[STUDY GROUP] J.V. Stalin's 'Anarchism or Socialism'

[A.J.]

Anarchism or Socilaim (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html)

Marxism and anarchism are built up on entirely different principles, in spite of the fact that both come into the arena of the struggle under the flag of socialism. The cornerstone of anarchism is the individual, whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is the principal condition for the emancipation of the masses, the collective body. According to the tenets of anarchism, the emancipation of the masses is impossible until the individual is emancipated. Accordingly, its slogan is: "Everything for the individual." The cornerstone of Marxism, however, is the masses, whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is the principal condition for the emancipation of the individual. That is to say, according to the tenets of Marxism, the emancipation of the individual is impossible until the masses are emancipated. Accordingly, its slogan is: "Everything for the masses."

The Dialectical Method (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c1)

The Materialist Theory (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c2)

Proletarian Socialism (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3)

[OneBrickOneVoice]

I'd be up for it. Stalin was a terrific writer.

[Rawthentic]

He was? I thought he was too dumb to be a good writer? Anyhow.

Its good to differentiate writer from actor, theoretician from politician, and this case I refer to Lenin and Stalin specifically.

[The Author]

I'd be interested in participating in this analysis of Stalin's critical work.


Originally posted by [email protected] April 30, 2007, 10:42 p.m.
He was? I thought he was too dumb to be a good writer? Anyhow.

Its good to differentiate writer from actor, theoretician from politician, and this case I refer to Lenin and Stalin specifically.

It's comments like these that make me laugh. When someone lacks the knowledge to provide a decent response, they resort to ridiculous, pointless insults in the hopes of provoking their opposition to return the flame in kind. As long as we can avoid the sectarian flaming, I think the discussion can become very interesting. Anarchists and Trots are welcome to comment, but we won't respond to infantile posts like this gem above.

[Rawthentic]

Ha, ok bud. I didn't make it to be a flame, but it seems your type are used to it.

Like I said, I agree with Stalin in that essay above, but it contrasts with the material reality and conditions in Russia...and Stalin's role.

But I mean, can any Marxist worth his salt call Stalin a communist in theory and practice? I will give him the credit for vastly industrializing Russia, but not for the incredible human cost of peasants and workers, who actually did the industrializing.

[syndicat]

Stalin once pointedly said "Paper will take anything that is printed on it." Here he says:

According to the tenets of anarchism, the emancipation of the masses is impossible until the individual is emancipated. Accordingly, its slogan is: "Everything for the individual."

This may be true of extreme individualist anarchism but that is a different viewpoint than social anarchism, which is also called libertarian socialism. Social anarchism is based on the social theory of the person, that persons are inherently social, and raised in social groups of various sorts. (This is also Marx's theory of the person.) Social anarchism recognizes the existence of the class system and the class struggle as the means through which the working class can emanicpate itself. A fundamental principle of social anarchism is, "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves".

The aim of social anarchism is not "everything for the individual" but ownership of land and the means of production by everyone in common, and collective self-management of industries by the workers, and authentic mass control of public affairs thru councils or congresses of delegates rooted in the base assemblies.

Individuality should not be lost sight of however. Altho persons are social each person is also unique, and cannot be reduced to its membership in some group such as a class or nation. The view that reduces the person to just an expression of a group is characteristic of totalitarianism, either fascism (the nation is everything) or Stalinism.

[A.J.]

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c2

".....Let us take a shoemaker who owned a tiny workshop, but who, unable to with stand the competition of the big manufacturers, closed his workshop and took a job, say, at Adelkhanov's shoe factory in Tiflis. He went to work at Adelkhanov's factory not with the view to becoming a permanent wage-worker, but with the object of saving up some money, of accumulating a little capital to enable him to reopen his workshop. As you see, the position of this shoemaker is already proletarian, but his consciousness is still non-proletarian, it is thoroughly petty-bourgeois. In other words, this shoemaker has already lost his petty-bourgeois position, it has gone, but his petty-bourgeois consciousness has not yet gone, it has lagged behind his actual position.


Clearly, here too, in social life, first the external conditions change, first the conditions of men change and then their consciousness changes accordingly.

But let us return to our shoemaker. As we already know, he intends to save up some money and then reopen his workshop. This proletarianised shoemaker goes on working, but finds that it is a very difficult matter to save money, because what he earns barely suffices to maintain an existence. Moreover, he realises that the opening of a private workshop is after all not so alluring: the rent he will have to pay for the premises, the caprices of customers, shortage of money, the competition of the big manufacturers and similar worries -- such are the many troubles that torment the private workshop owner. On the other hand, the proletarian is relatively freer from such cares; he is not troubled by customers, or by having to pay rent for premises. He goes to the factory every morning, "calmly " goes home in the evening, and as calmly pockets his "pay" on Saturdays. Here, for the first time, the wings of our shoemaker's petty-bourgeois dreams are clipped; here for the first time proletarian strivings awaken in his soul.

Time passes and our shoemaker sees that he has not enough money to satisfy his most essential needs, that what he needs very badly is a rise in wages. At the same time, he hears his fellow-workers talking about unions and strikes. Here our shoemaker realises that in order to improve his conditions he must fight the masters and not open a workshop of his own. He joins the union, enters the strike movement, and soon becomes imbued with socialist ideas. . . .


Thus, in the long run, the change in the shoemaker's material conditions was followed by a change in his consciousness: first his material conditions changed, and then, after a time, his consciousness changed accordingly.

The same must be said about classes and about society as a whole.

In social life, too, first the external conditions change, first the material conditions change, and then the ideas of men, their habits, customs and their world outlook change accordingly.

That is why Marx says:

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." "



This is an interesting passage, in which Stalin seeks to illustrate how consciousness is derivative and secondary to material being by illustrating the situation of a petty-bourgeois shoemaker who becomes a proletarian worker. This is semi-biographical on Stalin's own father(who was, of course, a cobbler by trade).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Stalin's 'dialectical method' (which was even worse than Mao's -- and that is saying something!), is trashed here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/

[The Author]

Originally posted by [email protected] May 4, 2007, 02:41 pm
This is an interesting passage, in which Stalin seeks to illustrate how consciousness is derivative and secondary to material being by illustrating the situation of a petty-bourgeois shoemaker who becomes a proletarian worker. This is semi-biographical on Stalin's own father(who was, of course, a cobbler by trade).

I agree. This passage is an example of the dialectic in action. When Stalin says, "...in social life, first the external conditions change, first the conditions of men change and then their consciousness changes accordingly," he's noting the quantitative changes in the train of thought of the shoemaker, based on his class status. Once he loses his shop and his class status changes, his line of thinking changes as well. Thus, we see the negation of the petit-bourgeois shoemaker into his antithesis, the proletarian worker at the shoe factory; a qualitative change, and a perfect example of contradiction in motion.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

the passage also I think illustrates how the higher the stage of capitalism IE the larger the trusts or monopolies or corporations, the more conditions for revolution will be laid. Proving false the theory that revolution in a country like America or Britan is impossible

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

QE:


Thus, we see the negation of the petit-bourgeois shoemaker into his antithesis, the proletarian worker at the shoe factory; a qualitative change, and a perfect example of contradiction in motion.

I fail to see how this is a 'contradiction' (unless you seek to redefine that word).

And the use of 'antithesis' here suggests you have not yet read this thread:

http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=51512#

Fourth comment down.

[The Author]

Here's another interesting passage, If we can call the material side, the external conditions, being, and other phenomena of the same kind, the content, then we can call the ideal side, consciousness and other phenomena of the same kind, the form. Hence arose the well-known materialist proposition: in the process of development content precedes form, form lags behind content.

And as, in Marx's opinion, economic development is the "material foundation" of social life, its content, while legal-political and religious-philosophical development is the "ideological form" of this content, its "superstructure," Marx draws the conclusion that: "With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed."

This, of course, does not mean that in Marx's opinion content is possible without form, as Sh. G. imagines (see Noboati, No. 1. "A Critique of Monism"). Content is impossible without form, but the point is that since a given form lags behind its content, it never fully corresponds to this content; and so the new content is "obliged" to clothe itself for a time in the old form, and this causes a conflict between them. At the present time, for example, the form of appropriation of the product, which is private in character, does not correspond to the social content of production, and this is the basis of the present-day social "conflict."

Here Stalin is summarizing the Marxist concepts of the base or "content" (consisting of the relations of production, and the means of production and means of distribution) and the superstructure or "form" (consisting of legal, political, and cultural institutions which exist based on the relations of production and which class is ruling). Also, we see another example of dialectic analysis with the notation of the social organization of production in contradiction to the private appropriation of products and property ownership, resting in the hands of the bourgeois class. The point is to change this situation by a working class revolution, which leads to the negation of private property. Of course, we know that once upon a time in history, private property did not exist but property was collectively owned in primitive communal societies. This was negated by the establishment of private property relations. With the seizure and collectivization of property by the working class, the status of private property itself is negated. Therefore, we have a shining example of the dialectic concept of the negation of the negation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, you keep using these tired old empty phrases, but they are all devoid of content.

But, if you want to live in a fools paradise, it's your failed revolution....

[The Feral Underclass]

I always felt that this particular piece of writing would have been a whole let better if Stalin actually knew something about anarchism.

[Panda Tse Tung]

I just found out we had Study Groups :). Why isn't this discussion furthered. It's a very interesting piece of work. It's a shame the best counter-arguments here are one-liners. But it's still a very good piece of Study-equipment.

[Tower of Bebel]

Stalin is right on several points.

It is because of the focus on individuality of the anarchist theories that so many currents thinkable and that they all fit together. Anarcho-syndicalism seems to differ a lot from other 'types of anarchism'. Yet it was a logical development of anarchism, as the worker's movement became inevitably more important than farmers.

I find Stalin far from terific. He started to speech and write better after he came to power (although he was inable to speech better then Lenin). When he became the secretary general of the USSR he started read a lot. More than Hitler, Churchill, whatever leader at that time you can name.
For the people who agree with his statements he, of course, is a good writer. That's with most writers.

[Panda Tse Tung]

I think he has a nice, understandable writing-style (the later is especially important to me, since I'm no intellectual and i already had difficulty's with the Communist Manifesto when reading it).

[Bilan]

Racoon

Stalin is right on several points.

I beg to differ.


It is because of the focus on individuality of the anarchist theories that so many currents thinkable and that they all fit together. .

No. Clearly you haven't read alot on this subject. Read far to many of Stalin and Lenin's "critiques" of anarchism, and not enough of their theories - which clearly differ more than what you've given credit for.


Anarcho-syndicalism seems to differ a lot from other 'types of anarchism'.
How much does it differ from Anarchist Communism?
Are you suggesting that "a lot of other types of anarchism" are all individualist?
This would be a gross inaccuracy on your part.

[Axel1917]

I am not sure if I will be able to get on this work or not, but judging by parts of it, it explains things in a simple manner. I don't think it is the best work on such a subject, but it does seem to get the basics down.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Stalin is retarded, and obviously disconnected from anarchist theory by large; it's certainly not based on the 'emancipation of the individual', considering that there is several different theories and variations that branch off of anarchism itself that contradicts that statement.

[Tower of Bebel]

I know what stalin must have been thinking. But he makes the anarchists look like idiots. Like the last time I heard a workshop on anarchism where someone told us that anarchists were just marginal people wearing a (A) on there backpacks or clothes. (PS: that person I told about was corrected during the workshop.)


considering that there is several different theories and variations that branch off of anarchism itself that contradicts that statement.

I don't fully understand.


No. Clearly you haven't read alot on this subject. Read far to many of Stalin and Lenin's "critiques" of anarchism, and not enough of their theories - which clearly differ more than what you've given credit for.

I do not read Stalin and I haven't read Lenin on anarchists because he's too aggressive when it comes to anarchists and left communists.

[Bilan]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 09:08 am

No. Clearly you haven't read alot on this subject. Read far to many of Stalin and Lenin's "critiques" of anarchism, and not enough of their theories - which clearly differ more than what you've given credit for.

I do not read Stalin and I haven't read Lenin on anarchists because he's too aggressive when it comes to anarchists and left communists.
Wasn't this by Stalin...?
And if not, I don't understand how you can come to a conclusion on anarchism. The majority of anarchist theory does not value the individual above the community. Some does. But, from my knowledge, this is not the case for most.

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by Tierra y Libertad+July 27, 2007 10:48 am--> (Tierra y Libertad @ July 27, 2007 10:48 am)
[email protected] 27, 2007 09:08 am

No. Clearly you haven't read alot on this subject. Read far to many of Stalin and Lenin's "critiques" of anarchism, and not enough of their theories - which clearly differ more than what you've given credit for.

I do not read Stalin and I haven't read Lenin on anarchists because he's too aggressive when it comes to anarchists and left communists.
Wasn't this by Stalin...?
And if not, I don't understand how you can come to a conclusion on anarchism. The majority of anarchist theory does not value the individual above the community. Some does. But, from my knowledge, this is not the case for most. [/b]
Maybe I'm wrong and focused I too much on the individual aspect of anarchism to understand what it really is and how it could go wrong.

[Bilan]

Originally posted by Raccoon+July 27, 2007 07:57 pm--> (Raccoon @ July 27, 2007 07:57 pm)
Originally posted by Tierra y [email protected] 27, 2007 10:48 am

[email protected] 27, 2007 09:08 am

No. Clearly you haven't read alot on this subject. Read far to many of Stalin and Lenin's "critiques" of anarchism, and not enough of their theories - which clearly differ more than what you've given credit for.

I do not read Stalin and I haven't read Lenin on anarchists because he's too aggressive when it comes to anarchists and left communists.
Wasn't this by Stalin...?
And if not, I don't understand how you can come to a conclusion on anarchism. The majority of anarchist theory does not value the individual above the community. Some does. But, from my knowledge, this is not the case for most.
Maybe I'm wrong and focused I too much on the individual aspect of anarchism to understand what it really is and how it could go wrong.[/b]
Perhaps hehe.

I recomend you read something by Kropotkin (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/kropotkin/KropotkinCW.html) it might clear some stuff up.

Cheers.

p.s. I apologise if I came off hostile earlier :o