MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT POSITION PAPER ON ALBANIA Last edit: 8/26/92
Albania: Background
by MC5 from: August, 1990 MIM literature
Albania is a small country in Eastern Europe that borders Yugoslavia and Greece. It has a population of 3 million people, who are mostly farmers.
Politically Albania is an important country in communist history. Today it claims to have the only communist government in the world. [The government collapsed after this was written--ed.]
In 1939, Italian fascists occupied Albania and Albanians initiated an armed struggle for independence. In 1941 they formed the Communist Party of Albania led by Enver Hoxha.
The Albanians organized the defeat of the Italians and then the Germans who invaded in 1943. Out of the countries in Eastern Europe liberated from the Nazis with the help of Stalin's offensive against the Nazis, Albania did the most to gain its own independence.(1)
Upon independence in 1944, Enver Hoxha led Albania till his death in 1985. Most notably under Hoxha, Albania was the only communist government to side with China in the Sino-Soviet split in 1960. >From 1960 to 1976, Hoxha was the only communist government leader to side completely with Mao.
During those years, China's and Albania's communist parties issued joint communiques condemning Soviet phony communism and supporting the Cultural Revolution in China. Governments in N. Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia/Kampuchea, not to mention those in Eastern Europe either took positions between the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties or sided with the Soviets against the Chinese and Albanian comrades.
Since the two communist parties of Albania and China were thought to be alike, it was with great disappointment that communists found Enver Hoxha breaking with Mao after Mao's death. In his book Reflections on China (1979), Hoxha claimed that Mao was only a progressive nationalist figure.
Offering no explanation for why he changed his political stance after the death of Mao, Hoxha changed his theory on the dictatorship of the proletariat and claimed to uphold Stalin but not Mao.
In 1976 Mao died. In 1978, China cut off all military and civil aid to Albania. Hoxha's criticisms of Mao came after. Even the anti-Maoists of the U.S. Progressive Labor Party and Kansas City Marxist-Leninist Cell called out Hoxha for this: suddenly Hoxha said that China's revolution was never a socialist one at all, just a bourgeois one. Why did he wait so long to say so? (2)
What has been the concrete situation of the masses within Albania? Is it a capitalist society and if so, when did it start being one?
While MIM has some information on this subject, it needs much more. In the meantime, MIM can say that Albania's leadership grossly errs in detracting from the Chinese Revolution (1949) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
1. "New Albania: A Small Nation, A Great Contribution!" (NY: Albania Report, 1984) 2. "The Race to the Right," PL Magazine (NY: PLP, Spring 1979); "Towards the Development of the International Marxist-Leninist Trend," (Kansas City: KS Marxist-Leninist Cell, 1980)
Albania: Hoxhaites hang it up
MIM Notes 54, July, 1991
The neo-Hoxhaite government of Albania resigned on June 4th. Albania had the last government in Eastern Europe claiming to be communist.
As explained in previous articles in MIM Notes, Albania's communists running the government had claimed to be Stalinist. Striking workers brought the government done and forced it to call new elections within a year. The head of state had to quit the Party of Labour (the communist party) in order for the masses to continue letting him serve.
It were as if President Ramiz Alia were bent on proving that he was the leader of the bourgeoisie in the party all along. In the 1980s, MIM had a lot of critics saying that it is impossible for a society that had a socialist revolution to go back to capitalism-- the Marxist-Leninist Party, Communist Workers Party, Communist Labor Party and exiles from the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and New People's Army to name a small fraction. Where are they now?
--MC5
Source: New York Times, 6/5/91, 1.
Albania moving for outright Western capitalism
by MC5 MIM Notes 52, May, 1991
Election victory
Albania, a small country in Eastern Europe that borders Greece and Yugoslavia, held its first Western-style elections on March 31st after the government run by a supposedly communist party agreed to legalize a pro-Western, bourgeois party, the Democratic Party.
The Party of Labor of Albania (PLA), which supports Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Albania's own late Enver Hoxha as leaders, won the elections. In the 250 seat Parliament the Labor Party will have over 160 seats and the Democratic Party will have 72.
Although PLA head Ramiz Alia lost his campaign for a parliament seat, he remained as head of the party. The Democratic Party won most of the seats in the six major cities as well. Significantly the PLA blamed its own loss on "Tseparation from the masses'" in the cities.(1)
After the elections, the Albanian government quelled riots by killing three people. Nonetheless, the opposition recognized the election outcome as legitimate while promising to bring down the government in two months.(1)
Background
In December, 1990, President Ramiz Alia had announced that opposition parties could run their own newspapers. The opposition had four months to organize for the elections.(2) Albania is the last country in Eastern Europe nominally run by a communist party. It has 3.5 million people, 60% of whom are peasants.
Since June, 1990, 80,000 Albanians have left Albania for Italy and other countries.(1) The exodus resulted in the placement of martial law on the ports.
Bourgeois Western scholars and journalists refer to Albania as a "hard-line" and "Stalinist" country. MIM has always held that Albania failed to learn from Stalin's mistakes, namely underestimating the existence of classes and class struggle under socialism.
However, even the PLA doesn't really uphold Stalin. Without any explanation the supposed Stalinists took down statues of Stalin in December, 1990.(4)
Marxist-Leninist Party, USA
Western supporters of Albanian-style socialism used to include the Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP, USA). MLP moved away from a 100% orthodox pro-Albania line a few years ago. It saw some of the problems in Albania in the making, but it did not identify Albania as state capitalist.(5)
The pro-Albania groups in the United States have been in disarray for some time though and it is likely that new realignments are in the making.
The supporters of Albania style "communism" said it was the Maoists who were overly tolerant of the bourgeoisie under socialism. (See MN #46 for a letter from an Albania supporter along these lines.) The "Hoxhaites"-- supporters of Enver Hoxha's model of socialism --found it impossible that a real communist party would ever have a bourgeoisie in it as Mao Zedong believed.
As followers of Mao Zedong, MIM is not surprised to see Albania careen from "pure" dictatorship, which simply ignored the reality of class struggle, to Western-style elections applauded by U.S. imperialist and Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell.(1)
At the same time that the phony communists in Albania were pledging completely free elections, they announced new regulations allowing unrelated people to own private enterprises jointly.(3) The PLA also has embroiled the country in massive unemployment.(4)
Just as Mao always predicted, it was the people in the party in power who cleared the way for capitalism: "You are making the socialist revolution and yet don't know where the bourgeoisie is. It is right in the Communist Party --those in power taking the capitalist road." (6) Although Mao said this in 1976 to persuade people in China, he could have said it to the Albania supporters.
It's especially ironic that it was the Hoxhaites themselves who had to prove Mao right despite their wishes. The Albania supporters did not recognize that Enver Hoxha was taking Albania down the capitalist-road at the end of his life, but how can they deny that President Ramiz Alia is? How can they then deny that Hoxha's party had a bourgeoisie in it the whole time, since Ramiz Alia was in it?
The Hoxhaites ignored the reality of class struggle within their own party for years and as a result people who never would have suspected "hard-line" Albania to go capitalist are surprised just how far capitalist Albania has gone so quickly. Since MIM saw the basis for contradictions in the PLA all along, it was not surprised by recent events. Two months before the PLA announced elections, tore down Stalin statues and announced the legalization of general private property, MIM exposed the "Hoxhaite hoax" and said, "Pro-Albania communists in the United States may have some explaining to do soon."(7)
Foreign affairs
As in domestic affairs, in foreign policy President Ramiz Alia is taking a shamelessly bourgeois line. In a speech to the UN this year, the first ever by Albania, he said, Albanians "approve and consider as promising the changes that have taken place in the relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, the agreements they concluded on disarmament..." Alia also promoted "detente" between the two powers.
In this speech, Alia demonstrated how far Albania is from Marxism-Leninism, especially Leninism's theory of imperialism. MIM disagrees with Alia because it is like selling drugs to the people to say that imperialists like the United States and Soviet Union will end war through disarmament and detente. The imperialists only throw around these ideas in order to win advantages over other imperialists. In the end the imperialists always use war as their instrument all around the globe.
Historical achievements of Albania
Despite problems in Albania, communism is probably more popular there than other countries in Eastern Europe. Albania's own people under communist leadership liberated themselves from fascism in 1944. In most other Eastern European countries, the Soviet Red Army played a bigger role because of the need to push Hitler's armies back to Germany. Communism in Albania is also of interest in comparison with Central American leftist movements. Albania built socialism for 34 years in a tiny and isolated country with many of the problems that the Sandinistas' short-lived revolution in Nicaragua had. Of particular notice is that Albania did much more to collectivize agriculture than Nicaragua did.
Finally, Albania is of special interest to MIM because Albania was the only other country to support the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the theory behind it from 1966-1976. Of course this support was in words and not in deeds because Albania itself never had a cultural revolution against the bourgeoisie in the PLA.
After the death of China's leader Mao in 1976, and the subsequent end of China's aid to Albania in 1978, Albania's leader and founder Enver Hoxha turned around and opposed the Cultural Revolution and Maoism.
Call to comrades
MIM calls on all supporters of Albania and Enver Hoxha to look back at the history of socialist countries and realize that Mao was right: There was a bourgeoisie in the party under socialism. It's time to sum up this history and get back on the road of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism by quitting the pro- Albania groups and joining MIM.
Notes:
1. New York Times, 4/2/91, p. 1, 5. 2. UPI, 12/29/90. 3. AP, 1/2/91. 4. Workers' Advocate, Marxist-Leninist Party, USA, 12/21/90. 5. Workers' Advocate Supplement, 3/15/91. 6. Quoted in Fang Kang's "Capitalist-Roaders Are the Bourgeoisie Inside the Party," Peking Review #25, 1976. 7. MIM Notes, No. 45, 10/1/90, p. 7.
Albania: A rating for Enver Hoxha
by MC5 4/5/92
In elections in March, 1992 the last remnants of the communist revolution in Albania that originally came to power in 1944 were thrown out out of government. Albania is now a plain capitalist country like Greece.
The successors to communist leader Enver Hoxha in Albania after 1985 were outright capitalist-roaders, who instead of following the trail blazed by Mao and the Gang of Four in China, took Albania to its current economic crisis and capitalist restoration. However, MIM gives Hoxha a grade of 70% like Stalin, but for different reasons.
Regarding the historical evaluation of the first stage of Albania's revolution started during World War II, MIM can have no major objections to Hoxha's work. Hoxha led the communists to kick out the fascists, collectivize agriculture, nationalize industry and liberate women.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Enver Hoxha provided a genuine service to the international proletariat by leading along with Mao the critique of the Soviet revisionist takeover. Hoxha and Mao defended the memory of the late Stalin against the Kruschev revisionists, who changed Soviet policy in order to oppose armed struggle in the Third World and run the Soviet economy on a profit basis.
For this alone, MIM gives Hoxha a lot of credit. Most communist parties in the world and all the others in Eastern Europe went along with the Khruschev revisionists to one degree or another; although, communists in Asia and Africa in particular leaned toward Mao. With the experience of one major
capitalist-restoration after a successful Marxist-Leninist revolution, Hoxha summed up history and formed part of the correct pole in the international communist movement. (For example, there had been one restoration before in Hungary that crushed the revolution in its infancy, but the Bolshevik Revolution was unique in going down to defeat after decades on the socialist road.)
Further to Hoxha's credit, he joined Mao in press releases backing the Cultural Revolution in China and the theory of continuous revolution. This brings us to 1976, the death of Mao Zedong. By this time, Hoxha had already given more than 30 years of correct leadership to the international proletariat.
Before Mao's death, Hoxha held all the views necessary to be a member of MIM today-no small feat given the influence and power of revisionism all around the world. It is only the last years of Hoxha's life-1976-1985-that MIM quarrels with and MIM believes that the mistakes Hoxha made were honest mistakes for the most part. The lies he made to the communist parties of the world regarding Mao Zedong and Hoxha's flip-flops can be interpreted as the necessities faced by a leader in state power surrounded by social-imperialists and renegades like Deng Xiaoping. MIM understands the difficult situation Albania was in after the death of Mao.
MIM does not make essentially nihilist-idealist criticisms the way anarchists and Trotskyists do. No revolution is perfect in the sense of matching ideals. To not support a revolution because of this fact is utter political immaturity characteristic of the intellectuals and petty-bourgeoisie. In Hoxha's case, however, his line was criticized by the Maoist pole after 1976. There was someone in real life who had a better line than Hoxha's, but Hoxha ignored and mistakenly opposed the correct line espoused by the Maoists.
If no one had developed the theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and no one had told Hoxha that there was a bourgeoisie in his party, then we would have to say that Hoxha had a historical record of somewhere between 90% to 100% correctness. As it happened though, the Maoists told him he had a bourgeoisie in his party forming continuously and after the death of Mao, Hoxha decided it wasn't true and returned to Stalin's theory of class struggle. This major error is why Hoxha can only rate a 70% evaluation.
Today it is clear to everyone that Hoxha's own successor Ramiz Alia himself was the top bourgeois leader in the PLA. Hence Mao was right and Hoxha was wrong. It was not easy to do a more thorough study of the Soviet Union than Mao did. With the historical experience of the Soviet Union and China's own rich historical experience, Mao was in a position to come to the correct conclusions regarding how the vanguard party relates to the means of production and class struggle under socialism.
Further references, MIM Notes #45 and #52.