Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice Volume 25 (2021), pp. 51-71
Marxists Behaving Badly: Anti-Stalinism on the “Left”
Grover Furr
Abstract:
In theory, Marxists are materialists. Materialists decide the truth or falsehood of hypothesis on the basis of evidence. But with regard toJoseph 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 andtheory; 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 socialistcountries. 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 atand in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.
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 theWestern anticommunist academics who write about Soviet history. 1Marx 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 Please note that I do not cite this letter from the Marxists.org site.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.
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.2Then 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 andTheoryLenin wrote that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”3But 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. ...man by his practice proves the objective correctness of his ideas, concepts, knowledge, science.
See the article at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>.3Lenin, What Is To Be Done?(1902), Chapter 1, Section D.
53FurrLife gives rise to the brain. Nature is reflected in the human brain. By checking and applying the correctness of these reflections in his practice and technique, man arrives at objective truth. Truth is a process. From the subjective idea, man advances towards objective truth through “Practice” (and technique). Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality.
The unity of the theoretical idea (of knowledge) and of practice–this NB –and this unity precisely in the theory of knowledge, Testing by facts or by practicerespectively, is to be found here ineach step of the analysis.4To the extent that Marxist theorists are divorced from practice, they are, in reality, not Marxists at all. Marxists who are ignorant of the history –that is, the practice –of the first socialist state, the USSR, during its most dynamic period, the “Stalin” period from 1929 through 1953, who have based their interpretation of the Soviet Union on anticommunist lies, cannot learn from the communist movement of the past because they are ignorant of what the practice of that movement really was. They have uncritically ingested a false and slanderous version of that practice from the writings of Leon Trotsky, from Nikita Khrushchev and his hired historical liars, from Gorbachev andhis hired historical liars, and from Western anticommunist writers and academics.Such self-styled “Marxists” do harm by claiming the status of “Marxist” or “communist” while spreading falsehoods within the Left about Soviet history.
In doing so they fatally mislead younger or naïve persons who, disgusted with capitalism, want to learn how to fight for communism.In a review of Phil Slater, Origin and Significance of the Frankfurt School,Terry Eagleton wrote: As a Marxist himself, Slater puts an accurate finger on the central, devastating disability of the whole [Frankfurt] School: its chronic inability to bring its theorizing into any productive relationship with political practice.5This includes all Trotskyists, because their understanding of history is based on “belief” in anticommunist lies about Stalin and the USSR of his day and on their devotion to what amounts to acult around Leon Trotsky. 4These quotations are from Howard Selsam and Harry Martel, Reader in Marxist Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1963), pages 108, 341, 346, 349, 352, 353, 364.5Eagleton, Terry. Review of Phil Slater, Origin and significance of the Frankfurt School (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), New Blackfriars. Cited from inside title page of Slater’s book.
In my years of researching Soviet history of the Stalin period I have discovered a numberof false concepts that characterizenon-objective, non-scientific research in this field, some of which is indeed dishonest but some of which is simply misguided. I will discuss six of the most important falsehoods here. They are: “totalitarianism;”“Stalinism;”“dictator;”“terror;”the “GULAG;”and “democracy.”61. “Totalitarianism”“Totalitarian” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary(OED) as follows: Of or pertaining to a system of government which tolerates only one political party, to which all other institutions are subordinated, and which usually demands the complete subservience of the individual to the State.The OED quotations show that it has been applied to Christianity,to Italian fascism, and to “total” war.
But it has also long been used by anticommunists to claim that communism is similar to fascism. Yuri Fel’shtinsky and George Cherniavsky, very pro-Trotsky writers and very hostile toStalin, are the authors of the latest comprehensive Russian-language biography of Trotsky in five volumes. According to them, Trotsky was the first to use the term “totalitarian” about Stalin.Trotsky ... became the first author to include the Stalin period under the general theme of totalitarianism, and, unprecedented for a communist, went so far as to compare three dictators: the Bolshevik leader Stalin with the fascist Duce Mussolini and the national socialist Fuhrer Hitler.... in the vocabulary of Trotsky and in the book “Stalin” the term “totalitarian power” was entered to denote the nature of Stalin’s political rule.7
In political language since Trotsky the term has been used to yoke the Soviet Union together with Nazi Germany, thus to efface the fact that Hitler was a capitalist, imperialist, and anticommunist more similar to the Western Allies than different from them.And here is the Trotskyist Marxists.org: “Stalin’s regime is probably the most effective totalitarian regime in history....”86I use scare quotes to emphasize the false nature of these concepts as applied to Soviet history.7Iurii Fel’shtinskii, Georgii Cherniavskii, Lev Trotskii. Vrag No. 1 1929-1940. Moscow: Tsentropoligraf, 2013, 380, 383.8At <https://www.marxists.orgglossary/terms/t/o.htm>.