Yes, *that* Stalin

"Anarchism or Socialism" is a short work by Joseph Stalin, published in several Bolshevik newspapers in Georgia 1906-1907. At the time, Georgia was controlled by Czarist Russia. Due to the suppression of the newspapers and the subsequent arrest of Stalin himself, "Anarchism or Socialism" is unfinished. Moreover, the published portions exist in several different versions. This review is based on the version available free on-line at the Marxist Internet Archive.

Stalin's article is relatively uninteresting. Its polemic against anarchism is Marxism 101. The Georgian anarchists against whom Stalin contends are a rather confused bunch, and the future dictator of the Soviet Union has little problem exposing and mocking their contradictions. At one point he calls them "schoolgirls"! Some of the anarchist accusations against Marxism strike me as weird, such as the claim that the Communist Manifesto was plagiarized from an earlier manifesto by one Victor Considerant. Even if true, so what? That would simply force the anarchists to take on Messieur Considerant instead...

Stalin exposits on dialectical materialism, the Marxist view of history, the character of the state and its abolition, etc. Along the way, he criticizes vulgar (reductionist) materialism, "parallelism" (the idea that material factors and ideas are of equal importance), idealism and "empty theology". The Georgian anarchists seem to have been parallelists, while rejecting dialectics as unscientific and metaphysical. Stalin hotly denies the charge that the "Social Democrats" (the name used by the Bolsheviks at this time) want to set up a party dictatorship or state capitalism. Quoting the Communist Manifesto and pointing to the Paris Commune, Stalin claims that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" is similar to the radically democratic Commune and the last state power in history, before the state dies away. The whole class, not just the Marxist party, should be in charge during the transitional period.

Stalin further criticizes the Georgian anarchists (who were followers of Kropotkin) for promoting decentralization and small-scale industry. Weirdly, the anarchists had accused the Bolsheviks of being against the violent overthrow of the system, something our author has little problem disproving. I wonder whether Stalin's outspokenness on this point might have led to the suppression of the Social Democratic newspaper in which his article first appeared?

I can't say that "Anarchism or Socialism" thrilled me, but since the article is unfinished and directed against a particularly muddled group of opponents, I suppose we have to give Joe a break on this one.

And then, maybe not. Two stars.