From Albania Today, 1977, 5
By Zija Xholi – Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Politics and Law.
The 7th Congress of the PLA, the historic report of Comrade Enver Hoxha, and all its other documents are a profoundly principled scientific analysis, full of revolutionary conclusions, of the situations in which the construction of socialism in our country and the entire present-day communist and workers' movement in the world are developing. One of these conclusions is the thesis that “the world is at a stage when the question of the revolution and the national liberation of the peoples is not only an aspiration and a perspective, but also a problem taken up for solution”.
In their theoretical works, Marx and Engels made an analysis of the internal mechanism of capitalist society, delved into its deepest secrets and discovered that the capitalist order is moving irrevocably towards its destruction, that this destruction will be the deed of the proletariat which will carry out the socialist revolution and set up its own dictatorship. The development of history has fully confirmed Marx's conclusion. Capitalism very soon revealed its incurable ills. It quickly became an arena of fierce class battles for the revolution, for the establishment of the proletarian state power.
The new features which capitalism gained with its transition to imperialism made all the irreconcilable internal contradictions of capitalism even deeper, turned capitalism into a decaying and expiring order, into a order which is on the eve of the revolution. “Imperialism,” said Lenin, “is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. Beginning from 1917 this has been confirmed on a world scale".
Lenin's analysis of imperialism preserves all its force and validity, his forecast that the social revolution of the proletariat is the only alternative, remains unshaken to this day. Day by day from the world of capital and the bourgeoisie comes gloomy news, many open or indirect signs, which speak of the increasing severity of all the basic contradiction of imperialism, between the all-powerful monopolies and the masses of the working people, between imperialism and the oppressed peoples, and among the imperialists themselves. They testify to the deepening of the general crisis that has seized all aspects of bourgeois-revisionist society, whether economic and political, or ideological and cultural, its entire base and superstructure.
The closing down and bankruptcy of hundreds and thousands of factories and plants in all capitalist countries without exception and, on this basis, the ever increasing chronic unemployment of millions and millions of workers (more than 100 million today), the increasing cost of living that is rising not just each year, but each month and day, the anarchy of production which is assuming ever greater proportions, the monetary and currency crisis in which the whole system of payments and exchanges is floundering, show with the greatest clarity that the capitalist system based on the absolute power of insatiable monopolies is incapable of administering the productive forces of society, that it destroys them en masse, depriving society of any possibility of development. The capitalist system remains what it has always been, a system of exploitation of man by man, a system of mass misery and poverty, a system that takes a toll of millions and millions of lives. By its very existence, imperialism turns the proletariat into an opposition force, inevitably drives it towards the revolution, leaves it no other way of salvation but to rise against the system and establish its own dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat, by violence.
The other typical contradiction of capitalism, too, the contradiction among the imperialist powers for the division and the redivision of the world, has now become fiercer than ever. Today, such superpowers as U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism confront each other with unprecedented savagery. With their policy of expansion and hegemony, their frenzied arms race to equip themselves with the most powerful weapons, they have become a permanent danger, a daily threat to the freedom and security of many peoples, big or small, distant or near at hand, on all continents. As long as it exists, no imperialism can give up its aggressive tendency. Aggression is the very nature of imperialism. With the pressure they exert on the peoples, with the plots they hatch up every day against their freedom and independence, with the new world war they are actively preparing, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism have become the main enemies of the peoples. In these circumstances, the peoples have no alternative but to throw themselves into the liberation struggle, the proletariat has no alternative but to rise in violent revolution and establish its state power. The triumph over the bourgeoisie of its own country is also the principal condition for the proletariat to cope with the threat posed by the two superpowers. The bourgeoisie of the various countries is linked in one way or another with this or that superpower. This makes it absolutely essential that the proletariat, which is moving towards the revolution, while fighting its own bourgeoisie, must not forget the danger that threatens it from the superpowers, and while fighting against the threat posed by the superpowers, it must not forget its own bourgeoisie that oppresses and exploits it. The struggle against its own bourgeoisie and the struggle against the threat from the superpowers do not constitute two different problems, but two aspects of the same problem, which only the revolution of the proletariat and its state power can solve once and for all.
Just as in the past, world imperialism, especially the two most rapacious and most savage imperialisms of our time, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, cannot do without the oppression and exploitation of their own peoples, or without the oppression and exploitation of other peoples of entire continents, such as Asia, Africa and Latin America, which at one time were colonies and semi-colonies. It is true that today, the colonial system of imperialism has suffered heavy blows and is disintegrating. It is also true that in some areas of the world, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, US imperialism has sustained irreparable defeats. But this does not diminish the imperialist threat to these peoples, does not remove their national liberation struggle from the order of the day. In their frenzied contest for exploitation, domination and hegemony, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism follow a typically colonialist and neo-colonialist policy. They are ready to use any intrigue or blackmail in order to embroil these countries in their spheres of influence, to set up military bases in them, to transform them into bases for aggression and intimidation. Besides this, the grave economic crisis that has gripped the imperialist world makes the imperialist powers more desperate and savage in their efforts to get their claws on the economic and human resources of those countries and to shift the burden of the crisis on to their backs. The situation becomes even more tragic when, in many countries, such as Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Chile, etc., fascist dictatorial regimes which have turned into tools of imperialism have been placed at the head of affairs and carry out an open doors policy, the policy of betrayal of the supreme interests of the peoples of their countries. All these circumstances arouse the peoples and throw them into the anti-imperialist national liberation struggle. As long as it is spearheaded against world imperialism, and especially, against the most savage, the most aggressive imperialism, such as U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the national liberation movement of the peoples of the world is the natural ally and a powerful reserve of the proletarian revolution, just as the proletarian revolution and the truly socialist countries are the reliable support of the revolutionary struggle and liberation movements of the peoples.
Marx ism-Leninism teaches us that, in the present epoch, the world is divided into two diametrically opposite worlds that stand confronting each other: the world of the proletariat, of the revolution and socialism, to which the working class and all the oppressed peoples have turned their eyes, and the world of the bourgeoisie, of the imperialist-revisionist counter-revolution, to which all the counter-revolutionary forces, with the two world gendarmes, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism at the head, are looking. A correct materialist class concept of the present-day social reality rules out any other perspective of development and advance apart from that of the revolution and of the anti-imperialist liberation movement.
On the question of the assessment of our epoch, of the relationship among classes in the world, and as a consequence of the strategy and tactics of the proletariat and its party, the PLA upholds the thesis of Lenin who, as long ago as 1921, when only one socialist state, Soviet Russia, existed in the world, wrote: “In the world today there exist two worlds, the old world of capitalism, that is in a state of confusion but which will never surrender, and the rising new world, which is still very weak, but which will grow, for it is invincible.” In the light of this clear thesis of Lenin and a whole dialectical materialist conception of history one sees how groundless is the so-called theory of "three worlds”. Theoretically, this anti-Leninist thesis is mistaken because it gives a distorted picture of the present-day world and of the real class tendencies operating in it; politically and practically, it is harmful because, by ignoring socialism as a social system, it ignores the most profound contradiction of the times, that between socialism and capitalism, which leads to the weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the countries where socialism is being built, while calling on the world proletariat not to fight, not to rise in socialist revolution. Whereas the Marxist-Leninist conception of our epoch and its contradictions, which are: the contradiction between labour and capital in the capitalist countries; the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations and imperialism; the contradictions among the imperialist powers, argues in favour of the proletarian revolution and opens brilliant prospects for it, the anti-Leninist theories of the "three worlds”, of “non-involvement", etc., are intended to impede the revolution, to put down the struggle against imperialism and social imperialism, to split the Marxist-Leninist movement and the unity of the proletariat.
A meaningful fact which shows that there is no way out apart from the revolution of the proletariat is the systematic and continual failure of the plans of the imperialist-revisionist governments to escape from the crisis. In every imperialist-revisionist country without exception, from the United States to Japan, from the Soviet Union to the European revisionist countries, inflation is growing, the cost of living is rising, unemployment is spreading, degeneration is becoming more rampant and reaction more savage day by day and year by year. The underlying cause of the successive failures in every capitalist-revisionist country is that the governments try to solve their contradictions and escape from the crisis in the conditions of the existing capitalist-revisionist order, while preserving this order. This is an impossible task. Crises, degeneration, and corruption are inevitable fellow-travellers of capitalism and have their roots in this system of oppression and exploitation. The only way out is that which Marxism-Leninism has disclosed and verified, that which the PLA has consistently defended and which it defended again at its 7th Congress. This road is the socialist revolution, the violent overthrow of the imperialist-revisionist bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In their efforts to find a palliative for the crises of the capitalist system, the capitalist governments have secured the help and collaboration of the revisionist parties and reformist trade unions. The revisionist parties of Italy and France, of Spain and Portugal have long ceased talking about the revolution and the proletariat. Instead of the violent revolution of the proletariat, the Italian revisionists talk about and strive for the "historic compromise", for alliance with the principal bourgeois parties of Italy. On their part, the French revisionists allege that, in the conditions of present-day capitalism, the proletariat no longer exists, that it has become a working class, and that consequently, the transition to socialism will be brought about through the development of bourgeois freedoms and democracy. In the theses of the French revisionists and their chief, Marchais, there is nothing original. They are merely a revival of the illusions spread by the father of modern revisionism, the renegade Kautsky, and criticised and exposed by Lenin. As Lenin explained, there is no such thing as pure democracy. Any kind of democracy is the dictatorship of one class to suppress another class. In this sense, bourgeois democracy, too, is nothing but a dictatorship in the hands of the bourgeoisie to suppress the working class and the masses of the working people. Lenin also showed who created and who needed the illusion about “pure democracy”. "It is valuable to the bourgeoisie,” explained Lenin, “which needs it to hide the bourgeois character of the present-day democracy from the people, to represent it as universal democracy, as pure democracy, and in repeating this the Scheidemanns, like the Kautskys, in reality are abandoning the viewpoint of the proletariat and taking the side of the bourgeoisie”. Against Kautsky's bourgeois stand, Lenin raised the proletarian revolutionary perspective, the perspective of the replacement of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, even if it is disguised as “the most democratic republic”, with the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Since Lenin wrote these lines many years have gone by and many events have taken place, all of which have proved that "pure democracy", “democracy for everyone” is an utter fraud. In reality it is one form of its dictatorship which the bourgeoisie maintains as long as it is useful to it and abandons as soon as its interests require that it go over to more savage forms of violence and terror. The bloody events in Indonesia and, later, in Chile once more showed the working class and the broad masses of the working people of these countries and the world proletariat that bourgeois legality and bourgeois democracy are not the slightest impediment to the bourgeoisie, when the time comes for it, to establish its fascist dictatorship and drown the liberation struggle of the proletariat and the broad masses of the working people in blood.
In the light of Lenin's teachings, in the light of the materialist-dialectical analysis of the situation in the capitalist-revisionist countries quickening with revolution, it is clear that the road of "transition to socialism” through the “economic competition” preached by the Soviet revisionists, through the "historic compromise” advertised by the Italian revisionists, and through the "extension of bourgeois freedoms and democracy” publicized by the French revisionists, are the roads of renegades from the proletarian revolution, of traitors to Marxism-Leninism, roads of complete submission to capitalist domination.
Lenin worked out and developed the theory of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, as well as all the other major problems of the revolutionary theory and practice, in struggle against open or disguised defenders of capitalism. Lenin stressed that “the only Marxist line in the workers' movement of the world” is "to make clear to the masses the absolute and inevitable necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for the revolution through a merciless struggle against opportunism”. The PLA has placed this Leninist tradition of ruthless exposure of, and irreconcilable struggle against, the revisionist enemies of Marxism-Leninism at the foundation of all its activity. It continued this tradition at its 7th Congress. In his report to the Congress, comrade Enver Hoxha ripped up, one by one, all the disguises revisionism assumes today, ranging from the open anti-communism of Marcuse and Garaudy to that of Berlinguer, Marchais and Carillo, from the pseudo-socialism of the Soviet revisionists to that of the Yugoslav revisionists. He showed the great danger that modern revisionism poses for the lifeof the peoples, the cause of freedom and socialism in the world. The fight against revisionism has been and still is an indispensable precondition for the triumph of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
How many times, in the course of the century or so, since the name of Marx became known and Marxism was born, have the reactionaries and revisionists declared socialism as “buried”! How loudly they are trumpetting that “revolution has become unnecessary”, that "capitalism is no longer what it was before”, that “it has found within itself the strength to emerge from the crisis”! How many times has Marxism-Leninism been declared "obsolete”, left behind by “new creative doctrines” which allegedly respond to the new circumstances and conditions! However, the dialectics of history has developed in such a way that the enemies of Marxism have suffered defeat and been exterminated, that those who denied it have been forgotten and nobody spares them a thought, (except, perhaps unkind ones), while the cause of the proletariat and revolution has been built up with greater power and vitality.
The present situation in the world is turbulent. The policy and
activity of the imperialist bourgeoisie, especially of the imperialist
bourgeoisie of the two superpowers, are the real cause of this grave
situation. The difficulties and obstacles which the class struggle of
the proletariat has to overcome are great. But through these
difficulties and obstacles the socialist revolution is advancing and
the liberation struggle of the peoples is mounting. "The socialist
revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat,” said comrade Enver
Hoxha at the 7th Congress of the PLA, “are an historic necessity, and
there is no force that can stop their coming about”. With this
assurance the proletariat is living and fighting today on the
barricades of the class struggle and the revolution.
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