We need to talk about Stalin

"When the Hungarian people erupted in revolt against the Russian occupier, the question was: which side are you on? When the Algerian people fought for liberation against the “socialist” government of Guy Mollet, the question was: which side are you on? When Cuba was invaded by Washington’s puppets, the question was: which side are you on? and when the Cuban trade unions are taken over by the commissars of the dictatorship, the question is also: which side are you on?"

 Hal Draper

I am, and remain, a passionate supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. The job of a genuine supporter, as distinct from a sycophant, is sometimes to criticise. And right now some criticism is called for. Jeremy has appointed Seamus Milne as a press officer.

Milne, not to mince words, is an unrepentant Stalinist. And for that reason, if for no other, he ought not to be appointed to a prominent post in Corbyn's team.

In some quarters it's being suggested that this kind of criticism is sectarian, or unhelpful, the kind of archetypical leftist fiddling while Rome burns which we'd be better off without. This in itself is quite revealing of a left that has never come to terms with the horror of Stalinism: as though death tolls rising into the tens of millions were a niggling political detail, which shouldn't allow us to be distracted from proper politics. As though the crushing of Hungary, the imposition of marshal law across Eastern Europe, the gunning down of people at borders, the walls, the barbed wire, the dehumanisation, the humiliation, the routine day-to-day normalised suffocation of freedoms, as though all of this shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of unity. No, on the contrary, the question of Stalinism is a question of a duty to the past, a duty not to forget its victims.

It is also a question about the future. The attitude we take towards Stalinism speaks volumes of what we mean by that misappropriated word 'socialism'. For me, socialism is something that happens from below, by workers and oppressed people learning to assert their collective agency. It is about the extension of democracy and freedom into every area of existence, the unleashing of human possibilities and creativity. It is the exact opposite of the extension of top-down state control, imposed by committee and enforced by Russian tanks. I do not want a man who accepts the latter, this grotesque parody of socialism, speaking for the labour movement in this country. The reality of Stalinism set back the cause of socialism for generations, and we cannot distance ourselves from it decisively enough.

Finally - and this pales into insignificance compared to what I've already said, which is the stuff of moral imperatives and basic choices - this appointment is a gift to Corbyn's critics. The Labour right are already gleefully tweeting away, and the Tories will be sure to follow. And I, for one, will not be defending Milne against them. There are some causes for which we ought to be prepared to go to the wall. The career of a journalist who is prepared to overlook the odd genocide in the interests of world-historical progress is not one of them.