First Published: in Struggle! No. 154, April 17, 1979
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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In many countries around the world, Marxist-Leninists have taken up a firm struggle against modern revisionism. This struggle is of great historical importance. The reconstruction of authentic communist parties and of a genuine international communist movement depend on its success. In other words, all true progress in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat depends on the victory of Marxism-Leninism over all forms of revision (that is, all deformations of Marxism-Leninism) which opportunists of all varieties try and colour the theory of proletarian revolution with.
In this context, Enver Hoxha’s work, Imperialism and the Revolution, whose original Albanian edition dates back to April 1978, but which has only recently been published in English and French, constitutes a major event. In fact, we had been expecting an analysis of the revisionism of the current leadership of the Communist Party of China for several months and almost the entire second half of the book deals with this subject. Hoxha’s book has the merit of taking a clear position. Not only does it not limit itself to denouncing the revisionist “three worlds” theory, but on the basis of the gestures of the current Chinese leaders, it also outlines the plan of these leaders to transform China into a superpower. Hoxha also analyses Mao Zedong’s role in the Chinese revolution. He says it was not the role of “a Marxist-Leninist but (of) a progressive revolutionary democrat... Within China, in the ranks of the party, among the people and outside China, he built up his reputation as a great Marxist-Leninist dialectician. But this was not so.” (p. 448)
The first part of the book is devoted to reviewing Lenin’s teachings on this era, the era of imperialism and of proletarian revolution: “We Marxist-Leninists must understand from this that we have to combat world imperialism, any imperialism, any capitalist power, which exploits the proletariat and the peoples, with the greatest severity. We stress the Leninist thesis that the revolution is now on the agenda. The world is going to advance towards a new society which will be the socialist society. World capitalism, imperialism and social-imperialism will become even more decayed and will come to an end through the revolution.” (pp. 129-130)
After indicating the strategy of imperialism on a world scale, particularly Identifying the ambitions of the United States, the USSR and China, the first part of the book launches a call to prepare revolution by developing the struggle of the proletariat and the peoples in different countries.
Hoxha’s book is an important contribution to the ,debates on fundamental issues which communists must today undertake and complete in order to drive out revisionism wherever it is to be found.
That is why, in the next few weeks, we intend to comment on certain points in this work and put forward our own independent point of view on the contentious questions which it raises, such as the evaluation of Mao Zedong as a communist leader. We invite all our readers to read this book, now available at the Spark and l’Etincelle bookstores.