China
HOXHA versus MAO TSETUNG - Defend Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought
Edited by the Central Leadership of Kommunistischer Arbeiterbund Deutschlands (KABD) (Communist Workers' League of Germany). Published July 1980 / Original English edition 1981. Published and Distributed by Verlag Neuer Weg GmbH. Improved English edition 2019 (part of quoted material translated from the German replaced by English-language sources)
Table of Contents
1. The Development of Relations between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania
The Joint Struggle against Modern Revisionism
Socialist China's Economic Aid for Albania and Its Unilateral Discontinuance by the Teng/Hua-Clique
Hoxha is Exposed by His Own Explanations for His Change of Course
2. Hoxha's Methods of Slandering Mao Tsetung: Double-talk, Falsification and Unproven Assertions
Particularities of the Chinese Revolution
Assertion: Non-proletarian Class Character of the CP of China
Assertion: Leadership of the Army instead of the Party
Assertion: Leading Role of the Peasantry in the Chinese Revolution
Assertion: Free Development of Capitalism after the Democratic Revolution
Assertion: Class Conciliation with the Bourgeoisie
Assertion: Promotion of Bourgeois Ideology
3. The Cultural Revolution as the Paramount Form of Class Struggle in Socialism and How Enver Hoxha Denies It
As a Method of Strengthening the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Is the Creative Further Development of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Tsetung
Hoxha's Change of Course in Evaluating the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – Repudiation of His Slanderous Attacks
Hoxha Denies the Existence of Antagonistic Classes under Socialism
In Denying the Two-Line Struggle, Hoxha Promotes Bureaucratic Methods within the Party
Hoxha Denies the Emergence of a New Bourgeoisie
4. For the Unity of the Communist World Movement on the Basis of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought
The Betrayal by the Teng/Hua-Clique and Hoxha's Slanderous Attacks on Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought Have Promoted Worldwide Liquidationism
Enver Hoxha in Agreement with Robert Steigerwald
Class Struggle and the Proletarian World Revolution Require Unity on the Basis of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought
The Struggle against Modern Revisionism and Liquidationism in Theory and Practice Is Part of Proletarian Class Struggle
1. The Development of Relations between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania
The Joint Struggle against Modern Revisionism
Mao Tsetung died on September 9, 1976. The same year, in November 1976, Enver Hoxha declared in the Central Committee's report to the Seventh Party Congress:
"The historic victories which the Chinese people have attained in their glorious revolution and the construction of socialism, the creation of the new People's China and the high prestige it enjoys in the world, are directly linked with the name, teachings and guidance of the great revolutionary, comrade Mao Tse-tung. The work of this outstanding Marxist-Leninist represents a contribution to the enrichment of the revolutionary theory and practice of the proletariat. The Albanian communists and people will always honour the memory of comrade Mao Tse-Tung, who was a great friend of our Party and people...
The dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism which were betrayed by the revisionists, have been carried forward by Albania and China, which remained loyal to Marxism-Leninism, defended it with determination, and declared stern ideological war on Khrushchevite revisionism and its followers. Communism did not die out, as the bourgeoisie hoped, and the opportunists and the liquidationists rejoiced too soon."(1)
Less than two years later Hoxha himself fell in line with the liquidationists. In his book Imperialism and the Revolution, which according to the PLA was first published in the Albanian language in April 1971, he defames comrade Mao Tsetung as a "Chinese Khrushchev" and Mao Tsetung Thought as an "anti-Marxist theory". According to him, China never followed "the road of socialism, but the road of building a great bourgeois, social-imperialist state". In order to destroy Mao Tsetung's high esteem in Albania and in the communist world movement, E. Hoxha slanders the principled struggle fought against modern revisionism by the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung. According to him, "its struggle against Soviet revisionism was not dictated from correct, principled Marxist-Leninist positions" and was full of vacillations.
In order to get a better understanding of the mendacity of these assertions, it is necessary to recall some facts. The struggle against modern revisionism began with the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. This Congress was the starting point of fundamental change within the socialist society of the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of Khrushchev, a substantial section of degenerate petty-bourgeois bureaucrats in the party, state and management apparatus took over political power in order to replace the dictatorship of the proletariat by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie of a new type. To meet his end, Khrushchev defamed Comrade Stalin, who had died in 1953, in his notorious secret address to the 20th Congress. Under the pretense of fighting the "personality cult" he called him a "megalomaniac criminal".
"In completely negating Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchov in effect negated the dictatorship of the proletariat and the fundamental theories of Marxism-Leninism which Stalin defended and developed. It was at that Congress that Khrushchov, in his report, began the repudiation of Marxism-Leninism on a number of questions of principle."(2)
The 20th Congress revised Marxism-Leninism in questions such as war and peace and the road to socialism. Very early the Chinese Party leadership and particularly Comrade Mao Tsetung began to criticize these fundamentally false positions. As early as April 1956 the Communist Party of China published an article "On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", and in December 1956 a second article, "More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", criticizing the false theses of the 20th Congress. These articles analysed Comrade Stalin's life, confirmed the general significance of the October Revolution and summed up the historical lessons of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
After the 20th Congress a two-line struggle between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism developed within the international communist movement and finally led to the split and disintegration of the socialist camp. In Moscow in 1957 at the Conference of Delegates of Communist and Workers' Parties it was above all the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA that waged a principled and successful struggle against the false position of the Khrushchev group. In April 1960 the Chinese Communist Party published the article "Long Live Leninism", forcibly stating the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism, on war and peace, on the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the Bucharest and Moscow conferences in 1960, the contradictions sharpened.
A smear campaign against the CPC was launched, and the leaders of the CPSU extended the ideological differences to state relations between the two countries. At the Bucharest conference the PLA strongly opposed the sudden attempt to condemn the CPC. In October 1961 the 22nd Congress of the CPSU adopted a new program that was totally revisionist. The leadership of the CPSU furthermore started an open attack on the PLA and even advocated overthrowing E. Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu.
In spite of strong pressure and a world-wide smear campaign by the modern revisionists, the Chinese Communist Party defended the revolutionary principles in a number of additional articles. This ideological-political struggle with the Central Committee of the CPSU found its climax in A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement, which in an outstanding way applied and further developed Marxism-Leninism.
How does Hoxha suddenly "prove" the alleged lack of principles and vacillations of the CPC? In Imperialism and the Revolution he asserts:
"In the light of these events, our party began to look more deeply into the causes of the vacillations which had been observed in the stand of the Chinese leadership towards Kruschevite revisionism, such as the instance in 1962, when it sought reconciliation and unity with the Soviet revisionists, allegedly in the name of a common front against American imperialism, or in 1964, when, continuing the efforts for reconciliation with the Soviets, Chou En-lai went to Moscow to hail the coming to power of the Brezhnev group. These vacillations were not accidental. They reflected the lack of revolutionary principles and consistency."(3)
In his so-called "diary", Reflections on China, Vol. 1, he refers mainly to Liu Shao-chi. But Liu was a traitor who flirted with Khrushchev and was condemned for that. At the same time Hoxha has to admit in his "diary":
"However, we did not see any concrete action in this direction on the part of the Chinese comrades…." (p. 117)
And, commenting on Chou En-lai's trip to Moscow, he writes:
"The Soviets demanded from Chou En-lai that they cease the polemic, and he did not promise them anything."(p. 178)
In this context it is important to quote from the message from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to the 5th Congress of the PLA in 1966. It is an example for the principled stand of the Central Committee and Mao Tsetung:
"The leading clique of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is Khrushchev’s faithful successor. It practises Khrushchev revisionism without Khrushchev and pursues a line of collaboration with U.S. imperialism to safeguard imperialist and colonialist domination in the capitalist world and to restore capitalism in the socialist world.…
There is and there cannot be a middle road in the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism. The only way is to draw a clear line of demarcation between ourselves and modern revisionism with the leading clique of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as its center, and thoroughly to expose their true features as renegades. Any united action with them is out of the question.
Whoever is intent on having united action with them will inevitably take part in the anti-Chinese chorus of imperialism, modern revisionism and reaction and sink into the morass of opposition to socialist China." (4)
How can Hoxha explain the contradiction between his statement at the 5th Congress of the PLA and his numerous entries in his so-called diary, Reflections on China, Vol. 1, written at the same time? The entry on September 15, 1964 reads as follows:
"Throughout the development of the struggle of the Communist Party of China against modern revisionists, and mainly against the Khrushchevites, some 'astonishing' vacillations have appeared in its tactic. In my opinion this tactic can only originate from pronounced lack of clarity on principles over the struggle which must be waged against modern revisionists."(5)
And, as another example:
"The Chinese comrades seem hesitant … and afraid…. In this situation, China is taking a centrist course, hesitating."(6)
Hoxha declared quite the opposite at the 5th Congress in 1966:
"In the face of the great treachery of the Khrushchevite revisionists, the glorious Communist Party of China, the Party of Labour of Albania (continued applause, ovations), the other Marxist-Leninist parties and all true Communists and revolutionaries stood up with all their might, called 'stop' to revisionism and began to wage a fierce, principled and uncompromising struggle against it. (applause)"(7)
And how can he explain the contradiction to Comrade Hysni Kapo's speech at the celebration of Comrade Mao Tsetung's 80th birthday?
The Party of Labour of Albania has publicly stated that the Communist party of China, and in particular its great leader, comrade Mao Tse-tung, has performed the great task of exposing Soviet-led modern revisionism, for the defence of Marxism-Leninism. Concerning this courageous, principled and determined struggle against the great revisionist betrayal, comrade Enver Hoxha has said: 'We, the Albanian communists, say with full conviction that it is extremely fortunate for the peoples, their freedom, world peace, Marxism-Leninism and the destiny of socialism that particularly now, the People's Republic of China exists, powerful and revolutionary, as does the Great Communist Party of China, militant and firmly loyal to Marxism-Leninism, and headed by its outstanding leader comrade Mao Tse-tung'. …
In the great battle with the Khrushchevite revisionists about the general line of the international communist movement, in the fierce struggle to defend Marxism-Leninism from the perfidious attacks and base blows of the Soviet leaders, the Communist Party of China and comrade Mao Tse-Tung have shown a fine, revolutionary spirit of principle and determination, high Marxist-Leninist maturity, communist patience and courage, to see the matter through to the finish."(8)
Does Hoxha honestly believe that Marxist-Leninists all over the world will believe his sudden conclusions about the vacillations and lacking clarity of principle of the CP of China under the leadership of Chairman Mao in the struggle against modern revisionism? That would be ridiculous!
Socialist China's Economic Aid for Albania and Its Unilateral Discontinuance by the Teng/Hua-Clique
Contrary to all principles of proletarian internationalism the Soviet revisionists extended the ideological differences with the CP of China and the PLA to intergovernmental relations. In July 1960, the Soviet government suddenly decided unilaterally to withdraw all Soviet experts from China within a month, and thus broke hundreds of agreements. In October 1961, the Soviet government unilaterally broke off diplomatic relations with Albania and virtually imposed an economic blockade. The "History of the Party of Labour of Albania" says about this action:
"The hostile activities of the Khrushchev group in the economic, military, political and cultural fields have done great harm to the Albanian people. The credits which the Soviet government was to grant the Albanian government according to agreements constituted a great part of the investments of the 3rd Five Year Plan. The complete discontinuance of these credits makes it uncertain if many of the projects in this plan can be constructed. Import and export with the Soviet Union covered 50% of foreign trade for twelve years. Therefore, the complete breaking-off of trade relations by the Soviet government caused great difficulties for the export of Albanian products and the import of machinery and other industrial articles necessary for the development of national economy"(8)
"In these years of hard struggle the fraternal aid given to the PLA and the Albanian people by the CP of China and the PR of China played an important part in mastering the difficulties which had been caused by the hostile activities of the Khrushchevite revisionists. They immediately granted the PRA the necessary credits."(9)
The aid by socialist China was in complete agreement with the principles of Marxism-Leninism and the Proposal Concerning the General Line, where item 21 reads as follows:
"Relations between socialist countries are international relations of a new type. Relations between socialist countries, whether large or small, and whether more developed or less developed economically, must be based on the principles of complete equality, respect for territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, and must also be based on the principles of mutual support and mutual assistance in accordance with proletarian internationalism."(10)
Further:
"It is absolutely necessary for socialist countries to practise mutual economic assistance and co-operation and exchange. Such economic co-operation must be based on the principles of complete equality, mutual benefit and comradely mutual assistance."(11)
The CPC under the leadership of Mao Tsetung gave this aid in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and stressed repeatedly what a big help Albania was for China. Chou En-lai declared on his part:
"The Chinese people will never forget that at the time when the modern revisionists slandered against and attacked the Communist Party of China frenziedly, assuming a correct stand, regardless of all pressures, difficulties and dangers, the Party of Labour of Albania, courageously faced up to this opposite trend, exposed and mercilessly hit at the anti-Chinese plots of modern revisionism."(12)
After the death of Comrade Mao in September 1976, socialist China underwent a complete change. Hua Kuo-feng's takeover and Teng Hsiao-ping's rehabilitation paved the way for a new type of bourgeoisie and the restoration of capitalism in China. In China aktuell, No. 4, we have demonstrated how the dictatorship of the proletariat has been destroyed rapidly. The achievements of socialism and the cultural revolution were abolished step by step and replaced by capitalist measures. In addition to and independent of the Soviet Union, a second social-imperialist power developed. With Teng's theories, the new leadership of the CPC universally revised Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought.
The revisionist line is nothing but a new version of Liu Shao-chi's line, which was smashed in the course of the cultural revolution, and a new variation of Khrushchevite revisionism.
The "strategic concept" of the "Three Worlds Theory" was developed by the new leadership as a kind of "new general line". The PLA was the leading force in criticizing this theory, but falsely and misleadingly attributed this anti-Marxist line to Mao Tsetung and thereby indirectly supported Teng's diversion manoeuvres.
Hoxha's insidiousness is so disgusting that we have to expose it. Hoxha held a speech at an election meeting in Tirana on November 11, 1978, where he maliciously declared:
"The Chinese leadership accuses us of having publicly attacked China and Mao Tsetung at the 7th Congress. In reality, the 7th Congress attacked neither China nor Mao Tsetung, but rather exposed the theory and politics of the anti-Marxist 'Theory of Three Worlds', regardless of its inventor, whether it be Mao Tsetung or Teng Hsiaoping." (13; emphasis by the ed.)
So Hoxha doesn't seem to know whose theory this is, but who cares, if it's Teng or Mao, revisionist or Marxist is all the same to him. What infamy!
In China aktuell, No. 2 (English edition: The "Theory of Three Worlds" as a Strategic Conception Smacks of Right-Wing Opportunism!) we repudiated the Three Worlds Theory and the assertion by the new Chinese leadership that this theory was developed by Mao Tsetung. We clearly proved that Teng transformed certain comments by Mao Tsetung – which expressed a tactical concept developed for a specific situation – into a right-wing opportunist strategic conception.
What Hoxha said at the election meeting was not a slip of the tongue, as one can see from his book Imperialism and the Revolution, published only shortly after:
"It is of no consequence to know who first invented the term 'third world', who was the first to divide the world in three parts, but it is certain that Lenin did not make such a division, while the Communist Party of China claims paternity to it, asserting that Mao Tsetung invented the theory of 'three worlds'. If he is the author who first formulated this so-called theory, this is further evidence that Mao Tsetung is not a Marxist. But even if he only adopted this theory from others, this, too, is proof enough that he is not a Marxist."(14; emphasis by the ed.)
Hoxha doesn't take great pains to find out the originator of the "Three Worlds Theory". Nevertheless, he keeps parroting Teng's false claim that it is "Mao's Three Worlds Theory". And this in spite of his statement:
"Now we are witnessing a period which is characterized by the big character posters against Mao Tsetung with which Teng Hsiao-ping's followers are decorating the walls of Peking. It is the period of 'revenge' which has two aims: first, to liquidate the 'prestige' of Mao and eliminate the obstacle of Hua Kuo-feng and, second, to make Teng Hsiao-ping an all-powerful fascist dictator and to rehabilitate Liu Shao-chi."(15)
What makes Hoxha use a witness like Teng to slander Mao Tsetung?
Just as the Khrushchevite revisionists did in the beginning of the sixties, the Teng/Hua-Clique extended their ideological differences to intergovernmental relations and in July 1978 unilaterally cancelled the agreements on economic and military co-operation with Albania. All true Marxist-Leninists condemned this as an act of violation of the principles of proletarian internationalism.
The Central Leadership of the Communist Workers' League of Germany (KABD) expressed this in a letter to the Central Committee of the CP of China and the PLA:
"The Central Leadership of the KABD unanimously condemns these measures of the People's Republic of China. We judge them as a serious breach of the principles of proletarian internationalism. They are a damage to the Albanian and the Chinese people. This act of the government of the PR of China does great harm to the cause of socialism. In the view of the Central Leadership of KABD, these measures can in no way be founded on Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought. However, if someone is set on violating the principles of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought, he will find not only ten, but a hundred reasons." (16)
But instead of showing the obvious contradiction between the aid from the People's Republic of China during the lifetime of Mao Tsetung and its suspension after Teng's and Hua's takeover, the Central Committee of the PLA in a letter of reply starts attacking Mao Tsetung Thought without referring to Mao directly, and to slander socialist construction in China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung. It declares:
"Not only today, but for a long period of time the Chinese side, in various forms and manners, has brought pressure to bear on Albania over economic and other questions."(17)
In his so-called diary, Reflections on China, E. Hoxha now claims to have the following opinion as early as October 31, 1964:
"It will be impossible to prevent the disagreements with the Chinese, which have begun on ideological and political questions, from influencing our economic relations with them. Perhaps the effect will not come immediately and brutally, as Khrushchev acted, but the coercion, delays and pressures will come gradually. Therefore, we must not go blindly into investments and constructions, into an extensive development, because such a thing could break our backs…."(18)
Anyone is free to compare this with numerous statements by Hoxha and the leadership of the PLA and to draw conclusions about the credibility of such phony "records". Listen to what Hoxha said at the 6th Congress in 1971:
[Building up Albanian economy] "is made much easier by the great, unsparing and internationalist aid which the fraternal People's Republic of China is giving our country for this five-year-plan. This is a further tangible expression of that sincere and revolutionary friendship which links the Albanian people with the Chinese people, which unites our two Marxist-Leninist Parties. The Albanian people and their Party of Labor are profoundly grateful to the Chinese people, to the glorious Communist Party of China and to Chairman Mao Tse-tung for the fraternal aid they are giving us for the construction of socialism, to make our socialist Fatherland prosperous and powerful."(19)
Hoxha is Exposed by his Own Explanations for his Change of Course
In an open letter to the Central Committee of the PLA (published in China aktuell, No. 3) dating from January 1979, the Central Leadership of the KABD already pointed out the following contradiction:
We have shown that you do not differentiate between the leadership of the CP of China in Mao Tsetung's lifetime and the present leadership.
For example, you maintain:
'This course of the Chinese leadership, which has gone through a zigzag process, has come up against the constant opposition of the Party of Labour of Albania which cherishes the cause of socialism, the revolution and the liberation of the peoples above everything else. This accounts for the emergence of serious ideological and political contradictions which have been gradually growing between the Party of Labour of Albania and the Communist Party of China'.
We are emphasizing these last words because we think that they have key meaning. You see a continuous line in the course the CP of China has taken and in its internal development from 1960 up until the discontinuation of aid in the present. This way of looking at it is not dialectical. All you see is a quantitative increase in the contradictions, but not their transformation into a new quality…. Either the contradiction between the PLA and the CPC is only non-antagonistic today, or there has been an antagonistic contradiction from the beginning of this process. In the first case, the step you have taken with this letter would be wrong: in the second case, it would have been your duty to openly take up the ideological struggle years ago. This is an evident contradiction at the base of your letter."(20)
This fact is that the leadership of the Party of Labour of Albania has undergone a turnabout of 180 degrees in its verdict of Mao Tsetung Thought after Mao's death. That's why Hoxha denounces Mao Tsetung's struggle against modern revisionism and socialist China's aid to Albania.
The fact is that the works of Mao Tsetung were translated into Albanian in the early sixties and Hoxha even quoted from them in various speeches.
Even a textile factory in Albania was named after Mao Tsetung. How then can Hoxha explain his sudden change of view without losing face?
In Imperialism and the Revolution, he puts forward some "reasons" for this:
"we Albanian communists have gradually formed our opinions and convictions about the danger presented by 'Mao Tsetung thought'.…
By analysing the facts, our Party arrived at some general and specific conclusions, which made it vigilant, but it avoided polemics with the Communist Party of China and Chinese leaders, not because it was afraid to engage in polemics with them, but because the facts, which it had about the erroneous, anti-Marxist course of this party and Mao Tsetung himself, were incomplete, and still did not permit the drawing of a final conclusion.…
Besides this, we did not have full knowledge about the internal political, economic, cultural, social life, etc. in China."(21)
If Hoxha wants us to believe that from 1949, the foundation of the People's Republic of China, until Mao Tsetung's death in 1976, he was in no position to judge China's internal life, where did this sudden enlightenment come from which enabled him to form an objective opinion today? Hoxha has neither found the philosopher's stone, nor can his two-volumed so-called diary of 1600 pages cover up his basically petty-bourgeois way of thinking.
The basic question of political line and the principles of Marxism-Leninism is not just a matter of knowing the complete facts and figures. If Hoxha within 30 years is not able to make a difference between a Marxist-Leninist line – which he calls revisionist and "devoid of the features of Marxism-Leninism" – and a truly revisionist line, he proves himself incapable. Hoxha and the leadership of the PLA are well aware of this problem. That's why this so-called diary Reflections on China tries in vain to prove Hoxha's "principled stand". The publisher's note announces:
"'Reflections on China' consists of excerpts from the Political Diary of Comrade Enver Hoxha.… In these notes the zigzags of the Chinese leadership, its revisionist, anti-socialist and anti-Albanian course, are revealed. From these notes and others which may be published later, the reader will be able to see the analysis the PLA has made and the principled stands it has taken in defence of Marxism-Leninism." (From the inside cover of the English edition)
Unluckily, his "diary" renders him a bad service. Given, everything written was true, it would have been Hoxha's duty to begin the ideological debate long ago. Then it would not make any sense that he stated completely opposite views at the 5th, 6th, and 7th Congress of the PLA and in countless other speeches and writings. For example, in the 'History of the Party of Labour of Albania', published by the Central Committee of the PLA, it says:
"The PLA has acknowledged the victory of the great Chinese revolution as the greatest victory of the international working class and the proletarian world revolution since that of the Great Socialist October Revolution. Out of the Chinese revolution emerged the PR of China under the leadership of the CP of China with Comrade Mao Tsetung at its top, the bastion of socialism, the mighty base of world revolution."(22)
And in a speech given by Enver Hoxha, we are assured:
"The Albanian Communists and the whole Albanian people will never forget that their Chinese brothers stood side by side with them in times of joy as well as in moments of hardship. They will never forget the generous aid of the Chinese brothers, who shared their rations with our people. They will never forget that the CP of China always protected the Party of Labour like the apple of its eye."(23)
These are undeniable historical facts that allow only one conclusion: Hoxha's so-called diary was manipulated afterwards to fit his present views. Its purpose is to slander Mao Tsetung and the CP of China in the eyes of the Albanian working class and the Marxist-Leninist world movement. It is an attack on Mao Tsetung Thought and Marxism-Leninism!
2. Hoxha's Methods of Slandering Mao Tsetung: Double-talk, Falsification and Unproven Assertions
Particularities of the Chinese Revolution
For a long time China was a feudal society with a feudal economy and political system, reflected in a feudal culture. With the aggression of British imperialism in the Opium War in 1840, feudal China began to transform into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. Since then, the bourgeois national-democratic revolution began to develop at the first stage in the struggle of the Chinese people against the imperialist and feudal forces for a bourgeois-democratic society. The bourgeois-democratic revolution was brought to its climax in 1911 under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, but it was not completed at that time. With World War I and the Russian October Revolution, the first stage of the Chinese Revolution was complete, because the course of world history had been changed by these events. Stalin wrote in The October Revolution and the National Question:
"Thus, the October Revolution, by establishing a tie between the peoples of the backward East and of the advanced West, is ranging them in a common camp of struggle against imperialism.
Thus, from the particular question of combatting national oppression, the national question is evolving into the general question of emancipating the nations, colonies and semi-colonies from imperialism."(24)
Thus there was also a change in the bourgeois-democratic revolution in China. Had it been up till then part of the old bourgeois-democratic world revolution under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, it transformed into a new democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat and became part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution, or, as Stalin says: The significance of the October Revolution for the world is, that it
"erected a bridge between the socialist West and the enslaved East, having created a new front of revolutions against world imperialism, extending from the proletarians of the West, through the Russian revolution, to the oppressed peoples of the East."(25)
The particularities of the Chinese revolution are a result of this development. Mao Tsetung describes them as follows:
"The century of China's bourgeois democratic revolution can be divided into two main stages, a first stage of eighty years and a second of twenty years. Each has its basic historical characteristics: China's bourgeois-democratic revolution in the first eighty years belongs to the old category, while in the last twenty years, owing to the change in the international and domestic political situation, it belongs to the new category. Old democracy is the characteristic of the first eighty years. New Democracy is the characteristic of the last twenty."(26)
E. Hoxha slanders Mao Tsetung regarding the evaluation of the Chinese revolution, although he admits he had "very little knowledge about China" at this time. He denounces the CP of China:
"The entire development of the Chinese revolution is evidence of the chaotic course of the Communist Party of China, which has not been guided by Marxism-Leninism, but by the anti-Marxist concepts of 'Mao Tsetung thought' on the character of the revolution, its stages, motive forces, etc.
Mao Tsetung was never able to understand and explain correctly the close links between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the proletarian revolution."(27)
Reading these words one would assume that Hoxha has not studied the Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, but he does know them – and distorts them, for Mao Tsetung explains:
"Every Communist ought to know that, taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces the two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are two essentially different revolutionary processes, and that the second process can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society."(28)
Hoxha slanders Mao Tsetung by putting him on the same level with the leaders of the 2nd International:
"On the question of relationship between the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution, Mao Tsetung takes the standpoint of the chiefs of the Second International…."(29)
Let's take a closer look at Hoxha's slanderous claims against Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought.
Assertion: Non-proletarian Class Character of the CP of China
In order to show how viciously E. Hoxha slanders Mao Tsetung and with what dishonest methods he operates we will quote from his report to the 5th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania on November 1, 1966:
"It is an undeniable historical fact and a great fortune for the people of the world and international Communism that the glorious CP of China under the leadership of the outstanding Marxist-Leninist Mao Tsetung is standing at the fore of today's struggle against imperialism led by the USA and against modern revisionism led by the Soviet leaders (continuous applause, ovations). The role and the contribution of the CP of China and the PR of China in the struggle for the revolutionary cause of the international proletariat and the peoples of the whole world are colossal.…
The enemies hope in vain that they can discredit the great People's China. It is victoriously marching forward under the leadership of the CP of China and Mao Tsetung Thought (continued applause, ovations)."(30)
Today, Hoxha acts as if he had never said this. But because he cannot deny it, he has to start slandering. Hoxha writes completely the opposite of the above in his book Imperialism and the Revolution:
"While renouncing the principled struggle in the ranks of the party, Mao Tsetung played the game of factions, sought compromise with some of them to counter some others and thus consolidate his own positions.
With such an organizational platform, the Communist Party of China has never been and never could be a Marxist-Leninist party. The Leninist principles and norms were not respected in it."(31)
Anyone who can write two such completely contradicting statements can't be taken seriously, he isn't credible. He is double-talking, dishonest and ruthless, and he seriously damages the international workers' movement. Hoxha asserts that Mao Tsetung exercised "unlimited power" and that he scorned the elected party bodies:
"Mao Tsetung did not have the slightest respect for either the Central Committee or the congress of the party, let alone the party as a whole and its committees at the base.… The party forums, its elected organs, had no authority whatsoever."(32)
In other words: The 30 million party members are a flock of stupid sheep blindly following their leader. It's bad enough that the members of the PLA have to take this from their chairman. But by publishing this book in foreign languages, he challenges the whole communist and labour movement of the world. Hoxha is also characterized by his methods. He quotes an instruction of Mao Tsetung from 1953:
"From now on, all documents and telegraphs sent out in the name of the Central Committee can be dispatched only after I have gone over them otherwise they are invalid."(33/34).
From this quotation Hoxha draws the conclusion:
"Under these conditions there can be no talk of collective leadership, democracy within the party or Leninist norms."(35)
This is knowingly misleading, for Hoxha does not say the reason for Mao Tsetung's instruction. It had become necessary in criticizing Liu Shao-chi and Shang-Kung, who had broken the party discipline and published documents without authorization in the name of the Party Central Committee. This shows that Hoxha uses deceptive methods. Hoxha denies the class character of the CP of China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung and asserts:
"Mao Tsetung, however, conceives the party as a union of classes with contradictory interests, as an organization in which two forces, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie ... confront and struggle against each other."(36)
This is a malicious insinuation. No Communist Party can prevent petty-bourgeois elements from intruding into its ranks and carrying in bourgeois ideas. Even the Bolshevist Party of Russia under Lenin's leadership was not safeguarded against that. In his speech "Combat Bourgeois Ideas in the Party" Mao Tsetung says:
"We must unfold a struggle in the Party against bourgeois ideas. Ideologically, the Party membership falls into three categories: some comrades are firm and unwavering and are Marxist-Leninist in their thinking; quite a number are essentially Marxist-Leninist but infected with non-Marxist-Leninist ideas; and a small number are no good, their thinking is non-Marxist-Leninist."(37)
Mao Tsetung said this in 1953, in the period between the national-democratic and socialist revolution. Furthermore he said:
"The bourgeoisie is sure to corrode people and aim its sugar-coated bullets at them. Its sugar-coated bullets are of two kinds, material and spiritual."(38)
Hoxha does not understand that this ideological struggle within the Party is a struggle of Marxist-Leninist ideas against bourgeois ideas that constantly penetrate into the Party, a struggle of the proletarian mode of thinking against the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking, or to be more precise, a struggle between two lines, the proletarian line and the petty-bourgeois line. This requires being constantly vigilant and applying criticism and self-criticism as the law of development of the party. In Revolutionarer Weg, No. 19, we have written:
"Under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat the class struggle shifts in the course of socialist development from the military side to the ideological and political, which is no less dangerous.
Bourgeois ideology seeps through numerous channels into the working class and seeks to corrode proletarian ideology. This is made easier by the existence of the petty-bourgeois strata, which vacillate between bourgeoisie and working class. The working class and the petty bourgeoisie are interlinked by thousands of strings. Petty-bourgeois thinking constantly exerts influence on the working class. The proletarian party, the vanguard of the proletariat, is also not immune to this." (W. Dickhut, State-Monopoly Capitalism in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Vol. II, pp. 535 f.)
Assertion: Leadership of the Army instead of the Party
At the Third National Congress of the Youth League in 1957, Mao Tsetung said:
"The Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people. Without this core, the cause of socialism cannot be victorious."(39)
But Hoxha claims that, according to Mao Tsetung, the army is the core of leadership and stands above everything! In his book Imperialism and the Revolution he vilifies Mao Tsetung Thought concerning the Party, calling it "anti-Marxist" and declaring:
"So the army was above the party, above the state organs, above everything. From this it emerges that Mao Tsetung's words regarding the role of the party, as the decisive factor of the leadership of the revolution and socialist construction, were only slogans. Both at the time of the liberation war and after the creation of the People's Republic of China, in all the never ending struggles that have been waged there for the seizure of power by one faction or the other, the army has played the decisive role. During the Cultural Revolution, too, the army played the main role: it was Mao's last resort.…
In order to liquidate his ideological opponents, Mao Tsetung has always set the army in motion."(40)
He cites a quotation, isolated from its context, from the article "Turn the Army into a Working Force" (41). This is a Party directive for the army's work in the liberated areas, not a definition of the relationship between the Party and the army.
How does Hoxha know this, having said about himself that he "did not have full knowledge about the internal life in China"?
The Communist Party of China experienced 30 years of war and civil war during its existence – a party in arms. For this reason Mao Tsetung says:
"Every communist must grasp the truth. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."(42)
"All our officers and fighters must always bear in mind that we are the great People's Liberation Army, we are troops led by the great Communist Party of China. Provided we constantly observe the directives of the Party, we are sure to win."(43)
In spite of these clear statements of Mao Tsetung, Hoxha insists on his fallacy and applies it to the situation today:
"Power in China is still in hands of the army, while the party tails behind. This is a general characteristic of countries where revisionism prevails."(44; emphasis by the ed.)
With this eclectic method Hoxha implies that China was revisionist under Mao Tsetung.
Assertion: Leading Role of the Peasantry in the Chinese Revolution
Hoxha insinuates that, according to Mao Tsetung, not the proletariat but the peasantry played the leading role in the revolution.
"The anti-Marxist concepts of 'Mao Tsetung thought' about the revolution are even more obvious in the way Mao has treated the motive forces of the revolution. Mao Tsetung did not recognize the hegemonic role of the proletariat."(45)
This is a blunt lie, for as early as 1926, when the industrial proletariat consisted of only two million workers, Mao Tsetung wrote in his class analysis:
"The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat."(46)
This has always been Mao Tsetung's position; at the same time he drew a distinction between the main force of the peasantry, numbering in millions, and the leading force of the proletariat:
"As every schoolboy knows, 80 per cent of China's population are peasants. So the peasant problem becomes the basic problem of the Chinese revolution and the strength of the peasants is the main strength of the revolution. In the Chinese revolution the workers rank second to the peasants in number. There are several million industrial workers in China and several tens of millions of handicraft workers and agricultural labourers. ... the revolution cannot succeed without the modern industrial working class, because it is the leader of the Chinese revolution and is the most revolutionary class."(47)
The emphasis of the leading role of the proletariat in the Chinese revolution can be proven by numerous passages in Mao Tsetung's writings. Compared to the huge Chinese population as a whole, the working class was small in number. That's why the peasants and not the workers were the main force. With reference to Stalin, Mao emphasizes the importance of the peasants' struggle in the national-democratic revolution – which Hoxha calls a "petty-bourgeois theory"(48). He quotes Mao Tsetung incompletely.
The complete quotation runs as follows:
"Stalin has said that 'in essence, the national question is a peasant question'. This means that the Chinese revolution is essentially a peasant revolution and that the resistance to Japan now going on is essentially peasant resistance. Essentially, the politics of New Democracy means giving the peasants their rights."(49) (Hoxha only quotes the passage in bold print.)
Hoxha concludes that Mao held "that the peasantry and not the working class should play the hegemonic role in the revolution".
This is the method Hoxha employs against Mao Tsetung. He transforms the importance of the peasants' struggle into the hegemonic role of the peasants in the revolution.
Let us see what Lenin says on this question. At the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1907, he stated:
"For this reason, the agrarian question, that is the struggle of the peasants against the landowners for the land, proved one of the touchstones of the present revolution. This struggle for the land inevitably forces enormous masses of the peasantry into the democratic revolution, for only democracy can give them land by giving them supremacy in the state. The victory of the peasantry presupposes the complete destruction of landlordism.
Such an alignment of social forces inevitably leads to the conclusion that the bourgeoisie can be neither the motive force nor the leader in the revolution. Only the proletariat is capable of consummating the revolution, that is, of achieving a complete victory. But this victory can be achieved only provided the proletariat succeeds in getting a large section of the peasantry to follow its lead. The victory of the present revolution in Russia is possible only as the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry."(50)
We think that Mao Tsetung Thought and Lenin's concept of the role of the peasants and the leading part of the proletariat are basically the same. We shall now turn to the question of the national bourgeoisie in the national democratic revolution.
Assertion: Free Development of Capitalism after the Democratic Revolution
In his essay "On New Democracy" Mao describes the role of the national bourgeoisie in the Chinese revolution.
"But China's national bourgeoisie has a revolutionary quality at certain periods and to a certain degree, because China is a colonial and semi-colonial country which is a victim of aggression. Here, the task of the proletariat is to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie against imperialism and the bureaucrat and warlord governments without overlooking its revolutionary quality.
At the same time, however, being a bourgeois class in a colonial and semi-colonial country and so being extremely flabby economically and politically, the Chinese national bourgeoisie also has another quality, namely, a proneness to conciliation with enemies of the revolution."(51)
Mao Tsetung had no illusions regarding the dual role of the national bourgeoisie and its inconsistent, vacillating character in the revolution. The revolutionary United Front included the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, with the working class as the leading force and the masses of peasants as the main force by number. The way Mao Tsetung classifies the forces of the democratic revolution is in agreement with Lenin's statements:
[The proletariat] "can become a victorious fighter for democracy only if the peasant masses join its revolutionary struggle. If the proletariat is not strong enough for this the bourgeoisie will be at the head of the democratic revolution and will impart an inconsistent and self-seeking nature to it. Nothing but revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry can prevent this."(52)
After the democratic revolution in China had succeeded and the People's Republic had been founded, the National United Front was consolidated; it was not possible to pass over from the people's democratic revolution to socialist revolution immediately. What had to be done was to overcome the country's enormous backwardness, caused by the oppression and exploitation on the part of the foreign imperialists and the national reactionary regime; for this the national bourgeoisie was necessary. During the War of Resistance against the Japanese invasion and occupation, Mao Tsetung wrote in "On New Democracy":
"The Chinese revolution cannot avoid taking the two steps, first of New Democracy and then of socialism. Moreover, the first step will need quite a long time and cannot be accomplished overnight."(53)
Hoxha calls this anti-Marxist and quotes Mao without naming his source. He has good reason for this, because the quotation is falsified:
"During this period all the elements of capitalism, in town and countryside, must be permitted."
End of quotation. Referring to the positive role of the national bourgeoisie in the people's democratic revolution, Mao explains:
"For this reason and because China's economy is still backward, there will be need, for a fairly long period after the victory of the revolution, to make use of the positive qualities of urban and rural private capitalism as far as possible, in the interest of developing the national economy. In this period, all capitalist elements in the cities and countryside which are not harmful but beneficial to the national economy should be allowed to exist and expand. This is not only unavoidable but also economically necessary."(54; the emphasized parts were omitted by Hoxha)
Against better judgment Hoxha asserts that the CP of China and Mao Tsetung "left a free field for the development of the bourgeoisie and capitalist social relations". (55)
A few lines beneath the isolated fragments quoted by him, you can read clearly and plainly:
"But the existence and expansion of capitalism in China will not be unrestricted and uncrushed as in the capitalist countries",
and half a page further down:
"Restrictions versus opposition to restriction will be the main form of class struggle in the new-democratic state. It is entirely wrong to think that at present we need not restrict capitalism and can discard the slogan of 'regulation of capital'; that is a Right opportunist view."(56)
Is that enough for you, Comrade Hoxha?
Assertion: Class Conciliation with the Bourgeoisie
Hoxha accuses the CP of China and Mao Tsetung of reconciling classes and tolerating counter-revolutionaries
"The Communist Party of China has maintained a benevolent opportunist stand towards the exploiting classes, and Mao Tsetung has openly advocated the integration of capitalist elements into socialism."(57)
This is not only evil slander but also reveals his ignorance of the situation in China at that time. Less than a year after the founding of the People's Republic, Mao wrote "Don't Hit Out in All Directions":
"At present our relations with the national bourgeoisie are very strained; they are on tenterhooks and are very disgruntled. Unemployed intellectuals and workers are dissatisfied with us and so are a number of small handicraftsmen. The peasants in most rural areas are complaining too because agrarian reform has not yet been carried out there and besides they have to deliver grain to the state.…
In order to isolate and attack our immediate enemies, we must convert those among the people who are dissatisfied with us into our supporters.…
The national bourgeoisie will eventually cease to exist, but at this stage we should rally them around us and not push them away. We should struggle against them on the one hand and unite with them on the other."(58)
This was correct tactics by the CP of China in accordance with the situation at that time: "Don't hit out in all directions," "don't make too many enemies," "relax the tension a little." For this reason the enemies were handled carefully and there was more stress on education than before. Disregarding the circumstances, Hoxha reacts dogmatically:
"Proceeding from such anti-Marxist concepts, according to which with the lapse of time the class enemies will be corrected, he [Mao] advocated class conciliation with them and allowed them to continue to enrich themselves, to exploit, to speak, and to act freely against the revolution."(59)
Once again it is Hoxha's bad trick to turn Mao into an anti-Marxist by quoting him incompletely. In order to "prove" his above assertion he quotes Mao Tsetung again out of context:
"We have a lot to do now. It is impossible to keep on hitting out at them day in day out for the next fifty years. There are people who refuse to correct their mistakes, they can take them into their coffins when they go to see the King of Hell."
The people in question are Rightist intellectuals. Did Mao Tsetung really take a conciliatory and capitulationist stand towards them, as Hoxha wants us to believe? In order to unmask Hoxha's dishonest method, let us quote from the same passage from which he drew his quotation; it begins as follows:
"Do we need to finish off the Rightists with one blow? Giving them a couple of hard knocks is quite necessary. If we don't, they will play possum. Don't we need to mount attacks on these types and go after them? Yes, attacks are necessary. But, the aim is to force them to reverse course. We should use every means in our offensive to isolate them completely, only then can we win over some, if not all. They are intellectuals and some are big intellectuals; once won over they can be useful."
At the end of the passage, Mao emphasizes:
"As I see it, even a century hence the die-hard Rightists will get their punishment."(60)
From the same volume Hoxha quotes another fragment which is meant to show the conciliation with counter-revolutionaries, and concludes:
"Acting in practice according to these views of conciliation with the enemies, the state administration in China was left in the hands of the old officials."(61)
Quoting from the same Mao essay, it is easy to prove that applying certain tactics towards the people's enemies does not mean class conciliation at all.
"In future not only must the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in society continue, but we must also uncover all the hidden counter-revolutionaries in Party and government organs, schools and army units. We must draw a clear distinction between ourselves and the enemy."(62)
Hoxha does not distinguish between tactical action against the enemy as was necessary in the concrete situation after the victory of the people's democratic revolution and the fundamental difference between the masses and the enemy. He has a dogmatic point of view and thus does not comprehend Mao's dialectical method.
Assertion: Promotion of Bourgeois Ideology
In his attempt to stamp Mao Tsetung a revisionist, Hoxha declares in his book Imperialism and the Revolution:
"According to Mao Tsetung, in socialist society, side by side with the proletarian ideology, materialism and atheism, the existence of bourgeois ideology, idealism and religion, the growth of 'poisonous weeds' along with 'fragrant flowers', etc., must be permitted. Such a course is alleged to be necessary for the development of Marxism, in order to open the way to debate and freedom of thought, while in reality, through this course, he is trying to lay the theoretical basis for the policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie and coexistence with its ideology."(63; emphasis by the ed.)
This is another one of Hoxha's unfounded assertions. Mao Tsetung always said that culture is committed to a certain class, Hoxha knows this very well. Let's hear what Mao says himself:
"In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above all classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics."(64)
The Revolutionary United Front was formed to carry out the people's democratic revolution. Its forces consisted of the proletariat, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie and it was led by the proletariat. It was reflected in the new-democratic culture:
"In a word, new-democratic culture is the proletarian-led, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses."(65)
After the victory of the people's democratic revolution it was necessary to continue with the United Front policy, because socialist economy and politics had not yet been developed. That's why culture could not yet be fully socialist but rather national-democratic and new-democratic.
"New-democratic culture is national. It opposes imperialist oppression and upholds the dignity and independence of the Chinese nation."(66)
In the transition from the people's democratic revolution to socialist revolution the proletariat could not do without allies either. This situation was reflected in politics, economics and culture. That is how the slogan "Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend!" originated. Mao says:
"They were put forward in the light of China's specific conditions, in recognition of the continued existence of various kinds of contradictions in socialist society and in response to the country's urgent need to speed up its economic and cultural development."(67)
Mao Tsetung correctly realizes that class struggle in socialism will last for a long time and that for this reason bourgeois ideology will maintain its influence longer. Who will win in this struggle is not yet decided in the stage of socialism because the wrong ideas will still have their effects on people up to the stage of communism. That's why they simply cannot be forbidden. But:
"as far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech."(68)
It is absolutely untrue when Hoxha claims that, according to Mao Tsetung, "the growth of 'poisonous weeds' along with 'fragrant flowers', etc., must be permitted." On the contrary, Mao demands:
"Mistakes must be criticized and poisonous weeds fought wherever they crop up. We are against poisonous weeds of whatever kind, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower. Together with the masses of the people, we must learn to differentiate between the two and use correct methods to fight the poisonous weeds."(69)
Hoxha is ruthless in slandering Mao Tsetung, raging:
"This conciliatory stand towards everything reactionary goes so far as to call disturbances in socialist society inevitable and the prohibition of enemy activity mistaken."(70)
What does that refer to? Mao refers here to small groups of workers and students who went on strike in 1956 for material demands which were not met. Mao names two reasons for these disturbances: First, bureaucracy in the leadership and second, the lack of ideological and political education of the workers and students. Since this concerns contradictions among the people, the handling of these contradictions is mainly a matter of education. Then Mao concludes:
"We do not approve of disturbances, because contradictions among the people can be resolved through the method of 'unity – criticism – unity', while disturbances are bound to cause some losses and are not conducive to the advance of socialism."(71)
Hoxha's presentation is utterly superficial and misleading.
3. The Cultural Revolution as the Paramount Form of Class Struggle in Socialism and How Enver Hoxha Denies It
As a Method of Strengthening the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Is the Creative Further Development of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Tsetung
It is inevitable that after the socialist revolution, a part of the old bureaucracy, the bourgeois scientists and possibly the dispossessed bourgeoisie will have to be called on to help build socialism. This cannot be avoided especially in such large countries as the Soviet Union and China, where the largest part of the population is petty-bourgeois, where many petty bourgeois elements penetrate the Communist Party and move into positions in government, management and administration. Very early Lenin recognized this danger. In April 1918 he wrote in "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government":
"It goes without saying that the element of petty-bourgeois disorganisation (which must inevitably be apparent to some extent in every proletarian revolution, and which is especially apparent in our revolution, owing to the petty-bourgeois character of our country, its backwardness and the consequences of a reactionary war) cannot but leave its impress upon the Soviets as well.
We must work unremittingly to develop the organisation of the Soviets and of the Soviet government. There is a petty-bourgeois tendency to transform the members of the Soviets into 'parliamentarians', or else into bureaucrats. We must combat this by drawing all the members of the Soviets into the practical work of the administration.…
The fight against the bureaucratic distortion of the Soviet form of organisation is assured by the firmness of the connection between the Soviets and the 'people', meaning by that the working and exploited people, and by the flexibility and elasticity of this connection." (72)
Seeing the danger of the petty-bourgeois degeneration of the bureaucracy, Lenin saw the best means of encountering this danger in mobilizing and revolutionizing the masses. The workers and poor peasants must have the right
- to elect and dismiss their officials
- to control the work of the officials
- to put qualified workers into responsible positions
In order to put the dictatorship of the proletariat into practice, the workers must take all power into their hands and must perfect themselves in exercising power. With great concern Lenin wrote to Sokolov:
"Bureaucrats are smart fellows, many scoundrels among them are extremely cunning. You won't catch them with your bare hands."(73)
In the following years Stalin carried out the struggle against bureaucracy with the help of the State Security Service, but even they could not give a decisive blow to bureaucracy because the masses weren't mobilized to master the degenerate petty-bourgeois bureaucrats.
After Stalin's death the bureaucracy under Khrushchev usurped power, abolished the dictatorship of the proletariat and restored capitalism of a new type. As a consequence of this development, Mao Tsetung conceived the concept of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In China, too, the bureaucracy had degenerated to a great part and become petty bourgeois. Not only in government, administration and management, but even in top positions in the Communist Party, bureaucrats who were taking the capitalist road could be found. Even old and experienced revolutionaries succumbed to petty-bourgeois mentality, which by the long tradition of bourgeois ideology will come up over and over. Their material privileges made possible a petty-bourgeois life-style and gave rise to egoism. Bourgeois ambition and a lust for power drew them away from the masses and made it impossible for them to understand the wants and needs of the common people. The bureaucracy within the Party became the biggest danger to the existence of socialism. This bureaucracy developed step by step to a new class of capitalist roaders, bringing about the danger of capitalist restoration, if not stopped on time.
Mao Tsetung drove back this development in several campaigns. He concludes:
"In the past we waged struggles in rural areas, in factories, in the cultural field, and we carried out the socialist education movement. But all this failed to solve the problem, because we did not find a form, a method, to arouse the broad masses to expose our dark aspect openly, in an all-round way, and from below."(74)
The petty-bourgeois bureaucrats in the Party, government and management had already taken control of many sectors and set up their counter-revolutionary headquarters in the Party under the leadership of Liu Shao-chi. The new bourgeoisie was threatening to take power. At this point the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was initiated and personally led by Mao Tsetung, which unfolded the broad masses, especially the young militant Red Guards.
In the 16-Point-Resolution of the Central Committee of the CP of China on August 8, 1966, the Party members were called upon to mobilize the masses;
"Trust the masses, rely on them and respect their initiative.… Make the fullest use of big-character posters and great debates to argue matters out, so that the masses can clarify the correct views, criticize the wrong views and expose all the ghosts and monsters. In this way the masses will be able to raise their political consciousness in the course of the struggle, enhance their abilities and talents, distinguish right from wrong and draw a clear line between ourselves and the enemy."(75)
Beginning in the schools and universities of the country, the Cultural Revolution spread rapidly to all provinces and into all cities and villages, propagating Mao Tsetung Thought. The Red Guards distributed the Little Red Book, the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung, into the remotest villages and exposed the representatives of the bourgeois line. The report to the 9th Congress of the CPC, held on April 14, 1969, gives an account of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution:
"Under the guidance of Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line, the broad revolutionary masses plunged into the fight. In Peking University a big-character poster was written in response to the call of the Central Committee. And soon big-character posters criticizing reactionary bourgeois ideas mushroomed all over the country. Then Red Guards rose and came forward in large numbers and revolutionary young people became courageous and daring pathbreakers.… And now, at Chairman Mao's call that 'The working class must exercise leadership in everything', the working class, which is the main force in the proletarian revolution, and its staunch ally the poor and lower-middle peasants have mounted the political stage of struggle-criticism-transformation in the superstructure. From July 27, 1968, mighty contingents of the working class marched to places long dominated by the persons in power taking the capitalist road and to all places where intellectuals were predominant in number. It was a great revolutionary action."(76)
Under the leadership of Mao Tsetung, the proletariat of a socialist country succeeded for the first time not only in defeating the old bourgeoisie but also in fighting back the newly developed bourgeoisie within the ranks of the Communist Party. But the fight was not yet hard enough, as was shown by the development of bureaucracy later on.
Let us summarize:
"The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is:
1. the highest form of class struggle in socialist society;
2. the awakening and rapid development of socialist consciousness in the masses by means of criticism and self-criticism and by studying and, at the same time, putting into practice Mao Zedong Thought;
3. the concrete form of exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat to prevent the bureaucratization of the Party, the government and management apparatus (against capitalist-roaders in power);
4. the building of an ideological-political barrier against the danger of capitalist restoration.
The concept of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a great contribution to Marxism-Leninism under the conditions of class struggle in socialism. This class struggle manifests itself as a dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of the sharpest control over the bureaucracy…." (77)
The new Chinese leadership under Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-ping has succeeded in pushing through its revisionist line and liquidating the achievements of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, has reversed the changes made in the Party leadership and in government and economic management, rehabilitating bureaucrats, intellectuals and bourgeois elements back into these positions. The rehabilitation of class enemies reached its peak in the posthumous rehabilitation of the arch-revisionist Liu Shao-chi. The Communique of the 5th Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CP of China takes position:
"Comrade Liu Shaoqi, former Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chairman of the People's Republic of China, and a great Marxist and proletarian revolutionary, was loyal to the Party and the people at all times over the past decades, devoted all his energy to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat and made indelible contributions to China's new-democratic revolution and its socialist revolution and construction. Because the appraisal of the situation in the Party and the country on the eve of the Cultural Revolution was contrary to fact, an entirely wrong and groundless inference was made, asserting that there was within the Party a counter-revolutionary revisionist line and then that there was a so-called bourgeois headquarters headed by Comrade Liu Shaoqi. … This biggest frame-up our Party has ever known in its history must be completely overturned."(78)
Hoxha's Change of Course in Evaluating the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – Repudiation of his Slanderous Attacks
Not only the modern revisionists in the leadership of the CP of China attack the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution directly and indirectly and denounce it in connection with the so-called "Gang of Four" – saying "Gang of Four" and meaning Mao Tsetung. Enver Hoxha takes a similar position, only that he attacks Mao Tsetung more openly.
To characterize his power of judgment and his morals, let us compare two of his statements which completely contradict each other. After the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had begun, at the 5th Congress of the PLA on November 1, 1966, Hoxha said the following in his report:
"The PLA welcomes the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, the purpose of which is the relentless struggle against bourgeois revisionist ideology, which appears in people's minds in the field of culture and in every other area of life in the country, against the class enemies and all open and concealed revisionists who are trying to lead China back onto the capitalist road, and also against American imperialism and all reactionaries"(79)
Twelve years later Hoxha said on this same topic:
"The course of events showed that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power."(80)
In this matter of principle Hoxha has had a complete turn of mind. Perhaps, one could object, he didn't have a complete picture of the situation at the 5th Congress in 1966, but five years later, at the 6th Congress in November 1971, he still took his original view:
"The triumph of the great proletarian cultural revolution initiated and guided by the great Marxist-Leninist Comrade Mao Tse-tung, is a victory and a source of inspiration for the whole revolutionary movement."(81)
Supposing that new facts and insights had led to his fundamentally opposite view, then it would have been his duty to practice candid, honest and objective self-criticism before the PLA, the Albanian working class and the whole international communist movement, which openly, honestly and objectively investigated the alleged mistakes of his former positive opinion. But Hoxha did no such thing.
Instead, this change of course is presented as proof for the never-failing "principled analysis and stand of the PLA in defending Marxism-Leninism". Once again he calls upon the faked diary, according to which he supposedly said as early as October 1966 about the Cultural Revolution:
"Nothing can be solved correctly, no correct Marxist-Leninist line can be decided or accepted, without the party, without the working class in the forefront. Any other road leads to mistakes, to things fraught with many dangers for the future."(82)
Ten years later, in April 1976, he described the Cultural Revolution as a revisionist power struggle:
"This revolution was the result of the struggle between two rightist, liberal revisionist trends over who was to seize power: Mao or Liu."(83)
Instead of criticizing the stand he took at the 5th and 6th Congresses, he says three months later, in July 1976:
"At some stage, when the truth about what Mao really was comes out clearly, the question will be raised as to why we have described him as 'a great Marxist-Leninist'? It is true that we have said this, but not with complete conviction. Then have we not been opportunists? No, we have always sought to do our best for the Chinese people and the Communist Party of China, which openly defended Stalin, and have had the best of intentions towards Mao personally."(84)
Which Communist is going to believe this? Especially when he again, according to the documents of the PLA, said exactly the opposite at the 7th Congress in November 1976:
"The work of this outstanding Marxist-Leninist represents a contribution to the enrichment of the revolutionary theory and practice of the proletariat."(85)
This obvious mendacity of the alleged diary is enough to expose Hoxha. Methods like this are incompatible with proletarian mentality. Not the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and Mao Tsetung must be re-evaluated. But rather Enver Hoxha himself.
Let us now turn to the core of his slanderous attacks. In complete opposition to his earlier views, Hoxha now states in Imperialism and the Revolution:
"But the main thing was the fact that neither the party nor the proletariat were in the leadership of this 'great proletarian revolution'."(86)
He is not the first to make such allegations. The modern revisionists also claimed this during the Cultural Revolution and afterwards. For example, in a book called "Criticism of Mao Tsetung's Theoretical Views," published by a Soviet revisionist collective, it is stated:
"The Cultural Revolution is designated as 'proletarian' and was allegedly carried out in the interests of the proletariat, but the Chinese workers were, in fact, excluded from participation…. Mao Tsetung's followers counted on the political immaturity of youth … and took advantage of this to smash the Party organizations and other socialist institutions."(87)
How the arguments are alike! However, neither the Soviet revisionists nor Hoxha can prove them because they aren't true.
The Cultural Revolution was initiated by a circular of the Central Committee on May 16, 1966. This document was written during the two-line struggle against the followers of Liu Shao-chi and was distributed for discussion in the entire Party. It says:
"The whole Party must follow Comrade Mao Tsetung's instructions, hold high the great banner of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, thoroughly expose the reactionary bourgeois stand of those so-called academic authorities who oppose the Party and socialism, thoroughly criticize and repudiate reactionary bourgeois ideas in the sphere of academic work, education, journalism, literature and art and publishing, and seize the leadership in these cultural spheres. To achieve this, it is at the same time necessary to criticize and repudiate those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army and all spheres of culture, and to clear them out or transfer some of them to other positions."(88)
Based on broad discussion of this circular, the Central Committee of the CP of China passed its 16-point resolution on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, giving an outline for carrying it out. It says about the leadership by the Party and the tasks of the Party committees:
"What the Central Committee of the Party demands of the Party committees at all levels is that they persevere in giving correct leadership, put daring above everything else, boldly arouse the masses, change the state of weaknesses and incompetence where it exists, encourage those comrades who have made mistakes but are willing to correct them to cast off their mental burdens and join in the struggle, and dismiss from their leading posts all those in authority who are taking the capitalist road and so make possible the recapture of the leadership for the proletarian revolutionaries."(89)
As a result of the militant struggle of the masses against the bourgeoisie on the ideological front and based on the strengthening and broadening socialist consciousness, not the Party was liquidated but rather the headquarters of the new bourgeoisie. In the movement "struggle – criticism – transformation", which spread over the whole country, the Party and state officials were remoulded, so that many of them could remain in office and do good work afterwards. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution did not become, as Hoxha claims, a movement to liquidate the Party, but, on the contrary, a movement to consolidate the proletarian Party in class struggle.
In the same ay one can prove that Hoxha's slanderous assertion that the Cultural Revolution did not put the leadership of the working class into effect is nothing but an empty lie. He claims:
"Thus the working class was left on the side-lines, and there were instances when it opposed the red guards and even fought them. … The party was disintegrated. It was liquidated, and the communists and the proletariat were totally disregarded."(90)
It is a fact, however, that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was initiated by the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on August 8, 1966, and was led by reliable Communists, workers, peasants and class-conscious members of the Red Guards, not, of course, by party officials against whom the struggle was directed, the capitalist roaders.
Accordingly, it was stated in the bulletin of the enlarged 12th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the CP of China:
"The working class must exercise leadership in everything, to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in the superstructure, including all the various spheres of culture, to fulfil the tasks in all stages of struggle-criticism-transformation put forward by Chairman Mao and to carry the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution through to the end."(91)
Because of the long tradition of bourgeois ideology in schools and universities, the bourgeoisie still had a lot of influence, especially in the educational institutions. It is no coincidence that the Cultural Revolution began here. In the course of its development it spread out to the factories and villages. Before the Cultural Revolution, most factories had overemphasized production.
With "struggle – criticism – transformation" proletarian politics was put in first place. Revolutionary factory workers formed worker's propaganda teams which went to the various government and state bodies and other social institutions to exert control in the interests of the working class, to show where conditions were bad and to educate the officials. Their tasks were described as follows:
"As regards intellectuals, they must be re-educated by the workers, peasants and soldiers so that they can integrate themselves with the workers and peasants. The workers' propaganda teams should stay permanently in the schools and colleges, take part in all the tasks of struggle-criticism-transformation and will always lead these institutions."(92)
Hoxha's intentions are clear. By claiming that there was no leadership by the Party and the working class, he is attacking the Cultural Revolution as the highest form of class struggle and concrete form of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the bureaucratization of the Party, the state and management apparatus.
Hoxha Denies the Existence of Antagonistic Classes under Socialism
In his book Imperialism and the Revolution, Hoxha claims to have had doubts about Mao Tsetung's theses before:
"On many of Mao Tsetung's theses, such as that about the handling of contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as non-antagonistic contradictions, the thesis about the existence of antagonistic classes during the entire period of socialism, … we had our reservations…."
"Thus he [Mao] does not see the socialist revolution as a qualitative change of society in which antagonistic classes and the oppression and exploitation of man by man is abolished, but conceives it as a simple change of places between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat."(93)
Scornfully Hoxha says this is Mao Tsetung's "discovery" and then quotes him:
"If the bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot transform themselves into each other, how does it come that, through revolution, the proletariat becomes the ruling class and the bourgeoisie the ruled class?" (All emphasis by the ed.)
How can Hoxha assert that this change of place Mao Tsetung talks about is no qualitative change when "through revolution, the proletariat becomes the ruling class"? Marx in his time had already made this "discovery". Stalin, too, writes that there is class suppression before and after the revolution:
"But there is one substantial difference. This difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states have been dictatorships of an exploiting minority over the exploited majority, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploited minority."(94; emphasis by the ed.)
In attacking Mao Tsetung's statement that antagonistic classes continue to exist throughout the whole period of socialism and that the victorious proletariat as the ruling class commands and suppresses the bourgeoisie, Hoxha takes the opposite stand, contradicting Lenin, who in his work Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat stresses explicitly:
"Having overthrown the bourgeoisie and conquered political power, the proletariat becomes the ruling class; it wields state power, it exercises control over the means of production already socialised; it guides the wavering and intermediary elements and classes; it crushes the increasingly stubborn resistances of the exploiters. All these are specific tasks of the class struggle, tasks which the proletariat formerly did not and could not have set itself. The class of exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, have not disappeared and cannot disappear all at once under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The exploiters have been smashed, but not destroyed. They still have an international basis in the form of international capital, of which they are a branch. They still retain certain means of production in part, they still have money, they still have vast social connections. Because they have been defeated, the energy of their resistance has increased a hundred- and a thousandfold. …
But if it is not forgotten, it becomes obvious that by overthrowing the bourgeoisie the proletariat takes the most decisive step towards the abolition of classes, and in order to complete the process the proletariat must continue its class struggle, making use of the apparatus of state power and employing various methods of combating, influencing and bringing pressure to bear on the overthrown bourgeoisie and the vacillating petty bourgeoisie."(95)
By denying the existence of antagonistic classes and the emergence of a new bourgeoisie, Hoxha restricts class struggle in socialism to "remnants of the overthrown and expropriated classes" and to "elements who are degenerating and opposing socialist construction", but mainly to external enemies, the "surrounding capitalist-revisionist world" (Shehu).
In Denying the Two-Line Struggle, Hoxha Promotes Bureaucratic Methods within the Party
For Enver Hoxha a thing does not exist if he doesn't want it to. That's why he denies not only the existence of antagonistic classes but also the objective law of the two-line struggle. For that purpose he distorts Mao's views. Thus he maintains in Imperialism and the Revolution:
"Mao Tsetung himself has advocated the need for the existence of 'two lines' in the party. According to him, the existence and struggle between two lines is something natural, is a manifestation of the unity of the opposites, is a flexible policy which unites in itself both loyalty to principles and compromise."(96)
As "proof" of Mao's so-called "sermon" on the necessity of two lines within the Party, he takes a quotation from Mao's "A Dialectical Approach to Inner-Party Unity" out of its context:
"'Thus', he writes, 'we have two hands to deal with a comrade who has made mistakes: one hand to struggle with him and the other to unite with him. The aim of this struggle is to uphold the principles of Marxism, which means being principled; that is one aspect of the problem. The other aspect is to unite with him. The aim of unity is to offer him a way out, to reach a compromise with him'."(97)
The open discussion of differing opinions within the Communist Party must not be suppressed, as long as every member argues on the basis of the unity of the Party. "The aim of struggle is to uphold the principles of Marxism." (Mao) In his essay Mao Tsetung deals with the different handling of contradictions among the people and the contradictions with the enemy. Here Mao points out the following:
"I think our attitude should be one of unity towards every comrade, no matter who, provided he is not a hostile element or a saboteur (...).
The unity of opposites is the fundamental concept of dialectics. In accordance with this concept, what should we do with a comrade who has made mistakes? We should first wage a struggle to rid him of his wrong ideas. Second, we should also help him. Point one, struggle, and point two, help. We should proceed from good intentions to help him correct his mistakes so that he will have a way out.
However, dealing with persons of another type is different. Towards persons like Trotsky and like Chen Tu-hsiu, Chang Kuo-tao and Kao Kang in China, it was impossible to adopt a helpful attitude, for they were incorrigible."(98; emphasis by the ed.)
The two-line struggle is the objective law of development of contradictions within the party. Even if Hoxha denies it, it will nevertheless have its effect (in the PLA as well). Petty-bourgeois mentality emerges spontaneously again and again and does not only infect people of petty-bourgeois origin. Unless they have a very firm socialist consciousness, proletarians, too, are inflicted by petty-bourgeois mentality as a result of inner influences and changes, reinforced by the influence of bourgeois ideology as an external cause. Particularly vulnerable are the bureaucrats who tend to petty-bourgeois mentality because of their higher standard of living and a certain amount of power they have in their hands.
Those members and officials in the party who are dominated by petty-bourgeois mentality will soon come into conflict with the proletarian line of the party. At first these are contradictions among the people which, if they can't be resolved, change into antagonistic contradictions. These contradictions are manifested as the two-line struggle. The petty-bourgeois line attempts to undermine the proletarian line and to change the Party into a revisionist party. This must be prevented by the consequent struggle of the proletarian line.
How far can the inner-party two-line struggle go? When does a contradiction among the people change into a contradiction between the people and the enemy? Mao comments on that as follows:
"What are the limits? One is that Party discipline must be observed, the minority being subordinate to the majority and the entire membership to the Central Committee. Another limit is that no secret faction must be organized."(99)
So it is a necessary process that a two-line struggle develops on the basis of inner-Party contradictions. The objective cause of this is the existence of classes, class contradictions and class struggle in socialism. Hoxha denies this objective law by implying that Mao Tsetung approves of the constant existence of two lines within the Party. But he cannot prevent this law from having its effects in Albania and the PLA. The best example is given by Hoxha himself in the Central Committee's report to the 7th Congress:
"In the educative work, it should not be forgotten that, for known reasons, the manifestations of the feeling of private property and the hangovers of petty-bourgeois psychology still have strong roots in the countryside…."(100; emphasis by the ed.)
"The 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Plenums of the Central Committee of the Party have been great schools of class struggle in the period between the two Congresses. These plenums uncovered and made short work of the hostile groups of Fadil Pacrami and Todi Lubonja, of Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume and Hito Cako, of Abdyl Kellezi, Koco Theodhosi and Kico Ngjela, and others, who had engaged in a far-reaching undermining and sabotage activity in the field of ideology and culture, in the army, industry, planning, trade, and so on." (101)
"The uncovering and liquidation of the plot hatched up by the internal and external enemies is a great victory of our Party and people, a victory of Marxism-Leninism over revisionism."(102)
We cannot tell which ideological-political questions were represented by the different groups because Hoxha doesn't describe the contents of the struggle. What we can tell, however, is that the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism, which Hoxha is referring to, is always a two-line struggle. But, according to Hoxha, this was not the case, because the "hostile groups … masked their counter-revolutionary activity … never daring to come out openly against the line of the Party…."(103)
But the struggle against traitors within the Party ranks is always complicated because they wave the red banner in order to fight it and they conceal their revisionist line. Since, according to Hoxha, "hostile groups" had strong influence in the Party and among the people, it would have been absolutely necessary to mobilize the masses in an ideological struggle and a comprehensive movement of criticism and self-criticism. This was not done in the PLA, as according to official opinion there was no two-line struggle. There is an obvious connection between denying the objective law of the two-line struggle, and, later on, attacking Mao Tsetung's concept of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
This is the best way to destroy criticism and self-criticism as both the law of development of the Party and the driving force of socialist revolution.
Instead, bureaucratic methods are promoted. Hoxha himself describes these symptoms in the Central Committee's report:
"For some time the enemies managed to act and cause damage without being discovered, because they found weak spots in the work of the Party and the state power. They exploited mistakes and shortcomings, manifestations of bureaucracy, liberalism and euphoria, which they did they best to spread and encourage."(104)
"The tendencies observed in some people to resort to administrative methods where persuasion and education should be used are also sectarian. Those who display sectarian tendencies often pose as 'consistent and principled revolutionaries'. But in fact they are opportunists and act in this way in order to be 'on the safe side'."(105)
What Hoxha described as a symptom in November 1976 is nothing but the systematic development of a petty-bourgeois bureaucracy.
Hoxha Denies the Emergence of a New Bourgeoisie
Because Hoxha refuses to recognize the objective law of the two-line struggle, he also denies that it originates from class struggle. Every ideological-political line belongs to a definite class: The class of the bourgeoisie brings forward its bourgeois line, the working class brings forward the proletarian line. The proletarian line is Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought.
Hoxha twists the two-line struggle as a reflection of class struggle into "a union of classes with contradictory interests"(106; emphasis by the ed.). But that means he also denies the class character of the hostile elements and groups following a revisionist line. In practice this means defending the petty-bourgeois bureaucrats within the Party. That's exactly what he does when he criticizes that the Peking Party Committee, which was the headquarters of Liu Shao-chi and his followers, was attacked in the Cultural Revolution.
In his address to the 8th Congress of the CPSU (B) in March 1919, Lenin drew attention to the fact that a new bourgeoisie was emerging in socialism next to the old bourgeoisie. This new bourgeoisie emerging from the bureaucracy was not yet of great importance. However, this was going to change basically later on. At the Party Congress Lenin said:
"Comrade Rykov, who is closely familiar with the facts in the economic field, told us of the new bourgeoisie which have arisen in our country. This is true. The bourgeoisie are emerging not only from among the Soviet government employees – only a very few can emerge from their ranks – but from the ranks of the peasants and handicraftsmen who have been liberated from the yoke of the capitalist banks, and who are now cut off from railway communication. This is a fact. How do you think you will get round this fact? You are only fostering your own illusions, or introducing badly digested book-learning into reality, which is far more complex. It shows that even in Russia, capitalist commodity production is alive, operating, developing and giving rise to a bourgeoisie, in the same way as it does in every capitalist society."(107)
The country's economy had been ruined by war and civil war, and the Soviet power was forced to tolerate a restricted form of capitalism in the 'New Economic Policy' in order to prevent a great famine. In spite of the danger of restoring capitalism, this temporary measure was necessary, but it was sternly controlled by the dictatorship of the proletariat, because this old and new bureaucracy was clear for everyone to see.
The petty-bourgeois degeneration of a large part of the bureaucracy was different. This was a long process of ideological transition from proletarian to petty-bourgeois mentality. Degenerated petty bourgeois were sitting side by side with reliable communists in the Party, state and economic apparatus and adapted to the circumstances in a way that they wouldn't be noticed. Later on they became the bourgeoisie of a new type and carried out the restoration of capitalism after they had come into power. This danger exists in every socialist country, may Hoxha believe it or not.
We already pointed out above that the objective laws have to have their effects in Albania. In his report to the 7th Party Congress Hoxha gave some more examples:
"In the recent years especially, the technocratic and intellectualist influences have been expressed, among other things, in the overestimation of technology and special skills, in the failure to consider problems from the political and ideological angle, in the lack of faith in the drive and optimism of the masses."(108)
This is a typical feature of bureaucrats with petty-bourgeois mentality in Party, government and management apparatus. They want to separate themselves from the masses and despise them. The report reads:
"But this must in no way … close our eyes to manifestations of indifference which are observed among many working people and even among a number of communists and cadres."(109)
The hostile groups mentioned had occupied key positions in ideology and culture, in the army and in the economy. The development demonstrated the absolute necessity of mobilizing the masses on a broad scale in ideological struggle and criticism and self-criticism in a proletarian cultural revolution.
The development of bureaucracy into a new class which in the end will restore capitalism cannot be prevented only by dismissing the bureaucrats from office. Contrary to this, the magazine Albania today practically asserts that the danger of a restoration of capitalism does not exist anymore! It says:
"The energetic and irresistible development of socialism in Albania is the work of our heroic party (...).(110)
That is why the people with the Party at the head took unprecedented efforts and abolished exploitation and oppression once and for all."(111)
"Irresistible" and "once and for all", that is sheer idealism! How will class struggle in Albania develop further on? Can the restoration of capitalism be prevented? By attacking Mao Tsetung Thought and the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in a liquidationist way, the leadership of the PLA has taken an extremely dangerous course. Hoxha does not see how petty-bourgeois mentality arises and develops spontaneously, resulting in a petty-bourgeois political line. This is an objective law of the development of contradictions. He denies the two-line struggle and also denies the emergence of a new bourgeoisie. He doesn't accept this because he himself is already predominated by petty-bourgeois mentality. If this petty-bourgeois mentality, which arises spontaneously again and again, is not fought back constantly, if it is not overcome, that is, if it is not displaced by the proletarian mentality, if the socialist consciousness of the masses is not advanced and strengthened – then the PLA will inevitably be confronted with the alternative:
EITHER PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION OR RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM
4. For the Unity of the Communist World Movement on the Basis of
Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought
The Betrayal by the Teng/Hua-Clique and Hoxha's Slanderous Attacks on Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought Have Promoted Worldwide Liquidationism
The clique of modern revisionists under the leadership of Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao-ping – petty-bourgeois degenerate bureaucrats who came into power after Mao's death – have restored capitalism and have turned into a bourgeoisie of a new type. In order to maintain their rule over the workers and peasants, they needed allies from other classes and strata: former capitalists, petty bourgeois and higher-ranking intellectuals. They were given back leading positions in economic, state and academic sectors. What is expected from the old capitalists under the command of the new bourgeoisie is plainly expressed by a revealing report about a banquet of 2,500 representatives of the national bourgeoisie:
"Vice-Chairman Deng expressed the hope that all the democratic parties and all the All-China Federation of Industrialists and Businessmen will play their role as masters of the country, make criticism and suggestions regarding the government's major policies and work in various fields, be the Party's sincere friends who will give their forthright views and comments, and work together with the Communist Party to run the state well"(112; emphasis by the ed.)
One can well imagine their enthusiasm. Numerous intellectuals and businessmen who had been dismissed from their high positions during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated. In order to decorate these anti-socialist measures with a socialist appearance, the Chinese revisionists think up new theories:
"When the means of production are no longer in the hands of a class and when one group of people can no longer appropriate the labour of another, this class, of course, also ceases to exist."(113)
That stands in fundamental contradiction to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought. Lenin explained clearly and plainly:
"And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear.
Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes have also changed. The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms."(114)
Accordingly, Mao Tsetung points out, "in the historical period of socialism, there are still classes, class contradictions and class struggle".
Reality shows how the concept of "fundamental change in China's class situation" works and how the former exploiters have been "remoulded" into working people who "live by the work of their own hands". In January 1979 the following decision of the Central Committee of the CP of China was published:
"According to this decision, their [the old capitalists' - the ed.] bank deposits and other property confiscated with the approval of Lin Biao and the 'gang of four' during the Great Cultural Revolution will be returned to them, and the money deducted from their original wages over the years will be refunded. From now on they will receive the same high salary as they used to get before the Cultural Revolution."(115)
This appalling fact is camouflaged as the "reinstatement of Chairman Mao's policy towards the national bourgeoisie". This is blunt demagogy! The CP's policy towards the national bourgeoisie which had taken part in the revolution – a policy which was a necessary part of people's democratic revolution after liberation in 1949 – is applied to the period after the socialist revolution in 1956 and raised to a principle. This is a frontal attack on the Cultural Revolution.
The CP of China had pursued a policy of buying up the means of production owned by the national bourgeoisie which had supported the new-democratic revolution. In 1956 the small and middle private business became mixed state-private property. For a transitional period these capitalists were compensated with 5 per cent interest for their capital, the old bosses were often allowed to remain in leading positions in their former factories and often received higher salaries. But that was under state control. This agreement was only applied until September 1966, when all factories were transformed into the property of the people in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In a fierce class struggle the still existing influence of the national bourgeoisie was broken. The revolutionary masses confiscated the accumulated interest, saving accounts, public loans, gold and silver, private mansions etc. The high salaries of the businessmen were adapted to those of the common workers. Most of them were fired from their high positions and were sent to the workshops and stores for manual labour.
These revolutionary measures of the dictatorship of the proletariat are now being slandered as an expression of a "fascist dictatorship". The capitalists are getting back their money and interests and are re-instated in their former positions. Now the question comes up: Where does the money come from to pay back the interest, to pay back the fortunes? Where does their original capital come from? It comes from the surplus value pressed out of the workers!
Furthermore, the Marxist-Leninist line towards the intellectuals was revised.
These are the reasons:
"Shortly after countrywide liberation in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party brought out the policy of uniting, educating and remoulding intellectuals as most of them were bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals from the old society. More than two decades have passed and many fundamental changes have taken place in the ranks of the intellectuals. Today, the policy is no longer applicable in regard to the overwhelming majority of intellectuals. They are no longer the object of uniting, educating and remoulding, but are now a part of the working class engaged in mental labour and a force the Party relies on."(116; emphasis by the ed.)
However, it is a fact that under socialism, too, the intellectuals still vacillate. Many intellectuals enjoy a higher standard of living than the workers, cultivate a petty-bourgeois life-style and are more vulnerable for bourgeois ideology. That's why Mao Tsetung emphasizes the necessity of remoulding the intellectuals in socialism. The new Chinese leadership has changed the policy towards the intellectuals fundamentally. Formerly the students were sent to the countryside during their university years in order to become acquainted with the life of the simple peasants and to unite with them, today they are expected to concentrate exclusively on their academic studies. Also they are exempted from taking part in physical labour, which bourgeois intellectuals often consider an annoying duty. As early as in March, 1978, Teng declared at the National Science Conference:
"Scientists and technicians should concentrate their energy on scientific and technical work. When we say that at least five-sixths of their work time should be left free for their scientific and technical work, this is meant to be the minimum demand. It is still better if even more time is available for this purpose."(117)
For him, ideological-political education is of no importance:
"We cannot demand that scientists and technicians, or at any rate, the overwhelming majority of them, study a lot of political and theoretical books, participate in numerous social activities and attend many meetings not related to their work."(118)
The new Chinese bourgeoisie needs these intellectuals to maintain its rule. For this reason a growing number of intellectuals are given leading positions in economy, the academic field and the state, even in the revisionist CP.
In Beijing Review, No. 51, 1979, in a report 'Experts in Leading Positions', one could read:
"For instance, after the reorganization of the Party committee in the Shanghai Oil Refinery, seven of its eleven members now are engineers, two are technicians and one is a specialist in management."(119)
Just imagine – 10 intellectuals on a "reorganized" Party committee consisting of 11 people, obviously cleared of workers. The workers are to be taken out of the leadership and administration of the factories. This shows that a new proletarian revolution is necessary.
With its 'New Policy' the Chinese leadership sharpens the contradiction between manual and brain work and destroys the revolutionary alliance of working class and intellectuals. The intellectuals are intended to become faithful instruments in the hands of the new bourgeoisie under the new conditions of revisionist rule and to be detached from the working class. Teng and Hua need a mass basis among the people in order to strengthen their rule. They find this among the mass of petty-bourgeois intellectuals and bribe them with privileges and profitable positions. The dictatorship of the proletariat was abolished and the achievements of the proletarian revolution were destroyed.
Until recently this betrayal of Marxism-Leninism and socialism by the Teng/Hua-liquidationists has, for tactical reasons, not yet gone so far to criticize Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought openly. Frequently capitalist measures are even covered up by using words of Mao, made to fill their purpose – just as the Soviet revisionists hide their revisionism behind a screen of Marxist-Leninist phrases. The revisionist betrayal of the Teng/Hua-clique has done as much damage to the international communist and labour movement as the world-wide revisionism introduced by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 did.
Marxist-Leninists condemn the revisionism which has been practiced since Mao's death by the new leadership with Teng and Hua at the top. As a consequence of revisionism, capitalism has been restored and China has, in a social-imperialist manner, invaded Vietnam. The Chinese leadership's bellicose stand and its boot-licking of the superpower USA and the leading reactionaries in the capitalist countries have created a profound mistrust on the part of working masses throughout the world. A great split has divided the Marxist-Leninist movement world-wide, a split into followers and opponents of the new Chinese leadership. The dispute has led to liquidation or splitting up of many organizations. This world-wide liquidationism was reinforced by the fatal position taken by Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania. On the one hand, they condemn the betrayal of the Teng/Hua-clique, which is fully justified, and were the first to reject the so-called 'three worlds theory', on the other hand they claim that Mao Tsetung is responsible for the whole negative development in China, denounce him as a revisionist and a Chinese Khrushchev, slander his thought as anti-Marxist-Leninist, and thereby create profound confusion in the communist and labour movement, encouraging world-wide liquidationism.
In the ideological struggle against modern revisionism of the Soviet and Chinese variety, Enver Hoxha is a shady figure – on the one hand he is against it, on the other hand he is on a revisionist path himself in attacking Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought. This discredits him in the eyes of many Marxist-Leninists all over the world. In his blind effort to degrade Mao Tsetung in order to put himself in a more favourable light he has come very close to people like Robert Steigerwald, the leading theoretician of the revisionist German Communist Party (DKP).
Enver Hoxha in Agreement with Robert Steigerwald
In 1978, the year Hoxha launched his smear-campaign by publishing his book Imperialism and the Revolution, Robert Steigerwald wrote an "unfinished manuscript", titled 'What Methods Did Mao Tsetung Use? – On Maoist Anti-Sovietism'. Both writings are directed against Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought, and the similarity is obvious. This we shall demonstrate by juxtaposing essential passages from both writings.
Hoxha on Mao Tsetung Thought:
"'Mao Tsetung Thought' is a 'theory' devoid of the features of Marxism-Leninism."(120)
"When one talks of 'Mao Tsetung Thought', it is difficult to discern a single clear line in it, since, as we said at the beginning, it is an amalgam of ideologies, of anarchism, Trotskyism, modern revisionism à la Tito, à la Khrushchev, à la 'Eurocommunist', and down to the use of some Marxist phrases. In all this amalgam the old ideas of Confucius, Mencius, and the other Chinese philosophers, who have directly influenced the formation of the ideas of Mao Tsetung, his cultural and theoretical development, also occupy an honoured place."(121)
Steigerwald on Mao Tsetung Thought:
"Mao Tsetung's theoretical point of view was never proletarian, although he borrowed quite a bit from the terminology of Marxism-Leninism….(122)
The sources of Mao Tsetung's ideas are miscellaneous. Concerning the class aspect, various currents come together: feudal Chinese, bourgeois 'Western' and petty-bourgeois anarchist sources. It has not been sufficiently investigated how far the modern disciples of Kant have influenced Mao Tsetung. His teacher of philosophy and later father-in-law Yang Ch'ang-chi was a pupil of Friedrich Paulsen, a German disciple of Kant in Münster. It is a proven fact that Mao studied Paulsen's 'System of Ethics'. Certain traits of Mao's philosophy are, at any rate, set up in this spirit."(123)
Hoxha on Mao and the role of the proletariat:
"Mao Tsetung also preached the thesis on the hegemonic role of the peasantry in the revolution as the road of the world revolution.…
According to the Chinese views, the proletariat is a second-rate social force…."(124)
Steigerwald on Mao and the role of the proletariat:
"While Mao Tsetung analysed the situation of the peasants extensively, we find no traces of a comparable analysis of the Chinese working class by him.
The non-proletarian character of Mao Tsetung's ideology and policy repeatedly led to severe disputes with him in the history of the Party which did not even cease after his usurpation of power in the Party."(125)
Hoxha on Mao and dialectics:
"In dealing with contradictions, he [Mao] does not proceed from the Marxist theses, but from those of ancient Chinese philosophers, sees the opposites in a mechanical way, as external phenomena, and imagines the transformation of the opposites as a simple change of places between them.…
[He] negates the internal contradictions inherent in things and phenomena and treats development as simple repetition, as a chain of unchangeable states in which the same opposites and the same relationship between them are observed."(126)
Steigerwald on Mao and dialectics:
"When studying Mao's explanations of such general statements, one realizes that he is far behind not only the Marxist-Leninist solution but also Hegel's solution of the problem of contradictions. It is evident what damage has been caused by his narrow-minded adherence to the elementary dialectics of feudal Chinese philosophers, which were great in their time but backward under today's conditions. Mao's theory of contradictions comes down to a theory of complementary definitions transforming into each other in a simple circular way."(127)
Within this booklet we have to confine ourselves to these few examples. Our purpose was to demonstrate how far these two theoretical views coincide. It is obvious how they harmonize with each other in their revisionist evaluation and condemnation of Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought. What is the reason for this? It is the same petty-bourgeois mentality prevailing both in Hoxha and Steigerwald. Their petty-bourgeois attacks on the great Marxist-Leninist Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought damage the international communist and labour movement and promote world-wide liquidationism.
In the 'History of the Party of Labour of Albania', published in 1971, the PLA's leadership was still entitled to write about its own international role:
"The PLA has fulfilled a great international duty in taking up a consequent, principle-based struggle against imperialism and modern revisionism. In this struggle the party aimed to protect the socialist camp and the international communist movement from the imperialist and revisionist attempts to liquidate them, and to preserve and confirm this unity. After the Khrushchevite revisionists had split the socialist camp, the party attempted to restore unity on a revolutionary basis without revisionists and traitors and on the basis of a forceful struggle against them."(128)
The historical role of the PLA was turned into its very opposite when the PLA slandered Mao Tsetung as an anti-Marxist and revisionist and Mao Tsetung Thought as an anti-Marxist teaching and as chauvinism. Today Enver Hoxha argues in line with the West German revisionist Robert Steigerwald.
Class Struggle and the Proletarian World Revolution Require Unity on the Basis of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought
The international communist and labour movement is split as never before. The innumerable parties, organizations and groups can be divided into 6 main ideological-political categories:
1. The revisionist CPSU and its revisionist satellites like the German Communist Party (DKP).
2. The so-called "Eurocommunist" parties – revisionism with nationalist features. Their relations with the CPSU are loose and opportunist.
3. The revisionist CP of China along with those parties and groups which accept its policy without criticism, including the gradual and tacit dismantling of Mao Tsetung Thought. Among them you can find the recently dissolved 'Communist Party of Germany' (KPD) and the 'Communist League of West Germany' (KBW)
4. The PLA along with those parties and groups which in an opportunist way accept their whole political line, including the slanderous attacks on Mao Tsetung and the condemnation of Mao Tsetung Thought. One of them is the unprincipled Communist Party of Germany/ML (KPD/ML 'Roter Morgen'), which only recently has changed its name into 'Communist Party of Germany' (KPD)
5. Trotskyites, anarchists and liquidationist groups of all kinds with all their opportunist and subversive activities.
6. Marxist-Leninist parties and groups which reject and combat both the revisionism of the CPSU and that of the CP of China as well as the slanderous attacks on Mao Tsetung initiated by the PLA. Among them you can find the Communist Workers' League of Germany (KABD) and its subsidiary organisations.
The ideological-political struggle has become more acute world-wide and has broadened and deepened the split. At the same time class struggle has sharpened everywhere as a result of state-monopoly capitalism and its neocolonial, imperialist activities and oppressive measures at home and abroad. In our theoretical organ Revolutionarer Weg, No. 19, we have described the situation as follows:
"The complexity of the relations in state-monopoly capitalism makes the class struggle of the proletariat more difficult. The complete subjugation of the state apparatus to the monopolies, the merger of the organs of the monopolies with those of the state, the control of the mass media by the monopoly associations, the use of the police against militant workers, the emergency laws kept in readiness, the internationalization of monopoly capital – all in all a gigantic economic and political instrument of power of modern capitalism.
But this huge and complicated structure of state-monopoly capitalism is in reality extremely unstable. A sense of insecurity dominates and is spreading throughout the world."(129)
"The whole world is governed by unrest: strikes, demonstrations, armed intervention of the state’s instruments of suppression, rebellions, civil wars, mass uprisings not only against the imperialist exploiters, but also against their ruling puppets (Shah of Persia, Somoza in Nicaragua). All these national and social struggles and the intensifying class struggles in the imperialist countries confirm what Mao Zedong taught and what characterizes the current state of the general crisis of capitalism: Revolution is the main trend in the world!"(130)
The international economic and political situation requires that the revolutionary forces unite and overcome the split. That is not an easy task. Lenin says:
"Any practical step towards unity must be preceded by a preliminary clarification of existing differences."(131)
In our publications we have pointed out: Unity with liquidationists is not possible, you must fight and isolate them. Nor can we unite with revisionists of any kind because that would mean not strengthening, but dangerously weakening and paralysing the labour movement. We can unite only with those who abandon a revisionist and liquidationist viewpoint, who by hard class struggle have come to take a revolutionary stand and who strive for unity based on principle. Such unity is founded on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought. Any other basis is liquidationist and must be fought and repulsed. We agree with Lenin, who said:
"Clearly, anyone who offers the Marxist organisation a 'platform' giving the liquidators 'every opportunity' to liquidate that organisation—anyone who, 'in the name of unity', flouts the will of the vast majority of the class-conscious workers, is simply making a mockery of 'unity'.
Do you want unity? Then renounce liquidationism unequivocally, renounce the 'fight for open existence', and submit loyally to the majority. You do not want unity?"(132)
The Struggle against Modern Revisionism and Liquidationism in Theory and Practice Is Part of Proletarian Class Struggle
In 1910 Lenin wrote in "The State of Affairs in the Party":
"It is no mere chance that the masses, whom the revolution drew into the sharp struggle over questions of tactics, have subsequently, in the period characterised by the absence of open struggle, shown a desire for general theoretical knowledge; that was inevitable. We must again explain the fundamentals of Marxism to these masses; the defence of Marxist theory is again on the order of the day."(133)
Today in our daily work, especially in preparing and leading struggles of the working class, we must at the same time defend Marxist-Leninist theory, including Mao Tsetung Thought, against the petty-bourgeois liquidationists with their damaging views, their slander and distortions. In this way we realize the concrete unity of theory and practice.
Modern revisionism, as it was proclaimed by Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the CPSU (together with the slanderous secret address condemning Stalin), was accepted by most of the Communist Parties in the world and adapted to the specific national features of their respective countries. The working masses were offered a colourful spectrum of different forms of revisionism and reformism: from the West German CP (DKP) as the helping hand of the East German Party (SED) with Soviet revisionism leading both of them by the nose, to Italian revisionism, standing in the service of their own bourgeoisie led by the 'Christian Democrats', or, for instance, the revisionist Communist Party of France, which explicitly deleted the "dictatorship of the proletariat" from its program; or the Spanish revisionists who officially dropped not only Stalin, but also Lenin.
The CP of China under Mao Tsetung's leadership had resolutely taken up the struggle against modern revisionism as represented by Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Suslov, etc., and had initiated 'The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement'. On the occasion of Khrushchev's 75th birthday, the Frankfurter Rundschau (a bourgeois-liberal daily newspaper in West Germany) wrote on April 16, 1969:
"Anticipating the future, Khrushchev had realized the necessity of modernizing both Communism and its methods of rule. In an opportunist way he chose the path of least resistance by criticizing Stalin and thought this to be the best way of strengthening his position of power."
That's how a bourgeois paper describes this low-down revisionist whose secret address was distributed by the American Secret Service; he was regarded by many with contempt. In contrast, 'The Polemic on the General line', initiated by the CP of China, met with positive response all over the world. In many countries this was the impulse for founding Marxist-Leninist groups and parties, thus taking up the ideological struggle against modern revisionism. However, the majority of the members of these Marxist-Leninist movements, especially in the countries under state-monopoly capitalism, had their roots in the disintegrated student movement and were of petty-bourgeois origin. They were ideologically and politically weak and had no experience with the working class movement. Because of their petty-bourgeois impatience, lack of clarity and instability they could neither cope with the difficulties of building a party, nor with the ideological and political conflict with modern revisionism. The ideological-political debate and the administrative methods of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China often were not understood and in some cases even caused confusion and discouragement.
Only fragments of Mao Tsetung Thought were known at that time, as late as 1968 the first two volumes of Mao Tsetung's selected works were published in German. Mao Tsetung's China became the core of the ideological-political struggle against modern revisionism. The Declaration of Principles (Grundsatzerklärung) of KABD, adopted at its 1st National Congress in August 1972, expresses our stand as follows:
"Full of admiration, all true communists look up to the historical deed of the CP of China, holding up the banner of Marxism-Leninism against all assaults of revisionists. The CP of China has encouraged all Marxist-Leninist forces in the world to take up the struggle against revisionist predominance and to unfold a new revolutionary movement. The Communist Workers' League of Germany recognizes Mao Tsetung's China as the revolutionary centre of the Communist world movement."(134)
The death of the great Marxist-Leninist Mao Tsetung in 1976 opened the path for the victory of modern revisionism in China, led by the degenerate bureaucratic leadership under Hua Kuo-feng, and for the rehabilitation of Teng Hsiao-ping, the Chinese Khrushchev. A debate for or against the political line of the Chinese leadership took place all over the world, resulting in the split of many parties and groups. World-wide liquidationists of all kinds have undermined the Communist and labour movement.
All Marxist-Leninists looked up to the PLA because it had been the first to openly challenge the modern revisionists – which resulted in China's breaking off bilateral relations and stopping its aid to Albania. This conflict was brought to its climax by the repudiation and condemnation of the 'Three Worlds Theory' set up by the Chinese leadership.
In China aktuell, No. 2 (The Theory of Three Worlds as a Strategic Conception Smacks of Right-Wing Opportunism, English edition, March 1980) our organization has laid down its basic critical position on this revisionist theory as a strategic conception. This 'Three Worlds Theory' gives fresh impetus to world-wide liquidationism. We criticized that the Party of Labour of Albania waged the ideological struggle against the 'Three Worlds Theory' as anonymous criticism.
"It was the Albanian Party of Labour which first criticized the strategic conception of the 'Theory of Three Worlds', although they neglected to name the culprits. The article in the party paper Zeri i Popullit of July 7, 1977, entitled 'The Theory and Practice of Revolution', mentions neither the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party nor even China itself. In our opinion criticism and self-criticism is the criteria of the further development of a revolutionary workers' party, and must be candid, sincere and objective."(135)
A year later, Hoxha surprisingly launched his open assault without any scruples, this time not so much aimed at the Chinese leadership, but against Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought – in complete contradiction to all previous speeches and official declarations of the PLA. This was a slap in the face of all Marxist-Leninists. Hoxha is no longer trustworthy. He slanders Mao Tsetung and condemns him, as Khrushchev slandered and condemned Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Comparing once again Hoxha's statements, we come to the following conclusions:
Either Hoxha's speeches and the official declarations of the PLA in the past concerning Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China were honest, frank and correct according to Marxism-Leninism – no one in the international communist and labour movement doubted the sincerity of these words – then the statements Hoxha is making today on the Communist Party of China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung and especially against Mao Tsetung Thought and Mao Tsetung personally are vile slander, lies, distortion and unfounded claims and are a challenge to the international working class movement,
or the position Hoxha takes today against Mao Tsetung Thought and the Communist Party of China with their allegedly anti-Marxist and revisionist platform is his true opinion and was – according to the two volumes of his "diary" – the theory of Hoxha and the PLA during Mao Tsetung's lifetime. Then Hoxha's earlier speeches and the declarations of the PLA on the Communist Party of China and Mao Tsetung are nothing but a fraud, hypocrisy and slimy submissiveness, unworthy of a communist.
Whichever way it is: Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania have passed judgment on themselves! The leadership of the PLA can expect neither credibility nor recognition as Marxist-Leninists. Therefore we appeal to all Marxist-Leninists:
Raise the banner of Marxism-Leninism and defend Mao Tsetung and Mao Tsetung Thought!