Anarchism or Socialism?

This work is one of Stalin’s earliest theoretical writings, first published in serial form in a Georgian newspaper at the very end of 1906 and into 1907. In 1907 Stalin was jailed by the Tsarist secret police and the concluding chapters were lost in the course of the police search. This work is not just a polemic against anarchism, but provides a great overview of the dialectical method, and the materialist theory. Stalin formulates in simple terms the two forms of dialectical movement (evolutionary and revolutionary), and its relationship to quantitative and qualitative change. Similarly, Stalin explains the difference between material content and ideal form in stunningly easy terms, and explains the basis of Marxism in the social content of capitalist production.