At the stroke of midnight on December 22, the famous statue of Stalin in the Albanian capital Tirana was ripped off its pedestal on the orders of state officials, and driven away under cover of darkness to an unknown grave.
This politically-motivated act of official vandalism stemmed from the decision to de-Stalinise the country made the day before by the Politburo of the ruling Party of Labour of Albania (PLA). The Politburo ordered the removal of Stalin’s name from all state institutions and the tearing down of his statues and portraits.
When they toppled Stalin’s statue in Tirana at midnight, Albanian officials acted like thieves in the night. No prior warning was given to the Albanian people so they could express their opinion, no open debate was carried out within all levels of the PLA, nor was there any opportunity for the world communist movement to have its say. Yet previously the PLA leadership had expressed the opinion that the defence of Stalin was a matter of fundamental principle for the world communist movement.
The PLA leadership had criticised Nikita Khrushchev as a revisionist for springing a surprise attack on Stalin at the 1956 Congress of the Soviet Party and openly setting out on the counter-revolutionary course of restoring capitalism in the Soviet Union. Up until very recently, the PLA leadership had declared that Stalin was a genuine internationalist whose life and work belonged to the world communist movement, and couldn’t be misused by the Soviet Party as its own personal property.
Now the PLA leadership is following in the footsteps of the Khrushchevites and other revisionists whose attacks on Stalin signalled their surrender to capitalism.
On December 26, Albanian leader Ramiz Alia told a PLA Conference that “Stalin’s life has no direct relevance to Albania”. The many symbols of Stalin in Albania “are of no use to anyone”, he continued, and therefore should “now be done away with”.
But Alia showed that his revisionist faction still fears the strong proletarian emotions aroused by the symbols of Stalin when he went on to admit “the trouble was that these things risked being turned into political and ideological symbols”.
While their tactics differ according to circumstances, all revisionists must attack Stalin since he led the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union for 30 years, which gave practical confirmation to the communist theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The revisionists cannot rest easy knowing that workers continue to be attracted to the banner of communism taken so far forward by Stalin despite the frenzied opposition of the enemies of workers inside and outside the Soviet Union.
Leon Trotsky claimed that Stalin ran a “terrorist bureaucracy”. Trotsky wanted to promote his allies amongst the middle class intelligentsia into a ruling elite and destroy the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus it was Trotsky who advocated subjecting the Soviet working class to army-style commandism from above, while Stalin insisted that the Party was the instrument of the proletarian dictatorship and must therefore mobilise the working class by methods of comradely persuasion, and the class in turn must lead all other toilers in the construction of socialism.
Mao Tse-tung talked loudly about un-named “errors of Stalin” in order to lead the Chinese Party down the road of big power expansionism and collaboration with imperialism. While every person and party makes errors, as Stalin readily recognised, the successes of socialist errors, as construction proved to be so solid while Stalin was at the helm that the Soviet Union smashed the fascist blitzkreig after Western powers had been knocked for a six by Hitler’s armies.
Nikita Khrushchev slandered Stalin as a “bloody tyrant”. Khrushchev wanted to de-stabilise the Bolshevik Party as the instrument of the proletarian dictatorship and restore the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Party was led by Stalin, the enemies of the working class were suppressed when they challenged the dictatorship of the proletariat. But under Khrushchev and his successors, the Soviet Party suppressed the friends of the working class when they challenged the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie being installed by the Khrushchevites.
Lenin and Stalin always warned that the class struggle would continue in the Soviet Union throughout the entire period of transition to classless society (i.e. communism) where the class state withers away. In the era of Lenin and Stalin, the Bolshevik Party organised the working class as the ruling class in a socialist nation whose social production went to satisfy expanding social needs.
After the Khrushchevite counter-revolution, when revisionists gained control of the leadership of the Soviet Party, the working class was forced back to the same position it occupied under Tsarism as an exploited mass of toilers whose purpose in life was to produce surplus value for a tiny minority of pampered parasites.
This new class of Soviet exploiters had its social origins in those officials of the Soviet Party at district, republic and central level who over a period of decades started to become somewhat isolated from the working class. They finally coalesced into a separate stratum from the working class, serving their own selfish interests instead of the broad interests of the whole class. This search for official privileges was the material base of revisionism in the Soviet Union.
This counter-revolutionary process certainly had its beginnings during Stalin’s lifetime, but while he was alive, the revisionists could not reveal themselves openly and gain control. Those Party officials who had started their almost imperceptible slide into revisionism had to keep their heads down in Stalin’s era and carry out the socialist programme of the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee or they would get Stalin’s boot up their backsides.
Waves of opportunism inside and outside the Bolshevik Party were exposed and defeated by Stalin and the honest Bolsheviks. The Stalinists beat the Trotskyites in the 1920’s who planned to capitulate to the pressures of imperialism and open up the Soviet Union to control by foreign capital since they claimed that “socialism cannot be built in one country”.
The Stalinists beat the followers of Nikolai Bukharin in the 1930’s who wanted to protect capitalist farming and retain antagonistic classes in the countryside instead of going over to collective farming which alone would consolidate socialism and satisfy the class interests of the vast majority of small peasants and landless rural workers.
And the Stalinists beat the revisionist advocates of bourgeois political economy in the 1940’s and early 50’s who wanted to expand, not shrink, the operation of the law of value and commodity production in order to provide the “market forces” for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.
This iron determination to consolidate socialism and defend the dictatorship of the proletariat earnt Stalin the blind hatred of all imperialists and opportunists. They invented every possible slander to hurl against him. Since Stalin’s death in 1953, the enemies of communism have been trying to bury his life and work, but like a spectre he returns to haunt them in the shape of the communists all round the world who are fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
While Stalin, like every other person on earth, made mistakes, which he publicly corrected when he realised them, the essence of Stalin’s strategic line is correct. This is why the international communist movement went from strength to strength during Stalin’s era and why imperialism was pushed very much onto the defensive despite a relentless campaign of military, political, economic and ideological aggression against the Soviet Union.
Genuine battlers for socialism have always seen Stalin as the defender and developer of the communist theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin. This has always been the position of the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) over its long history, it remains the position of genuine communist parties in other lands, and it used to be the stated position of the Party of Labour of Albania until very recently.
But now Ramiz Alia and the current PLA leadership have reversed their stand on Stalin and have called for the de-Stalinisation of Albania. Alia & Co are attacking Stalin in order to openly throw aside all the communist principles that Stalin defended all his life.
Alia & Co are now warmly embracing bourgeois principles in all fields, as we will prove later on in this statement. But first, we must confess that if the CPNZ Central Committee had made a closer study of the situation in Albania than it did over the last year or so, then possibly the revisionist course of Alia & Co could have been revealed before now.
But this possibility of an earlier exposure of revisionism in Albania could not be achieved in practice by the CPNZ Central Committee because of several factors.
The main factor was the necessary concentration of the CPNZ Central Committee on giving communist leadership in the class struggle within New Zealand, in line with Lenin’s thesis that the internationalist duty of communists is expressed first and foremost by bringing the socialist revolution closer in their own countries. But this left little time for our relatively small number of Party leaders to devote detailed study to the situation in Albania.
Another factor was the need for a period of practice to clarify the stand of Alia & Co without rushing to hasty judgements since there had been many decades of comradely relations between the CPNZ and PLA.
So while the CPNZ Central Committee is critical of its inability to expose the flowering of Albanian revisionism earlier, we also recognise the factors which held us back.
But when the PLA leadership attacked Stalin last December in an open rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat, then the CPNZ Central Committee was impelled to devote itself to a much closer study of the situation in Albania. A 400-page dossier of source documents was compiled which chronicles events in Albania over the last two decades. This dossier clearly reveals the movement of Alia & Co from apparent adherence to communism towards open promotion of revisionism, at first almost imperceptibly, then cautiously speeding up the process over the last 18 months or so, and now in headlong gallop after the PLA Politburo was purged in July and December 1990 of those resisting Alia & Co.
The PLA leadership has openly rejected the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the form of state power in Albania. This is always one of the first moves by revisionists in order to weaken working class resistance to the capitalist counter-revolution.
The December 1976 Constitution, drafted in the era of former Albanian leader Enver Hoxha, defined Albania as “a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat which expresses and defends the interests of all working people”.
But this is contradicted by the draft of a new Constitution drawn up in December 1990 under Ramiz Alia’s close supervision. This new draft asserts that “the whole state power in Albania stems from the people and belongs to them”.
In 1976, therefore, the Albanian state was declared to be a class state in which the working class exercised its rule on behalf of all toilers. In 1990, however, the Albanian state was in effect declared to be a “non-class” state where all “the people” – working class, peasantry, state officials, intellectuals, etc. – hold power together.
This new formulation by Alia & Co is in essence identical to the “state of all the people” that the Khrushchevites claimed to be constructing as a more “democratic” replacement for the dictatorship of the proletariat of the Stalin era. In fact, the revisionist concept of the “state of all the people” was nothing more than a political disguise for the erection of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union on the ruins of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The history of the Soviet Union over the last 35 or so years, from Khrushchev to Brezhnev and now to Gorbachev, shows how a new class of exploiters arose out of the ranks of revisionist officials of the Soviet Party, coalescing into the ruling class under the political disguise of building the “state of all the people”, steadily consolidating their economic and legal position as pampered parasites sucking the blood of Soviet toilers, linking up with Western big business to unleash the full fury of capitalist “market forces” and eliminate the last remnants of socialist economy, erecting a pluralist political superstructure that allows different factions of the ruling class to squabble inside a “democratic” parliament over who gets what perks, so that today the Soviet fat cats preside over a country that is virtually indistinguishable from Western monopoly capitalism.
In response, Soviet toilers are organising mass resistance against the attacks of their ruling class. The Soviet working class is organising trade unions independent of their bosses and the state in order to gain better conditions of wage slavery. Many nationalities are agitating for separation from the Soviet Union in order to escape the “prison of nations” erected after the Khrushchevites betrayed the common cause of labour. And pro-Stalin political activists are discussing the formation of a genuine communist party in order to mobilise the Soviet working class for a second socialist revolution.
The revisionist leaders of Albania have started down the same capitalist road trodden by the Soviet revisionists. Disaster awaits the workers of Albania unless they organise around a new communist party to defeat the counter-revolution led by Alia & Co.
In his famous work State and Revolution, Lenin severely criticised the revisionist concept of the state of “the people” now being promoted by Alia & Co to disguise their capitalist counter-revolution. Paraphrasing Marx and Engels, Lenin declared that “every state is a special force for the suppression of the oppressed class”. Therefore, he concluded, there can never be any such thing as a “people’s state”.
Lenin went on to quote Marx who insisted that “the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat” (i.e. socialist society) and “this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society” (i.e. communist society).
“The period of transition from capitalism to communism”, Lenin observed, “is a period of an unprecedentedly violent class struggle in unprecedentedly acute forms and, consequently, during this period the state must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way(for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie).”
Lenin then stated: “The dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariatwhich has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from classless society, from communism. The forms of bourgeois states are extremely varied, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Lenin’s thesis that the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary for the entire period of socialism, as the transition period between capitalism and classless society (communism) is called, is fully in line with the conclusions of Marx and Engels.
In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx declared: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
But Alia & Co have turned their backs on the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore they have turned their backs on Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. And when communist principles are discarded, the only other sort of principles available are capitalist principles, since these two sets of principles correspond to the antagonistic class interests of the two decisive forces in our class-divided world - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, or in more simple terms, the working class and big business.
Before Enver Hoxha died in April 1985, the PLA leadership declared itself in support of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But close study shows that the terms “people’s power” and “people’s state power” were used as virtually interchangeable terms with the dictatorship of the proletariat by Hoxha and other PLA leaders.
In Hoxha’s report to the 8th PLA Congress in 1981, for instance, he declared: “People’s state power is the greatest victory and the most powerful weapon of the working class and the other working masses for the construction of socialism and the defence of the homeland.”
This is just a random selection of one example amongst many. The term “people’s state power” occurs repeatedly throughout Hoxha’s works alongside the term “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
As we have seen, it is nonsensical to use the term “people’s state power”, since all state power rests on “the dictatorship of a single class” (as Lenin put it). State power can never rest on all “the people” belonging to the different classes which still exist after the socialist revolution right up until the era of classless society (i.e. communism). In hindsight, therefore, we must conclude that even in Hoxha’s era the PLA leadership showed theoretical confusion in its defence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
And this theoretical confusion about the nature of the Albanian state must express a degree of separation between the PLA and the Albanian working class. In practical terms, the Albanian working class cannot have fully consolidated itself as the ruling class in Hoxha’s era, nor can the PLA have completely become the instrument of the proletarian dictatorship.
Given such theoretical and practical weaknesses in creating the dictatorship of the proletariat, it logically follows that socialism must have always been on shaky ground in Albania, despite the outward appearance of good progress being made in Hoxha’s era.
Lenin put it this way in State and Revolution: “The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat, as the particular class whose economic conditions of existence prepare it for this task and provide it with the possibility and the power to perform it. While the bourgeoisie breaks up and disintegrates the peasantry and all the petty-bourgeois strata, it welds together, unites and organises the proletariat.
“Only the proletariat – by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production – is capable of being the leader of all the toiling and exploited masses, whom the bourgeoisie exploits, oppresses and crushes often... more than it does the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation.”
Lenin continued: “The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming transformed into the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organising all the toiling and exploited masses for the new economic order. “The proletariat needs state power, the centralised organisation of force, the organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population – the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians – in the work of organising socialist economy.”
Lenin here clearly spelled out the need for the working class to become the ruling class and lead all other sections of working people – farmers, intellectuals, self-employed, small business people, rural labourers, etc – along the road of socialist construction towards the ultimate goal of classless society (communism). The task of the communist party is to make the working class fully conscious of its leading role and help organise the class to take up its leading role in the swirling currents of the struggle between capital and labour.
In the light of our close re-examination of the situation in Albania, the CPNZ Central Committee must now characterise Enver Hoxha as an incomplete Marxist, someone genuinely trying to apply the principles of communism but falling down on some of the fundamentals.
This is not to merely blame Hoxha for personal mistakes without applauding his merits and looking at the objective conditions which helped shape the man and his party. Hoxha was the driving force behind the formation of the PLA which, in turn, directed the liberation of Albania from the invading fascist powers in 1944. Then the government formed by the PLA leadership expropriated the capitalists and feudal lords, established state ownership over the means of production, embarked on an ambitious programme of industrialisation, established free health services and education, distributed land to the peasants and assisted them to set up modern farm co-operatives.
The economic and political landscape of Albania was radically transformed by this tremendous social progress. For the first time in Albanian history, the ordinary toiler was guaranteed a job, a living family income, a home, education for the kids, social security and a real say in how the country was run. These facts speak volumes for the merits of the PLA’s work under Enver Hoxha.
But the passage of time has revealed that there were grave weaknesses along with these merits in Hoxha’s era. In particular, we now see the fatal undermining of the dictatorship of the proletariat resulting from the confusion sown by the “non-class” concept of “people’s state power”.
Our research indicates that socialism couldn’t be consolidated in Albania because the leading role of the working class was never brought into full play by the PLA which was hamstrung by the concept of “people’s power”.
Objective conditions certainly hindered the creation of the leading role of the working class. When Albania was liberated there were virtually no factories or large-scale industries, and so there wasn’t a fully formed working class in existence, just a scattering of urban artisans. The overwhelming majority of the population were peasants. Stalin suggested to Hoxha in 1947 that the Communist Party of Albania be re-named the Party of Labour to clearly reflect this lack of proletarians in the country and consequently the party. This suggestion was acted on by the Albanian Party at its first congress.
The Albanian working class was created after liberation by the PLA’s programme of industrialisation. The sons and daughters of peasants were turned into industrial workers on a large scale. This created the possibility to consolidate the leading role of the working class in practice as well as in theory, and a number of steps were taken in this direction by the PLA, but this wasn’t able to be carried through to the end because of the lingering influence of the concept of “people’s power” amongst the PLA leadership.
After Hoxha’s death, this fatal weakness allowed Alia & Co to progressively censor all talk of the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus preventing the working class from becoming conscious enough of its leading role in the consolidation of socialism to squash the counter-revolutionary plans of the revisionists.
During his funeral oration at the memorial service for Hoxha in April 1985, Alia gave only the most cursory mention to the dictatorship of the proletariat, laying most of the stress on “people’s power”.
Opening a PLA Conference in October 1985, Alia equated socialism with “the Albania of the people”, not mentioning the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the same month, the PLA Central Committee resolution on setting up the Enver Hoxha Museum talked of the contribution their former leader made to “the establishment and strengthening of people’s state power”. Again, not a single mention of working class state power.
In Alia’s 200-page report to the 9th PLA Congress in November 1986, there are just three passing references to the dictatorship of the proletariat, in sharp contrast to previous congress reports. Instead, Alia emphasised the anti-Marxist concept of “people’s state power”.
In June 1989, Ramiz Alia and Albanian prime minister Adil Carcani held talks with East German foreign minister Oskar Fischer. The official Albanian news agency ATA has described Carcani as “one of the closest co-workers of Ramiz Alia”.
According to the official account of these talks with Fischer published by the East German Government, Alia stressed that East Germany constituted ”an important factor for peace and socialism in the world”. Alia went on to say that both countries “are building socialism under their specific conditions”. And Carcani characterised Albania and East Germany as “valuable partners in building socialism”.
Here we see further evidence that Alia & Co regarded revisionism, as practiced in East Germany, as the type of “socialism” they wanted in Albania.
In the space of a few short months following these talks, the revisionists ruling East Germany had allowed their state to be incorporated into capitalist West Germany. Now Alia & Co are making overtures to the West European powers to incorporate Albania into their political and economic system. The phoney “socialism” of the revisionist leaders of East Germany and Albania has taken them to the same counter-revolutionary destination.
The 8th Plenum of the PLA Central Committee was held in September 1989. This plenum was later described by Alia (in December 1990) as the concrete beginning of a “new line” in the PLA which signaled “a correction of many past stances” and “a distancing from many previous postulates in relation to socialism, to property, to mass democracy and to the party itself”.
Alia’s speech to the 8th Plenum showed how cautiously his revisionist faction was setting the stage for a future counter-revolutionary coup. Alia used his criticism of the “revisionist betrayal” of Gorbachev in order to question whether “particular individuals or leading organs had too much power” in Stalin’s era. In hindsight, it can be seen that this was a significant step towards an open attack on Stalin as the defender of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Alia used his lip-service about “strengthening the leading role of the Party” in order to call for more recruits to the PLA from amongst the intelligentsia. In hindsight, it can be seen that this was a significant step towards destroying proletarian influence within the PLA so that the Albanian working class was left leaderless against the counter-revolutionary coup.
Alia used his praise of “the active role of the masses” in order to propose changes to “the mechanism of the electoral system”. In hindsight, it can be seen that this was a significant step towards political pluralism where all bourgeois trends are sponsored by the state while communists are gagged and bound.
Alia used his criticism of “imperialist-revisionist encirclement” for causing “difficulties in socialist construction” in order to call for more “contacts with the world”. In hindsight, it can be seen that this was a significant step towards opening up the Albanian economy to control by Western capital.
Alia used his criticism of failing labour productivity to float the idea of a bigger role for “bank and financial discipline” and “control by means of money”. In hindsight, it can be seen that this was a significant step towards opening up the Albanian economy to the full play of capitalist “market forces”.
Casting our eyes backwards and knowing what to look for, the CPNZ Central Committee is now in the position to characterise this September 1989 plenum of the PLA Central Committee as marking a significant increase in tempo of the still cautious offensive by Albanian revisionism.
Over the next few months, Alia & Co steadily prepared the ground for the next big revisionist push. This can be seen in his December 1989 speech to the General Council of the Albanian trade union movement where he talked about improving “worker control” against bureaucracy without once mentioning the dictatorship of the proletariat which is the state form of worker control.
Alia went on to advise the trade unions to fight “bureaucrats, tricksters and careerists” holding official posts in the PLA.
We can now see this was an attempt to set workers and their unions against those PLA officials who Alia designated as “bureaucrats” because they opposed his revisionist course. This behaviour can only have widened the gap between the PLA and the working class already in existence because of the pervasive influence of the anti-Marxist concept of “people’s power” in the PLA leadership.
Alia & Co used the 9th Plenum of the PLA Central Committee in January 1990 to unveil significant capitalist reforms for the Albanian economy. In his speech to the plenum, Alia advocated these measures:
* Restricting centralised economic planning. Allowing state enterprises more economic independence.
* Expanding the operation of supply and demand.
* Allowing retail prices of non-essentials to rise.
* Linking incomes with the profitability of enterprises.
* Encouraging peasants to run private herds.
* Setting up produce markets where prices are fixed by the peasants.
Alia’s proposals were endorsed by the plenum under the political disguise of “invigorating the motive forces of socialist production”. But the capitalist media seized on the capitalist economic reforms of Alia & Co with great delight. Reuters news agency, for instance, crowed that Alia “has proposed limited reforms of the country’s Stalinist system”. The 9th Plenum indicated that the revisionist counter-revolution was gathering momentum in Albania. The PLA Central Committee’s 10th Plenum, held three months later in April 1990, pushed the Albanian economy well and truly onto the capitalist road.
Alia’s proposal for a “new economic mechanism” in Albania was endorsed by the 10th Plenum. The elements of this new economic mechanism, Alia declared, would include:
• Reducing the role of state planning.
• Increasing the role of the marketplace.
• Bringing prices closer to value.
• Restricting non-economic factors in price setting.
• Elevating the role of the profit motive.
• Requiring state enterprises to fund themselves from their own profits.
• Increasing the independence of state enterprises.
• Indexing wages to an enterprise’s profit or loss.
• Tightening labour discipline.
• Giving managers of enterprises the unrestricted right to hire and fire workers.
• Forging closer economic links with capitalist states.
• Giving land to peasants for their private use.
These measures were described by prime minister Adil Carcani as “all-round and radical changes of the economic mechanism”.
Ramiz Alia told the plenum that the new economic mechanism was a “valuable contribution to socialist political economy”. In truth, however, it was the same type of revisionist slide into bourgeois political economy that Stalin condemned in his 1952 essay Economic Problems of Socialism. This was written with the benefit of over 30 years of practical successes in socialist construction in the Soviet Union.
Stalin spoke about “the economic law that the relations of production must necessarily conform with the character of the productive forces”. Put simply, productive forces mean the instruments of production and the people operating them, while relations of production mean the property relations between people.
Talking about pre-revolutionary Russia, Stalin continued: “The productive forces of our country, especially in industry, were social in character, but the form of ownership, on the other hand, was private, capitalistic. Relying on the economic law that the relations of production must necessarily conform with the character of the productive forces, the Soviet Government socialised the means of production, made them the property of the whole people, and thereby abolished the exploiting system and created socialist forms of economy.”
Stalin continued: “The law of balanced development of the national economy arose in opposition to the law of competition and anarchy of production under capitalism. It arose from the socialisation of the means of production, after the law of competition and anarchy of production had lost its validity. It became operative because a socialist economy can be conducted only on the basis of the economic law of balanced development of the national economy.”
And Stalin noted: “Today there are two basic forms of socialist production in our country: state, or publicly-owned production, and collective farm production, which cannot be said to be publicly-owned.
“In the state enterprises, the means of production and the product of production are national property.
“In the collective farm, although the means of production (land and machines) do belong to the state, the product of production is the property of the different collective farms, since the labour, as well as the seed, is their own, while the land, which has been turned over to the collective farms in perpetual tenure, is used by them virtually as their own property, in spite of the fact that they cannot sell, buy, lease or mortgage it.
“The effect of this is that the state disposes only of the product of the state enterprises, while the product of the collective farms, being their property, is disposed of only by them. But the collective farms are unwilling to alienate their products except in the form of commodities, in exchange for which they desire to receive the commodities they need. At present the collective farms will not recognise any other economic relation with the town except the commodity relation – exchange through purchase and sale. Because of this, commodity production and trade are as much a necessity with us today as they were 30 years ago, say, when Lenin spoke of the necessity of developing trade to the utmost.
“Of course, when instead of the two basic production sectors, the state sector and the collective farm sector, there will be only one all-embracing production sector, with the right to dispose of all the consumer goods produced in the country, then commodity circulation, with its money economy, will disappear, as being an unnecessary element in the national economy.”
Stalin also noted: “It is said that commodity production is bound to lead to capitalism under all conditions. That is not true. Not always and not under all conditions. Commodity production must not be identified with capitalist production. They are two different things. Capitalist production is the highest form of commodity production. “Commodity production leads to capitalism only if there is private ownership of the means of production, if labour power appears in the market as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited in the process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation of wage workers by capitalists exists in the country. Capitalist production begins when the means of production are concentrated in private hands, and when the workers are bereft of means of production and are compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity.”
And Stalin went on to state: “Wherever commodities and commodity production exist, there the law of value must also exist.... But does this mean that the operation of the law of value has as much scope with us as it has under capitalism?.... No, it does not. Actually, the sphere of operation of the law of value under our economic system is strictly limited and placed within definite bounds.... The law of value cannot under our system function as the regulator of production.”
These words by Stalin strip away the political disguise of the revisionist faction now in control of the PLA and shows why they must attack Stalin.
Alia & Co are expanding commodity production to state enterprises by requiring them to fund themselves from their own profits. Alia & Co are allowing the law of value to regulate prices and production by restricting non-economic factors in price setting and bringing prices closer to value.
They are restricting the law of balanced development of the national economy by reducing the role of state planning.
They are unleashing the law of competition and anarchy of production by elevating the role of the profit motive, increasing the scope of the marketplace and forging closer economic links with capitalist states. They are undermining publicly-owned production by increasing the economic independence of state enterprises whose managers can largely do what they like.
They are undermining collective farm production by giving private herds to peasants and allowing them the private use of land.
And Alia & Co are turning labour power into a commodity by indexing wages to the profit or loss of the enterprise employing the worker, tightening labour discipline and giving managers unrestricted power to hire and fire staff.
The 10th Plenum revealed that the PLA’s revisionist leaders were fast retreating from socialist political economy in favour of bourgeois political economy. But how does this square up with the economic law that the relations of production must conform with the character of the productive forces? How could Alia & Co have imposed this flight from socialist political economy on Albania?
The answer lies in the failure of the Albanian working class to cement its leading role in socialist construction because of the negative influence of the concept of “people’s power” inside the PLA leadership and the consequent gap between the working class and the PLA. It is logical that this must have caused some degree of disharmony between the relations of production and the productive forces and prevented the consolidation of socialist political economy in Albania.
This disharmony provided the fertile soil for the revisionist seeds spread by Alia & Co to take root and begin to choke out the socialist plants which couldn’t grow to maturity because the working class was held back from exercising its leading role. Factors outside our control prevented the CPNZ Central Committee from making a speedy analysis of the capitalist economic programme adopted by the PLA Central Committee’s 10th Plenum. Such a poor English translation of the proceedings of the 10th Plenum was provided by the Albanian Telegraphic Agency that we couldn’t understand much of what happened. We never received a better translation until late last year, when the CPNZ Central Committee was too busy preparing for our party’s National Conference and giving leadership in the class struggle within New Zealand to devote time to the situation in Albania.
The 10th Plenum also adopted a revisionist agenda in the arena of foreign relations. Alia said Albania had to forge closer links with capitalist and revisionist countries involving “contacts, talks, agreements, compromises, refusals and approvals”. Telling the plenum that European states are finding “ways and means to reduce tension”, he proposed that Albania join “the process of European co-operation and security” and also seek diplomatic relations with America and the Soviet Union.
This April 1990 plenum therefore marked a significant step by Alia & Co towards integrating Albania in the global network of imperialism. The necessity of securing maximum profits for its ruling class compels each imperialist power to ruthlessly exploit and impoverish most of its own citizens and unleash economic, political and military aggression against other countries.
The nature of imperialism has not changed in the slightest. This is shown once again by the inter-imperialist conflict in the Gulf over control of Middle East oil. What has changed is the public stance of Alia & Co towards imperialism.
Whereas they previously said they stood opposed to imperialism, Alia & Co in effect told the 10th Plenum that Albania must now compromise with imperialism. And compromise with imperialism inevitably means the enslavement of Albania and its working people by international big business. But in the usual deceitful fashion of revisionists, Alia told the plenum that Albania would continue to be “inspired by Marxism-Leninism”.
Then in July last year came the storming of foreign embassies in Tirana by 4,500 mostly young Albanians demanding a quick passage out of the country. We can now see that this unprecedented mass discontent reflected the growing social conflicts within Albania stemming from the accelerating revisionist counter-revolution.
Naturally the foreign embassies acted according to their imperialist instincts and stirred up as much trouble as possible, but without the internal cancer of revisionism splitting the ranks of Albanian workers, the external pressures of imperialism would have met a brick wall. The 11th Plenum of the PLA Central Committee convened during the middle of the embassy occupation. The class struggle in the streets of Tirana found reflection in the plenum with obvious signs of a bitter internal struggle within the PLA’s leadership.
When he slammed “forces who want to hinder our development and change its direction”, Alia in effect acknowledged strong opposition to his revisionist counter-revolution. He added: “The worst is that now these forces have found some supporters, conscious or otherwise, inside our country, something expressed in the latest events in front of the foreign embassies in Tirana.... We enter a new class struggle with internal and external reactionary forces that want to hinder and undermine this development.”
At this plenum, Alia & Co engineered the sacking of three members of the PLA Politburo – Rita Marko, Prokop Murra and Manush Myftiu – and instigated a major re-shuffle of government posts. The opponents of Alia & Co in leading party and state posts were starting to be purged.
Alia used the July plenum to criticise “procrastination” in the carrying out of his revisionist programme. “It is high time to score achievements as quickly as possible,” he declared. It seems that Alia & Co had decided it was now time for the counterrevolution to switch to top gear.
The plenum adopted Alia’s proposal to give the green light to family-based private businesses in the retail and trades sectors. These private businesses are free to buy or sell from whoever they like at whatever prices they care to negotiate.
The main theme that Alia hammered at the 11th Plenum was the “democratisation of the country”. He declared that democratisation was sweeping the economy, culture, the state, government and party. By linking the concept of “democratisation” to his capitalist-style policy programme, Alia was in effect calling for capitalist democracy in Albania.
But capitalist democracy is only democratic for the ruling class, while the working class suffers under the cruel heel of bourgeois dictatorship.
“In capitalist society,” Lenin declared in State and Revolution, “democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains in reality a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich.... Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that they ’cannot be bothered with democracy’, they ’cannot be bothered with politics’. In the ordinary peaceful course of events the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”
Lenin emphasised that only socialism provided “democracy for the vast majority of the people” on the basis of “suppression by force” and “exclusion from democracy” of all those who wanted to exploit and oppress working people.
And he added that only when socialist society had developed into communist society, where there were no classes and the state withers away, could there be “a truly complete democracy, democracy without any exceptions whatever”.
Despite all the hot air spouted by Alia & Co about “democratisation”, the months following the July Plenum provided growing evidence of mass discontent and social conflict inside Albania. In September, Alia publicly admitted there were “hindrances and big difficulties” in implementing the decisions of recent Central Committee plenums. He slammed the “bureaucratic” opposition coming from Party and state officials and the managers of state enterprises.
An editorial a few days later in Zeri i Popullit, organ of the PLA Central Committee, detailed the increasing amount of theft, conflict and demoralisation in farming co-operatives as livestock was handed over to peasants as their private property. The editorial noted that “people who wanted to see the destruction of the co-operatives” and take Albania back to the old days “when the rich farmers lorded it over the toilers” were raising the banner of democracy.
Also in September, PLA Politburo member Pirro Kondi reported in Zeri i Popullit how “sudden changes in policy” had caused anxiety, confusion and anger amongst people. The PLA’s “poor communication” with the people had created “a vacuum, an uncertainty,” he stated.
Then in October, Alia publicly declared that “we should not make haste” in what he called the “process of democratisation”. This came just three months after he had advised his revisionist faction to proceed “as quickly as possible”. Why the sudden reversal of tactics? It seems that the growing opposition to the counter-revolution compelled Alia & Co to come to a temporary halt while they prepared the next stage of their revisionist coup.
This conclusion is borne out by the defection to the West several weeks later by Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, who told the capitalist media he had long hoped that Alia would become the “Albanian Gorbachev”. But he had gone into exile when “the process of democratisation halted suddenly,” Kadare stated.
The 12th Plenum of the PLA Central Committee convened in November 1990. Here Alia noted that Albania now welcomed foreign investments, joint ventures with foreign capital and economic co-operation with foreign countries. This opening up of Albania to economic control by foreign capital strips the country of the ability to defend its sovereignty.
At this plenum, Alia had to defend his revisionist line against un- named opponents who, he said, were having a “dangerous” impact on public opinion because they “appear under the guise of principle” to declare that “we are giving up socialism”.
He slammed “bureaucratic” state and economic officials who “hinder the implementation of decisions”.
Alia admitted that “there might be confrontation” between management and workers over the need for enterprises to make more profits. He noted “a general demoralisation” amongst workers of town and countryside. And he asked why “party committees sit with folded arms” when they see such a lack of labour discipline.
Going by what Alia said, it seems there is widespread opposition and disillusionment amongst workers, officials and PLA members to the counter-revolution being engineered by the PLA’s revisionist leadership.
This unrest is being expressed in the rapid fall in labour productivity. Workers obviously feel their class interests cannot be satisfied in the revisionist climate now prevailing in Albania and are merely going through the motions on the job. The same dramatic fall in labour productivity also occurred in the Soviet Union after the Khrushchevite counter-revolution.
Yet during Hoxha’s era, the labour productivity of Albanian workers had increased in leaps and bounds, allowing the country to experience some of the highest growth rates in the world. This was acknowledged by Alia himself at the 1986 PLA Congress when he reported that over the last five-year plan the total social product had increased by 19 per cent, financial income by 17 per cent, industrial production by 27 per cent and the export of goods by 29 per cent.
Now Albania is being plunged into disaster by the counter-revolution. Alia informed the November plenum about Albania’s “extraordinary” slide into economic crisis. State investments had to be reduced by hundreds of millions of leks to prevent a budget deficit which, he admitted, “has never before happened”.
Alia launched into a defence of “free discussion” and “pluralism of opinions” at the 12th Plenum. This was presented as theoretical justification for the change of political direction in Albania, indicating that the PLA’s revisionist leadership felt under considerable pressure.
Alia’s open encouragement of political pluralism was also designed to open the floodgates to every opportunist trend in the country with the aim of swamping genuine communists under this counter-revolutionary torrent.
Alia presented the plenum with a plan for “pluralistic” multi-candidate elections to the People’s Assembly which, he claimed, will give a “higher degree of political democracy than before”. These are the usual lies spread by revisionists. The real content of democracy comes not from the number of candidates, but from the political platform they present to the electors, and in Albania today the PLA’s revisionist leadership is working flat out to make sure that only a bourgeois platform is being promoted in every forum.
Just how openly Alia & Co are pushing their bourgeois platform was demonstrated in late November in a speech to top officials by Enver Halili, a PLA Central Committee member and minister of justice in the Albanian Government. According to the official ATA news agency, Halili proclaimed that Albania is now “implementing the principles of the fundamental documents of the Conference on Security & Co-operation in Europe”.
But CSCE’s fundamental documents are centred around the capitalist principles of a free market economy and the protection of private property. In effect, therefore, Halili declared that the Albanian economy was now on the capitalist road, which obviously goes hand-in-hand with bourgeois domination in the political and state superstructure.
The dumping of seven Politburo members by the PLA’s dominant revisionist faction at the 13th Plenum of the Central Committee in mid-December was further evidence of the intense inner-party struggle being waged. Those sacked from the Politburo were Muho Asllani, Foto Cami, Hajredin Celiku, Lenka Cuko, Pirro Kondi, Qirjako Mihaii and Simon Stefani.
The Politburo was completely stacked with Alia’s men following this latest purge and the purge five months before. The majority of the old Politburo had become casualties of the revisionist counter-revolution.
Alia & Co also used the December plenum to engineer a major re-shuffle of ministerial posts in order to eliminate their opponents in the government.
The 13th Plenum gave the green light to the formation of “independent political organisations”. This opened the way for the People’s Assembly election in early 1991 to be multi-party. The plenum’s communique defended such “pluralism” as being ”to the good of the further democratisation of the country’s life”.
The capitalist media reacted with unrestrained delight to these decisions. Thus Reuters news agency gave tremendous prominence to how Albania was ”dumping Stalinist dogma and moving towards multi-party politics” after virtually ignoring the country during Hoxha’s era.
One day after the plenum, Alia delivered a “state of the nation” address which was broadcast on all radio and television stations. Not even once did Alia refer to Albania as a socialist country, but instead he called for the creation of a “modern democracy” where there would be “independent political organisations”.
Since Alia refused to link his call for a “modern democracy” with socialism, he clearly wasn’t talking about socialist democracy. Capitalist democracy is the only other type of democracy possible in our class- divided world where capital and labour face each other as irreconcilable enemies. Therefore, it is self-evident that Alia was advocating the creation of capitalist democracy in Albania.
Capitalist democracy means democracy only for the tiny minority of parasitic millionaires, while the majority of people are subjected to a daily grind of crushing exploitation and excluded from any real say in how their country is run. In New Zealand, for example, monopoly groups like Business Roundtable set the agenda of both the National and Labour parties, while the working class remains without representation in Parliament.
Nor can there be any “independent” party in our class-divided world. Every party represents the interests of a definite class or section of a class. A genuine communist party, for instance, represents the interests of the working class, and these interests demand a friendly alliance between the working class and all other toilers in society.
Alia’s talk about “independent” political parties is merely the sort of political deceit typical of revisionists. Alia couldn’t openly say that he was promoting different bourgeois parties to represent the different factions of the class of exploiters now arising in Albania, so he disguised his betrayal of socialism under the cloak of “independent” parties and a “modern democracy”.
In his “state of the nation” address, Alia declared that he and other “initiators” of democratisation “wish to advance at a faster pace”. But he went on to say that “wishes alone are not enough” as he sounded the alarm against “dark forces” opposing his programme.
Alia hit out against “political demagogues, malcontents and provocateurs” who were resisting the “speedy democratic processes”. He warned against “enemies who want to divide us”. And he stated that “now is no time for theorising” in a probable reference to opponents who point out that communist theory directly contradicts Alia’s revisionist course.
So Alia was appealing to everyone inside Albania to come to the aid of the counter-revolution and help smash the resistance of the opponents of revisionism. Using deceitful code-words like “democratisation”, he was taking the struggle against socialism out to the widest possible audience.
Unfortunately, however, it appears that Alia’s opponents have mainly confined their struggle against revisionism to within the Party of Labour. They haven’t taken their message out to the working class and mobilised the class to smash the counter-revolution. This can only be a tragic legacy of the separation between party and class originating from the revisionist concept of “people’s power” which prevented the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because the working class was not led into battle as an organised force against revisionism, it was inevitable that mass dissatisfaction with the situation in Albania would express itself in spontaneous and anarchic outbursts. And this is precisely what happened a few days after Alia’s “state of the nation” address when violent riots broke out in Elbasan, Shkodra, Kavaje and Durres. In several cities, troops and tanks had to be deployed to restore public order.
About the same time, the Democratic Party was formed by Tirana-based students and intellectuals on an openly bourgeois platform of creating a free market economy, restoring private property, integrating Albania with other European countries, establishing bourgeois democracy, etc.
There is plenty of evidence showing the friendly relations between Alia & Co and the Democratic Party (DP). Prime minister Adil Carcani, one of Alia’s closest allies, invited DP leaders to a cosy two-hour chat soon after the new party was formed. DP leaders immediately got a lot of air time on television and radio. The PLA’s electoral platform drafted by Alia called for “loyal dialogue” and “democratic relations” with parties like the DP. The few hundred Albanians jailed for anti-socialist offences were set free after the DP demanded the release of political prisoners. The government agreed to the DP request to move polling day back in order to give the new party more time to organise for the People’s Assembly election.
There are friendly relations between leaders of the PLA and DP because both parties are advocates of capitalism, although for tactical reasons Alia & Co still drop the occasional “Marxist” word, while the intellectuals leading the DP are openly pro-bourgeois.
But Alia & Co are far from friendly to their opponents within the PLA. Alia told a PLA Conference on December 26 that “leading apparatuses of the party” would be restaffed as soon as possible with “young people able to respond energetically to the new demands and situations”. In simple language, Alia & Co are taking advantage of their dominant position to purge the “leading apparatuses” of all opponents of revisionism.
And he promised that this purge would extend right down to the executive committees of regional party organisations. The method to be used would be the drafting of “new rules and criteria” for elections to these executive committees designed to weed out opponents of Alia & Co.
In his usual deceitful fashion, Alia paved the way for this ruthless purge by talking about the need “to further deepen inner-party democracy”.
Alia had to admit that “the economic situation is no good” in his speech to the PLA Conference. “Many strategic objectives which once seemed so close to accomplishment are now seen to be much more distant.”
He slammed “a psychosis of laziness and slackness in many sectors which caused falling labour productivity”. Like all bourgeois politicians, Alia blames the workers for not wanting to work themselves to death to make more profits for the class of parasites sucking their blood.
He told conference that the new economic mechanism is “replacing the system of centralised administrative commands” and leading to a “market economy” based on competition between the state, co-operative and private sectors.
The profit motive driving the market economy would lead to “the closing of non-viable enterprises” which, he admitted, “will result in large-scale redundancies”. The imposition of taxes on workers and enterprises would be necessary to fund unemployment benefits and subsidise lower-income families.
He called for “political stability” in order to attract foreign investment. Praising the money that the Western powers are now pouring into Eastern Europe, Alia declared: “We like to hope that this aid will not be lacking for Albania.” The Albanian leader was begging for charity from the imperialist powers who never give any aid without many strings attached.
Alia’s December speech to the PLA Conference is further evidence of how fast Albania is sinking into the mire of bourgeois political economy. His talk about more competition, bigger profits, lazy workers, mass redundancies, higher taxes and foreign investment could have come from the mouth of any capitalist politician in New Zealand or overseas.
At the end of last year, the draft Constitution for Albania drawn up under Alia’s close supervision was publicly unveiled. One of its most remarkable features is the almost dictatorial power it places in the hands of the president of Albania who just happens to be Ramiz Alia. If the draft constitution is ratified, the president will be given these new powers:
• The convening of sessions of the People’s Assembly.
• Setting the date of elections to the People’s Assembly and the district people’s councils.
• Dissolving the People’s Assembly before its term has expired and calling fresh elections.
• Disbanding district people’s councils and calling fresh elections.
• Re-submitting laws that he is unhappy about back to the People’s Assembly for further consideration.
• Proposing to the People’s Assembly who should be appointed as prime minister and when that person should be dismissed.
• Appointing and dismissing members of the government.
• Appointing or dismissing leading officials of other central institutions.
• Presiding over meetings of government ministers.
• Overturning actions of the government, the ministries and the district people’s councils that he deems to be unlawful or irregular.
• Issuing presidential decrees which have the full force of law.
• Entering into international treaties.
• Appointing or dismissing diplomatic representatives.
• Presiding over the Council of Defence.
• Commanding the armed forces.
• Proclaiming a state of emergency.
• Proclaiming a state of war and partial or general mobilisation.
• Presiding over the Supreme Council of Justice.
• Exercising the right of pardon.
• Awarding decorations and titles of honour.
• Granting political asylum.
• Drafting proposals to amend the Constitution of Albania.
These dictatorial powers which the PLA’s revisionist leaders propose granting to Ramiz Alia contrast sharply with all their deceitful propaganda about the “democratisation of Albania”. These new powers will be used to crush opposition to the counter-revolution and speed up the transformation of Albania into a paradise for the rich and a hell on earth for the toilers.
The capitalist media invariably refers to Enver Hoxha as a “Stalinist dictator” because he fought for socialism despite being an incomplete Marxist. Hoxha had very few of the sweeping powers that the draft constitution proposes granting to Ramiz Alia, yet the capitalist media portrays Alia as a “reformer” taking Albania towards “democracy”, simply because this revisionist is fighting for capitalism.
Further evidence of the bourgeois dictatorship over the working class being created by Alia & Co was revealed in mid-January when the Albanian Government passed a law which virtually outlaws strikes. This was sparked off by a wave of strikes by miners, drivers and dockers for more pay.
The new law compels workers to give 15 days’ notice of stoppages. They cannot take any action during this “cooling-off period”. After the required 15 days’ notice has expired, workers are permitted to strike for only one day, after which they must wait another 15 days before launching a full-scale stoppage.
Strikes are forbidden during times of national crisis and before elections. In key sectors such as defence, energy, telecommunications, food and health, strikes will be allowed only if minimum functioning can be guaranteed.
On top of all these restrictions, the People’s Assembly is authorised to suspend any strikes if it decrees that the “national interest” is threatened.
In Albania today, therefore, it is virtually impossible for workers to mount a legal strike that is effective and widespread. The new anti-strike law is a police state law designed to prevent workers from even defending their conditions of wage slavery. This exposes the real capitalist content of the “democratisation” being imposed on the country.
With the slide of Albania into capitalism, the international working class doesn’t have any country it can call socialist. We are back in the position communists found themselves in before the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
There have been successful anti-imperialist revolutions since World War I in a number of countries which were weak links in imperialism’s global chain, such as the Soviet Union, Albania, Eastern Europe, China and Indo-China. But it proved impossible to consolidate working class rule in these particular countries, in large measure because the majority of the population consisted of peasants and other non-proletarian strata who provided fertile soil for the spread of revisionism.
But the class struggle between capital and labour is flaring up ever more fiercely around the world. This finds reflection inside New Zealand, for instance, in the government’s anti-union law and social welfare cuts. This is the most repressive legislative attack on the working class in New Zealand history. It amounts to an open declaration of class war by the parliamentary representatives of big business.
Therefore it is more imperative than ever for the NZ working class to unite around its own Communist Party and build a united front of labour able to undermine and finally destroy the economic, state and ideological dictatorship of big business.
It is more imperative than ever for the NZ working class to unite around its own Communist Party to take up the struggle for socialism where there is social ownership of the means of production protected by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The open embrace of revisionism by the PLA leadership is a defeat for the international working class. We have no wish to hide this unpalatable fact. But if our study and exposure of the causes of revisionism in Albania helps the CPNZ become more conscious about how to give communist leadership in the sharpening class struggle in New Zealand, then we will turn defeat into victory. The same applies for overseas parties.
The CPNZ has never based its existence or its work on what parties in other countries do or don’t do. Therefore the CPNZ will not be shaken by events inside the PLA.
The CPNZ is solidly based on the firm foundations of communist theory and practice. At the same time as the PLA leaders are rushing to suck up to international capital, an increasing number of workers in New Zealand are coming to regard the CPNZ as the most conscious and determined centre of opposition to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
In the 70 years since the CPNZ was founded in 1921, our Party has stood up against many revisionist trends, such as Trotskyism, Browderism (in the United States), the Titoites (in Yugoslavia), the Khrushchevites, Maoism, Euro-communism (the revisionist parties of Western Europe) and all their local counterparts in New Zealand. Now we must stand up against the revisionism of Alia & Co who have engineered Albania’s slide into capitalism.
The CPNZ has stood loyal to communist principles for seven decades. Our Party has become one of the world’s most battle-hardened opponents of social democracy and revisionism during its 70 years of existence. We won’t crack in this fight against Albanian-style revisionism, nor will our Party flinch from the on-going struggle to overthrow the rule of big business and establish the rule of the working class in New Zealand.
The CPNZ Central Committee is asking our whole Party to vote on reversing our recent National Conference resolutions supporting the PLA and describing Albania as a socialist country. We are confident that our whole Party will stand up against Albanian revisionism.
The CPNZ Central Committee invites a public response from all overseas parties to our Party’s public exposure of Albanian revisionism. This should help to focus the international struggle against revisionism and consolidate the world communist movement.