18 January 2025
I anticipate that the Merry Stalintime Address, that I am still celebrating the event itself, may upset comrades. Having perhaps expected a more radical turn in Gladsnost and Politstroika, these comrades may think I have betrayed or deceived them. Fear not, comrades! As they say in the East, 'Sovetsky Soyuz nyot dismembered one year, Tovarishch Gorbachev take half decade (dyat blyat)'. If Gladsnost and Politstroika were truly empty Party Congress resolutions, why then should I damage the repution of my Netlog for such a universally disliked comrade like Comrade Gorbachev?
The manner of the problem of Stalin is actually similar to what I have just written. Outside of the Marxist-Leninist tradition, Comrade Stalin has had rubbish both foreign and domestic heaped upon his grave, and his errors made excessive under an atomic micro-scope. There is a question of strategy at play: do we hide Stalin (or gag Gorbachev) within until members of the Party Order reach the inner rank of Central Committeeman, even Politbüro cadre? I think such a cryptic subterfuge should hurt the general health, and efficiency of the Party/government. Limiting the appearance of Comrade Stalin in non-party or non-Leftist settings will draw the ire of many young and old communists, yet is basically speaking quite possible without severe damage. I must caution, however, that many inconspicuous less-than-communist comrades I have known used Stalin as a creeping purge tool to ,,de-Stalinise'' (de-communistify) our organisations, which affirms the grossest fears of those whose ire should be drawn by any curtailing or mitigation policy like this. Alas, it happens to start with Stalin, but historically tends to end with Lenin or Engels, and in the most extreme cases with Marx or socialism (F Lassalle, E Bernstein,
J Lovestone, B Wolfe, perhaps R Chaplin) immediately come to mind. Then of course there is the gaping chasm of ruin that is the Gorbachev Government, which chills many of us into a pessimist conservatism, wherein a 'retreat from Stalin' is construed as the retreat from socialism all together.
As reformers, we have to consider such problems as these— we can not just purge the comrades of these views or holding these fears. Just as Comrade Stalin made errors, so too did we reformers make catastrophic errors during our reign in the Gorbachev Government. Never the less, like Stalin and Marxism-Leninism, Reform-Leninism achieved gross success in the People's Republic of China during the Deng Government. Remember that Comrade Deng said, 'write this down: we will never do to Mao what Khrushchev did to Stalin'. And as I said in my Stalintime Address, 'if you should forget him, you shall be forgotten'. Id est, say about Stalin what you should have said about you. If inter-Leftist comradery and friendship are to be restored for the future, perhaps Comrade Stalin, Comrade Trotsky, Comrade Mao, maybe (as I maintain) Comrade Gorbachev, must all be granted the Robespierric 'exorbitant favour'? In the name of revolution, its movement and ideals.
I think a general favour/amnesty is the only sensible, and truly reforming, option available to us. The uncomfortable truth which stands in the way of this sensible resolution, is that the Stalin Problem is actually a socialism problem, and that is my problem with the Stalin Problem. There are many Leftists, including whole tendencies, who hide behind the errors of Comrade Stalin as an excuse for their own. In a bit of farcical inception, the Bolshevik-Leninists hide many of Comrade Trotsky's errors behind those of Stalin! And enquiring of Comrade Lenin's errors? Untouchable— grounds for concerted attack or immediate expulsion. Whereas if any Leftist looks to learn from any-one ranging from Comrade Khrushchev to Comrade Gorbachev, whether in Bolshevik-Leninist or Marxist-Leninist circles, one finds exclusively errors! Every-one after Trotsky must have been a ,,Stalinist reactionary'', and every-one after Stalin must have been a ,,Trotskyite revisionist'', or so we could forgive a new comrade for concluding. The Bolshevik-Leninists refuse to read Stalin's works and learn from them; the Marxist-Leninists pervasively ignore Trotsky's works and learn caricatures for them; all of them except liberals and Right-social-democrats discount Gorbachev's works, and these two ideologies are not interested in learning of them, but display them as trophies of anti-communist victory. Such a strident, Calvinistic multiple personality disorder plagues the Left from this violently isolationist behaviour.
One of the grossest errors, and one which impacts the Left to this day, was Comrade Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation policy. Like the totalitarian school of Soviet studies, he mistook the defects of the model for those of the man at its helm. Comrade Stalin had been an active Bolshevik for twenty years at Lenin's death, twenty-five if we include his career in the pre-split Russian Social Democratic Labour Party: certainly the peculiar sociality of the underground revolutionary Party should have a strong influence on every member. It is curious to acknowledge that Comrade Trotsky was also deeply influenced by this sociality, suggesting a not uniquely Bolshevik origination. I do not know enough about Menshevism, Martov, or Comrade Trotsky's intellectual lineage/inspirations to say any-thing more on this importantly posited subject.
Comrade Khrushchev ought to have, as I believe Comrade Gorbachev in large part and Comrade Deng definitely did, focused his reform efforts on the system and the sociality engendered within it. By spoiling the initial excitement for reform, and retreating into the tenets of anti-bureaucratism, all to court the generally more Rightward Zeks (the Woke-Stalinists of yester-year), ensured that Khrushchev should be at war with the entire Soviet bureaucracy, not to mention the more conservative or pro-Stalin of his fellow reformers, now alienated from his coalition by rabid Zeks and Zekism. I am, if but lightly, alleging two equally serious points:
I. Khrushchev prioritised his own selfish designs at the expence of the over-all reform movement and its other policy objectives.
II. Khrushchev bought into the Omni-Stalin Delusion to some extent, believing Stalin and his legacy to still have an immense input as to the future of the system and its sociality (rather than the system and its sociality themselves). If any-thing, Comrade Khrushchev bolstered the then naturally waning influence of the Stalin legacy, by so attacking it.
I am not insisting that it is impossible to offer a comradely yet thorough critique of Comrade Stalin; but I am suggesting that any comrade who embarks on such a project must have a care for his true motives in doing so, the likely result of his particular project, and how he should feel if another comrade were to compose a similar project of critique against him. The Left loves to speak about how empathetic it is to-day, but I should say posit that the Left has never been so unable to express sympathy. Empathy is a removed calculation based upon understanding experience: it is an emotionless intellectual tool, like planning or the dialectic, yet many comrades treat it like a justified nullifier of sympathy, a replacement for sympathy. This is simply unacceptable, and per Gladsnost (Cordialness) must be rectified.
The Stalin Problem is not the same as the Yezhovshchina Problem. Saddling Comrade Stalin with blame for the purges is laziness on a scale utterly dishonourable, specially for communists. Comrade Trotsky also conducted (traditional party) purges and maintained heated rivalries with leaders and entire party factions within the Bolshevik-Leninist movement. I myself have suffered many such betrayals: yet Trotsky and Stalin (and Yezhov and Mao) are both dead! Clearly, the Left has a much bigger problem here than one which is purely historical or completely Stalin-derived. The ghoul of history hunts (haunts?) the Left but until Eleven, if I might contribute my own stupid philosophical quip.
I cautioned earlier on that reforms aimed against previous socialist leaders have a tendency to end with Lenin or Engels, where they had started with Stalin and Mao. This has extra importance for our reform efforts. The vanguardist organisational theory has been not merely a dogma of the Leninist ideology for a very long time, but is a founding dogma of Vladimir Ilyich himself. To go against the sacred doctrine decreed by Comrade Lenin is a dangerous proposition and course for any movement: on the Left we have denunciations of reformers to Lenin(ism), and on the Right we have denunciations to reformers of Lenin. It is not, nor must it be our intention to degrade reform into a job of character assassination, which should squander the opportunity to truly better the institutions and policies of the Left. The Union Council of Communist Parties and the Union Council International are not organisational structures which Lenin should have supported, but the conditions of our time and place have changed. We are not revolting against Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, or Mao; we are reforming the ideological model for our present needs, which are by necessity qualitatively different.
The unifying theme throughout every one of these musings has been that focusing on the incorrect particular in the matter at hand could cost us the entire movement for reform. To plan our reforms around one man is to instantly fall into the erroneous supposition of the revolutionary leader cult: if only we attack Stalin enough, socialist theory will naturally be reformed. in the wise words of Chinese Communist Hahn Xo-Loa 'that's not how reform works!'. Indeed comrades, such a view is too short-sighted to even be considered reforming, it is merely another form of dogmatism. Look beyond our leaders and history: that is where living socialism may truly be found. The very meaning of reform is to peer beyond the quarrels and stagnation currently beset, to build wide a bridge over them.
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