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On The Role of the Party of Labour of Albania and of Enver Hoxha in the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism

As a determined area of the division of work, the philosophy of each epoch supposes a determined intellectual documentation, that has been transmitted to it by the philosophies having preceded it and from which it proceeds. And this is why it happens, that countries lagging behind in the economic field may nevertheless play first violin in philosophy.Fr. ENGELS, Letter to Conrad Schmidt, October 20^th, 1890

During the VII^th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania in November 1976, between the official sessions, Jacques Jurquet, leader of the PCMLF, proposed to Ramiz Alia that to the emblematic figures of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin be joined that of Enver Hoxha. This was of course a provocation, which was sharply rejected. In his Report Enver Hoxha denounced the "theory of the three worlds" openly expressed in 1974, that is to say before the death of Mao Zedong, by Deng Xiaoping¹.

In France - amongst many other countries - it was the portrait of Mao Zedong that was displayed by many parties and organizations that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist. It was placed after that of Stalin, and increasingly in replacement of that of Stalin. This little war of effigies may seem puerile. It has however an evident practical use, that of putting forward a membership which though not being of religious nature adopts religious forms, claims to trace a demarcation and in fact traces this demarcation. The boundaries of the latter, of course, can only be fuzzy. While some are popularizing the image of the precursors or leaders of a party, it may turn out that the purpose is to cover themselves by a reference in order to conduct a policy contradictory to the teachings of the one whom they claim to take as a model. This is a policy fairly well known, a practice common to all regimes. This practice precisely renounces to examining the theoretical and political works of the one whom one praises.

Images may be distorted ones, being either praised or spurned for any good or bad reasons related to propaganda. Sustained by active publicity they have a chance, if one may say so, to survive some time, while being turned over or used according to more or less avowables objectives. Besides this - and here is the object of this short text - there are men and parties that, since at first sight they haven't had an international stature, are somehow repelled out of the field of history. That is, of all the histories and (what imports most to us here) of our history, which is that of communism and of the men and women who have struggled at the price of their lives for the destruction of the capitalist mode of production, for the emancipation of humanity, so that it be finally liberated from its chains.

In this sense we have a historical responsibility, which is the responsability to preserve the memory of the part played by the Party of Labour of Albania and its First Secretary Enver Hoxha. In fact, a double responsibility, because it does not only concern the memory : the struggle initiated by the PLA against modern revisionism is not finished off. It continues in conditions even more difficult today. The foundations of the struggle we claim to fight against modern revisionism appear in the history of the PLA, and the teachings that we can derive from this past struggle will enable us to continue and develop our own struggle.

There is a major risk, and this is why it seems essential to us to reconsider the question, and to reconsider it again and again : the risk of oblivion. Given, among others factors, the acceleration of history - at least a sensation of acceleration - from one generation to the other, whole sections of history are precisely evaporating. Who today, simply observing the present situation in Albania, would be able to conceive by himself the part played by the Party of this country on an international level in the defense of Marxism, of Leninism, during more than three decades, from the 50s to the 80s ?

The extreme brevity of the period is not a criterion ; the decomposition of the parties that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist, to take socialist Albania as a référence, is not a criterion either. The same is true, of course, as for the very decomposition of the revisionist parties like that of the ex-USSR. It is evident that our conception of the world, based on Marxism and Leninism, does not depend on the ups and the downs that stand out as landmarks of the struggle between communism and capitalism.

During all historical periods, and mainly in periods of ebb-tide, whether they may be considered as transitory or not, the important is to ensure the continuity of the relay. No one who today claims to politically assure the continuity of revolutionary Marxism, can ignore the contribution of the PLA and Enver Hoxha, contribution that constitutes an arm for the present and the future. Like any arm this one can rust. Our duty is to preserve it, to enrich it under the conditions of the new period that we approach just now and that begins to take form.

The oblivion can have, if one may say so, a natural cause : the extreme weakness of the international communist Marxist-Leninist movement. It can equally be favored by the renegades, not to mention the parties and organizations that share the points of view and the theses denounced by the Party of Labour of Albania, wether they are avowed revisionists or not. In a more veiled manner can be expressed criticisms, reticences, hesitations that have specific practices and geographical environments as a basis. The result is the same, namely having a limited political view and sacrificing the essential.

A temptation for militants who have not lived through the different periods that have to be dealt with - from the death of Stalin in 1953 to the 80s - or who have lived through only some of these periods, is to enter this history backwards, starting from the current situation. Yet it is necessary to deal with it in the context prevailing then. Let us keep away from all retrospective illusions.

The struggle of the Party of Labour of Albania and Enver Hoxha against modern revisionism spans over a long historical period. It can be divided in several stages :

1. Initially the context was characterized by the denounciation of Yugoslavia lead by Tito, which was undertaken by the PLA in conjunction with all the other communist parties from 1948 on, and even from 1942 on, as far as the PLA (CPA at that time) alone is concerned.
2. From 1953 after the death of Stalin until the XX^th Congress of the CPSU in 1956.

3. From the end of 1956 until the Meeting of the 81 Communist and Labour Parties at Moscow in November 1960.

4. From December 1960 up to Khrushchev's public attacks against the PLA at the XXII^th Congress of the CPSU in 1962.

5. From 1962 to July 1978 (the public rupture of the PLA with the Chinese Communist Party).

It is necessary at this point to underline that this struggle had a double aspect : internal and external. Before the PLA publicly adopted a definite position against Khrushchev and the leaders of the CPSU, the struggle had been circumscribed to relationships from Party to Party. By what had leaked out about disagreements, later turning into divergences, it was however possible to perceive that they concerned the way to qualify Yugoslavia and the relations from Party to Party between the CPSU and the CLY. In fact the Yugoslav question has served as a line of demarcation. The fluctuations of the CPSU and equally of the CCP² have in some sense served as a revealing factor and have strengthened the vigilance of the PLA that for its part, despite Soviet pressures, has never hesitated to denounce the Yugoslav regime as anti-Marxist³.

Even more important, of course, has been Khrushchev's Report, termed secret, at the XX^th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956, that is, the denounciation of Stalin, as well as the Soviet theses concerning especially the question of war and peace, the putting forward of different ways to achieve socialism, the peaceful transition to socialism, the attenuation of class struggle in the period of construction of socialism. In fact the CPSU intended to promote a general line for the International Communist Movement, a line based on the peaceful coexistence and the establishment of new relationships with the US. The fruitition of all this was to be facilitated by the reconciliation of the USSR with Yugoslavia and its theses.

The grave presumptions the PLA could have in the aftermath of Khrushchev's journey to Belgrade in July 1955, were thus found justified. They were confirmed in 1955 and in 1956 by the different attempts inside Albania to destabilize the Party as well as at the time of Gomulka's return to Poland and the counter-revolutionary insurrection in Hungary.

The positions defended by the PLA were sufficiently explicit in 1956, to cause Tito to personally attack Enver Hoxha in a speech pronounced at Pula on November, 19^th. An article of Zëri i Popullit of November, 23^rd, having as a basis some theses by Enver Hoxha, replied to Tito⁴.

By the end of 1956 the PLA was placed in a contradictory situation : the necessity to oppose Khrushchev's revisionist theses, while preserving the unity of the international communist movement face to the world-wide reaction. It had to resist to pressures exercized by the CPSU, yet without envisaging a rupture. Indeed it then seemed possible that Khrushchev and his theses be combatted victoriously inside the USSR. Another factor was important, that of the deserved prestige which the USSR enjoyed inside the Party and inside Albania, wether it concerned the October Revolution, the part played by Lenin and Stalin, the victories of the Red Army over the Germany of Hitler. Divergences were examined at the Politburo of the PLA even before1956, but they could not yet be expressed inside the Party, inside the working class and the labouring masses.

It was only in 1960, after the attempt of condemning the CCP undertaken at Bucarest by the Khrushchev group (scheming that the delegation of the PLA to Bucarest made fail), that the Central Committee of the PLA resolved upon putting its divergences before the Communist and Labour Parties during the Meeting at Moscow in November. Already before the end of the year the basic organizations of the PLA were informed by a Letter of the Central Committee about "the attitude adopted by the Party of Labour of Albania in the struggle against modern revisionism⁵".

A first step was carried out. The divergences were exposed before the whole of the Communist Parties - and so they were obliged to adopt a definite position - and before the whole Party of Labour of Albania. Nevertheless the divergences still remained inside the framework of the International Communist Movement. A year later, at the tribune of the XXII^th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchev publicly attacked the PLA. The rupture was consummated. And the Popular Republic of Albania isolated, at least in Europe.

For Albania the material consequences of the rupture were grave - is it necessary to emphasize it ? - as early as at the end of the year 1960. From a political point of view, with respect to the other Communist Parties, this rupture had little effect, wether speaking of the Parties in power in the Popular Democracies, or of the Parties existing in capitalist, imperialist countries. As for these latter ones, the denounciation of Stalin in 1956 had raised some problems, but the theses of the Khrushchev group encouraged the polycentrism put immediately forward by Togliatti, the idea of the peaceful and specific way of passing to socialism in each country. Modern revisionism could develop freely and vigorously, particularly in Europe, at the very time when the war - then conducted by America - in Vietnam and many other anti-imperialist conflicts referring or not to communism were going on.

It was in these circumstances that the PLA was rejoined by the CCP. For easily explicable reasons the part of the CCP and Mao Zedong resulted in occulting the one played by the PLA and Enver Hoxha. From now on the rupture with the revisionism of Moscow became all the more easy in so far as China, the Chinese revolution, the part played by Mao had been popularized. Moreover, against Khrushchev the CCP defended Stalin. Two great countries and two great Parties making a stand one against the other with Marxism-Leninism as a reference : the first, the USSR, claimed to have a modern lecture of it, while the second was accused of dogmatism for referring to ancient principles, outdated in an allegedly "new era", that of peaceful coexistence.

As for Albania and its Party, they continued their struggle, strengthened to a certain extent by the fact that in defending Peking against Moscow, those who rejected the Khrushchevian theses (including and perhaps most of all the condemnation of Stalin) were brought to defend Tirana.

However, the rupture with respect to modern revisionism was extremely limited and concerned only a minority of militants of the old Parties⁷. Some of these militants were susceptible to the reference to Stalin, others had been engaged with respect to the national liberation wars, others lastly rejected the theses of Moscow on the peaceful road to socialism, etc..

In fact the rupture mainly implicated young intellectuals, and the new parties, the new organizations, that were formed in this beginning of the 60s, being in general deprived of bonds with the proletariat and the working class, were excessively weak and played no political part at all in the capitalist countries where they were created.

One aspect was becoming outlined, namely the putting forward by the CCP of a theory still without name, only claimed as such in 1974, the theory of the three worlds. This theory resulted in raising against the two superpowers - the United States and the USSR -, a world-wide United Front formed by the proletariat together with the oppressed peoples and nations, and these nations were of any nature whatever. To make the revolution in one's own country no longer was among the questions of the day, and this meant strengthening directly or indirectly the capitalist countries, wether they were themselves imperialist or not! Once again, after the Khrushchev group, this meant conducting the international communist movement towards a policy determined by the interests of a single country.

During the same period, after the eviction of Khrushchev at the end of 1964, the CCP was going to pursue an extremely sinuous policy towards the CPSU as well as towards Yugoslavia.

In order to judge the rise of divergences between the PLA and the CCP it suffices to put face to face the presses of the two Parties. As for the PLA, it affirmed its independence face to the policy conducted by the CCP, asserting its positions without attacking those of China. With the Cultural Revolution going on, it is the very conception of the Party that was an object of divergence, while the "maoists", taking to a catastrophic flight ahead, claimed to closely copy this Cultural Revolution in western countries both against Stalin and against Lenin, against the "iron collar" of the Party. Divergences got worsened with the visit of Nixon to Peking in 1972.

These divergences - I had the opportunity to notice it in 1972 during my first journey to Tirana - were not confined to the limits of the Politburo of the PLA or its Central Committee. Still expressed in a discrete manner, their object was the journey of Nixon and the part of the army in China during the Cultural Revolution.

These signes were of course found to be confirmed, as far as I am concerned, during the VII^th Congress of the PLA in November 1976 : there was no other way than to render public these divergences. The new element was the directly questioning of the part played by Mao Zedong. This obviousness could not escape the notice of the leaders of the brother Parties invited to the Congress, that - at least some of which - had already undertaken to criticize the PLA⁸.

One thing that this brief recall shows already is that the PLA and Enver Hoxha - practically since the foundation of the Party in 1941 - have never ceased to struggle against modern revisionism, whatever were the parties that put forward new revisionist theses. This meant preserving the independence of Albania against all sorts of dangers that threatened it, not of an Albania of any indifferent nature, but of the State of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletarian patriotism and the bourgeois patriotism cannot of course be viewed in the same manner : the cause is either the defense of the construction of socialism or the perpetuation of national capitalism. The forms the patriotism can take may appear identical, but these two possible contents of it are of antinomic nature.

Thus it is that the putting forward by the PLA of Marxism and Leninism fatally had to be accompanied by the reject of the external pressures that by their various economic, ideological, political manifestations tended to cause the Party to deviate from the very construction, according to the norms that it had fixed, of socialism in Albania, norms that reflected the principles that had served as basis for its formation.

When considering the geographical dimensions of Albania, its economic starting point - one of the poorest countries of Europe -, hence the necessity to create a worker "know-how", it is a matter of course that this policy comprised risks. And the different ruptures fatally tended to delay, to imperil its development.

It can be said that the attempt of the PLA has been exemplary, precisely in so far as the proletarian internationalism had become a dead letter after the death of Stalin, when to the existence of the socialist camp had been substituted a quite doubtful "socialist system".

It is hardly necessary to say that the path of this liberation, that had been opened by the Revolution of October, today runs into a great void. The acquirements conquered with such difficulty have been ruined. And the memory of this havoc weighs heavily on the brain of the living. As if the void had gobbled anything, as if nothing could be built on the field of ruins that offers itself to our eyes.

The importance of the struggle led by the Party of Labour of Albania having Enver Hoxha at its head lies in the fact, that this struggle has been carried on beyond the revisionist transformation of the USSR, beyond the Chinese experience of sinoization of Marxism-Leninism. It constitutes the final moment of the ultimate resistance, on behalf of a Party in power, against the theoretical and political regression that has characterized the end of the epoch that draws to a close, whose completion we live through, while the contours of a new epoch are outlining.

This new epoch is still characterized by the existence of capitalism and imperialism, but today in a single world. And face to this domination, the combat is conducted by dispersed chaotic forces that, when at best they appear under a same banner - that of Marxism-Leninism -, do not assign the same content to it, do obey to contradictory references.

From the epoch that draws to a close to the one that takes shape, there is not only continuity of the capitalist mode of production and of imperialism, of the different imperialists. What remains equally is revisionism that, by merging itself into the capitalist world, gradually transforms itself into simple reformism. Waving red flags does not change anything to the matter, neither does singing the International, parading with the fist lifted, or tattooing oneself with sickles and hammers ! All this is nothing else than disguises, scarecrows.

Thus it is that the struggle against modern revisionism is more than ever the question of the day. Our struggle has a basis to lean on, the work carried out by the PLA and Enver Hoxha, work that it is necessary to resume and to continue under the new conditions forming the context of this struggle. The path has been cleared and this is a solid reference which we ought to be proud of. And it is not simply a reference, but an arm that we must sharpen unceasingly.

Reserving the rest of the world to itself, the Chinese Communist Party had declared one day that Albania was the beacon of Marxism-Leninism in Europe. Similarily some African leaders refuted Marxism in so far as Marx was European. The experience of the Red Khmers, like others carried out by various armed movements in the world, demonstrates indeed up to what catastrophic absurdities these affirmations can lead.

It is more and more evident that capitalism tends to occupy the world-wide space and that even the reserving of agricultural zones takes place as well in the framework of the international division of work, that is to say, the capitalist world-wide market. It may be possible to loosen temporarilly this vice in such or such country. This would be prejudicial to the development of one imperialism among others, but would not induce that there is a threat to the latter, and even less to the system as such. It is by the coordination of these struggles with those that will have to be conducted in the imperialist countries, and under the direction of communist parties that will assume this coordination in one form or another, that it will be possible to ensure the transformation of these armed struggles into proletarian revolutions.

Marxism-Leninism - this is a conception of the world, it determines an engagement that has as ultimate object the destruction of capitalism. To this extent it has of course a world-wide vocation. Is it necessary to repeat these "common places" ! Like the one that consists in reaffirming that revolutionary struggles must have as their primary field the country itself where they develop.

In fact the struggle started and developed by the PLA against modern revisionism has had effects well beyond the frontiers of Europe, whether it be in Africa or in Latin America, and even in Asia.

Enver Hoxha used a vivid expression to describe Marxism-Leninism : to him, it was a great avenue where opened small streets, each a bit different. This difference of course cannot be in opposition to the whole, to Marxism-Leninism in its totality. This very totality indirectly unveils through the various aspects of modern revisionism, combatted and revealed all along the history of the PLA as well as in the work of comrade Enver Hoxha.

1. In Peking Review n 45, 1977, can be read the following statement of Mao Zedong, made in February 1974 in the course of an interview : "In my opinion, the United States and the Soviet Union constitute the First World. The intermediary forces, like Japon, Europe and Canada, constitute the Second World. As for us, we are a part of the Third World." "The Third World has a quite numerous population. Whole Asia, except Japan, is a part of the Third World. Whole Africa belongs to the Third World, Latin America too." Politically, to the extent that the "First World" is the main ennemy, this analysis leads to uniting the capitalist countries of the "Second World" with the "Third World". In fact, this "theory" is quite anterior to 1971. See in the Bulletin International (First Series) a Summary Chronology of the "Theory of the Three Worlds" about the period 1946-1974 : n 0 (October 1977), 01 et 02, 1977, n 2, 4, 5, 1978. This is the meaning of the formulation promoted by the CCP : "Proletarians of all countries, oppressed peoples and nations, unite !"

2. See Bulletin International.

3. And this quite before the text of the CCP of September 13^th, 1963, "Is Yougoslavia a socialist country ?" A courious appreciation is met with, in this text : "For sure, Yugoslavia has been a socialist country and during a certain time this country progressed on the way to socialism." (Debate on the general line of the International Communist Movement (1963-1964), Publishings in Foreign Languages, Peking, 1965, p. 189 in the French edition). Nevertheless, it is clear that what has been questioned in 1948-1949 concerned the policy followed by the Yugoslavian Party since the liberation of Yougoslavia.

4. Theses published in French in 1974, in Les communistes albanais contre le révisionnisme - De Tito à Khrouchtchev 1942-1961 - Textes et documents choisis et présentés par Patrick Kessel, UGE-10/18, pages 180-185.

5. Idem, pages 291-326.

6. See Speech of Zhou Enlai.

7. With the exception of the Communist Party of Bresil that by a vote of the majority condemned the policy of Moscow.

8. In the Franco-Albanain Friendship Association, the fraction having the overwhelming majority of the Presidency, directed by the PCMLF, in fact defended China since several years.