The image attached portrays the defence of Stalin as a waste of time at best, this is frankly charitable compared to most self proclaimed leftists who think the rehabilitation of Stalin is actively harmful towards our movement.
There are reasons as to why the rehabilitation of Stalin is indeed an important issue and not just some trivial thing that we must halt in order to gain a larger following.
The rehabilitation of Stalin’s image is less about the rehabilitation of Stalin as a historical individual and more about defending and upholding Marxism.
Condemning or even refusing to uphold Stalin to at least some extent is equivalent to fighting our enemies on their terms. Why would we let our enemies decide who we should love and hate? There’s no reason to allow the historical narrative that our enemies have constructed to be our historical narrative, that’s just ideological surrender, may as well become a liberal at that point.
The total slander and demonization of Stalin’s image is what leads most people into deviationist tendencies, tendencies which are totally harmless towards the bourgeoisie. It’s only logical, if people believe Marxism-Leninism led to practically 1984 in real life, then why would they follow it?
Rather than keeping quiet about the USSR under Stalin, it is our duty to defend this period against the reactionary slander laid upon it. It was the first time in human history that mankind entered the socialist mode of production, and that’s something to be cherished.
Well, I do think we need new ideas for Communist Theory. It’s not just the lies and propaganda about the USSR, it’s also simply that they collapsed and failed. So what I’m missing is something like “neo-communism” that incorporates new information and communication technology into communism to be more efficient, realtime and democratic. Or advances in psychology to create tests for who may hold leadership. Game theory about how people min-max to achieve power to end up with leaders who are good at gaining and holding onto power, but not at ruling, and countermeasures. Even generative AI could be insanely useful for a communist economy.
But whenever you look into spaces like this, you’re encouraged to read the theory of the “ye olden days”. But in order to refute a hypothesis, you only need to show one counter example of where that hypothesis breaks down. And the USSR did fail. So the theory NEEDS to be fixed, patched, improved. But the few communist spaces I’ve looked into all seem very “conservative” with their ideology. Not that I have much to say on how to do that, besides ideas.
I think something like “how Stalin damaged the USSR and how to prevent it from happening again” would be far more useful to proliferate belief in communism.
Marxism-Leninism is an evolving science. Theory written in the past holds up, but certainly isn’t all there is, much has been written today and in the last century that goes beyond Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. The CPC for example is learning from the successes and errors of the Soviet Union, including the failure of Stalin to properly line up a successor or prevent a Khrushchev-style figure from instilling a social nihilism.
Contrary to your belief, we should not be learning how to “avoid a Stalin.” We should instead be learning how to avoid a Khrushchev, a Gorbachev. Stalin built up the USSR during its most tumultuous period, it wasn’t him but his successors that ultimately tanked the project. That doesn’t mean Stalin was perfect, but he was good.