First Published: December 1979
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Editors note: The following was originally sent as a letter to the Canadian Marxist-Leninist theoretical journal, Lines of Demarcation, which is published by the Bolshevik Union of Canada.
* * *
At long last there is a polemic that defends orthodox Marxism-Leninism by unmasking the revisionism of the Party of Labor of Albania! The Bolshevik League of the United States unites with the line presented in Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, “The Party of Labor of Albania Came to Canada Under a Stolen Flag.” The analysis contained in this work answers the questions being asked by Marxist-Leninists throughout the world as to why the PLA shifted from promoting the Chinese revisionists for nearly three decades to condemning “Chinese Revisionism” without a word of self-criticism.
Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, has tremendous significance for the proletariat and for Marxist-Leninists here in the US and internationally. It furthers the cause of the world socialist revolution by exposing how the centrists have defiled the meaning of proletarian internationalism by upholding it in words while operating out of the most unprincipled and selfish bourgeois nationalism in deeds. By ripping away the false flag that the Party of Labor of Albania has been waving to disguise its social-nationalism, the Bolshevik Union has shown that the PLA is not raising the banner of revolutionary Marxism-Leninism to which all true internationalists must rally.
In 1915, Lenin wrote:
To rally these Marxist elements, however small their numbers may be at the outset; to reanimate, in their name, the now forgotten ideals of genuine socialism, and to call upon the workers of all lands to break with the chauvinists and rally about the old banner of Marxism – such is the task of the day (“Socialism and War.” LCW 21:328).
In order to do this, the genuine Lefts who formed the Third International had to make a complete rupture with the social-chauvinists of the Second International. This required that they direct their main fire against the camouflaged social-chauvinists – the centrists. Today, the Bolsheviks are faced with the same task. This is why the Bolshevik Union’s unmasking of the PLA, the leading centrist force internationally, is of such vital importance.
Since the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong have been discredited and shown in their true colors as open social-chauvinists, the Party of Labor of Albania with its spokesman, Enver Hoxha, has been attempting to assert itself as the leading party of the international communist movement. In league with Hardial Bains of the revisionist Communist Party of Canada (ML), they have been laying the groundwork for an “international” of centrist parties. They present the PLA as a disciplined and orthodox Marxist-Leninist Party of the Proletariat that has always held “one Marxist-Leninist line.” They present the unprincipled alliance of the parties attending the Bainsite centrist “multi-national” (at which topics like Vietnam that would involve struggle were eliminated from the agenda) as the principled unity of Marxist-Leninists. In short, they assume a “left” cover to delude the international proletariat about the nature of the revolutionary vanguard Party and proletarian internationalism.
Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, uncovers this fraud of the PLA, particularly around the Albanian “opposition” to the “theory of three worlds.” The Bolshevik Union uses scientific socialism to analyse the foreign policy of the Party of Labor of Albania. Examining the situations in Africa. Iran, and Vietnam, they expose that the PLA is always willing to support a national bourgeoisie, no matter how reactionary, as long as it can serve the interests of the Albanian bourgeoisie. The PLA’s position on “developing nations” and the “progressive world” is in essence no different than the CPC’s position on “third world.” When it comes to imperialist nations, Albania is willing to ally with some (the “small fish”) against others (the “big fish”) – again as it suits Albanian national interests. This position is in essence no different than the CPC’s position on the “second world.”
Also, their slogan of the “superpowers” as the main enemy and main source of war, which is borrowed directly from the theory of the “three worlds.” diverts attention away from the system of imperialism and the rival imperialist blocs. It is no different from the CPC line of the “first world.” Contrast this approach to the scientific analysis of Lenin:
If the war is a reactionary, imperialist war, that is, if it is being waged by two world groups of the imperialist, rapacious, predatory, reactionary bourgeoisie, then every bourgeoisie (even of the smallest country) becomes a participant in the plunder, and my duty as representative of the revolutionary proletariat is to prepare for the world proletarian revolution as the only escape from the horrors of a world slaughter (“The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.”LCW 28:287).
By examining the PLA’s actions through sound irrefutable Marxist-Leninist analysis, the Bolshevik Union’s Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, shows that the PLA subordinates the revolutionary interests of the international proletariat to the interests of Albanian social-nationalism. Through this exposure Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, defends orthodoxy by reaffirming the Leninist thesis on the national question and proletarian revolution. This is absolutely essential to combatting the revisionist distortion of these questions promoted by both the “theory of the three worlds” and the centrist “denunciation” of that theory.
The Bolshevik Union correctly points out that “Modern revisionism is a revitalization of the old revisionist ideas of the Second International, only this time they are under the mask of Marxism-Leninism. The PLA can make no special claim to opposing modern revisionism. They only put forward their own version of it.” (Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, p. 55) And the aim of all variants of revisionism is the same – to deroute the proletariat from the path of proletarian revolution.
Enver Hoxha’s infamous slogan, “the revolution is a question taken up for solution”, is once again a clear example of an ambiguous slogan which makes Lenin’s analysis of imperialism being the eve of socialist revolution obsolete. Lenin in his Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, shows how:
The bourgeois liberal prostitutes are trying to drape themselves in the toga of revolution. (Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, LCW 9:126)
In exposing the opportunist utilization of the term “revolution.” Lenin states that:
It is now our duty to show the proletariat and the whole people the inadequacy of the slogan of “Revolution”; we must show how necessary it is to have a clear and unambiguous, consistent and determined definition of the very content of the revolution. (Ibid., p. 127)
Lenin states clearly that the advanced class must define exactly the very content of the urgent and pressing tasks of the revolution. Vague slogans about “revolution” are characteristic of the PLA’s “consistent line”!! The Bolshevik Union exposes why “the PLA generally speaks of revolution in general, rather than proletarian revolution–The bourgeoisie is in favor of revolution against feudalism and ’revolution.’ i.e.. counterrevolution against socialism and the proletarian revolution.” (Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, p. 73)
The international centrist trend seeks to deceive the proletariat by pointing the direction of “revolution” down the blind allies of reformism and social-nationalism. The centrists are the most dangerous enemies of socialist revolution because they prolong the subjugation of the proletariat and the toiling masses to imperialism under the banner of leading the struggle against it.
Hoxha’s analysis that “the situation in the world today is revolutionary” (Imperialism and the Revolution, p. 149) also paints the reformist spontaneous movements in revolutionary colors. Here is what Hoxha gives as examples of the supposedly “revolutionary struggles” of the working class: “The strikes, protests, demonstrations of the working people in the United States of America, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Poland, Italy, Germany. Spain, etc. which often end up in bloody clashes with the bourgeoisie and its apparatus of oppression, are striking at the very foundations of the bourgeois and revisionist rule. In these fierce clashes with capital and the bourgeoisie (“capital and the bourgeoisie”?! sic!) the working class and the broad masses of the working people are more and more strengthening their proletarian consciousness, preparing and tempering themselves ever better for the coming class battles.” (Report to the 7th Congress of the PLA, p. 159) Yet the struggles referred to so vaguely here have actually been under the leadership of various labor aristocrats and reformists, with their demands being limited strictly to reforms. It is pure economist deception on Hoxha’s part to claim that these reformist struggles “are striking at the foundation of the bourgeois and revisionist rule” or constitute a “revolutionary situation.” And it is sheer worship of spontaneity to claim that these spontaneous struggles lead the working class to “strengthening their proletarian consciousness.” Lenin long ago proved in What Is To Be Done? that the spontaneous trade union struggles only produce trade union consciousness, and not socialist consciousness, which can only be brought to the working class from without.
So Hoxha’s Leninist-sounding analysis that there is a revolutionary situation in the world today is a fraud that actually upholds the theory of spontaneity and attacks the genuine Leninist thesis on what constitutes a revolutionary situation.
Like the Comrades in the Bolshevik Union, we had originally accepted the PLA at its own valuation as a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party. At the time of the Bains Internationalist Rally for May Day, 1978, Bolsheviks in the US were shocked and disturbed at the PLA’s message of greetings to Bains and the CPC(M-L). For years we had been aware that the CPC(M-L) was a band of counter-revolutionaries who could in no way be considered genuine Marxist-Leninists. In the US we were familiar with the sect organized by Bains, a group called the Central Organization of US Marxist-Leninists (COUSML). COUSML had always been a small and shadowy sect, reknowned only for its waving of the Red Book and its social-fascist methods.[1] Based on this, we had assumed that the PLA was totally unfamiliar with the rancid history of Bainsites and was basing its friendly relations with the CPC(M-L) on the superficial knowledge that Bains gave lip service to condemning the “theory of the three worlds.”
Although we considered this a serious error on the part of the PLA, we thought that further contact with the actual positions of the Bainsites would convince them that in essence the CPC(M-L) upheld the revisionist “theory of the three worlds.” (Lines of Demarcation, No. 7 and 8, had unmasked the Bainsites beyond any doubt.) Little did we understand then that in essence the PLA itself upheld the revisionists as the enemy of the proletariat that it is. Instead, more praise of Bains and reprints of the poverty-stricken “analysis” of the CPC(M-L) began to appear not infrequently in the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA) and in Albania Today throughout the entire year of 1978.
In March, 1979, Bains held yet another international rally and advertised that the PLA would attend. And indeed a Central Committee member of the PLA sat on the dais with Bains and Co., going so far as to embrace Bains and lead a chant of “Make the Rich Pay!” Clearly the Party of Labor of Albania was doing their best to buoy up a revisionist who had been thoroughly discredited before the eyes of the proletariat by the Bolshevik Union’s systematic campaign to expose Bains’s “Party” and its opportunist line internationally. The PLA’s promotion of Hardial Bains included support for the class collaborationist position of unity with the Canadian “middle bourgeoisie” – a position totally inimical to Marxism-Leninism. This class collaborationist position is sanctioned by Enver Hoxha himself who states that parties must “maintain a cautious and flexible attitude, especially towards its wavering, possible, or temporary allies, including the various strata of the middle bourgeoisie...” (Imperialism and the Revolution, Tirana, p. 224)
But the Bains rally merely put the seal on the distrust we had been developing for the PLA. At the rally, Xhelil Gjoni made a speech condemning Mao Zedong “thought” as revisionist without any hint of self-criticism for the PLA’s years of conciliation to the Chinese revisionists. Even Bains gave lip sendee to the “mistake” made by the CPC(M-L) in upholding Mao. The PLA, however, itself apparently blameless, did not speak to the content of Bains’s criticism, paltry as it was. Instead, Gjoni was extravagant in his praises of the CPC(M-L) as a genuine party, supposedly upholding Lenin’s teachings on the attitude of a party towards its own mistakes. Lenin taught:
A political party’s attitude towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it fulfills in practice its obligations towards its class and the working people. Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions that have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification – that is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and its class, and then the masses. (Left-Wing Communism – An Infantile Disorder, LCW 31:57)
This teaching of Lenin can only shame the PLA. The Party of Labor of Albania blatantly distorts history by pretending they never upheld the CPC and Mao. On the contrary, the worst damage the PLA had inflicted on the struggle to build a Marxist-Leninist Party for proletarian revolution in the US was through the cover it gave the Communist Party of China. Posing as a principled Marxist-Leninist Party, a staunch defender of Stalin against the Khrushchevite revisionists, and a leader of the dictatship of the proletariat in Albania, the PLA promoted Mao Zedong “thought” internationally.
Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, rips the covers off this fraudulent Party. The so-called staunchness of the Albanian polemics against the “theory of the three worlds” is precisely such an example of this political fraud. The Bolshevik Union shows how “It is entirely incorrect for the PLA to try to lay the blame for the theory of ’three worlds’ entirely on the Chinese revisionists, it is rather endemic to modern revisionism of the Khrushchevite, Titoite, Maoite, or Hoxhaite variety. It is easy, however, to understand why the PLA wants to cover up the real history of this theory. In 1956 this theory was a theory that supported imperialism. Tito used it to try and win nationalist regimes back into the imperialist fold, and Khrushchev used it to try and bring them into the Soviet social-imperialist fold. Khrushchev at this time was restoring capitalism in the Soviet Union, and he was pursuing a foreign policy that was laying the basis for his imperialist plans. Hoxha’s position of supporting the drawing of these countries ’closer to the Soviet Union.’ was at best inadvertently supporting the growth of Soviet social-imperialism.” I Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, p. 22)
The Bolshevik League of the US agrees with this conclusion drawn by the Bolshevik Union, because it explains in precise terms why it took the PLA six years to finally break with the Soviet Union, though never breaking with the revisionist “theory of the three worlds.” Despite Hoxha’s present contention that the PLA always held “one Marxist-Leninist line” on Mao, but that he was somehow an “enigma,” Mao Zedong and the CPC had been hailed by the PLA for years as the leadership of the international communist movement. For example, on Mao’s 80th birthday, Enver Hoxha explicitly stated, “You, dear comrade Mao Tse-tung, as a great theoretician and strategist of the revolution, in irreconcilable struggle with various opportunist trends, both ’rightist’ and ’leftist,’ especially with the dangerous preachings of the Khrushchevite revisionists who have betrayed the cause of the revolution and communism, loyally and courageously defended the triumphant doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. As an outstanding follower of the great teachers of the world proletariat, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, in compliance with the conditions of China and the features of the present epoch, you further developed and creatively enriched Marxist-Leninist science in the field of philosophy, the development of the proletarian party, the strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle and the struggle against imperialism, and the problems of the construction of the socialist society. Your precepts on continuing the revolution under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, so as to carry socialist construction to final victory and bar the way to the danger of the restoration of capitalism, whatever form it takes and wherever it comes from, constitue a valuable contribution, of great international value, to the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Your works are a real revolutionary education for all Marxist-Leninists and working people.” (Supplement to Albania Today, No. 6, 1973)
Enver Hoxha’s “consistent one line” has apparently evolved from the above cheap and sickening flattery to claiming today that Mao Zedong was an “enigma” to him all along.
Although the overall influence of the PLA on the development of social-chauvinism in the United States was minimal, the effect of Mao’s anti-Leninist line was tremendous. Mao Zedong “thought” was a weapon which sabotaged socialist revolution in the US by creating ideological chaos in every sphere – organizational, philosophical, and political. It is only over the last few months that the Committee of US Bolsheviks (now the Bolshevik League) was formed to do the work of exposing this poisonous influence in order to rally class conscious workers and Marxist-Leninists to splitting completely with social-chauvinism, whether open or concealed. Our analysis of Mao’s role in the US opportunist movement appears in our new book, Imperialism, Superprofits, and the Bribery of the US “Anti-Revisionist Communist Movement.” Suffice it to say here that the genuine Lefts were far too long kept subordinated to the Rights through the effects of Mao Zedong “thought.” Yet all along, the PLA, rather than polemicizing against the anti-Leninism of the CPC, conciliated with it.
Even when we believed the PLA to be a Marxist-Leninist Party, this seemed suspect to us. It was evident that Albania had kept silent so long as it was receiving Chinese aid. We were also disturbed at the examples we saw of the concrete application of the PLA’s supposed “proletarian internationalism.” In Imperialism and the Revolution, Hoxha says the aims of the revolution in colonies and semi-colonies are “complete sovereignty and economic and political independence” and that this can be achieved throught the “democratic, anti-imperialist revolution.” (Imperialism and the Revolution, Tirana, pp. 174-175) This is in direct contradiction to Lenin, who says that communists “... need constantly to explain and expose among the broadest working masses of all countries, and particularly of the backward countries, the deception systematically practiced by the imperialist powers, which under the guise of politically independent states, set up states that are wholly dependent upon them economically, financially, and militarily. Under present day international conditions there is no salvation for dependent and weak nations except in a union of Soviet Republics.” (“Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions,” LCW 31:150) Concretely, calling Khomeini’s Islamic republic “revolutionary” and justifying Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia, are criminal betrayals of the proletariat.
The Bolshevik Union was able to analyze the social-nationalism of the PLA in Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, thus explaining how Albania’s seemingly contradictory policies are consistent with its overall revisionist line. This line represents the interests of the Albanian national bourgeoisie. By shedding clarity on the PLA’s revisionism, the Bolshevik Union laid our confusion to rest and rallied us to the banner of Leninism. Based on this, we were able to understand some of the positions of the PLA which had puzzled us over the years. We will give only a few examples, using those particular to the US situation, since the Bolshevik Union has gone into great depth in a number of areas.
In the United States, there were two national centrist organizations which joined with the PLA condemning the “theory of the three worlds.” These two organizations – the above mentioned COUSML and the CPUSA(M-L) have been competing feverishly for the official franchise from the Party of Labor of ’Albania. The keynote of this struggle has been unprincipled maneuvering on the part of both groups, encouraged by the unprincipled maneuvering of the PLA. During 1978, the CPUSA (M-L), (then the Marxist-Leninist Organizing Committee – MLOC), traveled extensively to make whatever backroom deals and alliances they could internationally since they were so weak in the US. Meanwhile, COUSML (through the Bains clique) was also busy playing the recognition game, intriguing to subvert MLOC’s connections and build their own.
In December, 1978, MLOC rushed to found their “Party,” the CPUSA(M-L). in the hopes of getting the nod of recognition from Albania. The PLA disappointed them by accepting COUSML as the US representative at Bains’s “Sixth Consultative Conference” in March, 1979. This alone proved that the rally was not organized on the basis of principled political unity, since a number of the “parties” attending had recognised CPUSA(M-L) and not COUSML as the genuine communist party in the US.
In accordance with the same opportunist norms that the PLA was promoting internationally, no principled polemics have been waged by either CPUSA(M-L) or COUSML in the scramble for recognition. Neither organization has aimed at drawing definite lines of demarcation based on line. Instead, in its March 15, 1979, Unite, CPUSA(M-L) used an article on the 60th anniversary of the Comintern to sneak in an attack by innuendo on the Bains rally for excluding them. That same month, COUSML ran an article insinuating that CPUSA(M-L)’s chairman, Barry Weisberg, was a police agent. As of yet, CPUSA(M-L) has not responded. However, that they are continuing their international maneuvering was evidenced by their activities at the August, 1979, Third International Youth Camp. In order to squash even the possibility of debate around line, parties with disagreements were labeled “Agent Provocateurs” and physically expelled from the camp. The CPUSA(M-L) brags about this social-fascist activity (in which Bains, by the way, also participated) in the Sept. 15, 1979 issue of Unite.
This cutting off of debate, this absence of frank and open polemics, is characteristic of the US movement. The norms that have prevailed for the last twenty-five years, not only in the US, but in the international communist movement, have not been Leninist norms. Lenin called for principled struggle waged openly before the eyes of the proletariat, not squashing of debate and concealment of the Party’s views and aims:
Open polemics, conducted in full view of all Russian Social-Democrats and class-conscious workers, are necessary and desirable in order to clarify the depth of existing differences, in order to afford discussion of disputed questions from all angles, in order to combat the extremes into which representatives, not only of various views, but even of various localities, or various “specialties” of the revolutionary movement, inevitably fall. Indeed, as noted above, we regard one of the drawbacks of the present-day movement to be the absence of open polemics between avowedly differing views, the effort to conceal differences on fundamental questions. (“Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra,” LCW 4:355)
In Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, the Bolshevik Union exposes the opportunist motivations of the PLA in revising Leninist norms. They show that the PLA supported and united with the Khrushchevites, only starting the “struggle against revisionism” when aid to Albania was cut off. Likewise, the PLA promoted Mao Zedong “thought” and the CPC until China cut off aid to Albania. All these flip-flops were conditioned by the bourgeois nationalist interests of the Albanian revisionists, and not at all by proletarian internationalism.
The abandonment of Marxist-Leninist principles is also seen in the type of groups that the PLA and other centrist parties support in the US. Both CPUSA(M-L) and COUSML most wretchedly worship the spontaneous movements. The only real difference between them is that CPUSA(M-L) focuses on tailing the trade union movement and trying to join the trade union bureaucracy, while COUSML focuses on tailing petty bourgeois movements, such as the anti-technology, social-pacifist “anti-nuclear” movement. All such bowing to spontaneity is, as Lenin teaches, the ideological root of all opportunism. As we have shown, the PLA glorifies these spontaneous struggles. And they have the nerve to carry out their anti-Leninist line in the name of Lenin and Stalin!
And lest there be any doubt that the PLA downgrades the role of the conscious element, we have only to look at Hoxha’s criticism of the Chinese revisionists, who he claims “advise the proletariat to shut itself up in libraries and study ’theory,’ because the time for revolutionary actions has not come.” (Imperialism and the Revolution, Tirana, p. 169) Anyone in the least familiar with the Maoists knows that this is absurd. Their problem is not that they’ve done too much theory, but that they’ve virtually liquidated theoretical work. Instead they are guided by the pragmatism of Mao Zedong, which only knows “practice, practice, practice.”
Just how the PLA rejects the historic mission of the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie is clear from Hoxha’s position in Imperialism and the Revolution on the US proletariat. He informs us that, “we cannot, in the least, negate the role and contribution of the American proletariat to the revolution in that country. In fact, in the United States of America also, there is a section of opinion opposed to imperialism, predatory wars, oppression by the capitalists, trusts, banks, etc.”
Clearly Hoxha does not see the US proletariat as the revolutionary class, but they do have a “role” to play. Luckily, however, there is a progressive “section of opinion” (of what class or classes is apparently unimportant) which will resist “the oppression by big capital.” (Ibid.) In the list of progressive “opinions.” no mention is made of the attitude of the proletariat to the nations oppressed by US bourgeoisie, although this is a vital question. In fact. Stalin says that one of the foundations of Leninism is that:
...(g) The formation of a common revolutionary front is impossible unless the proletariat of the oppressor nations renders direct and determined support to the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against the imperialism of its “own country,” for no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations; (Engels)
(h) This support implies the upholding, defence and implementation of the slogan of the right of nations to secession, to independent existence as states. (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, SCW 6:150-1)
However, this is not important to the PLA since they liquidate the national question in the US altogether. In the 1978, Albania Today, No. 5, (English edition) the article in the Press Review section, entitled “Jimmy Carter’s Words and the Racist Reality in the USA,” clearly shows the Albanian position on the oppressed nationalities and nations in the US. First of all, it speaks of “negroes,” rather than Blacks or Afro-Americans, “American Indians” instead of Native Americans or Native peoples and “portoricans” instead of Puerto Ricans. These terms have not even appeared in the bourgeois press for a number of years because they are widely known to be derogatory.[2] Obviously “socialist” Albania does not have to worry about such things since the PLA is not about to strike up an alliance with oppressed nations unless there’s something in it for Albania.
Despite the 1928 and 1930 Comintern resolutions on the Black National Question in the US, which scientifically established the existence of the Black Belt Nation in the southern United States, the PLA speaks only of “negroes” in the “South.” They give no reason for disagreeing with the Comintern resolutions; they simply ignore them. We have not completed a thorough analysis of the data to determine scientifically whether or not there exists a Chicano nation in the Southwestern US; however, there is no doubt that the US annexed the land of Native Peoples and of Mexico. But this is not even hinted at by the PLA. In fact, the PLA’s definition of Chicanos as “Mexicans and other poor people from Latin American countries who emigrate to the United States to find a job,” is incorrect and obscures this whole question. It makes it sound as if the Chicanos are simply immigrants and no one lived on that land before it was annexed by the US. It also ignores the question of US imperialism’s rape of the countries of Latin America, which forces emigration.
The Puerto Rican nation – a US colony in the Caribbean – is also ignored, except that the Puerto Rican national minority in the US is characterized as “peasants.” This is factually absurd even in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a highly industrialized capitalist colony and has only a small peasant population. Once again, hidden away, is the PLA’s platform for “revolution” in order to promote the interests of the compromising national bourgeoisie who is ready to accept a deal with US imperialism to take Puerto Rico from colony to semi-colony.
This line reflects the same tendency as Bains CPC(M-L) and COUSML. In every situation they figure out a way to promote an alliance with parts of the bourgeoisie. On the question of the US, for instance, there is no way to pretend it is a colony. There is no way to pretend it has a large peasantry. Therefore, COUSML’s rationale for unity with a section of the bourgeoisie in the United States is that fascism is here. So we need a united front effort against it. The line of the PLA in this article is remarkably close to that of COUSML. Without directly saying so, they hint that there is fascism in the US.
Chicanos, supposedly all immigrants looking for work, “live in slums under the double terror of the police and fascist gangs.” In Chicago, “Under threats from the fascists who have the approval of the police, negroes are prohibited entrance to Market Park, one of the green areas of the city.” “In the South... few negroes dare show outside the limits of their ghettoes.” (Albania Today, 1978, Vol. No. 5, p. 55)
The PLA’s absurd insinuations about fascism in America, are not restricted to the US. Nor are its racist comments about oppressed nations, oppressed nationalities, and oppressed national minorities restricted to the black and Latin American oppressed nationalities in the US. On both scores the Bolshevik Union points out that: “We all know why the Chinese revisionists raised the spectre of Hitlerite fascism about the Soviet Union. It was for the reason of justifying the alliance with all kinds of reactionaries for the sake of inciting the world to war with the Soviet Union. What is the PLA’s open alliance with the Vietnamese and its secret de facto alliance with the Soviet Union but an attempt to accomplish the same thing.” (Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, p. 71) This could not be clearer. Furthermore, the Bolshevik Union is absolutely correct in its appraisal of why the PLA insists on describing the alliance between China and Japan as a “Racist alliance”:
This hysteria about Hitlerite fascism is compounded by claims that the alliance between China and Japan is a ’racist’ alliance. What is this but raising the danger of the alleged ’Yellow Peril.’ something the Soviet revisionists have always done about China. The PLA is using the most disgusting forms of racism to try and incite people against China, like claiming that the source of Mao Tse-tung Thought is a product of ancient Chinese philosophy rather than modern revisionism. (Ibid.)
Under its veneer of Marxism-Leninism, the PLA is promoting reformism and alliance with the bourgeoisie. This extends to the liquidation of the national question. By reducing national oppression to simply racism, they substitute reform for revolution. The article criticizes Jimmy Carter for not fulfilling his campaign promises to put “an end to all discrimination and humiliation of the negro people,” (Albania Today, op. cit., p. 55) as if this could happen without the right to political secession of the Black Nation.
COUSML pulls this same trick. Thus they defend the “right” of their “own” bourgeoisie to oppress other nations. They defend the “right” of the US bourgeoisie to plunder the colonies and reap superprofits in order to defend the class privileges of the petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy which accrue from the suffering of the international proletariat and toiling masses. COUSML’s line on fascism in the US has the same class collaborationist basis. It calls for unity with (you guessed it!) the “middle bourgeoisie.”
This clone of the Bainsites, COUSML, must also be the source of much of the PLA’s material on the US. We can only speculate that this is why they are so obscure about their source – “the press is writing,” “as a newspaper writes,” etc. (Ibid.) On the other hand, they could easily have gotten their “facts” from bourgeois novels because their articles are utterly fictitious. They perpetuate some of the most vulgar bourgeois myths about the oppressed nationalities. For example:
The press is writing also about another deplorable phenomenon – the mass abandonment of families especially by negroes. US statistics show that about 80% of negro husbands and fathers are obliged to leave their wives and children and roam about the United States in the hope of finding a job some day or other and be able to support their families. (Ibid.)
This racist formulation, like Hoxha’s “jungle music” comment, shows the contempt with which the PLA regards non-European (and particularly non-Albanian) peoples. A vision of Chicanos, “portoricans peasants.” and “negroes” “roaming” around the country makes a farce of the genuine suffering of the oppressed nationalities in the US. This disgraceful article shows up the PLA in its true colors.
Not all the writings of the PLA, however, are as openly social-chauvinist and revisionist as this one. For years they have been successfully posing as a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party by-embellishing their revisionism with “left” phrases. For years they have had a corrosive effect on the international communist movement by forestalling the struggle against modern revisionism.
Now that the Party of Labor of Albania and Enver Hoxha have been exposed as frauds, those days are gone. The Bolshevik Union has proved that the PLA is not a Marxist-Leninist Party making errors. It is a revisionist party, a centrist party whose goal is to subvert proletarian revolution by keeping the genuine Bolsheviks from making a complete rupture with the social-chauvinists. With the publication of the analysis in Lines of Demarcation, No. 13, however, no honest Marxist-Leninist can any longer find the PLA an “enigma.” For this reason The PLA Came to Canada Under a Stolen Flag is valuable not just as an exposure of the PLA’s treachery but as a call for all Marxist-Leninists to split with the centrist trend!
Down with the Centrists!
Long Live the Bolshevik Revolution!
Central Committee of the Bolshevik League of the US.
November 7, 1979.
[1] We refer the reader to our recently published book, Imperialism, Superprofits, and the Bribery of the US “Anti-Revisionist Communist Movement,” for a full analysis on this topic.
[2] Hoxha himself made a speech to the 4th Plenum of the Central Committee of the PLA in which he describes the music that has its origins in the oppressed Black Nation as “the hullabaloo of jungle music.” (Enver Hoxha, Speeches, 1971-73, p. 348) This is the very same derogatory epithet promoted by the US bourgeoisie to promote racism and national chauvinism among the proletariat of the oppressor nation.