.

Grover Furr
Montclair State University

Abstract: In theory, Marxists are materialists. Materialists decide the truth or falsehood of a hypothesis on the basis of evidence. But with regard to Joseph Stalin and Soviet history during the time of his leadership, many Marxists are in fact idealists, ignoring evidence in favor of their preconceived ideas. This essay discusses: the need for objectivity in historical research; the dialectical relationship of practice and theory; and six words or phrases that are hallmarks of idealism and anticommunism on the pseudo-Marxist “Left”: Totalitarianism; Stalinism; Stalin the “Dictator;” “The Great Terror;” the GULAG; Democracy. The anti-Marxist nature of the Trotskyist website Marxists.org. is exposed and critiqued. The essay concludes that a true Marxist Left must reject the errors examined here.

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:

… it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.1

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.

We will fall prey to confirmation bias.2 Then we will have no chance at all of discovering the truth, for even if we stumble upon it we will not recognize it.

Anticommunists and Trotskyists cannot afford to be objective because the evidence does not support their falsehoods and fabrications. Very few of the academic scholars who write about Stalin-era Soviet history make any attempt to practice objectivity.

Practice and Theory
Lenin wrote that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”3 But what makes theory scientific, and so potentially revolutionary? That the theory is tested by an accurate understanding of the world, which is gained through practice.

Lenin understood that practice is indispensable for Marxist theory: Replying to Dühring, who had attacked Marx’s dialectics, Engels says that Marx never even thought of “proving” anything by means of Hegelian triads, that Marx only studied and investigated the real process, and that he regarded the conformity of a theory to reality as its only criterion.

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.

READ THE WHOLE ESSAY HERE

^REFS

¹ Marx to Ruge, September, 1843. At <https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/ Letters_from_the_Deutsch-
Französische_Jahrbücher>. Please note that I do not cite this letter from the Marxists.org site. All boldface and
italic type in this article is by me.
² See the article at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>.
³ Lenin, What Is To Be Done? (1902), Chapter 1, Section D.

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[su_box title=”ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE” style=”bubbles” box_color=”#000000″ title_color=”#ffffff” radius=”12″]Armed with a Ph.D. from Princeton, Grover Furr is a specialist in Medieval English Literature, but his real passion is political history with a focus on Marxism and the trajectory of modern revolution. Conscious of the insidious role played by anti-Stalinism in defeating revolutionary efforts, he is virtually alone in his struggle to rectify the record concerning Stalin. [/su_box]

Note: Originally this article appeared Cultural Logic, as per the details below:
“Marxists Behaving Badly: Anti-Stalinism on the ‘Left’.” Cultural Logic, 25 (2021), 51-71.
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/197798
This is a fully rewritten and annotated version of the talk that the author gave to the ICSS at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library on March 8, 2020.

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