Let's talk about why Hoxha was unable to thwart revisionism, despite his resolute stand against the Soviets and Dengists.
The Communist Party of New Zealand was the only communist party in the Western world to side with China and Albania during the Sino-Soviet split. Later, when Deng came to power, the CPNZ would again become the only party whose majority sided with the anti-revisionists, switching their allegiance to the PLA. They then fiercely denounced Ramiz Alia when he began the capitalist restoration, pointing to Hoxha's role in allowing this revisionist trend to develop.
See if you agree with their analysis.
Central Committee of the CPNZ wrote: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...
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”...[1]
Contrary to what Hoxha suggested, state power can never rest on all “the people” – industrial workers, collective farmers, intellectuals, state officials, rural labourers, self-employed tradesmen, etc – who still exist as very different layers of the social strata after the socialist revolution right up until the era of classless society (i.e. communism).[2]
Ray Nunes was a senior member of the CC of the CPNZ, representing the party in delegations to Moscow, Peking and Tirana, including the 1960 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties. He further investigates Hoxha's errors:
Ray Nunes wrote:...the Albanian leader, Enver Hoxha, lacking any understanding of dialectics, ascribed the rise of revisionism simply to the actions of Khrushchev. As he publicly declared, Stalin made no mistakes. Therefore, Soviet revisionism must have come into the world already fully grown, for it was only 3 years after Stalin’s death that the 20th Congress of the CPSU began the restoration of capitalism. According to Hoxha’s un-Marxist view, just as Minerva sprang into existence fully-grown from the head of Jupiter, so revisionism sprang into existence fully-grown, from the head of Khrushchev. As any person with even a scanty knowledge of Marxism knows, this is sheer nonsense...[3]
To the dogmatist Enver Hoxha therefore, only the formula of the Russian revolution could be applied to any revolutions. If they did not proceed according to this formula, they could not be genuine socialist revolutions. In spite of this, the Chinese revolution did not proceed according to Hoxha’s metaphysical formula, yet it succeeded. Hoxha asserts that it was never a socialist revolution. And yet Stalin, who was claimed by Hoxha to have made no mistakes, called China a socialist country in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR in 1952.
In fact, Hoxha drew most of his lines of attack on Mao from the Russian revisionists, thereby showing that dogmatism and revisionism can turn into each other.[4]
Nunes discusses Stalin's underestimation of the revisionist threat, and their philosophical roots.
Ray Nunes wrote:This programme [Lenin’s article On the Question of Dialectics] appears to have been missed by Stalin. For he makes only a brief summary of the law of contradiction in his pamphlet, the law is placed last in his exposition of dialectical laws, and it is not treated as the basic law.
In his treatment of the dialectical method, Stalin expounds four laws. (1) The law of interconnection and interdependence of phenomena; (2) the law of continuous change and development through the supersession of the old by the new; (3) the law of the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa, and (4) the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
As can be seen, these laws differ from the three ‘classical’ laws, which make no mention of any law of interconnection, though certainly classical dialectics recognises the interconnectedness of phenomena, and is itself a logic of motion and development, in contradistinction to metaphysics.
But the internal content of motion is, as we have seen, contradiction, and the interconnection of a given thing or process with surrounding phenomena is no less attributable to the development of contradictions.
The ‘negation of the negation’ is not mentioned by Stalin. However, it must be said that in regard to change and development, he sees the content of this as the supersession of the old by the new, though he does not use this exact formulation. In connection with the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa, Stalin gives this the status of a distinct law of dialectics, a major law. This is the more surprising as, in spite of quoting from Lenin’s ‘Philosophical Notebooks’, he apparently completely misses Lenin’s view, contained in his (previously-quoted) 16-point summary of the dialectical method which figures prominently in the ‘Notebooks’, namely, that this law of transition is actually a particular case of contradiction.
It is evident from his exposition that Stalin did not realise the overriding importance of the law of contradiction for dialectics and hence was bound to make errors in analysing things...[5]
...Stalin had erred in stating in the Constitution of the USSR in 1936, that there were no longer antagonistic classes in the Soviet Union. In fact the new bourgeoisie was an antagonistic class. It was already in existence then, and grew rapidly in the post-war period, enabling Khrushchev, its foremost representative, to gain support for a usurpation of power, leading to the restoration of capitalism.[6]
Foto Çami, member of the CC of the PLA, describes the party line on antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions.
Foto Çami wrote:A similarly great role is played also by the unity of the party, the people, society, which becomes a new motive force that promotes the development of the country. This is connected with the character of the contradictions which exist in the context of unity, mainly as non-antagonistic contradictions, in which the opposites are not in irreconcilable struggle with each other (My emphasis. C.S.R.), as is the case of contradictions under capitalism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Here we have to do mainly with a unity of opposites in which both sides of the contradiction are generally progressive, and their essential interests coincide. Such unity helps society advance, because it assists, creates favourable conditions to give solution to various contradictions existing in this unity, which, thus, is raised to a higher level...
On the other hand, we must not forget that the non-antagonistic contradictions may turn antagonistic. This our enemies are trying to achieve by spreading their ideology, culture and decadent way of life, by encouraging liberalism and bureaucracy, discord and discontent, theft and embezzlement, etc. And this happens whenever the stand towards the class enemy, its ideology and activity, are opportunist and liberal, when vigilance and the stern struggle against it are weakened or altogether neglected, when a wrong policy in connection with the relationships between various classes and strata in society, between cadres and masses, etc., is followed. If Albania did not go through the retrogressive process which occurred in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, this is accounted for by the fact that our Party has known how to treat correctly the two types of contradictions, and has not allowed non-antagonistic contradictions to become antagonistic contradictions. (My emphasis. C.S.R.)[7]
So who is correct?
[1] CC of the CPNZ. (2000). Albania’s Slide into Capitalism: Statement by the Central Committee Communist Party of New Zealand (11.02.91). Alliance ML, 38(1). Retrieved from http://ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/ALL38REXH.html
[2] CC of the CPNZ. (2000). Trotskyite Coup in Albania: Statement by the Central Committee Communist Party of New Zealand (15.4.91). Alliance ML, 38(1). Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ne ... a/coup.htm
[3] Nunes, R. (1997, p. 2). The restoration of capitalism in former socialist countries, and the struggle for socialism in the present epoch. From Marx to Mao - and after. Auckland: Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ne ... tion-2.pdf
[4] Nunes, R. (1997, p. 46). Dialectical Materialism. From Marx to Mao - and after. Auckland: Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ne ... ctical.pdf
[5] ibid., pp. 32-33
[6] ibid., p. 60
[7] Çami, F. (1980). Problems of Socialism in the Light of the Marxist-Leninist Theory and the Historical Experience of the Party of Labour of Albania. Albania Today, 2(1). Retrieved from http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/a ... ismpla.htm