Marxists Behaving Badly

Why don’t Marxists study the Soviet experience in order to learn what these pioneers of the communist movement did, and what we can learn from them?
For Marx, as for all materialists, practice was – is — primary. Theory must be tested through practice. To base theory on the basis of a false understanding of reality is as fatal to knowledge as it would be to base theory, as idealists do, on ideas alone, without regard to material reality.
The Stalin era was the heroic era of the worldwide communist movement. Indeed, the 20th century may be fairly described as the “Soviet century,” since all the important political and social events and upheavals took place with reference to the Soviet Union.
If, following Marx, we want to build an egalitarian, communist society, we must study the practice of those who came before us in this endeavor. That means studying the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution, especially the period when Joseph Stalin was in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state.
Why don’t today’s Marxists do this? My talk will explore the reasons for this fatal neglect and urge a corrective. — Grover Furr, Montclair State University